Good Bye

There is a myriad of endings every day in organisations.In the Myriad series, authors of Good Bye Alison and Lizzie, explore one specific ending and the challenges and opportunities that come with it. Using their REAR model—Reality, Emotions, Accomplishment and Ritual—they also offer some practical ways to help leaders end and begin well.This episode focuses on retirement, an ending loaded with personal significance, challenge and opportunity.The conversation includes:Unhelpful language, including the word retirementHow to manage shifting identityStructure and purpose before and after you retireThe importance of meaningful ritual and the ripple effect of thatA brighter future

There is a myriad of endings every day in organisations.In the Myriad series, authors of Good Bye Alison and Lizzie, explore one specific ending and the challenges and opportunities that come with it. Using their REAR model—Reality, Emotions, Accomplishment and Ritual—they also offer some practical ways to help leaders end and begin well.This episode focuses on mergers, whether it’s teams or whole organisations, this is one of the most complex events we can experience in organisational life and is rife with opportunities to increase the strength and success of the mergerThe conversation includes:The role of transparencyNavigating the challenge of different information being available to different people atdifferent timesHidden pitfalls and ways to avoid themHistory matters – acknowledging the past as you celebrate the newLosses, opportunities and assumptions

There is a myriad of endings every day in organisations.In the Myriad series, authors of Good Bye Alison and Lizzie, explore one specific ending and the challenges and opportunities that come with it. Using their REAR model—Reality, Emotions, Accomplishment and Ritual—they also offer some practical ways to help leaders end and begin well.This episode focuses on promotion and progression and how we might miss opportunities to have even brighter beginnings by giving more time and thought to ending well.The conversation includes:Approaching all endings as opportunities rather than boxing them in to positives andnegativesUnexpected complexities, including rivals for the rolePurposeful planning for the full realityThe impact of longer careersConfidence and imposter moments

There is a myriad of endings every day in organisations.In the Myriad series, authors of Good Bye Alison Lucas and Lizzie Bentley-Bowers, explore one specific ending and the challenges and opportunities that come with it. Using their REAR model—Reality, Emotions, Accomplishment and Ritual—they also offer some practical ways to help leaders end and begin well.This episode focuses on redundancy, one of the most emotionally charged endings in organisational life.The conversation includes:The isolating impact of redundancy on both sides of the tableThe ripple effect of redundancy on the individual, organisation, family and friendsFinding ways to end well through complex legal and HR processesNavigating the liminal space between rolesRestoring confidence

When Alison and Lizzie wrote Good Bye, they always knew they wanted their final chapter to be a Good Bye to their readers; an opportunity for them to use their Four Steps of Ending well Reality, Emotions, Accomplishments and Ritual, to end the process of writing their book. As you’ll hear in this episode, when it came to writing that chapter, they didn’t feel like it was quite the right moment, and the idea to make the last chapter a podcast was born. And this is it! In this first episode of the new Good Bye podcast (previously Endings for Beginnings) Alison and Lizzie take each other, and you, their readers and listeners, through the Reality, Emotions, Accomplishments and Ritual of saying a Good Bye to writing their book.You can find out more, order a copy of Good Bye, or get in touch with Alison and Lizzie, at www.GoodByeCoach.co.uk

This is Endings for Beginnings - the podcast to help leaders begin planning for a better ending. Following the response to their first article and podcast in 2020, Alison and Lizzie’s intention to start more conversations about endings in organisations in order to facilitate brighter beginnings has very much become a reality.In this episode, Alison and Lizzie talk to fellow endings activist Iona Lawrence about the work she, and her colleagues at Stewarding Loss, are doing to support better endings in the not-for-profit sector. Iona also set up and was the founding Director of the Jo Cox Foundation. In this conversation we take an in depth look at the multi faceted nature of endings in organisations and discuss why this work is important to individuals, to organisations and to the not-for-profit sector as a whole. You can find Iona at www.stewardingloss.comYou can find out more about our work, or contact us, at www.endingsforbeginnings.co.uk. There's always so much emphasis on a good beginning but what about the right ending? As leaders we can move on rather too quickly. Yet unfinished and unrecognised endings hugely impact those who remain, and may be carried into the next team, the next project and the organisation as a whole. Alison and Lizzie are professionally accredited coaches and facilitators, working predominantly at board level and across all three sectors, who love to enrich their practise by working and learning together. They are passionate about staying continually curious and paying attention to their clients individual and commercial needs and outcomes.

Organisations face a myriad of different kinds of endings every day. Some more obvious and traumatic, such as the death of a colleague, and others more everyday, from the completion of a project, to promotions, redundancies, mergers – the list is long. But while we invest heavily in beginnings and new starts in terms of time, energy and emotion, as leaders we can move on rather too swiftly from endings. Yet incomplete and unacknowledged endings impact the contribution and motivation of those who remain, and may be carried into the next team, the next project and the organisation as a whole. In 2020, the current context we all find ourselves in, one of many layers of often distressing endings, led hosts and professionally accredited coaches and facilitators, Alison Lucas and Lizzie Bentley Bowers, to create resources to support leaders, including this podcast, and we share it with you in the hope that it may be of support to you as leaders navigating your way through this time as well as in the future. You can find out more, or contact us at www.endingsforbeginnings.co.uk. REFERENCES AND FURTHER READINGManaging Transitions by William BridgesSystemic Coaching and constellations 3rd edition by John WhittingtonManaging With the Brain in Mind by David RockA Grief Observed by C S LewisLittle Gidding by T S ElliotHow Grief Can Help Us Win When We Lose - TEDx talk by Sophie SabbageDaring Greatly by Brené BrownWhat Do You Say About Saying Goodbye - Ending Psychotherapy by Keith TudorThis is Endings for Beginnings - the podcast to help leaders begin planning for a better ending.