16: Louise Armstrong on Funerals for Capitalism and Leaving Well
Louise is based in London and constantly exploring what it means to live change. She’s a loyal friend, partner, mother and curious human who loves adventure. Louise play multiple roles in different parts of the change ecosystem. and sees herself as a changemaker, facilitator, systems change designer, coach, process doula .
In her current 10 year cycle she’s wanting to make a contribution to reframing, the culture and practices around how we view and value loss, grief, death and closures as part of the natural cycles of life and the overlooked part of transformation. Louise currently has a role at Thirty Percy Foundation, is seeding The Decelerator as well as being a freelance pollinator and connector between spaces around governance, endings and the wider funding ecosystem. Louise is also an aspiring and reluctant writer.
“What does the funeral party for capitalism look like? How do we have some fun with this as well and not make it so serious? Yes, it’s serious. Yes, it’s hard. Yes, it’s sad, but oh my God, it’s going to feel so good when we’re freed of some of these things.”
Additional Quotes:
I think the most courageous leadership decision you can make right now is to intentionally close something down.
I've worked with hundreds of people over the years who were looking for radical transformation, for system change. We can't do any of that if we don't face into what is going away. When you're creating anything new, something else is going to be displaced or fall away as well.
We're going to have a bit of a Leadership reckoning coming. I can see the beginnings of it already actually blow up organizations as a form completely. Bring in inequality, racial dynamics into that as well and we've just got a pressure cooker that shows our current organizing models are not fit for where we are right now.
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Transcript:
What does the funeral party for capitalism look like? How do we have some fun with this as well and not make it so serious? Yes, it's serious. Yes, it's hard. Yes, it's sad. But oh my god, it's gonna feel so good when we're freed of some of these things.
This is Leaving Well, where we unearth and explore the realities of leaving a job, role, project, or title with intention and purpose. And when possible, Joy. I'm Naomi Hattaway, your host. I will bring you experiences and lessons learned about necessary endings in the workplace with nuanced takes from guests on topics such as grief, confidence, leadership, and career development.
Braided Through Raw will be solo episodes sharing my best practices and leaving well framework. Expect to be inspired, challenged, and reminded that you too can embed and embody the art and practice. Of leaving. Well, as you seek to leave your imprint in this world, Louise is based in London and is constantly exploring what it means to live change.
She's a loyal friend, partner, mother, and curious human who loves adventure. Louise plays multiple roles in different parts of the change ecosystem and sees herself as a change maker, facilitator, systems change designer, coach, and my favorite, a process doula. In her current 10 year cycle, she's wanting to make a contribution to reframing the culture and practices around how we view and value loss, grief, death, and closures as part of the natural cycles of life and the overlooked parts of transformation.
Louise currently has a role at 30 Percy Foundation, is seeding the decelerator, as well as being a freelance pollinator and connector between spaces around governance. Endings and the wider funding ecosystem. Louise is also an aspiring and reluctant writer. Louise, I'm so glad to have you on this episode, and I would love for you to start by telling us a little bit about your own transition and change story.
Thank you. Thanks for having me here. I've been admiring a lot of your work from afar so it's great to have this conversation as someone else that is kind of really talking about this topic that is lesser spoken, but starting to be more. And it's always hard to know where to start. these stories because they're constantly changing themselves and sort of in in retrospect and over years you want to shift and change your own narratives but the one i'm kind of talking about right now is about uh yeah this sort of 10 year cycles that i that i'm in which everyone says where did that come from and i i don't totally know but i had an intuition about it was about three and a half years two and a half years ago now, that, that I was closing a chapter of my life.
Um, and thinking back, it was about a 10 year cycle. At that point in time, I was, I'd been in a role for 13 and a bit years. Um, I'd recently become a mother, so lots was kind of shifting in my personal life. And I just felt like I was entering a different phase. I know I have a tendency to get excited and swept away by new things.
And I didn't want that to happen. Um, and I really felt like... This, this next cycle, I wanted to be rooted in all that I had learned before in the kind of previous 10 years, and also kind of, kind of rooted and have a, have a depth that sometimes when you get carried away with a new shiny thing, you kind of forget where that's come from.
