Saturday 9 September 2017

How do you find the right words....and who’s listening anyway?

Yes, this could be anywhere! It's actually the Delhi skyline to my right, as I write. India has the largest youth population in the world = approx 0.6 Billion 

I can still remember a memorable conversation with a close friend at my 50th birthday bash, about what it would look like to live in Community – a group of close friends doing life together; cooking together, owning only one lawn mower, chuntering over life events each evening and creating an entwined mesh of care and support for each other through the years, come what may. 

Now, ten years on, my friends & family still hear that same old dream, from time to time (usually after I’ve had a glass or two), a dream of belonging, a dream of individuals who ‘see’ and ‘hear’ one another.

I confess that what I witness of ‘normal life’ right now doesn’t do it for me. Technology rules and I too have succumbed, but I believe it’s threatening to drive us further away from each other, not bring us closer. Like an unspoken conspiracy, it actually distances us from each other; we keep text messages as short and as obscure as possible and waste obscene amounts of time scrolling through innocuous FB drivel. I do it, but it’s getting me down.

We seem to be making a migration away from face to face time - from giving each other unhurried time, thoughtful time and ‘I want to invest in you’ time.

So, what needs to be said?

Well, I’m using a Blog, because what I want to say doesn’t fit a Text, a Tweet or a FB sound bite, but to be honest I could probably share what I have to say that way and maybe it would have the same response as my Blog.

Text: We’re both quitting our jobs with EL

Tweet: Funding dried up. Training model not sustainable. Taking a new focus.

FB: 2.2 Billion new people will arrive on planet earth in the next 30+ years (1.3bn in Africa and 0.7bn in Asia). They will all need to discover how to LEAD themselves and their relationships, if they are to survive. The world is changing fast. There is an acute need to equip the coming generations with the Motivation, Mind-sets and Skills to LEAD themselves.
Emerging Leaders has reached and trained 40,000 over the past 10 years, but this is only a drop in the ocean. We need to act fast, use the brilliance of technology, to spread our Leadership for Life training and get it onto a digital platform.
Trevor and Jane will start engaging with this enigma (challenge), and to do that they will be leaving the ‘in the field’, EL training team at the end of the year (Dave Pepper is taking over as CEO), to research how this can be done, so that millions can get trained, not just a few. Learning to LEAD YOURSELF is essential, because there is NO sustainable change anywhere in the world without good, strong effective Leaders. So, that’s where we’re headed…please wish us well….and do stay connected with us….be our community!



- JB


Celebrating at the end of our last India visit - 50 Trainers equipped for 10 M&S garment factories in Bangalore and Chennai to train 11, 228 workers. They have, to date, trained 4,127 in 7 months