harthill3

Coaching, supervision and the thing with feathers

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 14:15:17 GMT

Taking inspiration from Emily Dickinson and the HopePunk concept, Ian Mitchell uncovers a series of ‘contrapuntal weavings’ for coaches and supervisors to ponder in their practice

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune without the words,

And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little bird

That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,

And on the strangest sea;

Yet, never, in extremity,

It asked a crumb of me.

- Emily Dickinson

Some years back, I completed a Professional MA in Coaching Leaders through Transition and Change. Back then, I could never have guessed what the world might look like when our species arrived in the mid-2020s. I had no idea of the transitions we would experience on the journey here and what changes might be being asked of us coaches as a result.

However, the pace and extent of change in the world have been such that many of us have, to some degree, been left reeling. The conversations in some of my Supervision and Reflective Practice groups have certainly reflected this. So, in 2024 and 2025, I donned my explorer’s identity once again and completed a Research project focusing on exploring what Spirituality ¹ , in its broadest sense, might offer to the world of Leadership Coaching.

And, as part of that research, I came across Mike Perk and Charles Matthews’ excellent book HopePunk ² .

Subtitling their book ‘A guide for optimists bettering workplaces’, Mike and Charlie say that the HopePunk genre is for people who believe that bettering our organisations, society, humanity, and the planet is the most essential purpose we can have. The term itself comes from a 2017 Tumblr post by author Alexandra Rowland, who declared, ‘The opposite of grimdark is hopepunk. Pass it on.’ ³

Emerging as a reaction against the bleakness and cynicism of the grimdark gaming subgenre, HopePunk celebrates radical kindness, defiance, and optimism in the face of despair.

I don’t want to expend too much energy in exploring how Grimdark’s bleakness and cynicism might translate from Warhammer 40,000© into a byword for the human world in which we carry out our coaching. Suffice to say, the core elements of its harsh, amoral world, with a focus on conflict and survival, might not be completely unrecognisable to some of our clients as they reflect on their working landscape. It certainly mirrors the language that some of my clients use when they’ve reached a place of feeling psychologically safe enough to give attention and voice to their deepest physical and emotional responses to the world that they inhabit.

And it is in that moment that I, as their coach, may need to whisper: ‘The opposite of grimdark is hopepunk. Pass it on.’ And, as a coach supervisor, it’s a whisper I find myself offering more and more in individual and group conversations. And what truth might that whisper contain?

‘Hope,’ say Matthews and Perk, ‘is the force of will and creativity that can imagine better outcomes against all odds…(Meanwhile) to be Punk is …to exhibit the self-belief to be our full true selves, without fear of failure, being shamed, or feeling isolated.’ ⁴

It’s a whisper that, in the words of a dear friend of mine, ‘can move molecules.’

The contrapuntal whisper at the heart of Emily Dickinson’s poem re-casts hope not as optimism, force, or strategy, but rather in the form of a connection with felt presence. As a living, relational force that perches itself somewhere ‘in the soul’ and begins to sing a tune that is transformative in its ability to offer new ways of reading ourselves, our relationships and our systemic context.

And for me, in both supervision and in coaching, when we invite our clients into that understanding, we enable them (and indeed ourselves) to uncover a surprisingly powerful developmental lens. A lens that can, in adult developmental terms, expand our meaning-making to a place in which the potential levels of ambiguity, perceived naivety or excessive moral certainty that critics often suggest to be Achilles heels in the HopePunk mindset can be more readily navigated.

Before exploring this any further, let’s briefly talk about counterpoint. In musical composition, it’s a device that allows two melodic lines to move with their own integrity while sounding together, creating a richness neither could achieve alone. Paul Simon’s Graceland, for example, uses counterpoint to stunning effect, particularly in tracks featuring Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Take, for instance, ‘Homeless’, where Simon’s lead line moves in one emotional direction whilst the choral lines move in another; the result is a layered clarity in which distinct voices, each true to themselves, weave into something fuller than any could offer alone.

In coaching or supervision, contrasting perspectives or energies can work together in a similar way. Perhaps one lens offers steadiness whilst another brings provocation; sometimes one softens and another sharpens. When brought together with sensitivity and held side by side, they illuminate one another- counterpoint allows difference to resonate, revealing patterns and possibilities that were previously hidden. In this interplay, clarity can deepen, complexity can become more easily navigated, and a fuller, more truthful picture of the client’s developmental experiences can begin to emerge and take shape.

And so, for me, the contrapuntal resonance between Dickinson’s thing with feathers and HopePunk’s forcefully creative will is a sound that might offer a potentially powerful transformative frame. Offered as an integrated coaching or supervisory perspective, the blend may well offer a fuller field of awareness, which may facilitate our clients to confront reality as they see it, whilst also preparing themselves to step with agency and imagination, toward the reality that they feel might yet become.

And perhaps it is by allowing this resonance to infuse our own coaching or supervisory stance that those of us who offer this work might find new opportunities presenting themselves to us. And in my own practice, I’m exploring four practical ‘contrapuntal weavings’ in which both I and those with whom I work can embody a hope-filled response to the world in which we find ourselves.