So I, so I took a bit of time and did a whole lot of reflection actually on what were these seemingly disparate. Projects and experiments and bits of work that I've been doing, like what really connected those things. And I was actually pleasantly surprised that some of those themes and threads weren't far from the surface.
They just needed a bit of kind of, uh, attention and space to, to honor them really. And I did this mostly for myself. I took a small month sabbatical away from the work I was doing at that time and actually stepping out of the pattern that I'd been used to was really, really important in terms of feeling like I could orientate and have perspective in what came next.
At the end of that month, I did decide that I did need to leave the role that I'd been in and that was huge because being in a place A very formative place, uh, for 13 years is a really long time. That was the majority of my professional career at that point. And it'd been an amazing place that I learned and grew and sort of became who I am now.
Uh, and it was a hard place to leave cause it was really wonderful, but I knew it was the right. Time to go as well. So I kind of did that and I, and I'd had this sense that when you're doing change work. Yeah, you love the thrill of the new the honeymoon period when things are easy and things get hard and things get difficult towards the end and But you sort of drop off a cliff and you just walk on to the next one and then start again.
And this sort of funny trauma cycle of like, starting, investing in relationships, it gets hard and then you can't carry on and then repeat and then repeat and then repeat was kind of like, surely something else is going on here that actually means. We should maybe pay attention to that kind of last bit because that's where all the kind of goodness sits and comes and we're actually we're missing out a whole lot of learning by ignoring the end part.
So I kind of, I closed my last 10 year cycle by really designing a really good ending from that role to a point where It felt good, I felt like I'd said everything I needed to do, it felt like my birthday when I left, and so the next cycle started. And yes, it was sort of a start and end, but we think about these things as binary, but they're actually a process.
So the end of my last cycle was the beginning of my next. I think that's where a lot of the writing came in, because a lot of that time really consolidating some of the threads and themes that had been consistent for me, came out in the form of writing for myself. As you said at the beginning, I'm a reluctant writer, but I literally felt like it was pouring out of me, and I kind of couldn't stop it, almost.
I turned them into imperfect blogs, and the sort of lovely surprise has been that that writing has become a bit of a beacon for the very thing, and, and the type of work and the type of people that I would never could have dreamed of meeting had I just kept it to myself. So, I did it for me, but it's been a wonderful surprise that actually some of.
Those words and reflections have really resonated and have kind of led to a whole bunch of interactions and experiences like this one, in some ways that wouldn't have been possible anyway. And I'm kind of being really upfront about this is who I am and I'm looking at as part of that. Anyway, that was quite a lot.
There's probably bits to dig into, and it doesn't always make sense either. Well, but that's, I think, the beauty of it is that it doesn't make sense always, and it isn't linear. And I love that you were talking about kind of the S curve, almost, of beginnings and endings. And I love, and I'm so thankful that you didn't keep it to yourself, your writing and your thoughts and reflections, because I think in the imperfect is when we can all resonate.
Uh, and pick up what you're signaling of, of what you're, what you've learned. Are there any other words or themes that kind of rose out of your reflection time that you would use to describe what you've learned? I keep coming back to this and having conversations with it, but I think that reflection time was really about Sort of distilling, and another friend has been talking about like bundling and weaving, and these moments where you just want to gather things together and see what that means now.
Harvesting, I guess, would be another. I feel like there's lots of different metaphors for what that phase is. But what I've realized is that we almost don't legitimize that phase or that moment or that process. So. It can feel torturous at worst, but actually the, it should be really great because there's a lot of richness that I think comes from those moments.
And maybe there's a bit of fear that comes with it as well. It's sort of distilling the essence of you and working out what's really important to you and where you want to put your time and to really confront and admit that to yourself means you almost can't hide from it anymore. You kind of have to enact and take the step to really.
Lean into that. And if that looks very different from what you've done before, then I guess that's quite challenging for all that that really means it's almost easier to deny ourselves these moments. Well, and I talk a lot with folks around making the decision and having decision confidence, and it feels sometimes easier when someone else has decided for you.
