Helena Clayton Newsletter - View this email in your browser     Leadership Developer • Coach & Facilitator • Writer     Welcome to the August 2024 Newsletter It seems like it's been two months and not one since I last looked back to see what's been happening.  And a feature of being freelance in the summer months is that there's more famine than feast.  Unless, as I very much do, you consider as feast the chance to get to the sea a lot more (LOTS of swims) as well as onto the Downs and do some wonderful development.  Two things specifically.  First, the final module with CSTD for my coach supervision training in the middle of London with all that energy and buzz.  Then the most wonderful week in rural Norfolk exploring grief and how to create spaces (as well as ritual and ceremony) for people to explore and express their grief.  All change comes with loss and so while this wasn't an organisational training, I'm already seeing how what I experienced and learned will flow into my work. And there were skinny dips in the fabulously clear chalk stream of the River Nar, too.      As so as we tip ourselves gently into August, here's:  a date for an in-person Love Lab in London. Hurrah! After a year off, the time feels very right for this now and I'm looking forward to seeing some of you there a link to some interesting trauma learning that has relevance for us all in organisations and perhaps especially in coaching new dates for the autumn season of Acts of Love for Tough Times a new research hub being set up to look at the future of organisations and organising a poem and some good reads. I'll be back with you early in September, and wishing you solid ground beneath your feet in the meantime. With love Helena x (art: Paula Jones)   The Love Lab 2024     Yes, I'm running another one.  It's been a while and the time feels right.  I know it's more difficult these days to fill in-person workshops, but let's see what happens.  I think this work matters.  We're facing tough times and our connection – and a loving connection – to other people will be vital to us. 10 until 4pm, in central London near Victoria on Friday 22 November.  Full info and link to book is HERE.  Described by a participant as 'a proper grown-up exploration of love', we take a look at:    How can we build more loving connections between us – even between strangers? What enables love to flow, including in organisational life? How might we start to create an ecology of connection between us (after all, we can only change and move if we do it with others) Sometimes we’ll be playful – as with all good experiments – and other times serious. There'll be small bites of research and input, plenty of discussion and experiences, some poetry.  And I'm aiming for joyful, abundant, useful, courageous and expansive.  COME!  It will be great to have you there ...   The Future of Organisations (and organising)     An interesting couple of hours spent with Sophie Tidman and Sarah Fraser of Mayvin this month, at a session exploring the future of organisations, a research project they're just setting up on the back of the work they're doing on their Masters Programme.  The conversation included the latest research from Deloitte's on Gen Z and millennials through to the pioneering thinking of Octavia Butler. And Sarah summarised the conversation as: The need to recognise that there are many possible futures, some which look lonely, others that have the potential to make progress on our most intractable problems in organisations around inclusion, diversity and sustainable futures.  How the challenge is to unleash our collective imagination, recognising what holds us in the here and now and therefore what we need to let go of in order to move towards a different future.  And as we look at the interconnected trends currently shaping and changing our organisations, i.e. generational shifts, AI and the pressing sustainability agenda, there is a need to consciously move towards a future of organising and organisations that meet our needs in these changing contexts in new and different ways.  The good folks at Mayvin recorded the session and you can watch that here.       Trauma informed leadership     I've mentioned before how Amy Fox, the CEO of Mobius Leadership, has talked why leaders in organisations need to be trauma-informed.   Maybe it's also because I've been doing my coach supervision training alongside therapists (on the CSTD training there were only 4 organisational coaches in a group of 20 - it was really refreshing) and also because I often refer to trauma as being one of the things that makes bringing love into organisations so problematic, and a block to love. This is a long winded intro to say that I signed up for this online course on trauma responses, responses that go beyond flight & flight.  Yes, it's aimed at therapists.  But I am find it really interesting for coaching and supervision, and also much wider. How so much of 'difficult' behaviour is, of course, often a old survival strategy, the importance of being well regulated ourselves and working with our own nervous system as well as the client's.      'Can we dare to imagine that others, in general, can be trusted?' Niki Harre     Stop It     The comedian Bob Newhart died this month and apart from a lovely memory of Dom and me listening to his recordings for hours on a very long drive through France once year, his main legacy for me is this genius 6min clip that I occasionally send to coaching clients (if the mood feels right!) (art: Sue Howells)   'Body like a mountain, heart like the ocean, mind like the sky'.  Buddhist aphorism     Acts of Love for Tough Times       I took a couple of months out over the summer, but I'm back now with some dates for the new season of Acts of Love for Tough Times.  It's a FREE workshop, and always will be.  A lightly structured online session, usually with about 12 or so people, to talk about what's difficult in our worlds and how things like joy, awe, activism or forgiveness (say) are forms of love that are vital medicine for these times.  The September one is now open for booking.   It's Thursday 12 Sept 8am-10am BST.  See you there?   The two other dates are: Tuesday 15 October between 4-6pm GMT Weds 11 Dec between 8-10am GMT (pic: that's the skinny dipping spot in the River Nar)   'Radical hope is manifested not in bold actions but in the courage to dream when all seems lost'. Hetty Einzig     Poem     Doubt If it's true we crawled up from the bottom of the ocean, then our skulls are seashells, our hands starfish.  As we lie here in bed, it's as if we have washed up on a white beach. If it's true, then what prayer is there for me to say and to what presence do I owe this moment? These bodies, then, the ocean surging within them, might be all we will ever have.  So, when we invent a god, we give it flesh and hope something more lives inside. Such grace we wish for ourselves, too, as we fall asleep, listening to each other's breath, softer and softer, until a different ocean whispers in our ears.  Christopher Kennedy   Good reads     We're a mixed bunch of readers in our local Book Group: it's what makes it wonderful.  This month's choice made me groan, but it turned out to be a compelling story of good guys and bad guys in Wall Street electronic trading, even if I didn't understand the half of what they were actually saying. Flash Boys from Michael Lewis.  My elderly next-door-neighbour leant me Absolutely & Forever by Rose Tremaine, which was wonderful, if deeply sad. The same could be said of The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See, which was a grim history lesson about South Korea as much as a wonderful story about two friends. The Seventh Son from Sebastian Faulks left me completely cold, though.  But Katherine Rundell's fab Why You Should Read Children's Book Even Though You Are So Old And Wise was a joyous shot in the arm (thank you, Keith!)     And at work     As I say, a quiet month, with the highlights of: a leadership team development day with a newly formed SLT of a charity (that I could walk to in 10 mins from home - never before happened!) a lot of coaching and coaching supervision the final session of an 8 month Leading from Love programme with a global charity, setting up how they might share their learning with their teams and beyond Meetings with two organisations - one a global manufacturer and the other a 'regenerative economic consultancy' supporting them in how they can start to talk about love with their customers and with their clients.  August will also have a lot of space in it.  And that's feeling very good indeed! (art: Sandra Apperloo)   Do get in touch and let me know how you're finding these Newsletters, or if you'd like to see more info or anything I could include.   I love hearing from you.  You know where I am on LinkedIn, or connect via Email. Or call me of course, whichever suits. Helena x helena@helenaclayton.co.uk 07771 358 881 Join me on social media       Copyright © *|CURRENT_YEAR|* *|LIST:COMPANY|*, All rights reserved. *|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|* *|LIST:DESCRIPTION|* Our mailing address is: *|HTML:LIST_ADDRESS_HTML|* *|END:IF|* Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. *|IF:REWARDS|* *|HTML:REWARDS|* *|END:IF|*