1. Hope as an inner orientation | Hope as a chosen stance

Dickinson tells us that the thing with feathers ‘perches in the soul.’ I don’t want to get into some kind of debate around the body and soul dichotomy; theologians have argued about that for centuries. Rather, for me, the point that Emily is making is that hope begins as an inner orientation. A quieting of our interior posture, one often emanating from parts of us that proponents of Internal Family System thinking might call our inner Firefighters and Managers and steadying our capacity to see.

Of course, for HopePunks, once we steady that capacity, it needs to seep into our chosen stance within the world. Hope, they argue, is not naïve or passive. It’s not something that should remain as simply an orientation; it needs to become a deliberate stance that we choose to adopt, even when circumstances give us no reason to do so. As Nikita Mor, writing in the Thought Catalog website ⁵ , puts it:

There will come a time when you will let yourself give in to a life-changing epiphany, and you will realise that soft is strong. Soft is changeable. Soft is malleable. Soft is adaptable. Soft is natural. Soft is you, the real you, and when you remember to be soft again, you will finally, finally be free.

Soft is strong. And it perches in the soul. Perhaps as supervisors and coaches, we might, as Jung is attributed to having put it, when meeting our clients, human soul to human soul, embody a thing with feathers and hold the space for them to soften. And in softening, emancipate themselves from whatever areas of Grimdark they might currently be experiencing.

2. Hope as a constant accompanying presence | Hope as embodied emotional resilience

Hope, says Emily Dickinson, 'never stops at all.' She sees it as a continuous, wordless tune that makes itself heard above the most cataclysmic foreground noises, but I think that might be a bit harsh. Maybe the thing with feathers simply uses words that we humans don’t understand. Maybe it’s singing with what Van Morrison called the ‘Inarticulate speech of the heart’ ⁶ - a notion he says that he adapted from a G.B. Shaw comment (uncredited) about:

That idea of communicating with as little articulation as possible, at the same time being emotionally articulate.

Now there’s a competency for coaches and supervisors to ponder. Emotional articulacy, offered to our clients in a way that never stops at all. I’d love to explore that idea with anyone who’s interested.

Meanwhile, over at Hopepunk, we can find for example, Rapelang Rabana saying:

Early on, I started to doubt this thing of living on autopilot…My ability to stay close to uncomfortable questions allowed me to keep questioning and to be a fly on the wall of my own life. I’m living my life, but I can also step out of my feelings and my mind and just look at myself. ⁷

A millionaire by the time she was 25, Rabana now co-leads Grindstone Ventures, a female-led African venture capital fund. Born and raised to embody hopeful resilience by parents who themselves were born into poverty yet fought and overcame class structures, she embodies the notion of emotional resilience in her mindful, confident approach to life.

And so perhaps there’s another potential competency for us coaches and supervisors to ponder. An understanding of Hope that’s not simply about positivity but invites our clients to keep questioning in a manner that makes their own lives an object of developmental observation and inquiry.

3. Hope as an intimate relationship | Hope as actively embracing failure.

I love how Dickinson talks in relational terms about hope. There’s such a strong visual portrayal in her words. Hope ‘perches’; think about that for a second. It implies intimacy, conjures images of conversations on high kitchen stools between friends. There’s not a lot of formality in the image.

And hope doesn’t get ‘abashed’. Abashment, according to Google, is an acute, negative emotional response to a perceived threat to one's social image or competence. Seen through the totally subjective lens ground out and polished by the life I’ve lived, it can be a response to a perceived threat to self-worth; negative professional, family or social evaluation; awareness of what I believe to be uncontrollable internal inadequacy, or failure to live up to whatever external standards to which I believe I should be subject.

Hope is an internal companion, inherently human, and one that, once discovered, is instrumental in accompanying and sustaining any of us through whatever beautiful or terrible moments, events and situations that life unfolds

But hope roots itself in intimate relationship, inviting me to approach life differently.

The counterpoint in HopePunk, through the voice of Sahil Lavinga8, articulates the difference like this:

For years, I considered myself a failure. At my lowest point, I had to lay off 75 per cent of my company, including many of my best friends. I had failed.

The owner of Gumroad, a digital platform for artists, musicians, and other creators, continues:

It took me years to realise that I was misguided from the outset. I no longer feel shame in the path I took to get to where I am today – but for a long time I did.

The HopePunk take on failure is the creation of an invitation to embrace, but not to celebrate, and that feels to me like a stance that might, to paraphrase Perk and Matthews:

Enable your client to be more Punk and try new approaches, stances, experiments and so on, without the fear of retribution if they don’t work out. ⁹

And so perhaps we are uncovering another potential supervisory or coaching competency on which to ponder. An embodiment, through relationship, of the level of mutuality that allows for shared vulnerability that encourages failure to be embraced in an honest and accepting audit, but not performatively celebrated as an attempt to manipulate our client’s meaning-making.

