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Learning happens in all sorts of places, sometimes unexpected, and development rarely follows a straightforward path.

To feel connection and moments of gratitude matters so deeply.

You still just about have time to book the storytelling session for The Q community you will hear the experiences of Sara Turle 💙 and her 14 yr journey across healthcare & why stories are so important to her q.health.org.uk/get-involved/e……… Storytelling in Health Matthew Kalman Mezey joriamramos

Words get bandied about in policy terms. Concepts get tightly defined in theory. Such as compassion, collaboration, care... Yet we risk these fine words, concepts, & values becoming meaningless if we don't truly live and breathe them in all their raw, messy, evolving selves.

When the sky is a work of art

Before I judge your words, I need to pause, check I'm understanding your meanings. Do I truly understand where you're coming from? I need to notice that how I understand is influenced by what I add from my experience. We need to listen to *all* of us with so much more curiosity.

When we share work in progress, we need space to talk and listen with curious uncertainty. And we need to be listened to with genuine inquiry and curiously unfolding understanding. This takes generosity, openness, and care on all our parts. It's not easy, but it feels essential.

Summer evening light

What if instead of 'what do you want to *do* when you grow up?', we could gently ask each other how we want to *be* in the world? If we could value experiences & learning that keep on unfolding in the spaces between us. And value each moment, place, and person we live alongside.

There's no prescription for how to cope with grief & hardship in our families. No one perfect way to be a daughter, parent, partner, friend... Rather than pile on pressure to 'get it right', we need more space to be human, messy, & real. To lighten the load with love & laughter.

Sharing some of my work at a learning event today, work I care about a lot. It struck me how hard it is to convey such things clearly when the nerves of speaking publicly kick in. And how much it matters to keep on going with the relational work, keep on making those connections.

It's as much in how we notice, listen and talk to each other, pause to think about who's involved and who's been left out, whose voices are heard, which experiences are hard to hear, how words we use hold biases we need to unearth. This is all the work, as essential as it's hard.

Imagine if the energy expended on countering and misunderstanding each other could be brought together in noticing, really listening, caring to understand where we're each coming from, and being just a little bit more generous in each of our interactions.

Quintessentially

Beside the sea

Feeling very grateful on a sunny Friday evening.

Maybe we reach insights, find helpfully alternative perspectives, feel able to face our shadows... in different moments and at different rates to each other. And that's why we need to listen more, and develop more understanding.

With different parts cast in light bathed in shadow life it is yet lived.

I'm almost as pleased that I could remember the French for 'avez-vous un parapluie s'il vous plaît?' than I was that the hotel did have umbrellas 🌂 for loan!

It seems to me that the values of community learning and development - social justice, equity, participative democracy, collaboration, inclusion - could better inform how the development of leadership is approached. It's more often treated as a business discipline. Why? I wonder.