“Helen, you simply can’t do this to me, you are the steady one; you are the one who holds it all together. I need you to stay just the way you are.”
A systems approach begins when first you see the world through the eyes of another. Charles West Churchman
When Change Meets Resistance
Linda’s words stopped me in my tracks. It was 1987, the final year of my psychotherapy training. Vulnerability was essential for my growth, yet not everyone welcomed it.
That moment taught me something profound: personal change doesn’t happen in isolation. It ripples through the systems we belong to and not all parts of those systems want us to change. Continue reading “Wholeness: Looking at the Whole System”
“Helen, you simply can’t do this to me, you are the steady one; you are the one who holds it all together. I need you to stay just the way you are.”
A systems approach begins when first you see the world through the eyes of another. Charles West Churchman
When Change Meets Resistance
Linda’s words stopped me in my tracks. It was 1987, the final year of my psychotherapy training. Vulnerability was essential for my growth, yet not everyone welcomed it.
That moment taught me something profound: personal change doesn’t happen in isolation. It ripples through the systems we belong to and not all parts of those systems want us to change. Continue reading “Wholeness: Looking at the Whole System”
As advocates for transformative leadership and sustainability, we’re excited to share and recommend One Planet Leadership program, run byMiriam Gosling Gage, a Wise Goose alumna:
Businesses today face increasing tension between serving immediate stakeholders—investors, customers, employees—and addressing broader impacts on future generations and ecosystems. The SDGs offer guidance, but real-world priorities often conflict, and there are no simple answers for leaders.
Despite efforts to promote inclusivity, many organisations have limited opportunities for genuine cross-cultural interaction, leading to isolation and a lack of engagement with diverse perspectives. This trend can make leaders more comfortable, but it hinders their ability to navigate complex global challenges.
Similarly, INGOs and public organisations are grappling with shifts in authority and trust, as well as the rise of localism over traditional hierarchies. This calls for leaders to listen, understand, and respond with greater wisdom and empathy.
The program offers a co-coaching and peer-learning experience for managers and leaders from around the world. It focuses on the lived experiences of taking responsibility and authority in diverse cultural and social contexts, helping participants develop leadership skills that balance global responsibility with local action. This program unites leaders worldwide in a journey of growth and collaboration. Join this global community to enhance your leadership skills and make a positive impact on our planet.
Join Miriam and a truly worldly team to learn from global peers, engage with real-world challenges, and build a more sustainable future together.
As this International Women’s Day comes around, I’ve been casting my mind back to women who have been my teachers over the years, right back to Mrs MacLean in Primary school who gave the shy, sickly little girl I was in those days space to shine.
In my early 20s I met Miss Rose Li, an elderly Chinese woman and Martial Arts master who I trained with for a over a decade. I’d get up at 5am to practice TaiChi and HsingI before catching the train to London – then I’d get home in the evening and practice again – oh for the energy of youth!
Miss Li is the girl on the right in the front row, flanked by her WuShu family. Miss Li taught me Mandarin too, on the commute I’d listen to language tapes, I’ve forgotten pretty much all of my Chinese but I still have the Beijing accent I picked up from her. Sadly I drifted away after I’d been through some big life changes and we lost touch. A generous and humble teacher, she was instrumental in bringing Internal Martial Arts to the West, at the time I didn’t realise how famous and revered she was! I wish I’d kept up the TaiChi, but I didn’t. I’ve recently taken it up again, and I have to admit it’s hard to be faced with all the skill I abandoned. I never let go of my love of Daoism which still influences my worldview today.
Diana and Judith
Judith Firman and Diana Whitmore were my Psychosynthesis trainers back in the 1980s . I’m no longer in touch with Judith, but forty years on I still work with Diana. We’ve been on quite a journey together and feel blessed to count her a friend as well as a wise and trusted colleague. Her dedication and her work with young people is an inspiration..
I first met the amazing Joanna Macy in 1987. She introduced me to Gaia Theory, Deep Ecology, Buddhism and a systemic approach; all of which continue to flow through the my work today. I trained with her, and was part of a facilitation team working alongside her at the Findhorn Foundation back in the early 1990s. After a few years my work went in a different direction, but our paths would cross from time to time, at workshops, conferences and other events; meeting her was always a joy. She’s in her 90s now, and as inspiring as ever!