4. Hope as Non-Transactional Gift | Hope as Ethical Resistance

In Emily’s beautiful framing hope 'never asks a crumb of me.' Not even in the most extreme situations. Rather, it perches and sings without looking for anything at all in return. Hope, she says, is non-transactional. In the world inhabited by ourselves and many of our clients, this is indeed a rare commodity.

And hope is unearned; though it’s not presented by her as an external gift from a supranatural source, but as an internal companion, inherently human, and one that, once discovered, is instrumental in accompanying and sustaining any of us through whatever beautiful or terrible moments, events and situations that life unfolds.

I wonder if this might hint at yet another potential supervisory or coaching competency on which to ponder, that of our representing, or saving a chair for, the notion of living a non-transactionally based life. Of course, we’d need to understand and embody that notion pretty comprehensively ourselves first, and that’s not always an easy thing to do.

In another poem ¹⁰ , Dickinson calls hope a ‘strange invention’ moving with ‘its unique momentum’, ‘unremitting’ yet ‘never wearing out’. And in doing so, it’s as if she opens a doorway into HopePunk’s contrapuntal sound.

To be Punk is to push back against the oppression born from the need to control and the inequality that this creates. It’s about standing up to and stripping away the complexity, and with that finding the space and freedom to express one’s true self. ¹¹

Or, in the language of author and developmental psychologist Robert Kegan, ‘experiencing a self-authoring transition’ ¹² . Kegan views this as a crucial developmental milestone in adulthood, moving from being defined by external expectations to constructing one's own internal values and direction. Perk and Matthews might prefer the term ‘being more Punk’.

And ‘being more Punk’ is all about ethical resistance. Resistance to cynicism. To dehumanisation. And to the Grimdark despair that can find its way into our coaching and supervision conversations more times than we might deem to be usual these days. Maybe ‘being more Punk’ as a supervisor or coach might lead us away from asking our clients to reflect on questions such as 'What outcome will this hope get me?' and towards others such as 'What kind of leader do I choose to be in the face of this?' 'What is the ethical stance I want to embody?'

And maybe in that notion lie the seeds of another potential coaching or supervisory competency on which to ponder.

About the author

Ian Mitchell, through Harthill, offers integrative coaching and supervision rooted in presence, meaning-making, and the active weaving of inner work with whole-context awareness. Alongside his long-time colleague Siân Lumsden and others, he co-facilitates an AC-accredited developmental programme for coaches drawn to the possibility of working in this way.

References

1 For the purposes of my research I have defined ‘Spirituality’ as ‘the place where transcendence meets immanence’ – in whatever sense we might understand and integrate both of those notions.

2 Perk, M & Matthews, C, HopePunk, USA, Creative Commons, 2022.

3 Rowland, A, Sourced from her Tumblr blog Extravagant and Unlikely by Perk & Matthews.

4 Perk (2022) p7.

5 Mor, N, Being Soft Is Not A Weakness, It’s What Makes You Strong, Thought Catalog, March 2019.

6 Morrison, V, Inarticulate Speech of the Heart, Warner Brothers, 1983.

7 Perk, (2022) p48.

8 ibid p109.

9 Ibid p111 (adapted)

10 Dickinson, E, Hope is a strange invention, 1877.

11 Perk, (2022) p94

12 Kegan, R, In Over Our Heads, Harvard University Press, 1995

Interesting Aspects of Adult Development

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 09:47:32 GMT

Extend and Include

When we read about adult vertical development in articles such as ‘Seven Transformations of Leadership’ we risk coming away with the impression that the process is linear, stepped, progressive and hierarchical. It’s hard to write about the phenomenon without creating this impression. However it is just not so! We can’t leave our past selves, our histories and earlier beliefs behind and start anew. We retain these within us as our perspective extends. We develop capability at a new level of meaning-making or ‘Action Logic’ but our capacity for the earlier versions stay within us. As in the case of the dolls - each doll dwells within the other.

Various developmental theorists have sought to define the different ‘levels’ or ‘stages’ of development which seem to exist, each having distinct flavours and features. The wonderful Robert Kegan describes three phases of evolution of self in adulthood, naming them ‘socialised’, ‘self-authored’ and ‘self-transforming’. Nick Petrie, whose writing and approach I admire, talks about the phases as ‘dependent conformer’, ‘independent achiever’ and ‘inter-dependent collaborator’. At Harthill, David Rooke and others have built on the work of Jane Loevinger, Suzanne Cooke-Greuter and Bill Torbert to create a perspective particular to leadership and organisations. In Harthill’s Leadership Development Framework (LDF) the stages or levels are more granular and named as: Impulsive, Opportunist, Diplomat, Expert, Achiever, Individualist, Strategist, Alchemist and Ironist. In each of these cases the story of ‘extend and include’ prevails with each expansion building on the previous one in an integrated sequence.

