Antarctic Update 1st to 4th December 2012

For the past four days the team has made excellent progress, and I’m happy to announce that Bryony has now passed 81° South, with her current position at http://map.iridium.com/m?lat=-81.135266&lon=-081223350 at an altitude of around 1000m. But the past few days have been taxing…

2^nd December

Bryony faces her first full day of whiteout conditions! Being able to see only a few meters on front of you is problem in the Antarctic with Sastrugi (wind-blown ridges in the snow) proving a real problem. Every member of the team fell at least a few times, with their skis hitting these snow drifts and tumbling forward! This was made more difficult for Bryony when her goggles fogged up. This condensation then froze, leaving a 5 pence piece sized whole through which to navigate! After the final rest stop this was rectified, just in time for conditions to clear!

So, would these conditions slow the team down? Travelling 19.5km Bryony managed her longest days skiing yet!

3^rd December

The bad news came from Ronnie on the evening of the 2^nd. He tells the team of the continued muscle problems he’s faced over the past few days, causing lack of sleep and exhaustion. After a lengthy discussion, it was decided that it would be safest for Ronnie to be medevac’d back to America to recover rather than risk further injury with more than three quarters of the expedition remaining.
Unfortunately, that caused problems firstly for the planned distance to be covered on the 3^rd. Of course, once the medevac was signalled for, the team would need to remain in the same position, awaiting transport in the form of ski-equipped light aircraft. From the initial call at 09:00 (local-time) it took 11 hours for the plane to arrive, cutting short any chance of skiing that day; though Ronnie was able to be safely flown out without incident.

Bryony would like to send a massive thanks to Chris of Icke Fitness, who has provided excellent training, nutritional plans, and support; without whom it could have been her on the plane heading home.

With conditions such as whiteouts (which can be more extreme than Bryony faced on Friday) and other complications, the team has allowed themselves three full rest days. Because of this, the team is not necessarily behind. So; what does the team do on a rest day? Well I can only speak for Bryony (and for those of you that know her this will not come as a surprise), you sleep! Catching up on some well needed napping, helping refuel for the next few days. Of course, there was still time for some shenanigans, including a snowball fight, which apparently becomes serious when shovels are involved! I’ve been informed that the snow varies vastly over different areas, not always good for snowballs!

4^th December

Fantastic progress from the team yesterday, with a total distance of 21km behind them, helped by the previous days rest and superb conditions with very little wind and temperatures around -12°C. The team has also elected to take rest breaks every 5km instead of every 1.5 hours to provide more challenging goals. I’m told “it’s nice to stop and know another quarter of the days skiing is behind you”. Speaking to Bryony in the early hours of this morning she explains that the weather is so nice they have started eating OUTSIDE in the evenings, nothing like a little Antarctic al fresco dining! Hoping to get pictures of this phenomenon soon!

And the weather's too warm at the Antarctic?!

With over 50km into the expedition the team is now well on their way, and getting into routines which will help them reach their goal in good time.

The weather has been "fantastic and beautiful" with some halo phenomenon including various sun halos appearing during the 18km stint the team managed yesterday. With external temperatures reaching an incredible 4°C above zero the group would appear to be blessed with what can only be described as the the Great British Weather. A pity then that these high temperatures could cause issues for the team. Bryony was forced to take more rest breaks due to overheating! The biggest issue in the Antarctic is trying to keep out the cold, but issues can also arise if any of the team get too hot. Being too hot causes sweating, which will conduct heat far better than air within the many layers of clothes, allowing heat to easily be leached from the body and cause hypothermia. During skiing the team have been removing their outermost layers to avoid such problems, putting them on when they stop to rest.

When asked how difficult it is to pull heavy pulks all day, Bryony answered, "You don't notice it really. We have stops every hour and a half for a rest and food, and after that it's just head down. It seems to fly by, just white, blue and sunny all the time!"

Lets hope the weather cools (only a little) and the team keep up the good progress so far!

Antarctic Expedition Update

Reaching the Union Glacier Base

Great news, as in the early hours of the morning we received confirmation that the flight landed in the Antarctic base despite 35 knot winds threatening to delay the team.

Current co-ordinates following the landing and trip to the base are as follows:  Latitude -79.760283, longitude -082.857400.  If you head to <http://iridium.com/m?> you can enter any of the co-ordinates posted to view a map on which you can scroll about and zoom, to get an idea of the scale more easily than in an image.

We will keep you updated.

British Antarctic Record Attempt

Zest Are Proud to Announce their Sponsorship of the British Antarctic Record Attempt

Last week Bryony Balen departed for a record breaking expedition to the Antarctic.  After covering 1100km of icy inclines in freezing temperatures, Bryony Balen aims to become the youngest Briton to reach the South Pole from the Hercules Inlet.  She will be just 21 years old.

Zest Business Coaching LLP works with individuals and organisations to help them achieve their goals. We are proud to support this record attempt of a very determined woman who has set her goal, identified the steps she needs to achieve en route and is to set off on this amazing challenge on 16^th November.  We wish her the very best of luck knowing that she and her supporting team will be fulfilling their potential and their dream.

http://www.zestbusinesscoaching.co.uk/british_antarctic_record_attempt.php

Bringing your Whole Self to Work

The dedication I like most in any book I have read is that in the Richard Barrett book 'Liberating the Corporate Soul'; it says simply 'To those who have the courage to bring their whole selves to work'.

It seems to me incredibly powerful and incredibly challenging to be able to bring our whole self to work. We have spent years, perhaps, deliberately learning to do exactly the opposite - don't mix your personal life with business etc etc. There is, of course, wisdom in this view too. It is unhelpful and unproductive to have a work colleague who constantly moans about their lot in life, taking us through the minutiae of their divorce, for exmaple, on a daily basis.. So when is it important to bring our whole self into the workplace?

