Working from Source

by Renewal Associates

Working from Source
By Peter Hawkins, March 2024

In October my new book “Beauty in Leadership and Coaching: and the Transformation of Human Consciousness” will be published by Routledge. In the final chapter I write about how we can work from ‘Source’ rather than from effort.  This will be once again one of the key themes and practices we will address on the Advanced Retreats I run each summer at Barrow Castle, on the outskirts of Bath, surrounded by gardens, woodlands and hills. To book for these click here.

Here is a passage from the final chapter of the book.

We need to learn how to live and work from source, rather than from effort and goal driven will.  On the advanced retreats I run each summer, we carryout collaborative inquiries into the different experiential phenomena of working from effort and working from source.  In pairs I ask one of the pair to adopt the position they are in when working from effort, and for two minutes, to report out to their partner:  “when I work from effort I……..” and to keep discovering new aspects of how this shows up within them.

When both partners have done this, we then invite them to find the physical bodily state they occupy when they work from source, and this time to continually repeat and complete the sentence: “When I work from source I…..”.  I have found that everyone who has taken part has a deep-felt sense of the difference between these two states and knows them from the inside.  Only when these have been deeply accessed, do the pair go on to explore how they can let go of ‘efforting’ and let source flow through their lives more fully.  

I have discovered that when I am working from source, I can work a week of long hours and end the week with more energy than I started it.  It is as if I am using renewable energy, rather than burning up stored fuel.  I am in-tune with my bio-rhythms, rather than working to the clock-time of forced labour.  Since the Industrial Revolution we have created this life versus work split, where we have to use the short time away from work to replenish all the spent energy from being a ‘wage-slave’ throughout the working week.  Even the concepts of ‘work – life balance’, has built into it the notions of work as draining energy and non-work life as replenishing it.

In the chapter on Grace we explored the whole notion of flow. How we can be in flow in our self, our head, heart, and body; our thoughts, feelings and actions.  How we can be in flow with others in our teams and families, our organizations and communities.  How we can be in flow with our work, our art and our craft, and the wider human and more-than-human world, with which we are inextricably entwined.

We are born out of Beauty, sustained by Beauty.  When we awake and become the beauty we love, we return home, to the home we have never left. 

 


How can you lead, support and coach High-value creating teams?

by Renewal Associates

How can you lead, support and coach High-value creating teams?

Dr. Catherine Carr, MCEC, PCC, RCC and I are very excited to launch our new program, that takes more than twenty years of work developing Systemic Team Coaching around the world and translates it into an on-line program not only for coaches, but for team leaders, HR business partners, consultants and everyone who needs to develop effective teamwork directly as a team leader/member or indirectly through those they coach.
This can be the beginning of the journey to become a professional Systemic Team Coach; or it can be a stand alone training to help you coach individual team leaders and team members, or make a difference to the teams you lead or as a team member.
Supported by a great global faculty from right around the world including
Sue Coyne PCC, Inge Simons, MCC, Pau Lim, Michael Cooper, Ingela Camba Ludlow, Fenneke Tjallingii-Brocken, MSc., PCC, CPCC, Monica Callon, Jonathan Sibley, Axel Klimek, Bob Gibbon, Christophe Mikolajczak, Daiana Stoicescu, Coach Trainer, MCC by ICF 🚀, Dirk Nieuwoudt, Dumi Magadlela PhD PCC, Harriet Dodd PCC, Julie Stockton, Karen Yanqun Wu, Kathryn Adams, Lesley Garrick, Lilia Dicu, Lucy Shenouda MCC, ACTC, ESIA, Michael Cooper, Nathalie Lerotić Pavlik MSc, GMBPsS, Pamela Maguire, Susan Douglas, Ph.D., ACTC, PCC, ESIA, Tjessica Stegenga 🌎 and many others

Join us for a FREE 90 minute Masterclass when we launch our new program!