One might assume that when we grow developmentally we leave the earlier ‘levels’ behind and act out of the latest, ‘best’ version of ourselves all the time. Yet we all have experience of not showing up at our best in certain situations. At times like these we show up at a level or two below what we are capable of because of the circumstances, our state of health, our emotional state or our stress levels. This phenomenon, called ‘fallback’ is written about beautifully by Valerie Livesay. If you want to see this in action come to my house where you might see me arguing with my wife about how I load the dishwasher having spent the day facilitating a group to leverage the later stages of adult development!

Having a good understanding of the notion of ‘extend and include’ is important when working with vertical development, your own, and your developmental coaching clients.

Becoming

Tue, 16 Jul 2024 14:18:03 GMT

Becoming

Reading the wonderful work of Dr Iain McGilchrist, I came across the following this morning, a quote from Friedrich Schlegel, ‘One can only become a philosopher. As soon as one thinks one is a philosopher, one stops becoming one.’ A philosopher is never in possession of the truth, but endlessly searching for it. (McGilchirst, I., (2021)‘The Matter with Things’ page 560.)

It strikes me that the same can be said of us as humans generally, from a developmental perspective, we are endlessly becoming. Developmental coaching then is an endeavour to ‘midwife becoming’.

If we could stop seeing ourselves as ‘problems to be solved’ but instead as ‘potentialities to be nurtured’ as we continue our becoming, life would be more exciting. Imagine if we became pre-occupied with learning what the ideal conditions for our continued emergence are?

One might assume that to facilitate becoming we would exclusively look forward however it is not possible to become without also looking back. Its useful to have a deep understanding of who we have become in order to be free to continue our becoming.

I have seen great value derived by coachees by leveraging the Gestalt paradoxical theory of change (Arnold Beisser). A counterintuitive approach to personal growth and development. The idea is that meaningful and lasting change occurs when we fully accept and embrace who we are in the present moment, rather than striving to become something different.

The Cape Cod school of Gestalt highlights the value of appreciating what is ‘well developed’, not resisting it or trying to avoid it but noticing it and welcoming it. In so doing the less developed can emerge thus facilitating growth. In practical terms this may involve drawing a coachees attention to the quality of their rationalisation, spending time noticing it, perhaps even accentuating it. This can result in the coachee becoming more aware of their capacity for rationalisation and use it more intentionally rather than have it using them, a subject object shift .

Akin to John O Donohue’s Unfinished Poem - ‘I would love to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.’ I continue to look for useful ways to support my becoming and that of the people, teams and organisations I am privileged to work with!

Vertically Developmental Coaching

Thu, 20 Jul 2023 15:59:21 GMT

Vertically Developmental Coaching

I've been thinking about Dave Snowden 's work on the relationship between narrative and learning networks - and the systemic attributes of identity management, trust negotiation and productive conflict. His metaphor of 'Bramble bushes in a thicket' is remarkably helpful - not only in this context but in several others. Not least when considering the interpenetrative relationship between developmental capacities, capabilities and practices as they work together to expand our understanding of ourselves, our contexts and the much wider systems to which these contexts are connected

And as a coach, I'm fascinated by how we can, in a non directive or agenda stealing manner, introduce our clients to the 'thicket' in a way that facilitates an understanding of how they might allow their vertical development to happen in a non linear manner that neither diminishes what is nor exalts what might become.

All the time feeling safe enough to experiment, safe enough to fail, and safe enough to try again.

If Vertically Developmental Coaching is to offer anything of value to the field I think it might be the ability to conceptualise and work within this thicket of expanding developmental capacity, capabilities & practices. And to help our clients do the same. But it's not an easy place to come to, as firstly we need to do the work with ourselves. And mostly this involves opening ourselves up to understanding the perspectives of others.

Which is why we offer the Diploma mentioned below. An academic year spent in exploring the thicket and from time to time discovering and tasting a blackberry!

If you're interested in finding our more, why not give one of us at Harthill Consulting Ltd a shout.

Ian Mitchell

#coaching #coachdevelopment #deliberatelydevelopmental #expansion #awarenessmatters

Celebrating 14,000 Profiles!

Thu, 20 Jul 2023 15:54:54 GMT

Celebrating the 14,000th Profile!

We received our 14,000th profile recently! It was from a participant attending our annual residential LDP Authorisation Training programme at the beautiful West Dean College of Arts and Conservation. Nickie has been considering the training ever since she profiled for a second time a couple of years ago. She found her own experience transformative for her role in healthcare leadership and now wishes to deepen her understanding to apply the Framework and Profile in her capacity as coach as well as the coaching conversations she has as part of her day-to-day leadership role.

Nickie was first profiled in 2019 as part of an organisational development programme through the NHS and appeared to have a primary Action Logic of Late Achiever. Now four years down the line, Nickie has just completed her 3rd profile. She has attested having taken on board the suggested practices to develop her own meaning-making, having first concentrated on her primary Action Logic and then progressed to working with her Leading-Edge Action Logic. Those practices, supported by changes in work roles and personal circumstances have enabled Nickie's primary Action Logic to expand to Early Strategist.

