Possibilities Newsletter | February 2022

regeneration

Coaching conversations recently have centred on a number of themes: burnout from ongoing pandemic life and big life choices: career, location, family. Finding ways to live in harmony with what Life brings and regenerating what is depleted has always been at the heart of our work and the metaphor of bamboo is meant to evoke the capacity to flex with challenges and grow back stronger in a different form when cut back. However I can't remember a time when pressure has been higher on our clients to regenerate themselves, their people and businesses.

A recent McKinsey Report claims the key challenge to an orderly net zero transition is leaders having the requisite "boldness and resolve" to take crucial near-term action on decarbonisation. The 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer reports that because trust in politicians is so low, most people expect business leaders to lead the way on societal issues too. And in his 2022 letter, even Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, claims that CEO's must accept this expectation to lead on climate emergency and social justice issues or face irrelevance, writing: "It is not “woke.” It is capitalism, driven by mutually beneficial relationships."

I believe that trust in the enlightened self-interest of market economies and the capacity of business leaders is misguided. Business Leadership Development has been largely designed to cultivate competencies for a corporate 'leadership pipeline'. Competitive and extractive industries lack frameworks for the co-ordinated and equitable metamorphosis we need in our economies and society. To paraphrase renowned coach, Marshall Goldsmith: "what got us here won't get us there".

grassroots and wild margins

According to Extinction Rebellion (XR) , the biggest civil resistance movement in Britain since the Suffragettes, what we need is distributed leadership. We may not all want to risk arrest, but XR's Strategy 2022 document invites involvement of different types. They call for a Citizens' Assembly on Climate and Ecological Justice and local citizens groups to address local issues: in other words, to avert catastrophe and protect the future, we all need to educate ourselves and step up. The good news is, taking responsibility and even small steps builds our sense of agency and response-ability, which is key to avoiding feelings of overwhelm and burnout.

In their new book, "CITIZENS: Why the Key to Fixing Everything is All of Us" Jon Alexander and Ariane Conrad invite us to look to a different story about ourselves in order to fuel our agency, not as individual and relatively powerless consumers but collectively as citizens. In his book, Sand Talk, Tyson Yunkaporta offers yet another perspective on our role in global systems, writing about the indigenous idea of humans as custodians of locations rooted in communities.

For many modern cultures, consumerism has crowded out commonality. One or two generations back, everyone served a church, school, or local community: now 'community service' is a punishment rather than a habit. Large companies and wealthy individuals shop for nominal 'citizenship' based on what can be avoided rather than contributed. Primatologist Jane Goodall founded her Roots and Shoots non-profit to inspire, educate and nurture youth to become a new generation of change-makers, but what about the rest of us? How do we all step forward to create positive change?

the path is made by walking, together

Our approach to coaching puts identity at the heart of change: how we behave starts with how we think of ourselves. But it doesn't end there. We can't appropriate the identity of citizen, custodian or change-maker, overnight: we need to apprentice to it. Apprenticing means 'taking hold' of different ways of being and doing. with our minds and hands over time and with practice. Apprenticing also means gradually allowing an identity to take hold of our hearts. Think about becoming a parent, a marathon runner, a poet- it happens with our minds and hands over time and with practice.

This happens in a crucible of different relationships- new identities depend on social groups or guilds in which we deepen our understanding and practice. Those groups continue to evolve and contribute to the practice of whatever it is, and the practice itself supports greater numbers, depth and shades of practitioner. That is a cycle of regeneration ie regeneration = inspiration + imagination+ action. rinse and repeat.

Pandemic and crisis fatigue can be numbing. Here is some music to inspire, a Ted Talk to fuel your imagination on what is possible and this tool from Paul Hawken's Project Regeneration climate solutions to help you get started.