Then there’s Margo Russell. I joined Margo when she founded Psykosynthes Akademin in Sweden in 1989. She was an outstanding, inspiring trainer and a beautiful human being. Margo took me under her wing, mentoring, encouraging and challenging me. I wouldn’t be doing the work I do today without her. We worked alongside each other until her death in 2001. She was only 62. I still miss her humour, fiery intelligence, friendship and irrepressible, irreplaceable spirit. The Swedish Akademin was my core work for 25 years, an enriching part of my life that happened because of Margo.
Last but not least, Sue Farebrother, my oldest friend. Over the years we navigated births, and deaths, marriage and divorce, we saw the best of each other, and probably worst of each other too. She wasn’t a ‘teacher’ as such, but we never stopped learning together. Almost fifty years worth of friendship – such a gift. Sue died in 2022.
Having started this account I realise just how many women friends colleagues have inspired and supported me over the years. Too many to mention, but I will mention two; Sybille Schiffmann chair of Wise Goose who has just gained her PhD (she deserves a medal for putting up with my bad jokes about every meeting with her being a doctor’s appointment now.) The other is Josie Sutcliffe who, every International Women’s day hosts Occupy the Airwaves – a marathon 16 hours of live broadcasting from 8am until midnight on Phonic FM, Exeter’s community radio station. Josie definitely deserves a cheer for the amazing job she does.
The list could go on and on. Basically I wouldn’t be where I am, or who I am today without the generosity of a whole host of women and the gifts and love they have given to me. So, for this years International Women’s Day I want to celebrate the contributions of all the women I know and have known – you inspire me in so many ways as you work to forge a better world, and you have definitely made my world a better place.
Who are your women teachers past and present? I encourage you to join me in taking a few moments to celebrate them today.
How should we think about addressing climate change?
Over the past fortnight at COP 26 debate has circled around pragmatic questions; fossil fuels, net zero, eco-efficiency, green consumerism, conservation management, political policy, economic reform and scientific or technological ‘silver bullets’.
But what about other ways of thinking about solutions to the issues? Amid all the noise, and with so many points of view vying for attention how do I make sense of my place in relation to it all?
Over these days as I watched the news, and published the posts, I noticed different ways of thinking emerge as different contributors from different worlds offered their thoughts about questions raised by the climate catastrophe.
As I tried to make sense of the voices I remembered coming across a paper by political theorist John Dryzek, this was back in 2007 while studying for a MSc in Responsibility and Business Practice. It helped me understand and untangle different ways of thinking and talking about environmental challenges. Dryzek argued that environmental discourses fall into four different buckets (my image not his!) or discourses, either reformist or radical, and either prosaic or imaginative.
Dryzek, J., The politics of the Earth: environmental discourses. 2005, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
The top left, prosaic and reformist frames the challenge within the current economic and social worldview. In other words, we need to tweak business as usual but basically can trust technology and markets to rise to the challenge and fix things. This was the loudest voice inside COP.
Top right, prosaic and radical on the other hand argues that there are limits to growth on a finite planet and to avoid disaster we must cut back economic activity. This might look like the call to rethink Christmas that just dropped in my inbox today, to reduce consumption.
In the bottom left ‘bucket’ the reformist and imaginative discourse operates largely within the ideals, values and worldview of current consumer-capitalist mindset, saying we need to do business better. Tackle things more creatively and intelligently, cradle to cradle, regenerative design fits here.
Finally, bottom right, the imaginative and radical approach seeks to shift consciousness, transforming the way we experience ourselves and the planet. Here all life is seen to have value in and of itself, not just as a resource for humans to utilise. This ‘deep green’ approach might involve a panpsychic perspective. In their beautiful pamphlet ‘On Sentience’ Peter Reason and Sarah Gillespie put it this way: “What would it be like to live in a world of sentient beings rather than inert objects? How would we relate to such a world?” This discourse can take a spiritual turn, seeing the sacred or divine immanent in the earth. A key movement here is in a shift of identity from a separate self, towards a connected self, what is sometimes called an ‘ecological self.’
Though these different ways of seeing the climate crisis and the best way to tackle it can and overlap, they are often in conflict and competition with each other. Think of the activists protesting outside COP26, angry with the prosaic reformist inside, or those inside wanting them to ‘go away’ so they can get on with the hard work of fixing the problem. Or, as we heard in posts here a cynical ‘your are away with the fairies’ or ‘in Narnia’ – a bemused ‘what’s the point’ of any of this in the context of business or a school of management?