Having just attended the LDP Authorisation Training, she said, “The training really helped me to better understand the different ways people make sense of the world and how that informs the way people think, feel and then act. As well as learning about the different Action Logics, and how that could help with crafting developmental conversations with people, Ana, Ian and the other attendees created a space that was personally developmental.”

Welcome aboard Nickie and all of the West Dean cohort!

What might have happened if he’d chosen both?

Fri, 15 Jul 2022 08:46:20 GMT

What might have happened if he'd chosen both?

"You take the blue pill... the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill... you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes."

The Matrix dilemma; the big decision. The metaphor that launched a thousand ‘wake up and smell the coffee’ conversations.

In case you missed 1999, the Matrix was a Keanu Reeves blockbuster. The one in which the red pill represents embracing a brave uncertain future; exiting from the enslaving control of a machine-generated dream world into living the "truth of reality”. All very Jean Paul Sartre.

The blue pill represents a beautiful, but delusional prison, albeit one of ignorance-but-comfort within the simulated reality of the Matrix.

There you go. Who needs 1999 anywa y?

But, you know, I’ve always wondered what might have happened if he’d eschewed the binary and chewed them both. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist that!)

And as a coach seeking to co-design with my client a context in which she or he can access what we at Harthill call their Alchemical way of seeing the world, that’s a conundrum I’m facing daily.

What do I mean by the Alchemical way of seeing the world? Well, it’s one that can live in illusion and reality at the same time – understand the difference and value both. The one that can see simplicity and complexity as being present at the same time, be simultaneously joyful and sad, serious and funny, confident and afraid – swallowing the blue and the red pill together, finding ourselves being both enlightened and perplexed by what comes next and flourishing in the finding out.

It's like conducting explorations into Quantum Superposition and Entanglement. Schrödinger loved it and illustrated it with the whole dead-and-alive-cat concept. Einstein despite helping to pioneer the notion, found the surrender of scientific certainty impossible to rationalise and turned his back.

Quantum Superposition: According to the Scientific American ‘any chunk of matter can occupy two places at once’. The alive place and the dead place like the infamous cat; reality and illusion like my red/blue pill thought experiment. Or maybe emboldened and afraid like many of my coaching clients when considering the current world in which they live their lives.

Quantum Entanglement: physics.stackexchange.com tells us that this can be the exchange of information from a particle that is known to be in several situations simultaneously.

The Alchemical invitation is to entangle with ourselves in both reality and the illusion, the joy and the sadness, the emboldenment and the fear. To send ourselves postcards from both edges of our self-experience and to read them again and again. And as coaches our role is to support our clients in the ride.
#coaching #experience #alchemy #verticaldevelopment

Further adventures in Alchemical Coaching

Sun, 10 Jul 2022 06:15:52 GMT

' Having Faith in the Fire. The Art of Alchemical Transformation '.

An article by Dr Dylan Hoffman.

So I read an article by Dr Dylan Hoffman on the Rebelle Society site earlier today. I'm still sitting at my desk in a state of burning grace.

He called the article ' Having Faith in the Fire. The Art of Alchemical Transformation '.

He had me at 'Fire'.

It's hard to explore the Alchemical without inquiring into fire. Fire sits at the heart of Alchemy. As Dr Hoffman puts it

'None of (their) processes or materials mattered at all without what the Alchemists called The Secret Fire, and this secret fire was Desire , the flame at work in the laboratory of the soul... fire does the work, fire is the process, fire is the medium, and fire finds the gold.

'Nothing happens without fire or without desire. Nothing melts. Nothing evaporates or circulates. Our habits stay solidified; our perspectives remain hardened and cold.'

Our perspectives remain hardened and cold. That's what I'd call a biggie.

If we believe that our Development - and in particular our Vertical Development - is predicated to a significant degree on the quality of our ability to identify and sit in the shoes of multiple perspectives outside of our own before generatively integrating them all in order to find a new way of better understanding ourselves, our context and our relationships - well, 'hardened and cold' probably isn't going to cut it!

'Our task', says Dr Hoffman, 'is to feel for the heat and follow the flame.' How's that for a coaching approach? I'm sitting here asking myself how I feel about being the guy who who can hold space while my client walks into the fire.

The fire of Desire. The fire that captures curiosity. Draws and ignites longing and love. Burns through the mundane, stirs the heart, draws the attention. Generates hope and possibility.

In Hoffman's words 'the soul is always already working on us... drawing our attention to where transformation wants to happen. Our task is to feel for the heat and follow the flame.'

Alchemical Coaching, to my understanding, offers and nurtures the spaciousness that encourages our clients to feel and follow.

He asks 'What if everything is consumed, burned through, lost in the ashes of unquenchable longing? What if nothing remains — my identity, relationships, career, or plans for the future?'

Alchemical coaching, as I see it, offers our clients the perspectives of Lacan, Žižek, Dr Simon Western and others as doorways into a deeper understanding of their desire, and stands beside them as they look into the flames and align themselves closer and closer to what the flame cannot consume.

