Ten golden rules for the new world leaders

1. Be an opportunist, think not of your country but what you can do for yourself.
2. Be outrageous and say things you know are not true. The more unbelievable the better.
3. Don’t have a long-term strategy. If you really must, don’t tell anyone about it. Someone might accuse you of changing your mind.
4. Run a negative campaign. Badmouth your enemies because the more you call them names the more the names will stick.
5. Don’t listen to anyone, especially experts. Reject advice from people who might actually have something useful to say or who may have your interests at heart.
6. Take huge risks and gamble with other people’s futures. Cheer up! It may never happen.
7. Don’t even think about plan B or C or D…nobody else does.
8. Have no regard for history. What could you possibly learn from history?
9. Blame your failures on other people.
10. Get a terrible haircut. It stops people noticing you have more than one face.

Inspired by a conversation with a fellow #remainer

Developing Leaders: What can you teach in one session?

Some people start with theory. I start with the participants

As a trainer or teacher, how do you engage learners in a conversation about leadership? Leadership is complex and context dependent. Some people begin with leadership theory. I start with the participants, and draw out the experience of leadership they bring. This blog is about the best participative leadership exercise I ever invented, and you can download the complete exercise with instructions by going to my new website, kellowlearning.com

‘To see ourselves as others see us’ Robert Burns

Leaders need self-awareness. If you don’t know who you are, why would anyone follow you? Self-awareness helps to build trust and confidence. Self-awareness can’t be taught. We have to learn it as we go through life. It can be an awful pain, learning who we are, and how we impact on other people. But knowing who are, and how other people see us, we can choose to do more of the things that help us to win friends and influence, and less of the things that confuse or irritate people.

Can we teach self-awareness?

Or can we teach self-awareness? Some years ago I developed a set of leadership competencies based on what I have learned from working with leaders in the context of sustainability. Using the competencies as framework for self-assessment, I created a participative group leadership exercise that I have run with all kinds of people in all kinds of places. The whole thing takes just over an hour.

The Leadership Odyssey

I call the exercise ‘The Leadership Odyssey’, because participants go on a short learning journey, with other people, and together they explore their leadership skills and attitudes. 'The Odyssey' is a good example of how I like to work. It's fun going virtual island hopping, and people learn things while they are having fun. In a short space of time people can begin to discover what they do well as leaders, and what they want to develop. 'The Odyssey’ works well at the beginning of a leadership programme as an ice-breaker, and a thought-starter. It can be run as a stand-alone exercise. 'The Odyssey' can also help people to generate ideas for creating their personal development plan. 'The Odyssey' is probably the best participative exercise I ever invented.

Download ‘The Odyssey’

You can download ‘The Odyssey’ complete with instructions by going to my new website, kellowlearning.com I hope you enjoy using 'The Odyssey', and please let me know you get on. 

For more information about leadership and learning, please take a look at my new website

Making a website: The 'Deep Dive'

This is the second of two blogs about making a website to celebrate the launch of KellowLearning.com. The first blog is called ‘I made a website www.kellowlearning.com'

It took me more than six months to write the copy for my website KellowLearning.com. I don’t regret the time I spent because the act of writing about leadership and learning helped me to find out what I think. I also found out what I remember from the past two decades of working as a trainer, what I have learned, what I have achieved, what I care about most deeply, and what gives me joy. Writing about what I do, day after day, was a ‘deep dive’ into who I am, and what I do. And the benefit of the ‘deep dive’ is that I was able to make a far better website than I could ever have imagined. And, what’s more, I now know what to say when people ask me ‘what do you do?’.

Here is what I discovered, and how it has helped me to communicate what I do.

I wrote to find out what I think. How do I define leadership? What are the game-defining factors affecting sustainability leaders today?

The Benefit: Clients need to know that I know what I am talking about.

I wrote to find out what I do. What is my approach to learning and change, and what is special about what I do?

The Benefit: Clients need to know what I do, and why I am the right person to work with them / their organisation.

I wrote to find out what I remember. What do I still remember from two decades of delivering programme and projects? Why have some people and events stuck in my memory, and not others?

The Benefit: Identifying my most powerful learning experiences has helped me to connect with what I do well as a trainer, and to remind myself how I can re-create transformational learning experiences for others.

I wrote to find out what I have learned. What are my key learnings from designing and delivering training for different groups of people living and working in different contexts?