Programs running on 5 dates between 26th February and 11th March

Don’t miss this valuable opportunity to learn from the best! Secure your free seat here: https://www.coaching.com/team-development/


Please share this post with your fellow leaders, coaches and mentors who want to unlock the power of high-value creating teams


13 NEW CHRISTMAS CRACKERS FOR SYSTEMIC TEAM COACHES

by Renewal Associates

Introduction

This is the seventh year that I am sending out a range of Systemic Team Coaching Christmas Crackers to the wide and growing global community of team coaches around the world.  Each year I take one-line aphorisms that I have found myself using on my various trainings and make a short collection.  Like mottos and jokes in Christmas Crackers, they are there to both amuse and help us see the world differently.  I hope you enjoy them.  Previous years aphorisms are published in the 4th Edition of “Leadership Team Coaching: Developing Collective Transformational Leadership” (2021) published by Kogan Page.

  1. We need to coach the connections, not the person
    For coaching to move beyond very expensive personal development for the already highly privileged, we need to coach the connections: the connections between the leader and their team; between the team and the team of teams; between the organization and all the stakeholders; between the various functions and between the organizational issues.
  2. Turn blame into need and complaint into request
    The biggest loss of energy and time in team meetings comes from spending time on polluting BMWs. This stands for Blame, Moan and Whine. We can make a big difference by turning every blame or complaint about the present or past into a clear request about the future.  See also my blog on “Grumble to gratitude”.

  3. Discover the extra team member beyond the persons in the room; she is called synergy
    Many teams tell me how pressured and over-worked they are. To one leadership team of 6 who expressed this, I said, ‘You are not making use of the 7th member of the team.’ They asked who the seventh member was.  I said, “she is called synergy.”

  4. Team coaching requires a team of team coaches
    To work systemically it is often more effective to co-coach a team, with two systemic team coaches.  In that case, it is essential for the co-coaches to turn up as a team, one that is more than the sum of its parts and not as a relay-race.

  5. The team is not your client but your team coaching partner
    When team coaching, the team is our coaching partner, and the client is all their stakeholders that the team serves and co-creates value for.

  6. An effective team takes responsibility for each other’s performance, learning and well-being
    I learnt this from my colleague David Clutterbuck, which I think captures very well the movement from individual accountability to collective mutual accountability.

  7. Is your inner team more than the sum of its parts?
    I wrote a blog on this earlier in the year. We all play many roles in life and how we work as a team makes a big difference to both the quality of our lives and the positive difference we can make in the world.  Do your internal team members collaborate or compete with each other? Is your inner team more than the sum of it’s parts 

  8. A purpose without a plan is a dream
    We discover our purpose by discovering what we can uniquely do that our stakeholder’s world of tomorrow needs, if we do not turn this purpose into a plan, it remains a dream, and we are surrounded by unmet needs.

  9. When we are in the spotlight, only the ones behind us can see our shadow
    Carl Jung said that the greater the light, the darker the shadow. This is particularly true for nearly all strong and charismatic leaders.  We all need help from those who are behind us and in our shadow: our team members, followers, our children and our partners.

  10. When the rubber hits the road, the road nearly always wins
    Reality is stronger than the best developed strategies and plans of any individual or group.  As one of my teachers said, “Those who do battle with the reality of what is, never win.” So, we need to welcome reality as our teacher and partner.

  11. To work from source is to realise that the source is not only inside you nor only outside you.
    When our work is in flow and we are working from source, we are not doing the work by ourselves, but in partnership with the world beyond us when the inner and outer merge.

  12. We are not our emotions but the space in which they happen
    The more we can witness our own emotions without identifying with them, the greater our ability to witness the emotions of others with compassionate empathy, without becoming collusive or reactive.

  13. “Beauty is love made sensate.”
    Let me end with this wonderful quote from my friend and teacher Elias Amidon, as it captures in five words much of what I am writing about in my book which is to be published by Routledge in 2024: “Beauty in Leadership and Coaching: and the transformation of human consciousness.”

