Just a week ago, we wrapped up the third module of Class 2 of THNK’s Creative Leadership program. Among the group of participants is Rachel Sinha. She is Sustainability Manager at ICAEW and Co-Founder of The Finance Innovation Lab, a large systems change project which innovates and accelerates new forms of prosperity, for people and planet. Following her return, she wrote this blog post.
Our third module at at the THNK School for Creative Leadership was different, because it’s changing us all.
As our lives at home inevitably unfold, these shifts merge into our THNK experience and we learn how Creative Leadership is not just about innovation, but about becoming a self-aware, well rounded human being. Marriages, new jobs, babies, break-ups, illness, they are all present in our group and the daily emergence of a new experience from one of us, give each day together a different mood.
At THNK, our Qigong-inspired morning practice shows us through our own bodies how we are too passive or too aggressive in groups, show us who leads, but has no followers, who is focused on the future and who is stuck in the past. These are things we see in each other but probably never see in ourselves.
Working in new groups keeps us on our toes. Shows us our flaws; who doesn’t listen, who doesn’t speak, who gives up, who gets angry. How a broken team dynamic means we can’t create a compelling business model. How to mend a fracture when we have no choice but to carry on.
Our coaching sessions hold up a painful mirror to our behavioural patterns. We find the roots of our leadership challenges in our family stories. At our offsite theatre day we learn how these challenges can be the source of our inspiration and drive us to create and become something, we had no idea we were capable of.
Our experience at THNK takes place in a well-lit, white room, fourteen hours a day, for ten days, back-to-back. Pitches and experts and first time challenges are part of our daily rhythm. There is nowhere to hide. We collectively unravel more layers of ourselves, the extroverts become more introverts, the introverts, extroverts. And it feels amazing, because it brings us all magically closer together. There is a strange sense of loss that comes with going home.
My challenge topic at THNK is exploring the ‘Future of Education’. Our group designed a school programme for kids that covered four levels of being human; Mental, Physical, Emotional and Spiritual. THNK School of Creative Leadership already has them all covered.