The Benefit: I can clearly describe my approach to training, facilitation and coaching, the principles I follow, and what informs the choices I make in the interest of helping people to have the best possible learning experience.

I wrote to find out what I have achieved. Recalling the people and the projects that I have worked on since the early 1990s, I became aware that the whole looks greater than the sum of the parts.

The Benefit: I am quietly proud of my achievements, and this gives me the confidence to be comfortable with risk and uncertainty. 

I wrote to find out what I care about most deeply. What are the most precious moments and experiences that I have shared with the people I have met, and why?

The Benefit: Telling stories about what I do, and why I do it, helps me to communicate what it is like to work with me.

I wrote to find out what makes me joyful How do I focus on what makes me healthy, happy, creative, and inspired? How can anyone working in a helping or enabling role if they do not look after themselves?

The Benefit: Paying attention to my physical and mental health helps me to be at my best when working with others.

What real leaders really do

What leaders really do?

Once upon a time, when I thought I wanted to work in HR, I read a much reprinted article by John P Kotter, called “What leaders really do” (Havard Business Review, May-June 1990). In plain English Kotter described a step by step approach to helping people deliver the organisation’s vision e.g. involving people in decision-making, being a good role model, providing coaching and feedback, and praising people when they were successful. At the time Kotter made complete sense to me, and I was grateful to him for making leadership seem so simple.

Years later...

Twenty years later, when I read the article again, I was nearly sick. This is a good thing, because it shows how much my ideas about leadership have changed since I began working in leadership and sustainability. How could I have imagined that this mechanical approach to managing people was the real deal? 

In Praise of the Incomplete Leader

Somewhere between my first and second readings of Kotter, I came across an article co-authored by Peter Senge, called ‘In Praise of the Incomplete Leader’. It began with the words ‘No leader is perfect’. I became very excited. ‘The Incomplete Leader’ describes four leadership competencies and why they matter: making sense of the world, relating to people, communicating your vision, and inventing ways to make it happen. 

Leadership beyond organisations

What I instantly liked was the framing of leadership as way of thinking and acting, a process of being and becoming. ‘Incomplete Leadership’ is not tied to an organisational setting. It can work in teams, partnerships, networks and communities. With its strong emphasis on creating shared narratives, ‘Incomplete Leadership’ is a joint quest for the best possible way forward. It’s OK not to have all the answers, provided we keep asking questions, and telling stories to raise our spirits.

What real leaders really do

Since I discovered the ‘Incomplete Leader’, I’ve thought a lot about what we can do to provide real leadership in a complex and uncertain world. The list that follows is incomplete, but that’s OK!

Real leaders:

1. Are motivated by serving other people, their community, their organisation, their favourite cause
2. Are curious about the future           
3. Scan the horizon for opportunities, innovations, and threats 
4. Question their assumptions and beliefs           
5. Listen and observe constantly           
6. Are comfortable with complexity           
7. Gather information from multiple sources. They talk to everyone they meet. They subscribe newspapers and magazines, have a twitter account, and read blogs
8. Invest time in building diverse personal and professional networks because they know the value of diversity
9. Explore many as many options as possible before making up their minds
10. Suspend judgment on hearing about a new way of doing things
11. They like to experiment because it is fun. They have courage, and they are willing to take risks
12. Take time out to think and reflect, perhaps go for walk or swim. They may keep a diary, a journal, or a write a blog
13. Encourage different points of view and involve people in decision-making           
14. Are open and honest about making mistakes. They treat mistakes as an opportunity to learn and share what they discovered with others
15. Take responsibility for their actions           
16. Want to learn and they want other people to learn, too. They give and receive feedback freely
17. Enjoy what they do. Real leaders make a positive difference to the lives of other people. People like to work with them because they are life enhancers
18. ?