I didn’t organise the way different discourses presented themselves over these two weeks, but reading back it looks like I might have. Perhaps it’s because most of us are dipping our hands into more than one ‘bucket’ as we go about our professional and personal lives, giving us access to different ways of thinking. I can easily name organisations and people I work with from all four discourses. This gives me hope, the challenges we face are complex, far reaching and systemic, we need to recognise, understand, accept, include, and co-ordinate all of these approaches. I have my own preferences and perspectives, but if we are to have any hope of tackling the challenges we’d best stop bickering among ourselves to link arms and work together.
Dryzek’s analysis is useful, but I’d like to offer another way of expressing this, from Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone in Active Hope https://www.activehope.info/the-book
They outline three dimensions of work that needs to be done to turn around the climate crisis: Holding Actions, Life-Sustaining Systems and Practices and Shift in Consciousness. They are mutually reinforcing and equally necessary, each one leads into the others.
Holding Actions focus on holding back and slowing down the damage being caused by ‘business as usual’. This can include raising awareness of issues, as well as direct action and protest. These voices are often outside conference rooms, out on the streets. The goal here is to protect what remains. Holding actions are essential; they save lives, species and ecosystems. But, though protest is vital, they point out that on their own, these actions are not enough. Along with stopping the damage, we need to replace or transform the systems and institutions that cause the harm.
Life-Sustaining Systems and Practices involve rethinking the way we do things, redesigning of the structures and systems that make up our society. The green shoots of these practices are all around us. We can all support and participate through our choices about how to travel, where to spend our money, what to eat, where to save. Social enterprises, sustainable agriculture, green energy and investing, all are small steps that contribute to the creation of a life-sustaining society. But like holding actions, by themselves they are not enough. These new structures won’t take root and survive without deeply ingrained values to sustain them.
Shift in Consciousness involves a deep transformation from the hyper-individualism that’s become a hallmark of a ‘business as usual’ mindset, to a deepening of our sense of belonging in the world. This is the emergence of a more connected and compassionate sense of identity. This shift in consciousness involves our hearts, our minds, and our views of reality. For me, the practice of paying attention to small things, here, with care, in this place, keeps my sense of belonging in the world alive and fresh, giving me the energy and nourishment I need to do the work I do out in the world. Chris and Joanna call this “the inner frontier of change, the personal and spiritual development that enriches and deepens our capacity and desire to act for our world.”
I hope you’ve enjoyed some of the ‘Thoughts for the Day’ we’ve offered over the past 14 days – I’m going to take a break, head up to the allotment and be quiet now!
COP26 is almost upon us, convened against the backdrop of profound challenges and upheavals of 2020 and 2021 from the pandemic, floods and wildfires to Black Lives Matter.
Like many others I’ve questioned the ability of our political, economic, and societal systems to take action. This year’s Edelman Trust Barometer survey showed that rather than wait for government to impose change, a whopping 86% of respondents thought business leaders should take the lead and be as accountable to the public as they are to their board and shareholders.
With this in mind, Wise Goose has taken another step on our journey as a ‘purpose led business‘ we’ve amended our ‘Articles of Association’ to integrate wider stakeholder interests into our governance structure. These are written rules, registered with Companies House, stating how the company is run. In practice little will change, a ‘purpose led’ approach has inspired our work since the early days, but now balancing people, profit and planet is firmly at the heart of our purpose. From now on, ensuring business and operations have a material positive impact on society and the environment, is a director responsibility adding an extra layer of scrutiny.
This is about taking a stand, stating our core reason for existing is richer and wider than solely creating shareholder returns. It’s a way of ‘putting our money where our mouth is’. The world needs more businesses to see their role as creating value for society, and while we may only be a micro business, we are heeding Theodore Roosevelt’s advice, “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” I’m proud to have found the confidence and courage to start where we are and take a step.
At the third of the rhythmic set of cries I stop, push the garden fork into the soil and turn. Of course, I know it’s a rook, but somehow there’s a depth in this particular call that makes the familiar strange, she has my attention. The tone and the rhythm have drawn me out of myself, out of the business of preparing ground for spring planting.
