I am inviting you to a new workshop I am presenting with my friend and colleague, Charrise McCrorey. It is in Chicago, September 7 and 8. It is called Liberation Conversations, and here is the link you need. You should run, not walk, to be there…
Now let me tell you how I got to the place of making this invitation.
In my early years in Organizational Development, particularly when I was bringing some of the ideas from How to Make Work Fun! And The Corporate Fool to my clients, I used to challenge them:
‘Don’t be one of those people who come to work and hang their personality in the reception with their coat!’
I feel now that more and more people are used to bringing ‘the whole of themselves’ to work, and I say that that is a good thing, both as a benefit to their company (think of all that creativity, passion, real-life stubbornness and so on unleashed as a force in the organization) and in terms of the integrity, the whole-ness, of the lives those people live.
And yet, and yet…
I realize now that the niche I have created for myself as ‘leading edge organizational transformation consultant valuing authenticity, consciousness and love ahead of strategy, process and structural redesign’ is only allowing me to express the work I was born to do from a particular starting place.
And I want to shift the ground I stand on.
The ‘whole of self’ is always present, of course, in any engagement I have with my corporate clients. When I am coaching ‘executive leaders’ (I place that in inverted commas because I have yet to meet anyone who wants that label on their gravestone), their personal life is always informing how they show up as a leader. Not just that row they had with a spouse this morning, not just their concern about their children’s future after college – everything they value as a human being is already shaping how they behave as a leader.
But sometimes I have found that the ‘corporate’ label which has me in the room with my clients manifests for them as a boundary, a filter that will have them feel safer exploring some conversations rather than others.
And I want any reason to defer the conversation about the ‘whole of our lives’ to be cast out of the window. And shattered in pieces on the floor.
That’s why, for the first time in my career, I am delivering – with Charrise – a workshop that invites ‘anyone’ to my work. ‘Work’, as you’ll see, remains one of the themes of the workshop, but not the starting point, which actually is:
‘How can you dismantle the apparent ‘default-fundamentals’ of your life and re-discover them as sources of insight, playfulness and creativity? The work we will do on this workshop will serve to strengthen your foundation, a place from which anything is possible.’
Rather than saying to my clients ‘This work will create value in XYZ ways as an ROI on your investment in your organization’, now I’ll be able to say:
This workshop will change your life.
That is my word.
And I am my word.
Chicago, September 7 & 8. Liberation Conversations. This is my invitation to you.