 London, 18 August 2013

Thanks for reading my blog. If you liked this page, you might like to check out my business website which has more content on leadership and learning.

www.kellowlearning.com

Five things I learned about leadership on a Leaders’ Quest

What can you learn from spending five days having conversations with people who are not obviously like you, and who know and do things you may not understand or care about? Quite a lot, as I found out when I went on a leadership journey organized by Leaders’ Quest. I have been home, physically, for two days, but in my mind I am still on the road. I need more time to digest what I saw and heard. Meanwhile, here are five things I learned:

1 How milking with Paul beats sitting with Mary

‘Sitting with Mary’ used to be how one learned to do a job. You sat, you listened, you observed, and you asked questions. And sometimes you got to practice, too. Last week I was given the chance to ‘milk with Paul’. Cows are very large animals, they poo and pee a lot, and they don’t like strangers in their milking parlour. This means you need highly developed skills and awareness to have someone shadow you when you are milking 187 cows in a confined space. Paul, the cowman, who looked after me, demonstrated phenomenal technical, spatial, communication, time and risk management skills. I learned a lot about how to lead from Paul.

2 Collaborative Inquiry not Interrogation

The conversations that worked best for me were the ones where the people we met had questions for us, too. Let me try to explain. If you tell me what you do, and then I tell you what I do, then we both know, what we both know. Whereas, if there is time, and the conditions are right for dialogue, new questions will emerge, and quite possibly we will discover valuable learning points together.  Firing questions at people may result in a diminished learning for all, because the thing you think you need to know, may not be as valuable as the knowledge or experience your interlocutor was going to share with you. If only you had let them.

3 Ditch your titles

We are conditioned to recognize people by their role, and job title. When you meet someone for the first time, hearing a job title may help to understand who you are speaking to: Banker, Consultant, Entrepreneur, Ex-Offender, Husband, Finance Director, Mother, Piano Tuner, Student. Husband, Mother, and Newly Redundant don’t work so well. If you want someone to remember who you are, it is essential to say something about yourself that will help them understand what you do, and, hopefully, arouse their curiousity.

4 Leadership and Learning

‘Leadership and Learning are indispendible to each other’, as John F Kennedy has said. For me, the people we met who were consciously learning from their challenges and opportunities, tended to be the most inspiring leaders. I’m thinking of a manager at a social enterprise who knew everyone by name, a school student in a new Academy, a probation officer who always took the difficult path, a banker who wanted to be a painter, Jimmy Mizen’s family, a piano tuner whose home is London, and who has no home.

5 The Kindness of Strangers

Perfect strangers can be exceptionally kind. Again, and again, we met people doing difficult things, who were patient, open, thoughtful, generous, compassionate, funny, and respectful to us, and to each other. With leaders like these, seizing the opportunity to tell them how great they are at what they do, was a privilege and a pleasure.

Pathways to a sustainability career

Young people doing it for themselves

I’m collaborating on a leadership development workshop for recent graduates who are looking for their first job in sustainability. It took me twenty years to realise I wanted to work sustainability. Now, twenty years later, I’m piloting a workshop to help recent graduates find a quicker route into a sustainability career.

How a little philosophy can help you work in sustainability

I have a hunch that there are a lot of graduates like me, who took degrees in subjects like Fine Art, Philosophy, and French, and want to work in sustainability. And like me, when I was their age, they don’t know what kind of green jobs there are, where to look for them, or how to get through the recruitment process.

Mid-career, multi-lingual and multi-talented: the new global leaders

What if young people on Facebook knew how to create their own professional networks? What would happen if they used their power to help each other to grow and develop, the same way folks who are on Linkedin do? I was having a coffee with one of my students recently. Julia is mid-career, multi-lingual, and multi-talented. She is part of the Linkedin generation: people who can do business in at least three languages, and are accustomed to changing the company they work for, and the country where they live, about every three years. She met a bunch of guys on a sustainability leadership programme, and they stayed in touch. Why? Well, first of all, they like each other. They have become close friends, and they have fun together. The glue that keeps them together is one part shared values, and two parts a common desire to make a difference to world. They understand the need to live and work more sustainably, and they are excited about the opportunities, locally and globally, to change the way we do things.

Networks are good for individuals and organisations

They also help each other with their careers. The Linkedin generation do business together. The fact that they know each, and trust each other, is making it easier for corporations to talk to corporations. Nadia and her network are working together to measure and reduce corporate carbon footprints, locally and globally. None of this would be happening to the same degree, if Nadia and her friends had not met on a leadership programme, and formed a network that works for them at both a personal and professional level. If all networks worked like this, might we all become better connected, more creative, happy and contented?

Can’t young people get jobs through Facebook?