Happy Christmas, Hanukah, Solstice, Dōngzhì Festival, Yuletide, Saturnalia, or December holidays to all my friends, colleagues, and Blog followers everywhere.

There will be a new program with www.coaching.com.  called Team Development Essentials and Practitioner program in 2024.

I will also be running a number of Systemic Team Coaching® Practitioner Certificate 3-day intensives in 2024.
Houston, Texas, USA January 22-24  
Singapore, March 13-15
Paris, France, April 24-26
Milan, Italy, May 15-17
Prague, Czech Republic November 4-6.   For more information visit the website

In addition, I will be holding Advanced Retreats for Coaches and Team Coaches during June and September in Barrow Castle, Bath UK, and an on-line programme on Supervising Team Coaching and Transformational Coaching.
For more information visit: Advanced Retreats

Peter Hawkins
21 December 2023
©Renewal Associates 2023


Love your work more in 2024

by Renewal Associates

My first Sufi spiritual teacher always said – “You can always love more.”  By this he meant more in terms of depth and breadth.

What would you need to do, to love your work more in 2024?  For too long we have talked about work -life balance in ways that portray work as a burden we then have to recover from.  In contrast I aim to leave each week of work more energised, alive and creative than when the week began.

So, what have I discovered enables this to happen?

  1. Discover the deeper purpose in your work. Work out who and what your work serves, for whom your work creates value and benefit. Love what you do and love those who benefit from it.
  2. Being in love with learning. Every person and team I coach and every person I train and/or supervise, I see as my next teacher. I have made a commitment that if I ever teach a course or workshop and do not: a) learn something new; b) teach something new; and c) upgrade the program, it will be the last time I teach that course.
  3. Teach what you are learning. I believe that we do not learn by being taught, only when we turn what we have read or heard into our own enacted practice. Also, that we learn most by teaching what we are learning to others, as then we need to be clear in understanding the learning and have to embody it.
  4. Always be curious. Be fascinated by everyone you meet; they all have an interesting story to tell.  Also be curious about new places, their history and culture; new subjects and ways of working different to yours.
  5. Surround yourself with great colleagues and partners. When I was in my mid-twenties and running a therapeutic community, I realised that my boss could not supervise my work, so I formed a peer supervision group and recruited people from many different organizations. My learning and love of the work quickly multiplied. Create a group of great colleagues, compatriots with a shared purpose.  Help those already in your team, by discovering their passion and helping them to develop it more fully at work.
  6. Treat every difficult person and situation that you encounter as a ‘generous lesson life has sent you.” Our most difficult clients, colleagues, bosses or teams are potentially best teachers, so rather than getting frustrated by them, ask yourself what they need you to learn.
  7. Work from source rather than from effort. Each summer I run advanced retreats at Barrow Castle near Bath UK and we explore how to work from source and renewable energy, rather than ego effort and energy that is not renewable. This entails letting go of believing it is you doing the work, and having to perform and get it right, and realise you are always working in partnership and just a channel for the work happening.
  8. Create teams that are synergistic and are more than the sum of their parts. Teams that enjoy being together, but even more love what they are collectively and collaboratively achieving together for the benefit of those they serve. Teams that have a collective purpose, remembering it is the purpose that creates the team, not the team members who create the purpose.

 I invite you to think of three easy ways you could love your work more in 2024.

I will be starting the year by teaching a Systemic Team Coaching 3-day training in Houston USA 22-24th January 2024, assisted by Steliana van de Rijt-Economu and meeting up with as many of our North American alumni who can join us on the evening of the 23rd January. I will love learning from each new trainee and how our alumni are taking the work into new worlds.  If you would love to learn with me visit https://www.renewalassociates.co.uk/stc/stc-certificate-houston/


David Clutterbuck’s and Peter Hawkins’s Best Reads of 2021

by Peter Hawkins

David Clutterbuck and I both enjoy an eclectic mix of books and have enjoyed many wonderful titles this year. Here are our top 10 reads across a number of topics.

