The normalizing of my work away from moments of awakening as the root of success has meant that I have had to change my relationship to my work, I have had to change myself. This was really obvious to me recently when I ran a two day training for a long standing client.

About eight years ago this client had said to me “does it always have to be this emotional?”. It stuck with me. Seven years on I got to work with their core team again. It was fascinating. The almost evangelical way I had brought the work at the outset had meant that people had begun to build a dogma of right and wrong about how to do it. Change leadership, a practice that is built around adaptability to a constantly changing reality had become rigid and inflexible! It was quite simply, too sacred, too precious.

The three day trainings are an essential gateway into the work, they break new ground inside people and within the contexts we are working. I am about  to do one next week with senior leaders across a major education system. It will set the tone for what I hope will be a long term intervention into building a more participatory culture of management and delivery of education for a huge number of young people, parents and educators. 

But what happens when you have done a couple of trainings with key people, decision makers are onside and there are still thousands of people left in the organisation or system who need to get trained? Not necessarily trained to host conversations but educated in the world view and practices so they participate fully and feel ownership of the direction. Endless three day trainings cost too much money and take too much time.