Why can't the pre-Linkedin generation have the same opportunities to motivate and support each other?  That’s what Facebook is for, I hear you say. Yes, and no. Facebook works very well as a means to share photos and stay connected with friends and family all over the world. It’s good for launching projects, promoting causes. I still think there is a need for something that allows you to do more than ‘Like’ what your friend had for breakfast. And I detect a kind of snobbery about Facebook, which means it may not be the best place to look for a job. Quite the opposite in fact. Employers use Facebook to eliminate job applicants.

The power of collaboration

This is why I am collaborating with friends on a leadership workshop for recent graduates. It’s a collaborative event because I believe it is important to walk the talk. I want to show the participants how a highly motivated team working together can create a transformational learning experience.

We want to share what we have learned from working in different areas of sustainability. We want to showcase different pathways to a sustainability career, and demonstrate how to build a self-sustaining network that will benefit participants, personally and professionally. Above all, we want the participants to leave ‘Pathways to a Sustainability Career’ feeling confident about their choice of career, and with an increased awareness of how to network and support each other in the future.

How to choose a name for your website

Open the champagne. It's a website!

What shall I call it?

No, I have not had a baby. The only thing I am going to give birth to, soon, is a website about me. And I am trying to choose a catchy name for the eponymous website that will tell the world what a wonderful trainer / facilitator / coach I am. You see the problem? I have now used three words to describe myself, and they don’t explain what I do, or why you should read any more about me.

A catchy strapline

My name is OK. There are not too many Edward Kellows in the world competing for the attention of a search engine. What I need is an elegant strapline that will tell people how creative, flexible and fun I am to work with: how I always deliver on outcomes; and how I help people to discover stuff that they never dreamt they could do, and later helped them to transform their company / relationship / life. And, despite, or because of, my success, I am totally authentic and trustworthy, thanks to my deeply held, and hard won personal values. I sound so good, I think I might even hire myself.

What do I do in one sentence?

How do I explain what I do in one sentence? I google a few trainers and coaches I know, and they use words like facilitate, learning, and change. That’s what I do! I facilitate learning and change. So I think I should definitely say ‘facilitate’ because ‘facilitate’ is a verb, and a verb spells action, and what all my potential clients want is someone who can make change happen.

“Words, words, words” Hamlet II.2

But wait a moment. Everyone who works in learning and development facilitates change. I need to tell people what’s special about me. So, I am creative, and I am fun. I give people space to work things out for themselves. And the reason I do that, is I genuinely believe that change only happens when people get comfortable with who they are, rather than trying to be someone else. I learned that from Mr. Beisser on my coaching course, though I think I knew it already. And the reason why I think THAT is important is that I believe change will only be sustainable if people are given a chance to work things out for themselves. When they do that people tend to take more responsibility for their actions, see?

 Edward Kellow: Fifty Shades of Learning (It was late, I was desperate, OK?)

So I invent some straplines that I think explain what I do, while hinting at my creativity, energy and dynamism:

Edward Kellow: making learning happen (dynamic!)

Edward Kellow: making it happen (sexier, but what do I make happen?)

Collaborative Learning: Steps towards sustainable futures (Too much ‘togetherness’?)

Curious Futures: facilitating learning and leadership (hmm, I like this one)

Collaborative Futures: facilitating sustainable futures (This has a ‘does what is says on the tin’ feel)

Edward Kellow: Leaning into learning (oh dear, no).

And I google them, and each and every one is taken by somebody else. Even ‘Curious Futures’, which is the one I like most, because I have done a lot of thinking about the value of curiosity (see my blog!), and I want my strapline to ‘Lean in’ to the future. Finally, when ‘Fifty Shades of Learning’ pops into my head, I give up.

What about “Edward Kellow: facilitating collaborative learning and leadership”?

Maybe it’s not so bad after all.

Is it good to be curious?

Look up at the stars

I’m curious about curiosity. I've noticed that when people talk about curiosity, I become curious. At the start of the London 2012 Paralympics, I was moved by Professor Stephen Hawking’s speech, when he urged us to be curious. “Look up at the stars, not down at your own feet. Try to make sense of what you see. Be curious.” Now I quote Stephen Hawking whenever I talk about leadership. Curiosity is an essential part of leadership. 

The ‘need to know’ rule

When I worked at the Ministry of Defence (MoD), there was a rule called ‘the need to know’. This meant you could only access information that you needed to do your job. There was a lot of secrecy. I took care not to ask too many questions about certain topics, in case someone should suspect I had an illegitimate interest. Confidentiality was so ingrained in the organisational culture that some people did not tell even their partners where they worked.

