Helena Clayton Newsletter - View this email in your browser

Leadership Developer • Coach & Facilitator • Writer

Welcome to the December 2024 Newsletter

From the upheaval in the US to me being on the road with work for most of the last month, plus a bunch of personal stuff, it's been intense. 

There was a one-legged husband with a broken knee replacement (repaired thankfully and not needing a second replacement) and the deaths of two men dear to me.  I got my first tattoo.  There was way more time on trains and on the M40 and in random hotel rooms than I'd like. 

But plenty that kept me together in all of that, not least that until work trips and high winds got in the way, there were weekly trips to the sea for swims with flat calm water the colour of green sea-glass.  My aim is to keep swimming/dipping through the winter but I know that Jan will feel very different to November, so am keeping expectations low.

And a huge highlight was the group of 16 people who gathered for The Love Lab 2024 which was THE most wonderful day. One participant said:

Through a series of facilitated exercises, discussions and reflections, what I actually experienced was a random group of strangers creating connection and community with the utmost compassion for each other. Nowhere to hide and certainly no bypassing. It was occasionally intense, sometimes funny, it demanded brutal honesty and was, of course, completely relatable. We all need love. We all respond to love. Why would we exclude love from our professional relationships?

I'll run it again next year and if you fancy it, please pencil in 28 Nov and as soon as I have confirmation from the venue, I'll firm it up. 

I hope you enjoy what's curated here and do share with others if you think they might like it too. 

I'll be back in January, still in midwinter, and please stay close to yourself through the depths and delights of these dark months. 

With love
Helena x

(pic: Lesley Richmond)

What sustains us in tough times? How do we honour the pain of the world? How do we stay connected to love when things around us can feel unloving?

ACTS OF LOVE FOR TOUGH TIMES (online)

BOOK HERE for December 11 0800-1000 GMT
and HERE for Jan 14 0800-1000 GMT

A timely set of questions, at the moment. 
 

That's pretty much what we explore together in these (always free) monthly online sessions. We begin with a connection to what we're finding difficult.  Because in the wise words of James Baldwin, not everything that we face can be changed - but nothing can be changed until it is faced.  

And then in each session we take a couple of different things each time and ask 'how might this be a form of necessary love for these tough times we find ourselves in?'.  In November, we explored activism (love activism, in fact). For December, I'm thinking about hope and expansion as likely themes. 

(pic: Pat Foreman)

I've been in a supervision group with Ian Mitchell from Harthill for a while.  It's one of the rare spaces in my working life that isn't structured in any way.  We just check in and go from there.

Supervision is often framed as a place for free association, for riffing together, a creative space  - and that's how these sessions are.  I'm under no pressure to take something to it, or take something from it.  It's a space that's more focused on what's in me that's unfolding rather than what it is about me and my practice that I want to improve.  

This month, Ian mentioned two questions that had come from his own supervisor and they stuck with me:

What is my practice evolving into?
What have I not yet become?

(I have space for 2 new coaching supervision clients, starting in January.  Please reach out if that's something you'd like to explore with me)

(pic: a stunning day for  one of those Nov swims I mentioned)

You know I'm interested in endings, and so big thanks to Emily Bazalgette who pointed me to The Decelerator, a free support service for civil society organisations, offering information, tools and hands-on support for better endings.  They look a Good Thing - check them out?

(pic: Dom's excellent ginger biscuits)

I imagine that writing about hope will be a vital thing over the coming years. If you don't already know the work of journalist Rebecca Solnit, you can read her pieces on Facebook, as well as author Anne Lamott.  Both offering activist, compassionate perspectives on life in the US - and both hopeful and pragmatic voices. 

And on this side of the water, I came across a new podcast that I'm liking.  Over The Top Under The Radar with Gary Younge (loved him when he was at The Guardian)  and Carys Afoko explores British politics and this episode was a conversation with Joe Mulhall from Hope Not Hate, an organisation working to expose and oppose far-right extremism.  

If I often quote James Baldwin when he says that we have to face things before we can change them, taking a proper look at the far right in the UK has to be one of those things.

And while I'm writing here about hope, take a look at this lovely advent calendar from Sophie Howarth - an email each morning with some beautiful messages of hope for these times. You can sign up for the rest of the month as well as get the few days you've missed so far. 

(pic: my favourite place for a Sunday morning breakfast - Chanctonbury Ring)

I recently came across this, the personal wellbeing policy of Beth McManus, a coaching psychologist I've just met. It kinda knocked my socks off with its audacious clarity - not just in terms of the content but also because it's on her website, it's 100% public!  

Obviously this works for Beth in ways that don't for me or for you. But the there's clearly magic in it because I have started to craft my much needed own version. On the quiet.  And just for me. I wonder what will happen as a result?

(And what might yours look like?)

(pic: postcard given to me by my good friend, Max)

For those of you who like to take stock at this time of the year, Janus-like look both back and forward, remember that Tiu de Haan does some lovely work here.  You can join a live workshop reviewing the past year and another one looking ahead to the next - or get the recording and do it in your own time (like I'll be doing this year).  The link is here. 

Last year I bought this package as a gift for a coaching client and then we used it in one of his sessions.  Worked a treat.

(art: Sandro di Massimo)

Lines of Leaving
 
I am losing you again
all again
as if you were ever mine to lose.
The pain is as deep
beyond formal possession
beyond the fierce frivolity of tears. 

Absurdly you came into my world
my time-wrecked world
a quiet laugh below the thunder.
Absurdly you leave it now
as always I foreknew you would.
I lived on an alien joy.

Your gentleness disarmed me
wine in my desert
peace across impassable seas
path of light in my jungle.

Now uncatchable as the wind you go
beyond the wind
and there is nothing in my world
save the straw of salvation in the amber dream.
The absurdity of that vast improbable joy.
The absurdity of you gone. 


Christy Brown

(art: from the Apothecary for Now exhibition at Nostell Priory)

Not so much reading when I'm so full-up with work.  But Manda Scott's Any Human Power was a helluva read.  A deeply modern book  - and I can't swear that I always knew what was happening  - but it was exhilarating and oddly hopeful.  And moved from there into Paul Lynch's Red Sky In Morning.  He won the Booker last year with Prophet Song and this one was as bleak but as good.

After the quietest first half of the year in 15 years of working for myself, there was the most packed November I've had in ages. Work trips to Oxford, Liverpool, Birmingham and Stratford on Avon (twice - and I did get to see Othello on one of the trips) meant I was very glad to get to 3 December when it all settled down. Some great work though including:

• A final module with a group of Senior Civil Servants exploring system leadership.  My colleague Pete and I have run these sessions using all sort of approaches - systemics constellations, drawing and embodied practices - over the last two years and I can safely say they prefer a more traditional approach of Powerpoint and case method working.  Ah well, you can but try!
• The launch of a new set of workshops for a long standing client - 8 workshops running in parallel, for 15 days on the trot.  Everything went super well but two of my team being laid up with a vicious stomach bug during the first few days meant some initial panic as we waited to see what would happen.  Fortunately, it all settled down and was a roaring success. 
• Some Discovery work for a new manufacturing client saw me joining manufacturing production lines for the 7am shifts in Solihull and Liverpool and then from there to work with their CEO and leadership team. Those 2 days, working with my colleague Matt, were some of the best and most satisfying work I think I've done in a long time.

(pic: Ragley Hall, the rehearsal day for a suite of workshops)

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

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