Beyond the Boundary -
What now, what’s next, what’s possible?
A mid-week reflective and practical residential for women who are navigating change in their professional lives, and exploring what it means for their personal life.
Is this what I’m looking for?
Are you at a transition point in your professional working life and think you might benefit from anexpertly facilitated, structured, safe space, to help imagine what your future could be?
Would you like the opportunity to take a few days away to consider and explore - in the company of other women - your options, choices, thoughts, and questions about possible futures?
This might be the space for you.
I came away with so much more than I expected, the week was completely transformative for me, I have recommended it to everyone I know.”
Debbie
Ex-public sector Director of Finance
Is this right for me now?
This might be right for you now if you are...
- Coming to the end of your current career and wondering how you can start to shape the rest of your life.
- Returning to work after a break, considering a more senior role, or seeking a new career/direction.
- Interested and curious about engaging with other women to build mutual support.
- In need of some time and space to just be.
This 4-day residential retreat is for you if you are facing some change and looking for support to navigate that change well.
This retreat provided me with exactly what I needed to work through a big transition professionally. Being ‘held’ in a safe and nurturing space, challenged and supported by incredible coaches and other participants I was amazed at how much I was able to achieve in 3 days. I emerged with a new clarity that I’ve been able to turn into action.
Tracy
Chief Executive
What can I expect?
The event is tailored around the women that join us but covers the following
A warm welcome to the venue on the evening of the first day. The venue will be confirmed when you are booking but will be in a beautiful countryside retreat. We have the whole place, and you pick your own en-suite room when you arrive. We have chosen venues that feel inviting, relaxing and help stimulate your mind and relax your body.
We know how important beginnings are so as well as that warm welcome, dinner and drinks, we do our utmost to create a space on that first evening where you feel at ease. It’s the first chance to meet with the group and have a structured conversation about what everyone is looking for from the time away, as well as plenty of time for informal chat.
Days 2 and 3 will be expertly facilitated sessions in the whole group, in small groups and some time on your own. We will use the inside and outside space to work, think and reflect. All meals will be prepared for you, and we will eat together. Evenings after dinner you can stay with the group or spend some time on your own.
Day 4 we will close with some final reflections, agreeing next steps and ending well.
I was nervous it was going to be all yoga and serious faces... But I spent much more time just talking and laughing with interesting women. I also went away with a renewed sense of ‘purpose’ in both my professional and personal life.
Catherine
Business owner
What next?
Facilitators
The three of us... We first met around 25 years ago, and have worked together at various times, with and for each other. Our most close collaboration was during the setting up and first stages of the NHS Leadership Academy, led by Karen, with Nichola and Philippa as part of the initial small Faculty team. It was such an innovative and exciting time, a great example of the energy and creativity that comes with new beginnings. Fast forward (through many, many other transitions) to the past couple of years and we have re-met and come together around our interests; particularly in how women navigate some of the major changes in their lives. All of us have noticed themes with our coaching and organisational clients of a specific need for women, who often put themselves last, to find some protected time to help them think through what they need. This programme was borne of that enthusiasm.
Next steps
Drop us a line to let us know you are interested, and which session you would like to join. You will be contacted by one of the facilitators to speak about what you are hoping for, any concerns or questions you have, the shape of the programme, any special requests you have, dietary or otherwise.
Having returned to work after cancer, I had already made some big decisions about the next chapter of my life and career. And yet, this time away allowed me to consider it all more deeply, and to benefit from the helpful perspective of this small group of fellow participants. I came away calmer and so much clearer on what I shall do next and at what pace.
Claire
Partner, Professional service firm
Facilitators
Philippa Williams is a facilitator and coach and she was co-founder of Practive, a consultancy specialising in the practice of leadership. She has over 25 years’ experience of leadership development, including the design and delivery of whole programmes, individual workshops, action learning set facilitation, Executive team and Board development. She is a highly experienced coach, working with senior leaders across the public and private sector; she specialises in helping people to develop their influence and impact, working with them on how they communicate with others, to understand the impact they have, to build on their strengths and explore ways to extend their range in all situations. Philippa is co-editor and author of ‘How to be a Nurse or Midwife Leader’, published by Wiley.
Nichola Jacob is a highly experienced facilitator, team and executive coach with over 35 years of experience working across both the public and private sectors. She has a business background in Logica, Coopers & Lybrand and PwC. Nichola left organisational life to set up her own Leadership Development business in 2004 and since then has worked alongside a range of organisations including several Law Firms, Professional Services firms, Energy organisations, Banks and has also worked with the NHS for the last 17 years. She is known for creating environments, which enable individuals to think both differently and creatively about themselves. These individuals are often people who have some opportunities, challenges, or dilemmas within their lives, be transitioning in terms of their work or life roles and/or need some time to reflect and plan for their future. Nichola’s style is characterised by a warm, relaxed manner and a collaborative, pragmatic and realistic approach. She adds challenge and a different perspective to situations, enabling the discovery of different possibilities and choices.
Karen Lynas worked a national level in health services for over 25 years, leading large complex systems, and networks, creating new teams and organisations. She has worked with leading Academic partners including Harvard, Insead and Erasmus as well as very many small and bespoke consultancy services, all to provide exceptional and impactful leadership development to tens of thousands of leaders at every level. Her last employed role was as Managing Director of the NHS Leadership Academy, a large, national, geographically distributed organisation she created, working closely with Central Government, senior leaders in health and international partners. In 2016 she left full-time employment to set up her own business and works with teams, boards, and individuals. As an accomplished facilitator of small and large groups she works particularly with those who have challenging issues to face and where different behaviours might unlock progress with seemingly intransigent problems. Her style is supportive but direct – she works with positive intent in service of your aims not shying away from helping you confront the less helpful or productive ways of working you might have developed.