Totally. When you're the one deciding. Yeah. And you also have to come face to face with you, who you are or where you've been, where you need to go. That can be scary. Totally. Yeah, definitely. And I, and I, and I think when we're taking these decisions. There are multiple, there's never, there's multiple different narratives at play.
And it is, yeah, absolutely. It's easier to blame someone else, to think it's their fault why this has happened, or they've taken a decision and to not feel agency. But actually it is, you have to step into your vulnerability when you're making a choice and having that decision confidence. And if you're not sure, and it feels completely counter to what's around you.
It's, yeah, it's a very vulnerable place to be in, actually. It's quite exposing in a, in a world where you can hide behind lots of things. Yeah. And, and, you know, both roots and things are true because all of these factors make up why you choose or feel like you have had to shift and move away from something, but definitely when you feel like you have agency over those decisions, it really changes how you feel about it and you can get ahead, you can get ahead of it before the decision is made for you or taken for you.
Would you talk a little bit about what you've discovered and how you're translating that into your current body of work? You know, I think about how you and I connected around the concept of leaving well, and the decelerator and all of those things. So I'd love just to hear from you a little bit about what you're up to, and how some of the things that you've learned from your own transition have informed or seeded What you're up to right now, you know, really my commitment to, you know, what are the cultures and practices around all of this work.
It means I'm, I'm playing this out on so many different levels and the very personal to the groups and organizations that I'm part of to, uh, sort of wider fields and. There in particular, I think it's about having visibility of talking about these things, making it okay, being okay to ask the question and giving people permission and legitimacy that this space and these explorations are valid and not just valid but absolutely necessary for the work that we're doing.
We're talking about, you know, I kind of, I've worked with hundreds of people over the years who were looking for radical transformation for system change. We can't do any of that if we don't face into what is going away. When you're creating anything new, something else is going to be displaced or fall away as well.
There's some big narrative work at play there, which makes it also sound really abstract. And it, it doesn't have to be, it can just be as simple as, you know, any group or. Uh, community asking the question of are we the right people now to be doing this? But it's amazing how confronting that question can be.
And then I think, uh, yeah, with the work of the Decelerator and what Stewarding Loss was doing before was really kind of accompanying, uh, groups of people through closures and looking at how you can intentionally design those, uh, with with the purpose often still, still needing something or some form of organizing.
It just might not be that group of people giving people the confidence to not see it as a failure, which so often is assumed, but to actually take the learning, not be as traumatized by these experiences and then take them onto the next things. Because while, while these realities aren't met, we're just holding them with us and we're taking them to the next place.
we're being. So yeah, just, just showing that you can design these things with care and intention, even when they're really difficult. I'm wanting to really open up the stories, the practices, the materials, like there's a very, it's quite a creative field at the moment because there are people starting to, it feels like people starting to kind of come out of the woodwork and talk about their experiences, both good and bad, to share the materials and resources.
So yeah, feeling, feeling like. Um, there's a role in some of the work I can play in really seeding and catalyzing and, and yeah, spreading them a bit further. And I, and I can see slowly, not because of me, I think because of lots of these people doing things, people are starting to pick stuff up and there's much, there's, there's a bit more talk about these things now, and there are more events happening.
Like it's, something is shifting. Um, maybe not at the scale that we need it to be yet, but I feel quite confident that more and more people are taking this seriously and putting the care and intention into it. Well, and I think that it may not be at the scale that we want, but that's how all great movements start is.
By one person looking at another and saying, I can do that. And so I think you brought up confidence. And I think your question about, are we the right people now to be doing this work? Are we still the right people to be doing this work? That is confronting. And I wonder if you have seen, you know, is, is there a certain level of expertise or a certain level of role or title that that question is harder for?
It sounds like maybe it would be a founder's question that might be confronting, but I wonder if you've seen it. You know, at frontline levels or at more community based levels as well, having that same push and pull around the question. Yeah, I think definitely the sort of founder CEO significant leadership positions.
