It's a long way to the top and other lessons in humility...

A conductor is certainly a specialist, but there is a very big difference between being a specialist and being an expert - and I love that difference.  I specialise in teaching people with neuro-motor disorders strategies and skills to enable them to manage their bodies better.  I don't make up these tricks and techniques, they are not my intellectual property - and I see my role, my specialty, as being able to articulate and share these solutions as openly and as freely as possible, and to facilitate the process of sharing and tweaking solutions that have worked for other people with similar challenges.  I have learned some of these tricks from other conductors, but most have been learned by being a partner in a problem solving process with an individual, and more often by letting my clients teach me the tricks they have worked out for themselves.  This means that the expertise and success are not mine; it means that I am teacher-learner combined, it means that I'm always on the lookout for new tricks to add to my repertoire and therefore always open to learning and growing, and it means professional humility is a part of being a conductor and I love that.

Lessons in humility come packaged in many wonderful formats.  Last week BC, a private client decided to stop training with me.  BC is a woman with advanced Parkinson's who started training with me because she was having frequent falls and trouble getting out of bed.  After a few weeks of private in home sessions she had mastered the tricks and techniques we had been working on to the point that she is no longer falling and can now get out of bed unassisted, and she no longer needed me to come to her home and practice with her.  I could choose to dwell on not being needed - but in reality no longer being needed is the best possible outcome and I'm celebrating. Conductive humility means knowing it is not about me - and that it never was - and there is nothing better than being around somebody who learns something and stepping back to let them own it.

Lessons in humility are sometimes delivered by posties on motorbikes. RP is a stroke survivor and a Harley Davidson enthusiast who has set up a rehabilitation space in his garage with parallel bars and steps - a dream workspace for a mobile conductor.  Last week while I was there working with RP, the postie - a big burly guy on a motorcycle - came up the long driveway to deliver the mail.  This week the same postie came up the driveway on his motorcycle. He had no mail to deliver, just wanted to tell RP that a few years ago he had been in a bad motorcycle crash resulting in a brain injury, and despite what everyone told him he was now walking again, and was back on his motorcycle, and that RP shouldn't give hope.  That day, for the first time, RP and I walked all of the way down and all of the way back up his long driveway.  This week RP did it again, twice in one session.  Conductive humility is being able to celebrate that after months of RP and I working towards something together and of me encouraging and teaching RP, what got him over the hump was a burly postie on a motorcycle and his heartfelt act of kindness. 

Life Without Limits -- Conductive Education on the International Stage

I was planning to use this blog posting to simply announce an upcoming conference that I will be presenting at -- but it seemed a bit impersonal dear readers, to do so without at least saying hello to you, and telling you a bit about what has been going through my head lately.  That said -- if you are pressed for time and just want the facts, please find a link to the conference which takes place April 16-18th in Auckland below.  My presentation is on Friday April 17th at 2:30 pm and if you are in the 'hood it would be most wonderful to have support from the CE community there.


Work has been hectic and a bit stressful over the last while.  That may or may not be the subject of a future blog post.  Life outside work has been more about exploring, adventuring, and indulging than about maintaining this blog, for which I will not feign apology.  In fact, I actually offer the opposite of an apology -- I offer the encouragement to do the same.  When life is good, get out there and enjoy it.  When things are hectic and stressful, all the more reason to seek what makes you happy and to care for yourself by doing things that offer pleasure, restores balance, and provokes gratitude.

Yes, my time outside work has been about exploring, adventuring, and indulging.  But as conductors we are very lucky.  Politics and organizational crappiness aside, for most of us our work makes us happy, offers pleasure, and provokes gratitude.  On the weekends I love the outdoors -- and New Zealand's outdoor are inspirationally splendid.  During the work week my classroom is my sanctuary, my time with clients feeds my soul, and inspires me to be the best that I can be for them and for myself.  Working conductively reminds me to celebrate being exposed to the attitude and lifestyle of Conductive Education; it helps me take risks and try new things; it helps me value and appreciate being the best you can be within the context of a set of circumstances or of a moment, and it helps me celebrate even the tiniest of achievements and to remember that tiny achievements add up to more than the sum of their parts.  For example...

A small achievement was writing about the benefits of Conductive Education for people with degenerative conditions as part of my dissertation as a student at NICE, and having that shape my practice to this day.  A small achievement was opening my colleagues minds to the possibility of opening our services to people with Muscular Dystrophy and other neuromuscular conditions beyond those typically seen in CE.  A small achievement was getting a pep talk from conductor Mandy Elliott affirming that I was right to pursue this path.  A small achievement was starting to work with people with such conditions, even if at first it was just me providing individual sessions outside of our main programs and groups.  The work was too exciting to keep to myself, the clients too outrageously orthofunctional to deny my colleagues the chance to learn and to understand what we could do to support these people.  A small achievement was building a service relationship with the relevant association here in New Zealand and being invited to speak to their key workers about what Conductive Education had to offer.  A small achievement was being encouraged by the Muscular Dystrophy New Zealand service manager to submit an abstract for this conference and actually finding time to meet the submission deadline.  A small achievement was having my abstract accepted for presentation -- and yes, it is a small achievement as in terms of exercise and lifestyle for people with Muscular Dystrophy I didn't have much competition.  (I will post my abstract in the comments for those who wish to read it).