'That,' says Dr Hoffman, 'is what the alchemists were searching for. The alchemists had faith in the secret fire. They had faith that there is some place in us, some inner substrate, some substance of the soul that will not burn away.'

Ah now, holding space for our clients to find that substance of the soul - that feels like great Coaching to me.

LinkedIn Post Ian Mitchell

Uncovering Alchemy in our Coaching Clients

Wed, 15 Jun 2022 06:02:02 GMT

I’m a Quaker, and one of the Quaker practices I seek to bring into my coaching/supervision work is to ‘answer that of god in everyone’

Of course, this practice has more metaphysical nuances now than it did in 1650. The word ‘god’ is interpreted in many different ways by many different people. And pretty much all of them can be a valid interpretation of our lived experience.

I like to think of it as a metaphor for whatever mystery it is that is the source of ease. Of comfort in our own skin. The source of grace, and inner beauty. Restlessness, desire and longing

And so, when I’m in conversation with a client I make it my practice to remember that whatever else I’m seeing figuring in their context, I’m also seeing ‘god’.

I’m also a coach. At Harthill Consulting Ltd we're about making meaning from what we encounter in the world. Right now, that feels more important than ever. Intrinsic to this, for me, is the notion of climbing higher to see further - to obtain more clarity of insight about how we wish to live our lives.

All of us can climb higher if we want to. If we choose to leave the comfort of our socialised mindset behind. Maybe not 24/7 - but enough to allow us to experience the ease, comfort, and grace to make us the kind of people who create transformative moments in the course of ordinary living. And like ourselves much more in the process.

One of these post conventional ways of making meaning is that of the Alchemist. This isn't referencing, as our profile report puts it, ‘any magical or mystical powers’, but ‘a place of constant paradox, co-experiencing profound ordinariness and an extraordinary depth of awareness and feeling. A mixture of the deeply felt existential, the profoundly playful and exceptionally ordinary’

Perhaps the source of our ease, contentment, and comfort in our own skin. Maybe a cocktail of grace, inner beauty, deep desire, and wistful longing. It might be what us Quakers mean by ‘that of god’.

So I seek to respond to that Alchemical 'something' inside every client I work with. The purpose of my coaching and my supervising is, as Dr Simon Western puts it, to be emancipatory. To connect them with their capacity to notice Alchemy in the ordinary, be playful in the intimidatory, and be at ease in their complexity.

I sometimes invite clients to share with me what they witness in themselves when we address some, maybe unusual, existential questions.

‘Who might love be inviting you to be in this?’
‘What might happen if you just let go?’
‘Where might you and your system embrace more vulnerability?’
‘What might evolve here if there was less of you in it?’

Stuff like that. That makes us both sit back in wonder.

Because, of course, I’m noticing the questions digging into me. Answering that of Alchemy in me .

Hoping, as Simon Cavicchia once said to a group of us, that grace will decide to descend on our conversation.

#coaching #love #develop #quaker #supervision

Leadership: Where should you start?

Sun, 02 Jan 2022 16:48:34 GMT

Working with thousands of current leaders and ‘soon-to-be’ leaders over the last 25 years...

Harthill gets asked one question more than any other: "Where should I start?". The answer is easier, and harder, than you think.

All the great leaders that we have seen quickly realise that that their #1 responsibility is to manage themselves, their personal discipline and their own personal growth.

If you cannot lead yourself, then you cannot lead others. And, the leader you are going to be tomorrow, you are becoming today.

What differentiates leaders on any day is not their personality, or style. Rather, it’s how they interpret their surroundings and respond.

What differentiates leaders on any day in the future are the choices they made for their own development in the past.

Relatively few people try to understand their own map of the world, and fewer still have explored the possibility of changing it. (Back to: 'If you cannot lead yourself, you cannot lead others!').

If you think you would like to develop your leadership capabilities, Harthill has a specific tool that you can use. It shows you the way to take a voyage of personal understanding and development to transform not only your own capabilities but also your team and your organisation.

Please get in touch with me if you would like to know more about it.

What would happen if I let go?

Thu, 16 Dec 2021 14:28:25 GMT

What would happen if I just let go?
Specifically, if I just let go of the metaphor that underpins the story of my coaching
Or the story of my leadership.
The one I believe defines my purpose and gives me meaning.

The one that creates all those 'shoulds' to help me assess my effectiveness and, ergo, value. That scores my preparedness, performance and position in whatever league table on which I desperately want to leave my mark.
And in so doing exposes me to worry, stress and feelings of deep secret shame.

That one.
The metaphor that, just by unfolding itself in my psyche, presents its own shadow as something that could be attractive to me, could be helpful to me, could perhaps even make me more professional.

What would happen if I just let go?
Not deconstruct, find fault or make a big thing about it. Not replace it with another metaphor - equally flawed; equally shadowed; equally as capable of causing me to feel like an imposter.
But just, as Barbara Holmes puts it, 'let go of our false sense of control, and ride the waves of destiny'
Walk into whatever the moment offers me. Stop being at war with myself and just let myself be.
It's an invitation, a suggested experiment, a developmental practice maybe. Perhaps it's an inquiry worth exploring.

