A Poem for a CV

From sharing a poem to becoming a COO.

Oct 15, 2024

Nine months ago I was logging into Zoom for my final session with the coaching training educator, The Somatic School. I was all set to become a Body-Oriented Coach.

For this completion session, we’d been asked to bring something that represents our training journey.

I decided to write a poem.

What flowed out of me was the top of mind learnings, challenges, funny moments and felt senses the course had left me with. My most memorable shifts in understanding. The power of community in our cohort. One participant’s chocolate-coloured dachshund who frequented our breakout rooms.

I can smugly share that everyone loved it. There were tears. It was purely in pursuit of sharing the lasting sense of the profound experience we’d had, and it did the trick.

At the request of one of them, I posted the poem on our shared space in the Circle community platform we use. And thought nothing more of it.

Fast forward to February this year when I found myself in conversation with the Founder Nathan Blair about co-creating a role for me at the School. “You draft the scope,” he told me. This was a dream. Something I’d only heard about happening to others.

I got to select elements of a role I wanted to do at the School and he was going to pay me to do those things.

We’d started chatting a few months prior over an advertised position for a Course Consultant, and quickly agreed that my place on the team looked different.

I started later that month as a Community and Business Development Manager.

The Somatic School lives and breathes its values of (amongst other things) play, joy, humility and simplicity, and we often repeat well-worn guiding principles at team meetings:

If it’s not resonant, it’s not right
Easy Does It
Let’s make this an uncommonly beautiful experience!
How can we invite a welcome exhale?
Leave a legacy of love

The team are a collection of well-attuned, nervous-system aware humans who understand the wisdom of the bodymind, and listen to it. They speak in the language of polyvagal, interpersonal neurobiology and Hakomi.

(A far cry from the strictly hierarchical and stiff culture of my days as a lawyer.)

What has unfolded over the past few months has been exactly that: an emergent unfolding.

Nathan whole-heartedly believes in the wisdom of the felt sense in our bodies and follows what is wanting to emerge.

He saw something in me. Something I didn’t see in myself. (Something that my creeping imposter syndrome still sometimes clouds.)

And the story doesn’t end there (and you’re probably wondering why I told you about writing a poem…)

A few weeks into my role, with some tentativeness, I shared with Nathan that I think the school needs a Chief of Staff or General Manager or COO... “Someone who can take the day-to-day away from you as Founder so that you can focus on strategy. Someone who can get the house in order and create cadence to executing your vision.”

With a knowing smile, Nathan bought me this book.

*Rocket Fuel: The One Essential Combination That Will Get You More of What You Want from Your Business by Gino Wickman and Mark C. Winters*.

Wickman and Winters’ theory is that every successful company is led by a Visionary and an Integrator. The Visionary sits on top of the ship and looks out for icebergs, the integrator mans the bridge. (I was a maritime lawyer, can you tell?)

The Visionary is the big-picture thinker, while the Integrator is responsible for turning those ideas into reality. Some examples:

Apple: Steve Jobs and Tim Cook
Walt Disney: Walt Disney and (his brother) Roy O. Disney
Microsoft: Bill Gates and Paul Allen
Southwest Airlines: Herb Kelleher and Rollin King

There’s a Job Spec set out in the book for the Integrator (you can also take this online test to see what you are) and after hurriedly ticking 95% of the list I was heart-soaring that there was a role in the world that could be my natural fit.

I incorrectly assumed that to start your own business, to climb the ranks in a company, to be ‘successful’ you had to be a Visionary type.

Turns out being an Integrator is just as valuable. It’s not as glamorous and you often don’t get the same air time as the Visionary, but guess what? Us Integrators don’t mind! And there’s not as many of us around apparently.

The Integrator Job Description
1. Faithfully executes the business plan, achieving or exceeding planned P&L objectives.
2. Leads, manages, and holds the leadership team accountable for achieving agreed-upon commitments.
3. Integrates all major operating functions of the business. Ensures everyone is rowing together in the same direction. Models the way, always working toward the greater good of the business.
4. Resolves issues effectively — seeing real problems, being comfortable with conflict, calling out the problems, and solving the problems in apractical and healthy manner. Ensures the leadership team is healthy, functional, and cohesive.
5. Ensures that everyone is truly following and adhering to the company’s core processes and operating system with consistency. Demonstrates effective project management skills.
6. Dependably demonstrates a relentless obsession with values alignment, focus, simplicity, and clarity.
7. Effectively collaborates with the Visionary and stays on the same page. Maintains a high level of mutual respect with the Visionary. Realizes the unique contributions and ideas that the Visionary has, and possesses an ability to filter and translate those ideas into functional plans for the company.
8. Confirms that all key messages are properly and consistently cascaded across the organization. Inherently ensures that everyone is in the know. Verifies that a high level of effective communication exists throughout the organization.

