As I sit here, in the growing dusk listening to a Buddhist Evening Chant, I’m reflecting at the length of time since I last posted. I spent the better part of this year engaging in 2 learning opportunities and I prioritised these over blogging. The time I dedicated to study and praxis were rewarding and I am honoured to say that I’m a Human Systems Dynamics Professional and a Certified Radical Collaboration® Trainer. I’m so excited about both of these – my training and consulting are becoming more strategic, and these are 2 potent disciplines to have. Let me tell you a bit about them.
Nothing is intractable! This is the tagline of Human Systems Dynamics, a simple yet powerful discipline based on complexity science and chaos theory that allows you to see patterns in chaos and complexity to help you better understand your wicked problems and determine your next wise move. The world we move in is increasingly complex and the methods, ways of working and solutions of the last century are no longer relevant, or even enough, to successfully navigate today. This applies in any sphere – education, healthcare, business, peace processes, building networks and coalitions, and much more. Many of my cohort peers were medical professionals now engaged in educating other medical professionals.
Knowing how to build collaborative relationships is an essential skill to have in complex environments when you don’t know what you don’t know until you know it. This is where Radical Collaboration® comes in. I did the 3-day course in January in Ghent, Belgium, and decided that I wanted to teach and coach people to build collaborative skills, and decided the certify as a trainer myself.
Jim Tamm, one of the creators, explains that the key to building collaboration is by reducing defensiveness – this is the fundamental difference of this program. He talks about this in his TEDx Talk and what we can learn from groups of chickens…
So I hope you’ll forgive me for the radio silence. I aim to make up for it – I have loads to tell about Belgium and Thailand. Stay tuned.
If you want to know more about Human Systems Dynamics and Radical Collaboration® please pop me a message.
Feature pic is of yours truly, during one of the rest periods of the intense Radical Collaboration® trainer certification course.
Well done I admire your enthusiasm and your daring spirit.
Thanks Mabel 🙂
When my wife was teaching in Liege, Belgium, in 1992 we got to know a lot of the grad students. At a party, one of them mentioned that one of his professors had been a grad student of J.R.R. Tolkien, and that “all his grad students were his beta readers. He got up, and came back a few minutes later with a manuscript. It was an early version of THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING. The poem “Nine Rings to Rule Them All on the front page was very different, and it had been updated by hand (in red ink) to the version I was familiar with. The student casually mentioned that all the changes in red were by Tolkien”s own hand. It”s one of my most vivid memories from the year we spent in Belgium. I checked out the story later, and learned that at least one of Tolkien”s grad students was from Belgium. I don”t know what happened to that manuscript. I hope it ended up in a museum somewhere!
That’s a fascinating story! I hope it did end up in a museum. It’s very valuable too and I imagine collectors being willing to pay a pretty penny for it.
Congratulations on your achievement
Thanks Colline!