What would happen if I just let go?
WIld Geese
Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Leaders are Readers - Part 2

Thu, 16 Dec 2021 14:08:27 GMT

How should readers read? “Read what you love until you love to read. It’s that simple” says Naval Ravikant.

The full quote from Naval is worth studying: "The foundation of learning is reading. I don’t know a smart person who doesn’t read and read all the time. And the problem is, what do I read ? How do I read? Because for most people it’s a struggle, it’s a chore. So, the most important thing is just to learn how to educate yourself and the way to educate yourself is to develop a love for reading."

"Everybody I know who reads a lot loves to read, and they love to read because they read books that they loved. It’s a little bit of a catch-22, but you basically want to start off just reading wherever you are and then keep building up from there until reading becomes a habit. And then eventually, you will just get bored of the simple stuff."

The choices of WHAT you read are crucial, so you must make conscious and deliberate choices. But a question you might ask is “HOW should I read?”

If you are reading for information, understanding and study, my personal favourite is from Tony Buzan in his 1st book ‘Use Your head’. It’s great for getting the most out of your reading time. (I have a 1-slide version of his method, see the link in the comments.)

There's also the classic ‘How to Read a Book’ by Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren. In it he provides an interesting framework for reading with four different levels as well as how to become a ‘Demanding Reader’.

The key is to eliminate distractions and focus on reading as if your career as a leader depends on it — because it does!

Confirmation Bias

Thu, 02 Dec 2021 09:33:52 GMT

We humans are entrapped by many cognitive biases, one of which is confirmation bias.

When we take a position on something and we decide that we ‘know’, we become wedded to our perspective and allow only data that confirms that perspective into our consideration.

We then become blind to any disconfirming data because being wrong is not a comfortable place for us to be and we stop learning.

In these situations we need to open all of our senses and notice what is happening.

We can learn to appreciate that others notice different things to what we notice. We can then use this to recognise that we need to collaborate and share perspectives to deepen our understanding, reignite and accelerate our learning.

In short, we must first recognise the situation we are in. I suggest 4 things that might be useful:

1. We need practices that build capacity for wisdom.
2. We need patience to allow this process the time it needs.
3. We need courage to experiment in the direction of what we think is progress.
4. We need agility to withdraw from that direction of travel if it starts to seem wrong or indeed accelerate the process if it seems right.

What I believe is that we need to open all of our senses and notice what is happening. This is the reason Mindfulness practice is useful as it enhances our capacity for awareness.

We learn to appreciate that others notice different things to what we notice and we then need to collaborate and share perspectives to deepen our understanding and accelerate our learning.

That's why I love the Eric Hoffer quote: "In times of change learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists."

"In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists"

Eric Hoffer

Leaders and Readers

Thu, 02 Dec 2021 09:16:45 GMT

Simon Lovegrove December 2021

Prof Steve Sample wrote ".. we are what we read." **
I tend to agree. But there's a problem. The process that influences us is mostly subliminal. And almost everything we read is ephemeral: business plans, presentations, emails, social media/posts. It's a river of words.

Yet there are texts - hundreds of years old - that are still widely read today: the Bible, the Koran, the Bhagavad Vita, Confucius Analects, Shakespeare’s plays, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Homer’s IIiad and Odyssey, Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations.

The list is short, and that's the point. Of all the plays, all the books, all the articles ever written, there are only a few dozen still widely read today.

These have formed and set the major frames and stories we live by. Leaders can ignore them, but their influence is all around.

But everyone has special texts that have changed them; texts that have landed something - a new experience, a new frame, that reorders the world into a new shape.

We ( Harthill ) call these frame-changers . I can think of only a few for myself.

With this in mind, what do we suggest to read for the thousands of leaders we work with? .. We recommend you read widely.

Read the things that are timeless (of course). Ask others what they are reading, tell them what you have read.

Especially tell them about the things that set your heart and mind on fire. Tell them about your frame-changers .

What is one thing you recommend we read?

**The full quote is: "To a far greater extent than we would ever care to admit, we are what we read." This is from his book ‘The Contrarian's Guide to Leadership’.

Future leaders need a compass not a map

Thu, 25 Nov 2021 12:38:43 GMT

Simon Lovegrove - 25 November 2021

One of the biggest challenges of the future leaders is working out what the world is going to look like and how the role of leadership will fit into that world. The simplest, easiest framework I can think of is, no matter what, all future leadership roles will consist of ‘your business + tech’.

In 2011, Silicon Valley venture capitalist and creator of the first Internet browser, Netscape, Marc Andreessen wrote an essay called “Why Software is Eating the World”. He described how new companies built on software were ‘eating’ existing and disrupting previously dominant corporations.

Andreessen was prescient. He wrote that “over the next 10 years, the battles between incumbents and software-powered insurgents will be epic” — and specifically mentioned the likes of Google, Netflix, Square, Spotify, PayPal and Salesforce.

