Multi-storey Thinking

Thoughts and Images - Natalie Shering

January 2020: Multi-Storey Thinking

Setting Your Direction

 A New Year – and the chance to take stock and reset our direction for the weeks, months, and year ahead.

Take a look at this image, which I captured one reflective winter evening in a multi-storey car park, just as the blue hour was descending, in a bustling town on the South Coast of England.  

Just an hour before, the scene was very different.  Chock-a-block with cars, the rasp and roar of multiple engines firing up. Wails of over-tired young children echoing off the concrete. Weary Christmas Shoppers, eyes blinded by the piercing rays from the low, late afternoon sunshine, swaddled with fleecy scarves and ears muffled by bobble hats, turning car heaters up to the max before making their way back to their central heating and tasty dinners.

Now, it was just me, along with the neon strip lighting that had powered up noisily and continued its background hum. The chill wind swept through the empty car park shell, leaving a frosted bite in the air. All warmth from the last of the day had been replaced by a magnetic, Fluro-blue light that perfectly set off the car park signage's luminous yellow paint.

Creative Leadership is about noticing and about bringing your whole self to your leadership practice: all of the things that you see, all that you feel, all that you do, all that you say.  And giving myself this time to be in this space, to notice, to reflect, really did spark some insights for me.  So what had I noticed here in the car park and what did it make me think about? 

Every day, we are surrounded by signs: some are concrete, solid way-markers that suggest ways for us to act, telling us how to get to where we’re going. And there are less tangible signs - those borne out of our own emotional responses and the behaviours of those around us.  Noticing and choosing to respond to these signs will lead us along the best route when we set our direction of travel for this year.  There will undoubtedly be many twists and turns in the journey ahead, some of which will be obvious to us. Other possible avenues may present themselves, and the signage may not be so clear (who could have foreseen the many potholed cul-de-sacs that 2020 would throw our way?).  By setting our direction at the start of the journey and consciously noticing the signs along the way, we can stay on track, choose new paths if we wish, and ultimately, get to our desired destinations.

This is the first instalment of my Multi-Storey Musings for January. The theme continues next week with the second Creative Leadership calendar entry for 2020: ‘Decision Junctions’.