There was a lovely article in the Sunday Times recently entitled 'Boardrooms need Blackberry Woman'. The theme was, once again, that to get women in senior positions companies have to be more flexible in the way they allow their employees to work. The argument continues that 'Technology has set women free'. I would extend the argument and say that technology has set people free, not just women. many more people now have the the ability, thanks to the internet, email and mobile phones to work how and where and when they like. This brings with it its own challenges.

For example, last week I found myself arranging a phone call about a new piece of work with a client I hadn't yet met. It was really important to me to make the call at a time that worked for him because I wanted to win the contract. My daughter, who suffers from Cystic Fibrosis, needed me to be available during the afternoons for two weeks to push antibiotics through her intravenous line and do hospital visits. My challenge was to schedule the call to our mutual convenience without appearing to be inflexible and not wishing to appear constrained in my ability to work, which generally I'm not, before our business relationship had even started. How much information in this case is 'taking my whole self to work'?

The bit of me that I bring to work from the circumstance of having a daughter with a life threatening condition is my resilience, my optimism in the face of difficult situations and my determination to make any project I tackle a success. Those are some of the reasons clients will give for wanting to work with me on their issues without understanding where those traits come from. This is my commitment to taking my whole self to work. I take the traits my whole life experience has given me and transfer them across the many contexts in which I find myself working.

I work with organisations developing their internal coaching capacity. How often do I hear 'I don't know anything about business coaching', only to find that the person with whom I am working spends Saturday afternoons on the rugby touchline watching his son. Asking him to 'bring his whole self to work' brings the richness of this coaching experience into the workplace and is directly transferable to developmental and performance coaching in business.

So, if you only do one thing today, think to yourself  'what else of who I am, could I usefully bring into work?'. Bring more of you and see what happens! 

Eat, Pray, Love

I have read so many reviews and heard so much about the new Julia Roberts film, Eat, Pray, Love in the last few weeks I'm not sure I really need to go to see it at all! Of course, in the end, I will go. If only to stay part of the conversation with my girlfriends over the next few weeks.

It's interesting, the Elizabeth Gilbert book on which the film is based was a book we read at my village book club when it first came out. I might even have been the one who introduced it having picked it up at an airport somewhere. The reviews from each of us, a dozen middle-class, middle-aged women, the perfect target audience, were mixed. For those of us who had relatively recently experienced our own 'bathroom floor moment' (the phrase, emerging into everyday speak, for that moment of realisation that every decision you ever made was a bad one) we could tap into the angst Gilbert suffered and empathasise with her journey. For those lucky enough not to have got there yet, or to have bypassed it completely, the book has a somewhat self-indulgent, slightly neurotic tone.

How many people, I don't believe it's only women who go through it, reach a point in their lives when suddenly (or through a more gradual dawning) they feel as though they haven't lived the life they wanted or planned for? How many people wake up one morning and realise they are married to the wrong person, in the wrong job or following the wrong dream? I think, or maybe I hope!, this is normal, absolutely normal. Most of us go through it at some point.

The really hard bit is what to do next. How do you get up from the bathroom floor, physically or metaphorically and change your life? Julai Roberts will, of course, show us the way. Sadly, we don't all have time, or money, to take off on a year's sabbatical of self-discovery.

So what's nearer home, closer to real life? I've been doing lots of work and thinking lately around 'Confidence'. It seems to be a recurring theme, both personally and organisationally. For me confidence has been the key to changing my life. Discovering at 40-something that I was living the life I thought I should live was hard. To realise that I am a people-pleaser, conforming to my parents' view of how to live my life, to my husband's and my childrens' view. To realise I had no idea what 'I' thought or wanted left in a quiet space alone for an hour was a terrifying moment. One I worked really hard to avoid completely for the next 3 years, with some success. Even now, as I type, I look at the words and I'm transported back to a darker place. I know now though that I have the key, although it can still be a stiff and awkward key, to change things. To move forward in MY chosen direction, taking those I love with me, leaving the chains behind.

So yes, I'll go see the film, preferably with a lot of friends and we'll spend the next few weeks over our Pinot Grigio unpicking our personal journeys....We might even learn something new about ourselves or each other! Julia Roberts, eat your heart out!

http://www.zestbusinesscoaching.co.uk/

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Beyond Multi-Tasking

Well it's ages since I last posted anything on here. In writing a brief for a client and in looking at what I have been up to over the last few weeks I am reminded very clearly of the old adage that 'we should practise what we preach'.

Kids on school holidays, business to run, endless stream of visitors staying and the inevitable washing, cooking, cleaning still to be done....does this sound like the perennial cry of the working mother these days?! I am so not immune to it, and yet I run workshops, and I'm about to embark on running a long programme, entitled 'Beyond Multi-Tasking'!

This workshop represents the anti-thesis of my daily life and that of many people these days. It will challenges the myth of multi-tasking and looks at the fragmentation and ultimately the depletion of energy that is inevitable when we try to take on too many tasks at once - talking on the phone to a client whilst supervising the destruction of my kitchen with 4 children in lunch-making mode, springs to mind as yesterday's example!  We look at what is to be gained by focusing energy into one task at a time and ask delegates to do a personal energy audit to gain a deeper self-awareness of the times in their day they are most likely to be effective at their various challenges requiring physical, intellectual or emotional focus. I have learned that my brain works best in front of my computer at 5am and that if I want to exercise I'm most efficient at about 4pm. There's a really good body clock, The Human Circadian Rhythm, I found on Wikepedia that explains why this should be so.  I teach people to recognise that personal energy is a precious resource and challenging it wisely is crucial, made more so when organisations are facing difficult times and more is expected of fewer people.....now, how to take these themes in a practical way into today?!

Wish me luck!