  

Incurious George

George Entwistle, the former Director General of the BBC, seems to have followed the ‘need to know’ rule. When told by a senior colleague that Newsnight were making a programme about Jimmy Savile that might affect the Christmas schedule, Entwistle did not ask what the programme was about. He assumed that if there were anything to worry about he would have been told. There is something admirable and trusting about Entwistle’s behaviour. No micro-managing for him. Entwistle told MPs that it would have been wrong for him to show "an undue interest".  It was not curiosity that killed his career, but lack of it.

‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’

The Americans had a rule that seemed like a curious twist on the British ‘need to know’. In 1993 President Clinton issued a defense directive that military applicants should not be asked about their sexual orientation. This became known as ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’. I don’t imagine for a minute that this stopped people showing an 'undue interest' in each others’ sexuality. President Obama abolished the ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military in 2012.

Striking a balance between curiosity and trust

As with all things, however, there is a balance to be struck. Curiosity can turn into 'undue interest'. Trusting that people will tell you what you need to know, however, is a kind of recklessness. What might we have missed at the MoD because someone with an idea or a relevant piece of information was deemed to be outside the ‘need to know’ category? Being curious helps us to make sense of what is happening in the world. Curiosity is part of what makes us human. 

Curiouser and curiouser

I like very much the episode in ‘Alice in Wonderland’, where Alice meets the Cheshire cat at a fork in the road.  “Which road should I take?”, Alice asks the cat.  “Where do you want to go?” asks the cat. When Alice says she does not know, the cat says, “Then it doesn’t matter”. We need to know where we want to go. Noticing what is happening around us is the first step towards developing our personal view of the world: both how it is, and how we would like it to be. Curiosity can often lead to new ideas, and a desire to change things for the better.

“I am Curious Yellow”

Am I curious enough? I’m probably not as curious as the heroine of the 1960s film “I am Curious Yellow”, who asks questions about everything. But I completely agree with Stephen Hawking that we need to look up at the stars, not down at our own feet.

Click here to watch the original trailer for "I am Curious Yellow" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVqa05chzT4

A time and a place for learning

Time

My Dad used to say “There’s a time and a place for everything”. Usually, this meant that I was doing something that annoyed him. Time and place are critical factors in the kind of learning programmes that I design. I’ve always been interested in time and the impact that it has on people. When I was a student I was hooked on Anthony Powell’s ‘Dance to the Music of Time’, which follows the lives of a group of people who are changed by time. I also read Proust’s ‘A la Recherche du Temps Perdu’ in its entirety. I’m still not sure what ‘A la Recherche’ is about. But it seems to me that Proust is trying to make sense of what he has learned about himself, and the people he has known. He takes his time to explore the meaning of the loving, the dreaming and the cheating that preoccupy him. And learning, to me, is making sense of everything around us.

Place

I’ve always been sensitive to my surroundings, though you might not think so if you could see the state of my room. I work best if I feel comfortable, and I feel comfortable if I have natural light, order, and quiet. Noel Coward’s ‘Room with a view' will do me nicely. Mallarmé’s vision of ‘Luxe, calme et beauté’ would be an upgrade too far. If I had all that, I would do no work at all, because I would be too comfortable. As a trainer, I know that the look and feel of the working space can make the difference between memorable and forgettable learning experiences. This is true whether the learning takes place face-to-face or virtually. As Steve Jobs said, people do judge books by the cover.

Learning and performing

For me, experiential learning is a lot like performance art. Any learning experience requires the trainer to be set designer, choreographer and conductor. Natural light, space to move and a constant temperature of about 20 degrees create the optimum conditions for learning, creativity and strong growth. Dark, cold and cramped spaces do not work. And timing, as the best comedians know, is everything. Too much time, and people get bored. Too little time, and people get frustrated. The timing of the day matters, too. Too early, and people are not ready to learn. Too late, and people are too tired to engage. I think people learn best when they feel comfortable and challenged. And there is a tension between feeling comfortable, and feeling challenged, which a trainer can regulate by managing the time.