A big achievement, bigger than the sum of all of those small achievements - for what it is worth - is seeing Conductive Education represented at an academic, international conference.  I have a couple of months to prepare and I would be grateful for any support from the Conductive Community, anecdotal or other, from conductors who have worked with people with neuromuscular conditions beyond the few we typically see in CE and from people with these conditions who have benefitted from CE.  Not to be sardonic, but there is a good chance I will be presenting as an independent instead of on behalf of my current organization, so I could use all of the support from the CE community that I can muster.




Conducting myself as a manager..

There are some conductors that have found a way to carve out happy niches for themselves and to happily work within the contexts of their organisations or own businesses - but happily employed or self employed conductors seem to be a minority.  Most often, when you talk to conductors working all around the world, there is an undercurrent of frustration; frustration about not having choice in or control over the programs they conduct and frustration about restrictions and rules and policies for their organisation or governing and funding bodies that get in the way of what they see as best conductive practice.  For years I have been advocating for conductors to step up and take lead roles in organisations providing Conductive Education, and for organisations to look to conductors to build, shape, and manage programs.

I can certainly confess that I was a frustrated grumbler in previous places that I worked - and though I am not sorry that I fought for what I thought was right for my participants and for CE, I am sorry that I was not mature enough, or clever enough to to find ways to thrive within organisations that were trying to support me and CE. When I look proudly back at what has been achieved by my baby, the program at Dimes Canada, I realise how impatient I was, wanting everything to be perfect and perfectly my way right away, and that I was not able to see how hard the organisation was working to bring about change or to appreciate how much behind me - and CE - they were and still are.   I now realise that I got too frustrated with the teething pains of a new program and too caught up in what I saw as the good fight to engage well with management or to step up and take the reigns even with ample opportunity.

Now, years later in another time and another place, after years of successful private practice, I find myself sitting in a very different position as a managing conductor in an organisation brimming with potential but working through transition. A exciting position within an organisation that has chosen to give a conductor the opportunity to build and shape programs; a tenuous position working with frustrated conductors dissatisfied with previous management; an unfamiliar position within an organisation and a program that I haven't personally built from scratch.      

I am emotionally unattached to the history and politics of the organisation but respectful and empathetic to the frustrations of the conductors I am working with and their relationship with what has been, and their resulting demotivation. I do not feel threatened or needing to fight with senior management or board members; I accept they do not necessarily think like conductors but appreciate that they are supportive of seeing our program continue to succeed and grow, and accept that part of my job is to liaise between them and the conductive team. It is an oddly mellow headspace to be honest, an odd combination of bustling passion and excitement and calm clear-headedness that I haven't experienced in any other CE job that I've had.

I have had the opportunity to reflect on how I conduct myself as a managing conductor.  As I've said time and time again, and as Andrew told me years ago, being a conductor is not about 'what you do' but about 'how you do everything that you do'.  In this job there are times when I'm working as a conductor, and times when I am working as a manager, but I know that when I am wearing my manager hat I still think and feel like a conductor.

I have a general manager that I love working with who I have been blessed to have as a mentor - DB is a compassionate and dedicated manager with vast experience in management, governance, and leadership in non profit, disability, and education organisations.   He has given me structure and space to grow and learn, and challenges me to find a way to take this role on my way, conductively, and is patient as I try to find my equilibrium as a conductive manager.  I dare say that he is in fact a 'conductive' manager.

I have stopped trying to see conducting and managing as different - in the classroom I conduct my participants, and I the office I conduct myself and my team -- and I assure you conducting conductors is by far the harder of the two.

As in the classroom, I find myself digging my heels in about believing in my team, about expecting the best from my team even when they are under-performing, about believing it is always worth trying to find a way forward even when my team do not see it.  I still strongly feel responsible for being part of the solution, and believe that it is possible to find a solution even if I'm not the one to find it.  When things haven't gone well I wonder what I haven't done well, what as a manager I should have done better; when things are going well I feel really proud of my team and enjoy their success and the levity it creates in our office.

Even after challenging days or minutes with my team I find myself falling back on an attitude of rugged positivity and tenacious determinism - the very same attitude I have always had with my participants.  Even after a challenging day I still come back in the next day ready to try again, and hoping that this might be the day when we find the break through that moves us forward.

I want to be able to find ways to motivate and inspire my team, to give them opportunities to grow and thrive, to figure out how to bring out the best in them, and to learn how to respect them for where they are at.  I feel badly when I am not able to create that conductive environment for them, or when they choose not to run with opportunities I think that I have opened.  I try to understand my disappointment in myself as a manager who isn't always able to provide an ideal environment or to lift my team in the context of my expectation that as conductors they should be able to create this environment for each other, for our program assistants, and for themselves.  I try to balance this by being transparent in my efforts to bring a conductive approach to my management style, hoping that they too will be conductive with themselves and each other outside of the classroom, and wondering if that is an unreasonable thing to hope for.

It has taken me a while to have the confidence to start to voice this.  I know that there are going to be days and moments that are better than others and I'm a lot more okay about that than I was a few months ago when I started this job, with bright eyes, bushy tail, and rose tinted glasses.  Reflecting conductively helps me remember that as long as I am doing my best in any moment, it is the best that I can do, and thus helps me reflect more kindly on my own successes and challenges. I am so proud to be a part of a profession that has taught me to do everything that I do conductively, and so excited to bring my conductive approach and mindset with me as I step up and into my new role here.