New Baggage - The Pond-Deshpande Centre’s Systems Coaching Experience (4/5)
This blog is the fourth in a five part series that details the experience the Pond-Deshpande Centre (PDC) — a team that includes NouLAB and Be.For.Change Ventures — is going through with Holon Leadership, the coaching firm of Saralyn Hodgkin. The funding for this work is being provided by the Innoweave Scaling Impact program, specifically the work is to Scale Deep — changing the “hearts and minds” of the organization to allow for greater impact in the work we do.
After taking a break from these sessions for the months of July and August to accommodate the team’s vacation time, we rejoined together for the last two sessions in early September — but it looked a bit different this time around.
The summer months allowed the team to take some much needed white space to focus on our reflective practices. To help support this, we paused or cut down on our meetings together and instituted Fridays and Mondays as “no meeting days”. Saralyn also set us up with a midsummer prompt to reflect on trust — what does it mean on this team and in our lives? By the time September rolled around, it felt like the start of a new year. After 2020, who isn’t looking forward to that?
You know that saying “new year, new me”? Well, for the PDC team, it was more like “new year, new team”. The composition of our team had changed over the summer months as people moved on to new opportunities. This meant that our container had to be adjusted. We were very much still in the throes of it all for our first session back with Saralyn. We had some heavy questions that needed navigating: What does this mean for our new team? How do we honour relationships? How do we engage with this new dynamic? What do we hold on to and let go of? Saralyn held space for us as we explored these questions and tapped into the work we did on how we want to show up as a team and in our work.
As a team, we felt the dichotomy of fragility that stems from a place of abundance instead of scarcity. Have you ever felt something similar? It’s like the first few moments before the dawn; everything is still, quiet, dark. Then, you look over the trees and you see the light. It was about honouring the context we found ourselves in while looking forward to the possibilities for something more. I think Leonard Cohen said it best: “There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in”.
So with some new baggage, a new team, and one session left with Saralyn, it feels like we’re about to leave the dock and set sail for parts unknown. Only this time, the sun’s coming up and we’ve got a new piece of luggage: our system’s coaching toolbox.
Stay tuned for one final blog about this leadership series.