It's. it is, it can be really difficult, particularly when, you know, so much of your time and energy, but also your identity is wrapped up into these causes or issues. And, you know, your very existence is sort of tied to whether this thing works or not. So I think it's really difficult there, but I'm, you know, I'm seeing people.
design great succession plans and to design in, you know, over the long term things and to call in support sooner. But I think it was with an organization recently that wound down and for those that were doing project based work, in some ways the decision was out of their control. And they were angry and accepting and kind of understood but it became really difficult when they had to tell the people that they were working directly with because they weren't playing a really unique role in the system, and there was a sort of double double hit of being told the news but then having to tell other people and.
Then dealing with their responses that became really difficult, actually, because it, you know, the work they were doing was really valuable and it was still having impact it just wasn't able to work in that kind of current context. So yeah, I think it, I think it affects. Everyone often in different ways.
So this question you weren't prepared for, but I'm curious what you would say around the idea that if we, if we name something, such as a necessary ending or a really. powerful positive succession plan if we name something like that in the beginning does it make endings easier if we talk about or name something that it's maybe not forever that's what i'm trying to test out right now i don't i don't know the answer to that my my assumption is that yes if we name it soon enough and if it's designed in right from the start then absolutely it will be because the expectation is there and so the current role i'm doing i kind of went in very Explicitly and said, this is going to be a two year thing.
I want to support this group of people to do what it needs to do and build up the capacities internally so that actually my role isn't needed. I'm sort of halfway through that. And I don't know if it's going to work or not, to be honest, already people look like, are you sure you're going to go then? And I kind of thought it was like, I'm going to commit to what I said I was going to do, but also things change as well.
There's been a few foundations, uh, who have said they'll be spending out foundations and then they've sort of extended the times and some of it is, you can set a timeline and almost be a bit too fixed and rigid about it. And what some of them have done is they actually, they've thought about it, considered What is needed now and shifted and adjusted their role rather than kind of continue.
But yeah, it's not always straightforward, but I would love to believe it would be that simple, but I don't know for sure if that's the case. Well, we'll have to, you'll have to keep us posted. Yeah, are you finding, uh, in the UK or in the work that you're doing in the work that you have done? Do you think succession planning as we've traditionally known it is.
Out of date, should we be looking at a different model or do you think it still has its place? I feel like for me, succession planning has been absolutely tainted by succession. The series, which was, I mean, I loved it. And I could talk for hours on a whole nother podcast about that. But just shows how hard that is.
And you can. I have the intention of a great succession plan, but of course, family dynamics, long term relationship dynamics just play out in so many ways that go way beyond the kind of straight governance or organizational, and this is about messy, complex humans and all of the unmet emotional needs and intergenerational stuff, like, it's big.
Perhaps we need succession planning that really deals with some of these bigger forces, and doesn't pretend they're not there, is what that TV show showed me. But I think we're at a really interesting point, um, a colleague of mine, who I did some work with a few years ago, Joy Green, would talk about how this mid, mid this decade, mid the 20s, is we're at a kind of generational shift of who is in the workplace, which is, and we can feel the rumblings of that now, I think.
And, and with that generational shift is likely to come a value shift and a whole set of different expectations, which COVID has continued about what, what people are willing to do in their lives, what the shape of leadership looks like. And so I'm not sure that. That leadership and succession planning in the sort of current dominant system is what's going to be what the next generations of people need.
We're going to have a bit of a leadership reckoning coming. I can see the beginnings of it already actually blow up organizations as a form. Completely. But you bring in inequality, racial dynamics into that as well. And I think we've just got a pressure cooker that shows our current organizing models are not fit for where we are right now.
I agree with you. And I think, I think the reckoning is, is starting to happen and I'm glad for it. I also am so curious to see what happens as We continue to watch more and more, mostly what I'm paying attention, attention to is women leaders, women leaders of countries of large movements of large corporations, choosing to step down and not having it be because retirement has happened or because the length of their tenure has happened.
I think seeing that modeled will also help with some of that. Yeah, I think so. And it feels tricky because. You know, there are lots of very valid reasons why you wouldn't want to step into significant leadership positions right now. Because of the sacrifice and the challenge and the exposure that you get, I think don't make it healthy or desirable to do.
