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Leadership Developer •
Coach & Facilitator • Writer
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Welcome to the June 2026 Newsletter
If life has worked out well, you're receiving
this when I'm down on Gower for two weeks - Rhossili beach,
to be precise. Perhaps the place that settles me
best. It's the lack of wifi and decent phone signal.
The long straight lines of beach and horizon. Add in the
repeating cycles of walks, swims and body boarding, reading and
sleeping and it returns me to factory settings every time.
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After weeks of
wearing leg warmers under my trousers, I was giddy with
excitement at the prospect of a hot week. It didn't
disappoint. Two lovely walks and 5 trips down to Goring
for swims in flat calm waters. Happy days.
And this month, here's:
- how being listened to helps people open their minds and change
their minds
- how Death Cafes create spaces for important
conversations
- taking the notion and the fact of a garden to see how it can
help us with ... well, all sorts of things
- the ways we need to create space first, before there's
room for anything else to emerge
- and the latest from the On Being crew.
See you in July, and wishing you well until then.
With love
Helena x
(pic: Sophie Wake)
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'A conflict
of any kind can be resolved when something of a higher
moral or aesthetic frequency enters the scene'.
Roger
Housden
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This piece from The Guardian on what George
Monbiot describes as radical listening. I know it's
of-the-moment to put radical
in front of so much. And it really shouldn't feel so
radical to hear that deep listening - when
someone is heard attentively and without judgment - means people
are 'more likely to become more open-minded and process
information in a less defensive manner'. On one
level, no shit, Sherlock. On another, try testing
out how often you do that yourself when you're in conversation
with someone you disagree with.
But it's also a term that came to mind listening to Max Gooding talk about her
experience of Nora Bateson's Warm Data Lab training (we
were in Wisley, having a long overdue catch up ...my first
visit ... what a place ...) How radical it is to listen to
people tell stories to each other - as you do for 8 days, as
part of this training - and not do some sort of '...
and to what end...?' questioning. To not be listening to a
story for instruction or teaching. To not be asking: '... and so
the point of that story is ...?'
It's been with me for a while, the thought of doing that
training. So maybe in 2027. Anything that moves me
into experience and away from instrumentalising feels like the
right move for me these days.
*'warm data' = information that is alive
(pic: Holly
Farrell)
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I ran my first
Death Cafe in May, with a colleague. A Death Cafe is 'a group
directed discussion of death with no agenda, objectives or
themes. It's a discussion group rather than a grief support
or counselling session and the objective is to increase
awareness of death with a view to helping people make the most of
their (finite) lives'.
11 people came and left saying they felt more
connected and that they’d really appreciated the opportunity to
talk about death and dying when so many people around them in
their lives weren’t able to have those conversations with them.
So what did we talk about? So much – and the following
gives you a flavour:
- How difficult it
was to talk about planning for your own death with your
children when they thought you were being morbid
- Whether you
should really ‘sort out all your clutter’ before you died so
that your family didn’t have to do it – or whether it was
actually a helpful part of the grieving process for a family
to do that
- What did it
actually mean: ‘to have a good death’?
- That many people
really wanted to die at home where they had more choice and
were able to personalise their ending rather than go into a
care/nursing home or die in hospital – but how we didn’t
really know what we could legitimately ask for or insist on
- Was having a
Direct Funeral (becoming more popular) a helpful thing for
your family or not?
- That other
countries do death and dying very differently and we heard a
wonderful story from another culture that really got us
thinking about how we do things in the UK
- The importance of
thinking and planning ahead and considering what was
important to you around your own death, including the admin
of setting up a Lasting Power of Attorney, say.
Maybe that sounds interesting to you too? If
so, here's the website where you
could find one in your area. Next one in Horsham will be 2
July.
And there was an excellent podcast series in
May on R4 with Matthew Bannister exploring how our attitudes to
death and dying are changing. The first episode mentions
Death Cafes (as well as the most wonderful-sounding ritual that
happens in Liverpool set up by the guy who used to headline
The KLF ...)
(pic: Yoku Kurihara)
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Long-used to
talking about organisations as living systems and not machines,
and introducing groups of change leaders to the emergent
properties as well as the planned elements of change, it was no
surprise when I signed up to a couple of workshops with Will Brown who was
piloting his work with 'garden thinking'.
Will uses the idea of a garden as a metaphor for wider
system thinking and encourages us to explore where managed /
unmanaged and nature / culture meet. And he's interested
in actual gardens, both personal and community gardens in
urban spaces, and how they could be developed to support
wellbeing, community connection and food sovereignty Take a
look at his intro post here for more
information.
