I wrote a chapter in my book on Cultivating Attention about Connectedness (more on that here).

At a couple of recent meetups I was reminded of how complicated and multi-layered the experience of connectedness within working teams can be. When it really works, it’s pretty special–and of course that doesn’t always happen.

But I’m grateful for a group of people I’ve gotten very connected to: my professional coaching training cohort at SeattleCoach, which graduated last summer and has gotten together regularly since then. This group has turned out to be a very important resource of support and camaraderie as I establish my consulting practice. It’s a strong, tough, wise, funny group. Here’s a photo from our gathering over the weekend which captures just a slice of our connectedness. Every team has its own style–this group’s is pretty nice. What’s not visible in the picture is how hard and with what integrity each person in the photo (and the others in our cohort not pictured: Chris Cancialosi, Phoebe Sade-Anderson, and Peter Berry) worked through the coaching training and continues to courageously hold the flame of authenticity and wisdom.

What this somewhat goofy picture might not show–but which I can attest to–is that each of them is engaged in daily battle to bring more clarity and wisdom to the corporate and entrepreneurial places where they do their work. How fantastic that we are capable of unleashing such connected joy from time to time!