I think we're also seeing Little signals of like co leadership becoming more of a, of an option, particularly in really senior roles. And I think that is great because you've started kind of building in more support at those levels. I mean, it's crazy that that hasn't been standard, I think. But I, I, you know, some of the, some of the organizations that we've helped to, um, close well have actually had.
co leadership models that I think has also allowed them to take the perspective and go, no, actually for, for this, this piece of work for this intention, this is the right thing to do. So it's also, I think it helps on lots of levels, but I also think it helps with the ending stuff because it's less on one person and feeling like one person's failure and you can be Not necessarily more objective, but you can be more strategic and ambitious in what you talk about, you know, I'll talk about how I think the most courageous leadership decision you can make right now is to intentionally close something down.
Yeah, I agree with you. I love when you're talking about co leadership. And I almost wonder if that's part of what the new version of succession planning could and should look like is having that shared leadership. At an organization, and it goes back to, again, what you were talking about with the question of, are we the right people still to be doing this work?
And maybe that's a shared accountability as well to each other to have the conversations about closing something. Yeah, definitely this might be an impossible question to answer Louise, but I'm curious if there's 1. One particular powerful process that over the course of the organizations and the people that you've worked with, that has risen to the top as something that more people should be doing when thinking about closing or ending or leaving it's.
It's gotta be about really taking the time to craft the story and the narrative that feels true and authentic for you or for the organization and not to just adopt it. Or take on projections from other people, but really put the time into designing what that is and what is going to serve the people, the mission, the next steps.
And it takes a bit of work. Um, but I think really working that through can make a massive difference for the agency that you feel like you have for the framing and messaging that then goes out. And I think, you know, stories. Stories travel and to, to feel like there is, I mean, you're never going to have complete control of stories once they're out, but I think it really pays on lots of levels to, yeah, just, just be intentional about that.
And yeah, make it authentic to your personal situation or the organizational context. That makes me think about an expansion, a beautiful expansion of like your workplace legacy that you're taking care of and modeling even as you go. Storytelling. Yeah. I mean, there's a, one of my favorite example that I talk about a lot, um, is an organization in South Africa called CDRA and they, they closed after 30 years just before the pandemic.
I think they decided to do that and, um, they've touched lots of people. In South Africa specifically, and they, they actually ran a, a writing retreat for anyone who felt called to come and share and kind of share their story or experience of what CDRA had meant for them, be that their partners, be that the staff, be that people that had gone to events.
So it was, it was, it had a very wide remit and they had people You know, they had founders, they had long term staff, they had more recent staff. They had a whole bunch of people who came to that, really spent a week in lots of different shapes and forms, kind of crafting and consolidating the practice.
And actually a lot of the practice was about the culture and the way of being that these people had kind of taken on and now adopted in lots of different places and contexts. And they, they did. They actually did a year's worth of events after they'd closed, which sounded so long and sounded crazy, but for that group of people, that's what felt really important.
And I mean, that was an event every couple of months over a pandemic year. So when everyone was kind of online as well, and that's how I got to know them. And they just, you know, they, they spoke a bit of the stories of some of these practice and they, you could see they were literally seeding this around the world.
And it was beautiful and incredible framing. And it gave them lovely closure. They really felt like they were gifting a lot of their experience out to other people who felt called to it. And I just think it's a really great example of putting, putting care into the stories and then seeing how they can spread way beyond whatever you could do.
And there was a really interesting, really important piece that I talk about a lot now about how so often when things close you assume that's the end, but it's not often it's about the people and relationships and the relationships that matter will sustain way beyond any one organization or group or whatever, you know, they really stay with you and an impact your life in lots of different places and they don't go anywhere.
The important ones don't go anywhere. Well, I also think in addition to the relationships, think about just the lessons learned with that organization and that they took in those having those events, I would imagine that people are going to take and. iterate and blossom and continue using in their next steps in their next organizations and that ripple will probably go on forever.
I think so. And I think when we don't mark those endings and when we don't take the time to consolidate, to find the narrative, to be really generous in our seeding of where those lessons go, you know, we, we lose. We think it, we think it's easier and it's almost like we're too ashamed to, to look into that.
But I think you're, you're losing a lot of the richness and the goodness that can, can be planted elsewhere as well. I realized as you were talking about that, we recently had a closing ceremony for a community group that I was helping to facilitate. And I said yes to the planning of it because it sounded like a wonderful idea.
