These recent months have been 'ploughing and planting season': a time of patience and digging deep.
Being at home more has been restorative. I've been investing in relationships with peers, and co-creating new things.
I can see some fresh shoots beginning to come up; others are still underground. It's a good feeling.
This period began with a 2-day leadership programme facilitation in London for the Caritas Social Action Network; mostly experienced leaders with lots of real raw material to bring to discussions. It was a blast of oxygen to work with them. The live energy we generated between us took me by surprise, after months on Zoom! I believe we all left feeling hopeful and stronger.
Straight from there, I headed for the Community of the Resurrection in Mirfield to accompany 4 people through a silent retreat. That was quite a gear shift. It’s a restorative place to spend quiet time, especially in Autumn.
Then after some weeks at home working online, the Ignatian Leadership Programme I wrote about in the last newsletter took place in Portugal.
It was a full week, with 31 leaders gathered from 16 countries to learn with and from each other.
It’s difficult to convey to you the alchemy that occurs when leaders bring their generosity and their real struggles to an event like this, rather than their carefully cultivated facades and their (often deeply impressive) career trophy lists.
Change occurs. Growth occurs. Dancing occurs!
The limits of Zoom. A few newsletters ago, I was advocating for Zoom and online connection. I’m still profoundly impressed by what is possible through digital connection. For one-to-one, if both parties are able to bring their whole presence and attention, I don’t believe rapport or effectiveness need suffer. But the larger the group, the bigger the loss, in my experience so far.
Real faces in real windows! This was at Sintra, LDP, January
Multicultural accompaniment. Not counting course participants, I’ve been working directly with 18 different nationalities over these six months.
They all thrive differently. It’s so fascinating trying to tune to a new and unfamiliar frequency, particularly when it is subtle, or when a person doesn’t correct my out-of-tune moments.
It’s most fascinating when supporting development in areas that are culturally loaded, such as communicating compellingly, reading body language or growing in credibility.
The six months ahead shift the balance away from 1-2-1 towards a lot more facilitation, including two of the largest-scale facilitations I’ve ever been involved with (one facilitating in a team, one solo).
I’ll tell you more about them once they are safely over! I’m intrigued to notice quite HOW much less daunted I am by the team one…
As the travelling increases, to keep my carbon footprint down I’m mainly accepting bookings I can cluster together.
The down-side of that is being away from home for a bit too long … So it’s Rome next week, followed by a month in the UK (two facilitations, guiding on one 8-day retreat, and a lot of one-to-ones and catch-ups).
In June I’m heading to Rome again, and then France in August and Germany in September, both facilitating.
Thank you for reading!