Repertoire, Technique and Presence: Improvising Responses to Need in the Moment as they Emerge

by Brian Lawson

A week spent responding to the diverse needs of our clients in all the areas of our new offer and brand. Spring is in the air and work begins in earnest on our new delivery programme as I’m amazed at the variety and diversity of the needs of my clients. Here are some examples of the diversity of this from last week’s work:

  • Responding to the pressure of a new forming Board to progress some decision making, build some skills and take forward vision and strategy to make the best of a £10 million opportunity we create a live meeting to rehearse roles, mapping the conversation and build the learning and strategy.
  • Working on the delivery of crucial areas of work and integrating it strategically using a whole system event to co-create the solutions utilising the whole of the room available in the golf club – including the dance floor.
  • Spending 3 hours facilitating a fast paced conversation to assist a management team integrate services and create a radical new solution with a 6 week timetable to address the most crucial stuck issue. They needed to be pushed to crystalise the solution they sensed was there.
  • Coaching a client into believing in their leadership capacity and capability based on some stunning achievements under enormous stress and scrutiny. They needed to believe in their talent.
  • Preparing to author a review with a new team likely to come under public scrutiny as well as under pressure to deliver quickly. We needed to get to know each other and put a programme together quickly.
  • Running the 3rd module of an integrated leadership management, workforce and organisational development session and realising the range of responses to the change and transition people are working through. I needed to help them listen, stick with the difficulty, understand the diversity of their responses and begin to shape what they needed.

All of this has taught that the times we live in and the pressures on people in organisations require an agile and dynamic response from me to make the best use of the precious and pressured reflective spaces which they are able to create for themselves.