I scan the still-bare trees at the edge the allotments looking for the owner of this loud but surprisingly warm, almost mellow voice. Behind the trees the sky is empty, a cloudless, bottomless blue. I stand, squinting into the brightness, quiet, waiting. One patient breath; another, two more, long and slow. Then a rolling shuffle along a high branch catches my eye; there, I see you now. Out of the seamless ground of sky and woods where ‘rook’ is simply part of everything, a figure is pulled out by my curious senses and insistent urge to know and name. Then, almost as if she knows she’s been spotted, she takes flight, air whistling whhsh-whhsh-whhsh through beating black wings, heading towards the rookery above the nearby cemetery.
Left behind, I close my eyes for a moment, listening to the presences of this place. Over there high in the cherry, intense, confident warbling of a robin; somewhere to my left , darting between the cover of the beech hedge and bramble brash, a whirr of wren’s wings; very close to my ear the drone of a bumble bee. From the direction of the apple trees, tits call back and forth ‘tsee-hu, tsee-hu, tsee-hu’ and there’s a gentle mystery song too; long, low and burbling like a softly blown referees whistle. It’s late March and the world is filled with twitters and caws and coos, I’m hearing the voice of ‘ten thousand things’ as they briefly emerge into manifest existence then fall away again into nameless, formless, generative emptiness. For a few moments eyes still closed, enjoying the warmth of late March sunshine, I know I am also and always woven through this place, whether conscious of this truth or, as is more often the case, not.
******
Back at home I’m at my desk, during the first couple of weeks in a strange pandemic world of social distancing, hand washing and self-isolation, lethargy stalks me. After an initial burst of activity, most of my work has come to a standstill, groups postponed with no sense of when I can re-schedule, no indication of when or how this lockdown will be lifted. My car stands idle in the drive, coated with tree pollen and spiderwebs. Much is restricted: ‘non-essential journeys’, more than one walk a day, meeting friends for coffee, a meal out. Daily, I cross the playground on my way to and from the allotment, slides, swings and climbing frames cordoned off like a crime scene, plastic incident tape fluttering red and white in the breeze. In this alien new world, where we stand patiently two meters from neighbours in straggling queues and streets fall silent after 2pm I have felt bestilled. Fragments from a poem memorised in childhood surface and run as if on a loop through my mind:, “Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion, As idle as a painted ship, Upon a painted ocean.’
Expectations of how the world works have been disrupted, my plans, and the plans of so many others, abandoned, or placed on hold. This is disruption on a grand scale, my sense of myself as a productive person doing meaningful work has been upended. Though unhappily passive, I resist the frantic activity I see ‘out there’, a flurry of lockdown blogs with seemingly endless advice on how to cope, survive or leverage ‘opportunities’, the competitive churning of performance and productivity goals, or heartless pontification about the ‘purpose’ or ‘meaning’ of this pandemic. My reaction to all this ‘noise’ has been a bristling, guilty anger. I want none of it. What is happening is unbearable, people are dying, isolated and alone, so much of everyday life lost. I wonder, could it be, in part at least, denial, a grasping for an illusion of control or a filling of the void created by self-isolation through frenzied activity. Nevertheless, I measure ‘their’ busyness against my loafing, finding myself wanting. I pause and potter, unsure of how to make good decisions about how far to postpone course dates, what options to offer students who need to complete their programme, how to include their voices as well as listen to my own. Maybe I should reschedule to June, maybe September, or maybe neither, there are so many unknowns.
So, I do what I must: respond to emails, coach online, buy zoom pro, offer virtual seminars, postpone meetings and retreat to the allotment. The only place where I feel fully ‘myself’ is on the allotment. Blessed with sunshine, it’s there I’ve been spending most of my days; days punctuated by a tally of new coronavirus cases and deaths. Though the human world is in lock-down, time does not stop. Spring sends out its own messages. Each day the buds on the cherry tree swell a little more, I watch for flowers knowing that not long after apple blossom will follow, each tree knowing its time. Every morning in the grey light before dawn, birds fill the air with song, in the evening, they fill it again. Days lengthen. Most days as the sun sets, you’ll find me still on the allotment sitting in the evening sunshine drinking tea.
