A Sabbatical

For obvious and thoroughly appropriate, if sad, reasons, all my booked group work for the next few months has been cancelled or postponed. One-to-one coaching , supervision etc that can be conducted remotely (via skype/zoom/phone) is going ahead; and I am investigating the practicality of online facilitated workshops.

Nonetheless, that means that I have a lot of time suddenly free in my diary, and have been giving some thought to the question of how best to use that.

As a base line, there is something about wellbeing for me and my family (my 95 year old mother in law lives with us, so we have been taking social distancing very seriously). Wellbeing or resilience in these difficult times involves putting in place suitable routines to keep us healthy physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

But I don't want merely to survive the current crisis; I want to make it as positive a time as I can for myself and others.  There's not a huge amount I can to for others, for obvious reasons; though we are clearly participating in the local village mutual support scheme, and I have also joined the EMCC's 4*4 offer of free support to people professionally; and am working on some more specific offers for my client base.


But this is clearly an opportunity to invest time in ways that are normally not easy; so I have decided to treat the next few months as largely a sabbatical, and set myself some aspirational targets, both work related and beyond work.

So, for example, I had already signed up to David Clutterbuck and Peter Hawkins' virtual course on Leadership Team Coaching which is running over the summer.  This is an opportunity to invest much more significant time in that to make the absolute most of the learning available.  So in advance of the programme's start, I am re-reading Hawkins' book on the subject and making more detailed notes.

Likewise, our garden will never be the same again!  And I have a number of other goals, spanning the various roles in my life.

So I recommend giving some thought to that question: when this extraordinary crisis is over, what will I need to have done, so that I know that I have used the time - both the challenge and the opportunity inherent in it, in the most positive way that I can?