“Our critics and heretics are the strongest drive we have for our evolution and need to be viewed as portals to improvement, not as a threat to the status quo” Ivan Lawler, March 2021. Today, those words were delivered in fine style amid the parting words of Ivan Lawler, who stepped down this morning as President of...
Continue reading...Changing the Sign on the Door?
Only once [National Governing Bodies] accept that some things are illegible — once they learn to say, ‘I don’t know’ — will they really be able to start effectively engaging with the complex challenges that characterise our world, and our times” Thea Snow, The (il)logic of legibility Do we dare to hope for meaningful change when we...
Continue reading...Interesting Times (Continued)
Four years ago, some of us were quite genuinely living through “interesting times“… but in strange ways. Despite all concerned having good intentions, the build up to the British Canoeing Annual General Meeting got quite feisty. The upshot? A bit of a reset on several fronts… Ivan Lawler got elected & set out to adapt the role...
Continue reading...Handling Ambivalence
In this new Run Your Life Podcast we get Stephen Rollnick explaining Motivational Interviewing as “a way of handling ambivalence or uncertainty in someone” and once again highlighting the ordinariness of getting out of the way of others as they say why and how they might change. For the umpteenth time this year, I find myself championing...
Continue reading...Transgression, Inclusion & Diversity in the Outdoors
Is there just something about the inherent messiness of living in the real world that gets us feeling uncomfortable, or even keen to kick back, when we encounter a mindset of “we’re listening… so long as you’re willing to be more like us?” Does any such instinct grow where we see ourselves as part of diverse and...
Continue reading...Navigating Uncertainty
Who does Sonja Blignaut speak for in suggesting we have outsourced our relationship with uncertainty to certainty merchants? Can we recognise something of ourselves in that characterisation? Are we among those who have forgotten that we already know so much about navigating uncertainty? This short presentation ranges over embracing messiness, re-cultivating our relationship with uncertainty and taking...
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