We brought someone else in to facilitate and that was such a gift because I was able to learn from the others in ways that I hadn't been paying attention during the work of why we had all gathered together. So to have that closing celebration also kind of let us all take a step back, me included, and realize the huge impact of what we had all done together and what we had all been to each other.
And that's powerful. Yeah, it is. And I think, you know, we Some of the most powerful moments we've had in the work in the last year and a half have been those kind of closing ritual, almost ceremonial moments. There was a lovely one, um, with the small charities coalition that we supported to close. It was quite messy at different points, but there was this really wonderful.
Again, online quite simple event where lots of people that felt touched by it came and I think the staff who by that point were tired and run down and really worn out, they just received so much love and appreciation from people that they kind of forgot was there. And it just felt. It felt really great to kind of leave with that, actually, and to be seen and to be witnessed in these transition moments.
That's beautiful. Is there anything that you would like to share in the space of all the work that you're doing and dancing inside of and helping to, um, seed and sow out into the world that you'd like to share with the folks that are listening around leaving well and closing things well? There's two things.
There's one about, uh, which sort of speaks to the narrative stuff. There's something about framing. And I guess I feel in this exploration and really playing with what is the right framing and entry point for work. I kind of started off proper like death and you're like, that's just too much, too scary.
And then it sort of went to loss and that still feels a bit too scary for people. Definitely, definitely sort of leaving well is feeling like an easier entry point for people, but still a bit off putting sometimes. And I think there's, I think there's lots of different ins into this, whether it's transition, whether it is thresholds, I don't know.
I think there's lots of ways of talking about this and I still don't know. What the right well there is no right one there's lots of different ways of talking about it and I think different groups and audiences will respond to different things so I think if if you are and the people that you're working with using one phrase and And it gets blocked down.
Be curious and don't let that put you off and see if there is a different framing and that changes over time. So that was one thing. And I think the other thing that I keep thinking about a lot is about, uh, I think how we interact with our own identities. It has a big part to play in this and how we understand ourselves as plural beings with many layers of identity I think might help us.
I guess we're living in a world where often we put our. Particularly when you're doing work that you really care about, you can often put your professional identity kind of upfront, and that becomes everything. And then forgetting about the other layers of yourself. And I think if we come into better relationship with those multiple identities and see them as layers, and you might take off a director.
Identity and shift to another one. It's still part of you. It hasn't taken something away from you. I guess my, my current hunch is that if we get better at those identity transitions and understanding what's there, that's going to help us get better at the many different endings and closures that happen in our lives as well.
And I say all of this, and, you know, and I have intentionally designed those bits of me. And then late last year I got to the point where, without realizing I was suddenly moving house and neighborhood community group. part of ended and I felt really rocked by it. like, no, but I know this stuff, but it like, it, it completely knocked me sick.
So you can care and be intentional about all these things and they still take you by surprise. And, but that, but I think that, I think there was something about multiple identities. were coming to a point of change in myself and I was like, oh, I've done all this work to rewrite my own narrative. I need to do it again.
But I think having done that big intentional endings of the year before that then allowed me to do it much quicker. And I think we can get, it doesn't always have to be fast and fast isn't necessarily good, but the more we do this, I think the easier some of those. Unexpected ones can become, yeah, well, and I think that so many people when I talk with them, they, I love that you said that about the identity piece, because that would probably help someone's reaction to or interaction with the process of something ending.
Naturally, if they're able to shed or put aside or set to the side, say the director identity, the ending might. Look different and feel different. And I think a lot about caretaking. So I am, um, through menopause, I, we have our youngest child is a senior in high school. And so she's almost out of the house.
And I think a lot about the caretaking identities that so many of us have and how that can, we have normalized that we call it empty nest. We call it all sorts of other things and there's grief and loss and all the things that you talked about, but we haven't yet. Overlay them onto the workplace, which is also where we spend a lot of time taking so I love it.
You said Louise about if something doesn't feel right or something doesn't land right. Be curious about. A different way of looking at it, or a different title, or a different name, that's really important. I think that interplay of the professional identities and the personal identities, and you're right, I hadn't thought about that, we, there is language and knowing about some of those other ones.