Towards the end of the third week of lock down I start to wonder: Is this stillness is a form of action? I watch spring unfurl, quietly turning over questions about the foundations, givens and patterns of everyday life. Perhaps something of the world can be revealed in a time like this when we have been forced to abandon so many old habits to find new ones.
Day after day, day after day my new ritual is to spend time on the allotment, it’s a small ordinary, beautiful place, not a mountain, or a forest, definitely not wilderness, though there are plenty of wild beings there. I immerse myself in its particular ecology and it teaches me about what it means to be human in a world that extends beyond human concerns. It’s a world where fellow citizens include oil beetles, orange-tip butterflies and carder bees, deer, badgers, mice and squirrels, celandine, dandelions and a robin who follows me picking up an easy supper as I clear the beds of couch grass, buttercups and bindweed. I see more clearly than usual how wider processes, these non-human neighbours keep me connected and sane, the anxiety, anger or powerlessness sparked by this virus coming to rest within something wider. This isn’t to ignore human suffering and death, who I am, who we are can’t be disentangled from each other. But neither can who we are be disentangled from how we relate to these many beings. Four weeks into lockdown and I begin to find a balance, a place that is open to the awfulness of what’s unfolding and can be sustained by everyday simple joys of life, a sunny day, hands in earth, sowing seeds.
I think again of the rook, cronking in the woods that back onto the allotments, I’m trying to imagine the unimaginable multitude of processes beyond human worlds that sustain me, sustain us all, making us the beings we are. We humans are a social species, being forced to keep physical and social distance from each other. It feels wrong. Along with many others I feel that loss of human connection deeply, but at the same time I wonder how our habitual crowding together might crowd out all the other voices. If we let voices from our wider kin seep into our everyday lives how might they help us understand our fragility, limits, strengths and place in the world differently? I wonder, if we paused to listen, how they’d shape who we may become?
Written in the 13th century, this poem an oldie, but goodie. Though overused in mindfulness circles to the point of becoming a cliché, it’s still a beautiful reminder to meet, accept and respect the myriad of visitors I’ve been entertaining as COVID19 lock-down sweeps my house empty of furniture. So here’s a virtual cup of tea for our uninvited guests. With all my love, Helen
The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honourably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
Jellaludin Rumi Rumi: Selected Poems, trans Coleman Barks with John Moynce, A. J. Arberry, Reynold Nicholson (Penguin Books, 2004)
I’m writing this at the Winter Solstice. It’s one of those still Dartmoor winter afternoons, there’s a blanket of motionless grey clouds and not a breath of wind. Earlier a buzzard wheeled lazily over our rooftop, the only movement in a sky where even the ubiquitous rooks were still and silent. Though it’s only 4:15pm it’s twilight, that intermediate, in-between state of not light and not yet dark. By the time I finish writing it will be deep dark.
It’s a day that feels like a pause, an in-breath, a still point, an ambiguous and paradoxical turning point in time. Slivers of lines from T.S Eliot’s poem Burnt Norton have been flickering in and out of my mind, like minnows barely visible in peaty amber streams that flow off the moor “the light is still at the still point of the turning world…”
This year, I almost didn’t send a Christmas post, too many have been popping into my in-box and I felt like I didn’t want to add to the busyness and clutter. But then at the last minute, I realise there is something I want to share…
Yesterday I attended the funeral of a local young man, not much more than a boy. Nineteen years old – the same age as my son. The sudden random death of one so young, with so much to look forward to shakes a community. He was ‘one of ours’ a lovely, bright boy. It’s just not how things are meant to be. It can’t be reconciled.
In the church, mourners squeezed into pews, packed themselves into the back and overflowed down the aisles in silent solidarity. Being part of a congregation, brought together to witness the loss and celebrate his life was a first attempt towards reconciling the unreconcilable, a leaning towards an eventual return of the light. It’s easy to say that there is no light without dark, no life without death and no dance without a still point. It’s easy to say that buried inside polarity and the clash of opposites is always a relationship between two elements. It’s easy to say that the challenge is to hold the tension and find a place to stand that can hold both sides of a paradox, stepping forward into life from there. But it is not easy to live from there and if I am totally honest, as a mother, I don’t know if I’d survive such a loss, I don’t know if or how I’d find my way through.
