Over the years that I have been a facilitator and coach, I have realised the importance of “walking the talk”. For me doing this has two aspects, the first is about how I effectively divide my time, daily, weekly, monthly and annually so that I have activities that support my wellbeing and growth. This includes, regular exercise, regular quality time with my family, a healthy diet, annual holidays, regular social activities, me time and more. The ability to design my time to include all these aspects regularly is part of my “walk the talk” and requires a lot of discipline. The second part is about how I continue to grow and develop my skill as a facilitator and coach. We live in a world that is constantly changing, complex and where there is no long term certainty, therefore in any profession there is a requirement to be able to work successfully in this challenging environment. To do that requires constant evolution, growth, and experimentation with whatever you craft or profession is.
As part of this process, I have an annual development plan that has a mixture of activities in it including, having a coach, reading books, attending workshops and conferences, and networks that I am part of. This year I booked myself on a 5 days day creative facilitator programme delivered by Efrat Shani from Points of You http://www.points-of-you.com/Team/efratshani. I have already attended one of their 5 day workshops two years earlier when I became interested in learning how to use creative tools in my coaching.
A key aim of the programme was to explore what ingredients or qualities make you unique as a coach or facilitator. When I coach and deliver leadership workshops I often ask this question so it was interesting for me to consider this myself. To prepare for the programme I had to explore this question by capturing 5 visual representations of these key ingredients and to put them together in a format that I chose that again represented something about me. It was a challenging but a very interesting exercise that allowed me to notice themes that were emerging about how I work and the impact it has on my clients.
Over the 5 days there was a loose program that included, doing collages of our visions and creative presentations of who we are but we never really knew what we would be asked to do. This element of surprise meant that I had to be ever ready and to trust myself when asked to do something.
Since the program I have a strong sense of what I bring to workshops and coaching and have noticed the impact it is having on my clients.