I got my felt tips out and created a mind map around the word Integrator. I wrote all the words that stood out to me in the book, the things that got me going, who I’d love to be for a company.

I also wrote a list of all the areas that I need experience in to feel more comfortable doing.

Then I told Nathan.

The best way of describing what happened was that he’d energetically headhunted me. He assures me there was never a moment that he had any doubt I was right for the Integrator.

There was something powerful in the “what wants to emerge” of how this unfolded – something beyond the logical, linear order of things that these scenarios tend to follow. It might sound esoteric, but in Nathan’s opinion me and the School found each other. It sought me.

Nathan sees himself as the steward of the Vision of the School and he shepparded this unfolding that we were witnessing. It was resonant, it was right and so we followed that – next right step by next right step.

I have had to lean into a trust in something beyond any one of us or deeper than words on a CV.

Over the past few months we’ve been organically moving me into this Integrator role. I’ve shadowed meetings with the accountants, had conversations about staffing gaps, written up new policies and procedures for more robust operations and co-created a new accountability chart for the organisation.

I’ve been opening all the cupboards and drawers, cleaning the shelves and sorting the contents. And there’re more to be done.

It’s resonant, so it’s right. And we are following that.

I expressed how important ceremony is for me and invited Nathan to Lisbon so that we could meet. And I proposed we went to a Couples Art Therapy session. I don’t know what kind of boss you have but I didn’t know that you could work with colleagues in this experimental, vulnerable and open way!

We met on a sunny Thursday, sipped tea by a kiosk and bonded. We symbolised the business in drawings, clay and string.

This person I’ve only known for a matter of months invited me to help run his beautiful business. He followed his intuition and for that I will be forever grateful for this heart-opening opportunity ahead of me.

On 1 October I became the Integrator for The Somatic School. It’s been an incredible lesson in trusting the natural flow of life. Do what you love, love what you do - as they say.

I say lead from love and love will lead the way.

I’ve found a place that simply accepts that how I show up is the natural order of things. It suits, it fits and so it flows. It’s easeful. The next step, the rhythm, the priority is obvious. That’s when you know it’s right.

Oh, and the poem?

I asked Nathan the other day, “When did you know I was right for this role?”

“When I read that poem you posted.”

I once heard
‘The thing is rarely the thing’
And this course was not just a course
It was
Right now I’m sensing,
Right now I’m feeling
It was
Paul’s soothing lead ins
Tell me to notice my feet
Just one more time, let me hit record
Oh thank you Kathreen
We were that little animal in the wood
Being invited into our alliance
Our safe container
Letting us be learners
But remember… easy does it
We broke out
I’ll be the coach
I’ll be the client
I’ll observe
Just bring a 4 or 5
Oops that was 10
Let’s be with
Let’s do presence PIE
Let’s talk to the wall
Let’s let our palms speak to one another
Let’s let our eyes lead
We want a little more time,
I know Elena,
We want a bit more of Tessy’s tree
And Hannah’s Max
And 2 hour lunch breaks
Being a little more
And doing a little less
Might we try a constellation
Might we ask the body
Might the I attend to the It
Might we fill our toybox
Feel those senses
Sense those Feels
Regulate, resonate, revise
Loop and mirror and model
Beam and Source and Track
Yes And…
Debate the word miracle
Yes And…
Verbally experiment
With all our different languages
I get to take in the good
Co-regulate
Connect to you
And ourselves
And our space
All at the same time
Let’s do that
And let it be there as fully as it needs to be
And as sea turtles
We’ll go and hunt those sparkles
And enquire in the real world
Shall we savour this?
Shall we freely tend to our bodies?
Shall we take our time?
And listen…
So the thing is rarely the thing…
And this thing, our thing, was rare
We belonged, we relaxed, we stretched
And what a thing
What a thing we shared

I’d love to hear from you if anything in this piece resonated. Please reach out in the comments below.

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