The idea that some of these companies that embraced software in 2011 would be market leaders and dominate the stock market would have been hard to get your head around. Equally, the notion that these same firms would dominate our discussions 10 years later would have been laughed at.

The pandemic has fast-forwarded the fact that ‘software is eating the world’. Andreesen has been proven right. Most things we ‘do’ in our businesses are related to, tied in with or made up mostly or entirely of software. The most junior person in our organisation has more tech tools, more information and more computational power than the CEOs of the world’s biggest companies did just two decades ago.

Let me bring this to life a bit. When he was 5, my son was amazed to hear that back in the day his dad had ‘learned’ to use a computer. … “You had to learn to use one!!?” The lesson of this event is that wherever you are in this generational shift, you are likely behind the curve.

Future leaders have to anticipate a world where bandwidth is unlimited and where unexpected convergences in sensors, networks, AI, robotics, 3D printing, virtual reality and augmented reality will create new business models.

Part of the problem is that our brains are literally hardwired to think locally and linearly. As such, it’s nearly impossible for us to fathom the implications of exponential change.

A metaphor that I like is ‘compass versus map’.

Maps are only good in known worlds that have been charted. Compasses are perfect for when no one has charted the territory.

Compasses work when you need to thrive in complexity. Leaders of the future will have to develop their own personal compass to gain their sense of direction, and forget the idea of a reliable map.

Instead of wanting a map to tell us exactly the way to our destination, what we really need is a compass to guide us. Sure, we may go off course, but with a compass on ‘true north’, we know we WILL get there.

Lies about leadership you should not ignore

Thu, 25 Nov 2021 11:44:48 GMT

Simon Lovegrove - 24 November 2021

There is a persistent series of tropes about leadership that are, well, wrong!

The first is that “leaders are born, not made”.
The second is that “leaders possess a special set of qualities such as vision, energy, dynamism, inspiration, courage, charisma” and so on.

These two views are corrosive, and simply wrong.

We have worked with thousands (literally) of current leaders and ‘soon-to-be’ leaders over the last 25 years. With so much experience, you start to notice a few things.

The most important is probably this: the ‘born leader’ theory is a myth .

It’s wrong on so many levels. It implies that one cannot be taught to be a leader: either one is born with the skills to be a leader or not.

John Maxwell writes: 'Leadership can be taught. It’s not an exclusive club for those who were ‘born with it’.

We have trained thousands of people to be leaders. We have demonstrated (to us and to them) that leadership is developed not discovered.

What differentiates leaders is not so much their philosophy of leadership, their personality, or their leadership style. Rather, it’s how they make meaning of their surroundings, and how they respond.

Relatively few people try to understand their own map of the world, and fewer still have explored the possibility of changing it, deliberately.

If you think you would like to develop your leadership capabilities, Harthill has a specific tool that will help you. It's available to everyone. It shows you the map for a voyage of personal understanding and development to transform not only your own capabilities but also those of your organisation.

Get in touch with me if you would like to know more about it.

What does a leader of the future look like?

Thu, 18 Nov 2021 13:56:01 GMT

Simon Lovegrove - November 2021

What is Leadership?

When discussing leaders and leadership, it’s a good idea to be clear about definitions.

On Amazon there are 17,623 results when you search for ‘leadership’
On Google, there are 267 million results or more when you put the word ‘leadership’ in the search bar

Combine that with the millions spent annually by would-be leaders on leadership development courses, and I think we can argue that leadership is seen as important.

But leadership is hard to define it in a way that is satisfactory to everyone and the concept of leadership appears elusive.

So I’m putting together a few posts on how to navigate leadership in a turbulent world. If you follow me over the next weeks, you will hopefully see some insights from the front lines as to what the challenges are

So, what does the leader of the future look like?

Harrumph! Where do you even start with such a question?

Well, much easier than you think: the starting point is actually what sort of person you are. Here's Warren Bennis on this:
- "the process of becoming a leader is the same process that makes a person a healthy, integrated, normal human being".

This starting point means that we must work harder on ourselves than on our jobs to develop our capacities, capabilities, credibility and confidence. We must work on our sense of self, our emotional intelligence, ability to relate and the scope of our thinking.

This the only way that you can really begin to develop the base characteristics of any leader:

Have a clear and compelling vision
Inspiring trust and commitment,
Choosing a team (hint - it's a relationship, emphasis on choosing, and re-choosing)
Being in tune with your team, your customers and your stakeholders
Make change happen rather than just being an agent of change

Harthill, we have worked with thousands of current leaders and ‘soon-to-be’ leaders over the last 25 years. With so much experience, you start to notice a few things - and here is the most important:

The right leadership characteristics ONLY come when you have worked on your character, when you have come to the realisation that the answers are not ‘out there’ but ‘in here’.

Yes, it's hard work, and yes, it means asking tough questions. That's the reality we see from engaging with the best leaders day-in day-out.

Working on your character is an ongoing process, so individual practitioners of the art of leadership will always be works-in-progress that are never finished.

Are you working on your character every day?