Regular readers might recognise Will's name from when I've talked
about his fabulous Tending to Endings
cards. I use them with groups and they'll definitely
be putting in an appearance at my Endings workshop in
September.
(pic: Holly Farrell)
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'Life is
amazing. And then it's awful. And in between the
amazing and awful, it's ordinary and mundane and routine'.
Sharon
Salzberg
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Flicking
through an article in a recent Saturday Guardian about
decluttering resulted in me passing on about 50
work books to Oxfam. Stuff on aspects of
leadership, on organisational culture, some on research
methodology. In all the programmes I've designed over the last 20
years, none of them have begun with me reaching for one of
those books. I got rid of all my psychometric
materials and books about 2 years ago, clear as day knowing I
won't ever include a psychometric in whatever I design from
here on in.
What was the nudge in the article? The section that talked
about 'who do you no longer want to be and how does what you're
holding onto keep you locked in to that version of yourself'. You
are what you keep.
(pic: Yellena James)
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I was
planning to have listened to at least a few episodes of the new
series of the On Being podcast before
telling you about them. I just didn't get there.
But I'm sharing them so that you can discover them anyway.
They're always wonderful and so let's trust that this series will
be no less so.
I'll see if I can listen to a few before next time. Just flicking
through the list has got me hooked - Michael Pollan and Joy Harjo
as starters.
(pic: Susumu Kamijo)
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'I would like
my life to be a statement of love and compassion - and where it
isn't, that's where my work lies.'
Ram Dass
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A lovely date
night out watching Three Acres And A Cow.
Described as 'a history of land rights and protest in folk song
and story' (yes, we really know how to have a good time in
our house...) it was great. I left with my knowledge of
history updated and my interest in a mass trespass well and truly
kindled. Educational, political and great fun, I can really
recommend it - and they're playing all over the UK this
year.
(Pic: Kyoko Imazu)
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ENDINGS & BEGINNINGS 18 Sept, in London
Rarely in our organisational work do we consider
'what would make for a good ending'. Introducing the idea
of doing this to a group of leaders recently, they were shocked
by how little attention they gave any of the many endings they
and their teams were in the middle of.
In this Endings & Beginning workshop,
we look at how we can make endings good ones by drawing
on what palliative
care and the role of an end of life doula
can teach us, how we might work with ritual to
create movement and release stuckness, recognise the complexity of emotions
during endings, and remind ourselves that most of the
lessons we need to learn to do endings well in organisations come
from nature.
The are some 50% price tickets for anyone who feels that the full price is a bit
out of their reach at the moment.
ACTS OF LOVE FOR TOUGH TIMES online, free
The next Acts of Love for Tough Times is Thursday 16 July and
as ever, there will be some wonderful people there, and we'll
explore together how a loving response is the only sane response
in these challenging times. There'll be one in August too, I
just haven't worked out a date yet.
(Pic: Kyoko Imazu)
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Above Everything
I wished for death
often
but now that I
am at its door
I have changed
my mind about the world.
It should go
on; it is beautiful,
even as a
dream, filled with water and seed,
plants and
animals, others like myself,
ships and
buildings and messages
filling the air
-- a beauty,
if ever I have
seen one.
In the next
world, should I remember
this one, I
will praise it
above
everything.
David Ignatow
(pic:Judith
Bergerson)
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Some
books can be like eating with a spoon. With others you need
a decent set of cutlery and the ability to do a lot of
chewing. That's how I found Helm, Sarah Hall's
latest. A chewy read and a very excellent one.
Just one
book. It's a surprise to me too. But as the forecast
is for plenty of rain down here on Gower, odds on I'll be
bringing the average back up in July!
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There
was the Closing Day of a women's leadership programme in the
Civil Service. Such a lovely piece of work made all the
sweeter by the way the women were both surprised and delighted at
the depth of connection they forged between themselves.
Otherwise, a heap of desk-work, the admin of setting up two
client projects so that I can hand them over to colleagues.
A lot of detailed work which isn't necessarily a sweet spot for
me.
(pic: Angela Smyth - do take a
look at her work - it's very good)
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If you
enjoy this Newsletter, please do consider spreading the word and
sharing it with others who might appreciate it.
Helena x
helena@helenaclayton.co.uk
07771 358
881
And do
let me have any feedback or reactions - I love hearing
from you. You know where I am on LinkedIn, or connect via Email. Or call me of
course.
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