Perhaps it’s no surprise that on this longest of nights, after a year that’s had more than its fair share of clashing opposites and political polarity I turn to Eliot’s poem and find inspiration and comfort as it edges towards reconciling the irreconcilable. Here’s a few lines …
At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
So as the year turns and the light begins its return, with gratitude for all of your good wishes and support over the past year, I wish you the gifts of the season peace, joy, light, hope and love.
Granite. A glittering, resilient rock. The Barefoot Barn where we hold our Wise Goose Devon training programmes stands upon granite, the house I live in is built from it. Both overlook the huge granite plug of Dartmoor. Granite is one of the defining characteristics of this place.
The moaning, whistling, howling or whispering of wind is another; it’s usually south westerly – you can tell the direction by the lean of stunted hawthorn and oak. Water is another element of this place, drizzling or pouring, to be soaked up by the spongy ground that is our watershed; as I write this the landscape is wrapped in a gentle Dartmoor mizzle. The song of moving water is never far away, sometimes quietly dripping or gurgling, sometimes running off the tors in amber torrents, nudging the granite clitter downslope into streams which run away to meet the sea at Teignmouth.
‘Granite Song’, by local sculptor Peter Randall-Page, rests unlabelled, a secret waiting to be chanced upon, on a small island on the river Teign. At first glance this egg-like granite boulder is like many others nearby. Embedded in the landscape, it could have been tossed there by the river. But it has been split in two like a walnut, revealing carved organic, labyrinthine patterns. The sculptor has taken granite and made it a living part of a tradition of the moors with its standing stones, reaves and hut circles, knitting together a relationship and resonance between the people of this place and time and the land. In this simple sculpture there’s a sense of belonging, a vision of participation; a sense of place.
Here at Wise Goose we believe place matters in coaching, it can shape, inform and sustain us, place is both geographical terrain and a terrain of consciousness. That’s why, whether in the wilds of the countryside or the midst of the capital city, we do our best to find venues where we have a relationship, that provide opportunities to reflect and renew, connect with context and draw out a networked perspective. Most professional development courses are held in rootless, sterile and bland conference centres. Even mansions set in pristine landscaped gardens there’s often a disconnect between the content taught and the wider context of work – they don’t nurture a sense of place.
A sense of place weaves together the physical characteristics of the land with memory, art, story, metaphor and history. The inexplicable feel, sight, sound and smell places leave on the skin and mind affect how we approach our work and our lives. Connecting beyond our self in this way can inspire an embodied, systemic, networked, holistic approach to coaching that places human persons, organisations and communities as part of their world, co-creating their world, in service to a vision of a better future.
Our Space in the City: In the midst of King’s Cross Development site close to national and international transport networks, the Skip Garden is a unique and quirky space.
It is a movable, urban garden where fruit and vegetables are farmed out of skips. An initiative of the charity Global Generation, it brings together businesses who work alongside young people and the local residents to create healthy, integrated and environmentally responsible communities We are delighted to have the opportunity to collaborate with a charity whose values and approach so closely mirrors our ow
Amongst the lettuce leaves , blossom trees and open fires are unique indoor spaces, purpose built for all kinds of learning and personal development opportunities. The venue also boasts a thriving café serving food from the garden.
Our Scottish Collaboration. It is a real privilege to be working with the Findhorn Foundation to deliver a residential, intensive Foundations course in Core Coaching and Mentoring Skills in Scotland.
Nestled amidst dunes and forest, bay and beach, the Findhorn Foundation is an internationally respected ecovillage community and spiritual learning centre dedicated to inspired action and a vision of creating a better world.
The Barefoot Barn is our original venue and ‘home’. Set in six acres of woodland, glades and ponds with views across the atmospheric and spectacular ancient landscape of Dartmoor. An ideal location from which to practice outdoor walking coaching and widen perspectives. The Barn was initially created for the local community of Chagford, 20+ years ago, for the teaching and practice of meditation and yoga and is a few minutes walk from the centre of Chagford a historic and vibrant town, in an area of outstanding beauty, on the edge of Dartmoor and within easy reach of the M5, Exeter airport and the national railway network.
On ancient maps of the world cartographers, perhaps believing the world was flat, would write: ‘beyond here be monsters’. Fear of what lay beyond the edge of the known world kept their world small. Today we smile at how wrong this perspective is; we know that over that imagined rim lay whole new worlds.
