All change
  It is not the strongest of the species who survive, not the most intelligent, but those who are most adaptive to change (Charles Darwin)
Everyone around us is talking about the cuts that are going to change our lives in the next 12 months.
It seems that our professional and leadership lives are on unsteady sand.
We know that there is little we can do to change the way the waves come into the shore. King Canute, pictured here, tried and failed.
Writer, Tony Buzan says that 'All is Change. You are change' so now is the time to think about the things we can control and adapt to meet the changes.
Adapt and prosper
Life is destructive and destruction is creative, get used to it, get over it and learn to adapt and prosper (Andrew Missingham, CLP re:freshers, 90 second think piece)
So in the same way we can't stop the inside ourselves dividing, nor Tsunamis happening, we cannot control everything.
In Sync we often talk about 'choosing how to feel' about things. If we see the changes ahead as gloom and doom, then we lose energy. If we see it as an opportunity, a chance to try something different or to make a difference, this is full of energy.
Change in 90 seconds
Plan ahead, take a hankie! (Nina Edge, Associate Artist, Tate Liverpool, speaking at 90 seconds event at CLP re:freshers)
Hankies are useful for managing a runny nose and for the tears that come when we do well. It seems we're going to have to buy our hankies by the carrier bag full for the good and bad times ahead.
The recent re:freshers event at the Wellcome Collection started with twenty two 90 second presentations from a selection of individuals taking part in CLP programmes, including 2 of our Sync members, Rachael Wallach and Sue Williams.
What was 're:freshing' about this 3 days at such a big venue in London is that that disabled and Deaf people were filling the space along side other people and this felt good.
In Rachael Wallach's 90 seconds, she talked about not thinking about our own survival but grabbing every networking opportunity so that 'leaders of today and tomorrow in one space can create a vision together...'
Rachael Wallach will be talking more in the Autumn on Sync about her experience of local government and leadership.
Sync Intensive profile: Theresa Kiyota Rahman de Swiet
Theresa Kiyota Rahman de Swiet is working at Whitechapel Gallery on a placement. She is also on the Sync Intensives programme.
This month she has written an article about leading and a case study about another leader called SarahGem Tonin.
Theresa's view of leading has been changed by her experiences working at the Gallery.
She used to think that leading was about power and now she can see that leading is about inspiring people.
SarahGem Tonin set up an organisation called Creative Routes and ran a festival called Bonkersfest.
She never wanted to be a leader and got hurt by some of the things that happened to her when she was.
She talks about it as feeling like this:
I’ve got a picture of my internals with butterflies turning into geese bumping into my skin. I’m in the middle of a road and life is busily around and I’m on a little island in the middle. Because it felt that even though I wasn’t invisible, my needs felt invisible...
Sarah's experience of leading has lead her to think that: I suppose that’s part of being a leader, you’re looked at differently, treated differently...
Do you agree?
You can follow the links below and read more about Theresa and Sarah there.
Read more from Theresa Kiyota Rahman de Swiet
Surfing the waves
You embrace change. Change embraces you (Tony Buzan).
So all this change business and leading ourselves through it. Is it something we can embrace and hold? Something that we can feel excited by? Yes? No? Maybe?
Tony Buzan is inspired by what Charles Darwin says, leaning away from the idea of 'survival of the fittest' to the need to adapt.
The key to this, I think, lies in how we going to change our own lives and thinking. We are used to changing in order to survive and be visible and get our needs met. We must remember to
look at how well we are doing in getting our needs met
If we're not so good at it, we need to start practicising getting more of what we need on our terms, now!
choose how we feel about the changes ahead
As Tony Buzan says 'you choose to become a victim of the situation and your emotions or to ride change like a surfer: learning from it, managing it and helping others to manage it too, in the most positive way possible.
take a hankie. Not to wave the sea back but to be ready for the good and the bad.
And so
That's it for this month. get your surf boards out and ride the waves of change!!
Until August, happy surfing!
Sarah Pickthall
Sync Coaching
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