As always, we have both enjoyed an eclectic mix of new titles this past year. Here are our top 10 reads.

First, three books about how we think and make decisions

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. The author brings together the teachings of her Native American heritage, her life as a single Mother of two girls and being a professor of Botany to gently help us see the world more ecologically and indigenously.

Think Again, by Adam Grant & Noise, by Daniel Kahneman and colleagues. Two tours de force by giants in the field of human cognition, taking different perspectives on how and why individual and collective decision-making is so often flawed.

Thinking the Unthinkable by Nik Gowing and Chris Langdon. Explores how and why we tend to avoid dealing with difficult issues and what to do about it.

Next two books on systems and systemic thinking

Coaching Systemically by Paul Lawrence – explores systemic thinking from multiple perspectives.

Upheaval by Jared Diamond draws on case studies of how nations coped with crisis to draw conclusions about how organisations and societies can learn to adapt and thrive.

Two on aspects of awareness

The Body in Coaching and Training by Mark Walsh – a useful overview for anyone working with Gestalt, ontology, or mindfulness; or wanting to use themselves more in their coaching practice.

Supersenses by Emma Young. If you thought there were just five or six senses, you’d be wrong. Young identifies and explores 32 human senses. I found it broadened my mindfulness dramatically to experience consciously such a wide range of sensory inputs.

One general title on coaching

WeCoach by Passmore et al – the biggest collection yet of coaching tools and techniques in one volume.

One on teams

Team Human by Douglas Rushkoff – “being human is a team sport”. Rushkoff argues cogently that the impact of much technology has been to undermine our instinct for collective endeavour. He helps us in ’Understanding humanity as one big, interconnected team.’

And three intriguing outliers

The Handshake by Ella Al-Shamahi. The handshake is something we take for granted, but the meaning and impact of handshaking varies dramatically from culture to culture. A gripping read (yes pun intended!)

Becoming Mandela by Trevor Waldock.  Trevor moved from being a UK coach to developing young community leaders across Africa.  These are letters to his sons and a great guide in how to be an Elder, rather than a Leader.

No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention by Reed Hastings (Netflix founder and CEO and Erin Meyer Instead Professor.  Not an exemplar for others necessary to follow but many provocative ideas for how to run a company like an elite sports team.

And also this year we both enjoyed reading new updated editions of each other’s books on Team Coaching:

Coaching the team at work. (Second edition, 2020) by David Clutterbuck

Leadership Team Coaching: Developing Collective Transformational Leadership (fourth edition, 2021) by Peter Hawkins

What books have you enjoyed reading this year and can recommend to be added to our 2022 reading list?


A unique opportunity to join Peter Hawkins 3 day Virtual Systemic Team Coaching Course 15th-17th Dec 2021

by Peter Hawkins

AoEC
Systemic Team Coaching Course
15th – 17th Dec 2021
Virtual

(replaces the face to face event in London)

BOOK NOW

SYSTEMIC TEAM COACHING BROCHURE

Systemic team coaching drives powerful change at individual, team and organisational level. This 3-day experiential programme explores how to coach teams to consider both their internal dynamics and external stakeholders working with the connections and influences within and outside the team. Examining both internal and external aspects, the programme provides a valuable way of supporting teams to improve their productivity, performance and realise their full potential.

Those completing the Certificate/Foundation programme will be awarded the Academy of Executive Coaching Certificate in Systemic Team Coaching and which carries ICF credits: 19 CCEUs: 3 Resource Development & 16 Core Competency.

The Systemic Team Coaching Certificate includes training in the unique Team Connect 360 diagnostic, through which you’ll be licensed to use this powerful online 360 tool with your own clients – only Certificate participants are able to do this.