inspiration and hope appear in many forms...

and being able to spot them (despite how subtly they may appear) is a skill worth having...this is what happened to me in may of 2007...

i found myself attending a business forum hosted by the institute of chartered accountants (this was before i made the move to HR) and one session i attended was about having difficult conversations at work (you know the ones i mean: when someone isn't performing well, when someone's overstepped the line, you know those 'being authentic' type conversations that nobody really teaches you how to do)

the session was run by a woman who had previously been a partner in an accounting firm and having realised that she wasn't living her dream had been courageous enough to leave that all behind her to set up her own business as a leadership coach...mmmm a leadership coaching business, kinda weird since my longer term dream is (and was even then) to combine corporate leadership capability coaching/training with a counselling practice...

so imagine my surprise when half way through this session (which was attended by about 150 people) i find myself not only in the front row but taking the roving microphone to ask a question! as i have said to her subsequently, i NEVER do that sort of thing, preferring instead to sit quietly at the back so that a) i am not noticed and b) i can leave early if i get bored...

so even funnier is that at the end of the session i find myself going up to her to thank her and introduce myself - even funnier still is that i remember asking if i could take her for coffee sometime so i could get some insights on how she made the transition...

truth is she inspired me and she enabled me to find hope - i just needed a little reminder that it was there - i had finally met someone who seemed like me, who shared my values, who had a similar professional background and who shared my passion for leadership....better still here was someone who had 'followed her dream' and done so successfully...

so you see, i think that my being there and meeting mandy was in many ways serendipitous (i love that word).....you see i never really felt as though i belonged in finance, it was just something that i fell into and got trapped in! mandy represented both hope and inspiration for me at a time when i had absolutely no idea about how to extricate myself from a situation i found myself in with seemingly no way out...

so a few months later we have that coffee, a few months after that she invites me to a womens networking breakfast, another few months goes by (we both have overseas holidays) and finally yesterday we caught up again...

our catchup was great - we got to know each other a bit better, we talked about books (she has recently been asked to contribute to some books on leadership and she very kindly gave me copies, thank you), we talked about people, about what drives them, about what makes them behave without integrity, about what is it about our very different life experiences that lead us to share the same values - all in all a great conversation, a fabulous exchange of ideas, mutual admiration and support for each other and ultimately what i hope will be the start of a longlasting friendship...

so thank you mandy...for being you, for supporting me being me, for being my inspiration and for helping me rediscover my hope :-)