Damascus road experiences...

Good acclimatisation for future west coast living today. Leadership/team-building exercises in the rain in the Forest of Dean. I'm sure someone has muddled up membership of the Church of England and the Parachute Regiment. Never mind, it was an entertaining if potentially pointless set of exercises.

I did get that single blinding insight, of course, as one always does at these sorts of things. I am, by nature, a person who leaps into action full of ideas and directions for how the team should achieve the goals. Over the years, this has been tempered a little into facilitation, gathering other views, enabling team members to participate etc. etc. etc., but essentially I still like to jump in and say, 'So based on all that stuff - this is what we are doing - RUN - JUMP - GO THIS WAY...' etc.

However: Putting a set of blacked-out goggles on me during an exercise and I was as quiet as... well something that is really quiet. Very docile, lead around by the lovely lady who was my partner in the exercise - very obedient. Now, if they could bottle and sell that effect on mouthy people like me, they would make an absolute fortune.

The insight? I still love telling people what to do (in a very affirming, collaborative sort of way) - and you would probably have to poke my eyes out to change that... Ho hum.