Five Days Learning in Bulgaria

Last week in Sofia, I worked with a team of LEAD Associates on a leadership challenge to do with energy in Bulgaria. In addition to all the people we met, time and place were key players. We apportioned time to different activities: five minutes for each person to talk without interruption in the learning trios, six minutes 40 seconds for a Pecha Kucha, 30 minutes for each conversation at the World Café, one hour for meals.  Longer for drinking coffee, tea and wine, and less time for sleep. The compact nature of the city centre meant that we could walk almost everywhere. From the cosy Hotel Diter, we moved effortlessly from one space to another. Our base in the hotel garden was airy, and the sounds of the city were energising. We used the streets for intimate conversations in pairs. We performed in semi-public spaces like the British Council, The Ideas Factory and the Tea House, meeting local people and sharing what we had learned. During the short intervals between these performances, we used the outdoor cafes in the squares to download information, and plan for the next meeting. We continuously formed, performed, and then moved on. What I learned is that good timing, and imaginative use of space were key to helping our learners make sense of the complex energy challenges and opportunities in Bulgaria. And what I will try to remember is that groups that take responsibility for managing their time, and can adapt to different environments, are more resilient, and have better learning experiences.

As my Dad used to say, ‘There is a time and a place for everything’.

Dancing with pirates: how to build teams that listen

The Pirates of Penzance

“Better be a pirate than join the Navy” Steve Jobs

Lost in translation

A few years ago I was interviewing a young man from Eastern Europe who had applied to join a leadership programme. As I listened to him talking about his experience of working with communities, I had the feeling that he could easily have acquired his knowledge from one of the courses I used to deliver in CIS countries. He described the very tools and methods I used to teach. But from the tone of his voice it seemed to me that the western approach to community development with its emphasis on stakeholder engagement meant nothing to him. It dawned on me that I had made a living from peddling expensive training programmes that did nothing to help the people for whom they were designed. This made me feel very uncomfortable.

“It’s only a game”

Painful as this was, I put my learning to good use recently while working once again in Eastern Europe with a group of senior managers. This time, instead of delivering a set programme, I found myself dancing with pirates. On the first night the trainers and the participants sat across a table, sizing each other up like rival gangs. By way of an informal ice-breaker I tried a simple ‘getting to know you’ type exercise. “Is the training beginning already?” said Pirate Jenny, suspiciously.  “It’s just a game”, I said. The game took so long that it felt like the 30 Years War. “It’s just a game!” said the Pirate King, with a twinkle in his eye. This was the first of many skirmishes between the navy (me and my co-facilitator) and the pirates (the participants). Would the pirates play the game, we wondered, or would they make us walk the plank?

Forming a working alliance

On the second day, we danced a number of rounds using different methodologies. These included postcards, tennis balls, a hoola-hoop, a walk in the woods, and a visit to a local winery. Little by little, we persuaded the pirates to dance with us, and with each other. It was the week-end, after all, and who wants to work on the week-end. The process was similar to what some coaching professionals call “getting alongside the client” and “forming a working alliance”. We, the navy, moored our ship next to the pirates’ galleon. Very quickly they invited us on board. We got to know and like each other. How did this happen?

A picture says more than a 1000 words

I remember a number of breakthrough moments when the conversation flowed naturally, and it seemed to me that we were really learning together. The first such moment happened when we asked the pirates to choose a picture that said something to them about leadership. The pirates chose their pictures carefully, and all of a sudden they were talking to each other and to us about their personal visions of leadership. They shared some quite personal reflections and insights into leadership. Then, without any prompting from the facilitators, the participants volunteered the fact that we had got them talking and listening to each other. Lunch felt a lot more relaxed than supper the previous evening. We had begun to form a working alliance.

Into the woods

In the afternoon the navy and the pirates made up a joint reconnaissance party, and sashayed into the woods. Spring was turning into summer. The bees were buzzing, the sheep were grazing and tiny red flowers refused to be identified in the thick long grass. We sat on a hillside and talked sporadically like characters in a Chekhov play. That night the navy and the pirates partied until 3.00 am. We danced together for hours. This time the dancing was real.

Dancing in our heads

On the final day of the workshop we threw out large parts of our carefully designed workshop. We kept one methodology and one game that we thought fitted perfectly with the group narratives about storytelling, inspiring people and working less while earning more. The high point for me was the moment I noticed we had been standing in a circle in the garden for a long time. We were talking about how to inspire and engage people and somehow it felt completely natural and learner led. No-one sat down, and no-one left. We were dancing in our heads.