And yet we still deny them and don't always have the holding for them as well. And interestingly, I even denied my own, one of those transitions when I was talking about, yeah, moving house and neighborhood, leaving a community group. It was also felt like I was, I was leaving that early motherhood stage and then kind of parenting.
There's so many parenting transitions it's insane and requires so many shifts and then the capacity that you have for other things is completely different. While, while I think we have a bit of language and knowing around that, I think there's still a lot of part of it. Part of me becoming a mother, I realized I was holding quite a lot of grief actually for my independent life that I was still trying to do all those things but I physically couldn't, but I was, I was acting and carrying on as if I could.
I've kind of tried to release, but it's still there. Um, and it's still part of me as well. And I know, you know, when my song grows up in theory, I will have more time and space and capacity again, and it doesn't change that choice and decision. But yeah, it kind of gets. intertwined and messy. It does. It is messy.
All of it is so messy. Is there anything about change, transition, endings, all the things that people might be either shocked or surprised to hear you say or that you really, really want people to understand? I think there's something about the hardest part of my experience has been taking a decision.
And sometimes you don't even realize you're taking a decision, but the relief when you have taken a decision can be massive and really liberating and a release. Um, and I think a lot of time and maybe myself included, we carry around the possibilities and the potentials and the different routes and they weigh heavy on us.
Actually, so maybe that thing you've been putting off is a bit easier because when you have made that decision and you've started to tell people, then you have to follow through. And yeah, the act of talking to people and being accountable, I think is quite powerful. But yeah, I think that's been my biggest, that's been my biggest surprise.
And then the piece about endings and beginnings is the same process. You know, there's a sort of, when we deny an ending, we're also denying a new beginning. And I've seen that framing really help people go, Oh, okay. And actually, again, give more permission to As you continue working towards not better resources, but maybe the normalization and the education around the support for this work, what are you hoping for or walking towards?
I think you've covered a little bit of it, but as we kind of close up, I'd love your, your summary about what your dreams are. My dreams are that talking about this stuff is no longer taboo and just. Part of the way we do things and it's completely normalized and celebrated and, and really enabled, rather than kind of blocked and walked away from.
I really hope that there are more people who are. Proactively supporting and designing and seeing the kind of creative challenge in this space as well. And I feel really confident that that's going to happen. It's happening just a different scale. My wish is that we can then really apply some of these stuff to democracy and the way.
Countries are run and the economy and these really big things and that we get enough confidence at these levels that we're starting to actually shift it up a gear, because, you know, these, these. Old ways of doing things really have to shift. Uh, so that would be the high dream, but that also feels far, far off.
But, but it may feel far, but I think when you were talking earlier about, uh, seeing a new dawn of leadership happening and knowing what we know about beginnings and endings. So there's something has to be at its beginning and so it might as well be leaving well, totally. I remember doing a session and we were like, what does the funeral party for capitalism look like?
How do we have some fun with this as well and not make it so serious? Yes, it's serious. Yes, it's hard. It's sad, but oh my God, it's going to feel so good when we're freed of some of these things. I'll send flowers. Yeah, great. Is there anything that I haven't asked you that you would like to share or that feels important and relevant?
Oh, I think maybe the last thing is just, it's sometimes the thought of these conversations and topics are so much worse than the reality of them. Actually, they're super relatable because this is just part of how life happens. It's not a new thing. We just sort of forgotten how to work with it and deal with it and talk about it.
Um, so maybe it's not quite as scary as you think it's going to be. I love that, Louise. Thank you. Thanks for having me to find more information about what Louise is up to these days. We'll have all of those links in the show note. Thanks for being here. And part of this conversation to learn more about leaving well, and how you can implement and embed the framework and culture in your own life and workplace, visit naomihattaway.com. It's time for each of us to look ourselves in the mirror and finally admit we are playing a powerful role in the system. We can either exist outside of our power or choose to decide, to shift culture, and to create transformation. Until next time, I'm your host, Naomi Hattaway, and you've been listening to Leaving Well, a navigation guide for workplace transitions.