Contact
Please get in touch if you would like to talk more and see if this might be for you.
Philippa Williams
We all have patterns when it comes to endings, the theory goes. A small example: at a party, do you tend to decide to leave and then just go, or do you take your time to make sure you say goodbye to absolutely everyone first? Or are you like me, who mostly tends to cut and run, but sometimes, as an alternative strategy, stays until the bitter end? Either way, managing my anxiety at how I cope with endings.
I’ve been used to multiple transitions firstly as a theatre professional and then as a development professional. Always ending and always starting again. In theatre you get incredibly close for a short space of time and when the show ends, everybody vows to stay in touch and mostly you never do.
In my work with organisations, groups, teams and individuals a large part of my role is to make good beginnings and good endings and help clients navigate their way past the ending of my involvement towards their future. I also often work with individuals at moments of transition in their lives whether that is in adapting to a new role, taking on a new role, changing career, deciding when or if to retire and so on.
So of course, with all this experience, I decided to make three huge changes in my personal and professional life – at the same time. The strange madness of Covid added to this. In short order I sold my business, cut down hugely on the amount of work I do and moved out of London to rural Suffolk. What could possibly go wrong?
A lot of my interest in this offering comes from my own experience and one of the reasons I am so excited about this event we have created is that I know it is something that I would have loved to have had at the appropriate time.
I find Bridges theory of transition to be a helpful way to frame what I went through (and to some extent am still going through) and we have found it to be a powerfully simple way to help the participants on these events reflect on where and who they are, where and who they want to be and how they might make some progress towards that.
Nichola Jacob
Its only recently that I’ve really understood that transitions are simply the way in which our lives move on and unfold in an on-going series of endings and beginnings. I now realise that paying attention to the flow of these transitions, acknowledging and working through these different phases more consciously could have helped me navigate the ups and downs, joys and sadness and just messiness of life in a different way.
I’ve experienced some classic transitions; leaving home; moving jobs, redundancy, moving cities, getting married, having kids, having them leave home, setting up my own business, a husband through redundancy and early retirement. There have also been others; the death of my mum and a few good friends who went far to early; the breakup with my first love.
I’ve loved my work and still do. Moving from corporate life, 20 years ago, to setting up my own coaching business was one of the scariest moments of my life; moving from security and what was known to the ambiguity of not knowing what was going to happen the next week. It was my network of friends and colleagues and the collaborations we formed, the late-night conversations, the sharing of experiences the normalising of my fears that enabled me to thrive.
I’ve spent my working life supporting others to grow and change, to create the conditions to help themselves be the best they can be given the situations they find themselves in. I’ve worked with many brilliant people at different points in their lives, many coming to me as they experience a transition. I’ve found that creating environments/spaces for people to think and talk well together can produce amazing results which is what brings me to this work. Simple, honest human conversation works, sharing experiences and deeply listening to others is, I believe, one of the best ways of navigating/working through the questions we hold about our lives.
Karen Lynas
Having never really known what I wanted to be when I grew up, I fell into a career that ended up being a real passion. I went into the NHS, deeply committed to its core values and what its creation said about us as human beings holding a collective responsibility to look after each other. But I didn’t really know what my contribution could be. I stepped into management side because I really liked things to work well and hated mess and incompetence.
I moved into development almost as a stop gap between one management job and another, and that became my new passion. I believed deeply that good leadership made a difference to how staff felt, and how staff felt made a real difference to the quality and impact of patient care. So, leadership development became my accidental but much love career for over 25 years. I resigned and left the NHS the fourth time I was rejected for a job I thought I was made for.
Rethinking who I was, what my contribution could be, and daring to look back on my career and start to re-evaluate what mattered, what difference I’d made and what it all said about me, was very scary. Being in my 50’s I felt completely ill-equipped to deal with this big change on my own. I had no idea where to start and no idea who to ask for help.
I now own my own business, I am still working in development, and have a small team I work with. I feel more fulfilled by work than I ever have, less constrained by people and events over which I have no control, and able to make much smarter choices between work and home life, and the rest of my life. I think now that I have navigated that change really well. But it was lonely, hard, and painful, and took much longer than it needed to.
I meet with, work with, and spend time with loads of really amazing women and in conversation realised so many of them were having to do that work on their own too. Navigating personal, professional, career and life changes relying on nothing much more than their own resources. Of course, they can do it – but I was excited by the idea that we didn’t need to. We could create a space where women could have some protected time together, feeling looked after and cared for, and learn alongside others about what the next thing might be and how they can best get there.
The details bit
Dates
We run these retreats twice a year, in Spring and Autumn. Our next date is:
- 5pm Monday October 14th to Thursday October 17th 2024
Venue
- We use different venues for the events so let us know the week you are looking at and we will confirm where we will be. Our last session was held here; which is a good example of the kind of venues we use: https://www.fairoakfarm.co.uk/
Costs
- £1,800 inclusive of accommodation and food. £500 non-refundable booking fee and the rest will be invoiced a couple of weeks before the retreat. There is also an option to add a post-programme coaching session to reflect and embed your thinking. We can advise on that option when we speak.
- Let us know if you have any dietary requirements or special requests so we can accommodate you well.
Contact us
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