In Leadership for the Disillusioned Amanda Sinclair takes us to an edge. She challenges traditional views of leadership, exposing some of the monsters created by values that run through most leadership development: compulsive growth, conquest, materialism, individualism and relentless focus on future targets.
Hopeful, bold and challenging, it was recommended to me ten years ago, when I embarked on a Masters in Responsibility & Business Practice. Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Northern Rock and RBS were collapsing, I’d become disillusioned with leadership, mine and others. I felt sure there was a different way to do the work of leading but I felt shackled by prevailing practices.
It’s still one of the most exciting leadership books I’ve read, an antidote to pompous, ‘do it my way’ tomes, with their ‘heroic performances, impoverished theories and oversimplified templates.’ With a critical, systemic perspective Sinclair asks fundamental questions about the discourses that frame or limit what we think leadership is, or could be: What is leadership for? What are the purposes to which leadership is being put? Who benefits from these purposes? What are its unintended harmful consequences?
At times, it’s an uncomfortable read. It exposed my assumptions and less-than-wonderful practices as a leader. Asking ‘What’s wrong with leadership?’ she explores how leadership is often achieved through a leader’s self-inflation and ‘collusive seduction.’ She examines how the cult of adoration surrounding unassailable CEOs and leaders needs followers who are searching for a someone to fix things and make hard problems simple. She shows how the dependency of these followers, their surrender, suspension of critical faculties and abdication of responsibility leads to moral failure in companies and ultimately, failure of trust in leadership. Since the Brexit campaign and rise of Trump this analysis is more relevant than ever.
Central to the book is a call for leadership that ‘liberates’. She argues that good leaders seek to free themselves, organisations, teams and individuals from oppressive structures or practices and a create flourishing workplaces.
Leading that liberates is not just a job or position, but a way of being in relationship, anchored in self-awareness, mindful of others and wider systems. It’s an invitation to lead with less ego, to extend our sense of identity, be more fluid, porous and freer. This involves bringing unconscious assumptions about leadership, often laid down in childhood, to light, as well as developing more awareness of power dynamics and the responsibility to use power ethically. Sinclair argues that the way to do this is through being reflective and embodied, working experientially and thinking critically.
As a trainer, coach, mentor and developer of leaders this book was a place that encouraged me to explore ‘edges’ in my work. It helped clarify key questions as I developed training courses for coaches: How to create a programme that is reflective and thoughtful, that values relationship, connects to others and the wider world? How can I develop coaches who have the confidence and competencies to challenge the status quo? What would a coaching course look like that doesn’t ‘feed’ narrow individualistic striving, that is liberating – contributing to valuable, worthwhile purposes?
It shaped my thinking and the way I’ve build my business; I worked on creating assessment processes with power in mind; balanced theory and practice; wove together reflective practice with a critical perspective. I thought about how groups are recruited, and alongside those from corporate backgrounds, decided to offer sponsored places to charities or social enterprises to include a range of experience and aspirations. By inviting alternative worldviews into the room, I hoped to avoid slipping into ‘executive-coach groupthink’. These questions are reflected in the Wise Goose ‘brand’, an identity that’s less shiny and glossy than many coach training providers. I talk about ‘success with a soul’. Making these choices isn’t always easy, I need to maintain credibility with corporate customers, to keep one foot in the world leaders and organisations inhabit while holding a wider context and reframing spirit. I’ve needed to attend to the part of me wants to belong, to quietly follow, not rock the boat and be an insider.
Sinclair is not a comfortable insider defending the status quo. Neither is she an outsider throwing rocks, she’s a professor at Australia’s foremost business school. She occupies a precarious space between worlds, the ‘wild margins’. There’s a tension and energy at the places where edges meet, Leadership for the Disillusioned creatively negotiates the gap between hard realities of ‘leadership as usual’ and everyday practices of a liberating leader. It’s a book that inspired me to explore those edges for myself and in doing so shaped me.
I’m writing this at the Winter Solstice. It’s one of those still Dartmoor winter afternoons, there’s a blanket of motionless grey clouds and not a breath of wind. Earlier a buzzard wheeled lazily over our rooftop, the only movement in a sky where even the ubiquitous rooks were still and silent. Though it’s only 4:15pm it’s twilight, that intermediate, in-between state of not light and not yet dark. By the time I finish writing it will be deep dark.
