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Helena Clayton Newsletter - View this email in your browser

Leadership Developer • Facilitator • Writer

Welcome to the September 2020 Newsletter

Hi there and I hope you're well as we slowly shift towards late summer ...?

First off, good news. I've decided to run a second cohort of my new Leading from Love programme as the first is now fully booked. There are just two spaces remaining on this new cohort and so if you or anyone you know might be interested in one of them, please do let me know, especially as I am offering this first iteration at a heavily discounted fee. And if you felt able to spread the word in your social networks, that would be wonderful. Details of the programme are here.

I spent every Wednesday morning in August, with three others, learning the principles and practices of a Thinking Partnership. Taught by the fab Meg Peppin and based on the work of Nancy Kline, this 'gently radical' approach focuses on giving exquisite focused attention to someone so that they can fully experience what it feels like to think independently. It's a version of 'holding space' that I've written about before, but with light guidelines and structure and with deep generosity and appreciation at its heart. And I'm including it here because, as Meg and I often said, it feels like love to get fully out of someone's way while they think for themselves.

I wrote last month about the notion of eldership and its relationship with leadership. I'm not at all happy with our current description and assumptions about what being a leader in an organisation means and so in this blog written for Perry Timms and his team at PTHR, I keep on that same thread and wonder out-loud some more about what it takes for us to call ourselves a leader today. You may or may not agree ...

The main blog (below) looks at the idea of love as expansion and the work I need to do to not let my heart get small. The idea of love as being about seeing a much bigger picture or about the importance of taking a 'deep time' approach came when I wrote about love and climate crisis. But in this piece I write about the work I need to do to keep myself loving. And as I was writing it, I saw in his latest column, Oliver Burkeman suggests that the best question to help us with decisions isn't 'will this choice this make me happier' but 'will this choice expand me or diminish me?' :-)

I promised some news this month about the next piece of research, but my life took a different turn recently with my elderly dad's declining health and so that's taken some of my attention elsewhere for the time being. It's not forgotten though and more news coming soon.

Wishing you a lovely September...

With love
Helena x

Love as expansion

I found myself getting personal in this blog. For those of you who know me, you know that I'm at ease with that. Even so, it feels interesting to share with you a part of me that very few people have seen, as I explore some of the ways I have to work hard to keep myself loving at the moment. You may have a similar part within you and if my post on the inner critic resonated with you, you might like this one.

You can read it here ...

Podcasts, webinars and interviews

I've been busy writing and talking :-)

I guested on David Wetton's Conscious Leadership podcast and we had a wide ranging and free flowing discussion including how we might find ways to start conversations about love in our organisations, when it's such a tricky topic to introduce. You can find that here along with many other great episodes.

And a short webinar here with Clare Moriarty, former Permanent Secretary at DEFRA, where we draw on her stories of working with some of the most senior teams in the Civil Service and talk about how we make space for humanity and feelings in our organisations.

Louise Clifton of Invisible Grail interviewed me and you can see the edited transcript of that interview here. We explore love as a form of activism, how fear closes us down and about putting love at the heart of policies and procedures.

And I also got to talk with the wonderful Karen Graves of the Public Services People Managers Association (PPMA) about how organisations might heal and not harm people, the importance of doing our own inner work, and the need to find a robust and useful definition of love for the workplace. You can listen to that here alongside many other fascinating sessions.

A few more coming next month...

Forward

Upcoming Events

There's till not much happening in the world of events (which is why I have so many podcasts instead, I guess) but two things coming up you might like:

At the OD Network (Europe) Conference called, rather beautifully, a Carnival of Disruption :-) during 21-25 September I'm running a 90 minute session on Thursday 24 September at 5pm BST exploring how we can cultivate feelings of love online. It's very much experiential and experimental - and a bit scary as it's new territory for me - and you can find details to sign up to that and SO much more that week here.

The 6th Relational Coaching Conference on 'Love over Fear' at Ashridge, exploring how we create the conditions for love to emerge in a coaching relationship has now found a new home on 25th June 2021. That should be safe enough, we hope! Do add the date to your diary - and I hope to see some of you there.

Let's Connect

If the idea of love in organisations interests you (or maybe more interestingly if you think that love doesn't have a place in organisations...) come and explore it with me. You could hold a Learning Lunch session for your team on the role love might play in leadership - or run my 'Leading from Love' survey in your organisation. You might welcome a 1:1 session to explore your own relationship with love. Or take part in one of my Action Inquiry groups, exploring love in the workplace. Whatever, please do get in touch as I'd welcome the chance to explore this with you further.

Beyond that my leadership development work is all about conversations and relationships and building programmes that really open participants' eyes to new ways of seeing and working. Yes even virtually. So whether you're interested in finding out more about that, want some good books recommendations, or can share your own experiences of developing leadership, it would be good to hear from you.

I'm social too so you can follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn or connect via Email. Or call me of course, whichever suits.

Helena x

Email: helena@helenaclayton.co.uk
Call: 07771 358 881

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