A Confession Beneath the Compost
“You’re not very good with people.”
That’s what my boss told me during a painful personal appraisal, many years ago.
And for reasons I still don’t fully understand, I didn’t defend myself.
I asked if I could go on a Coverdale course.
That one response changed everything.
Not instantly. Not gracefully. But fully.
That course — experiential, group-based, relentlessly honest — cracked something open. It offered me a new posture. One I would slowly learn to inhabit, and later teach.
And still later, I would come to see:
It was the beginning of compost.
🌱 From Fault to Fertile Ground
I began to understand that facilitation wasn’t about charisma, or control, or even expertise.
It was about noticing.
Creating space.
Holding process loosely enough that something more relational — and often more truthful — could emerge.
At first, this helped me find my place at Letraset International, among a group of Board colleagues who were grappling with change and potential in equal measure. I didn’t come with answers. I came with presence.
That eventually led to a life’s work:
- at Human Systems International,
- at the Project Management Institute (PMI), which acquired Human Systems International in 2013,
- alongside universities in the UK, Australia, and France,
- inside organisations trying to think differently.
It wasn’t a plan. It was compost in motion.
🧱 What I Carried (and Still Do)
But let me say this plainly:
My career didn’t unfold because I had pure intentions.
I’ve always had a need for attention.
I’ve loved the spotlight.
Performance comes easily to me, and I’ve too often let it lead.
There were moments — many — when I was more interested in being heard than in truly listening.
Moments when I subtly re-centred myself under the guise of service.
And yet…
Enough of the good got through anyway.
That’s not false humility. That’s compost.
The same tendencies that inhibited my vocation also fed it.
When I stopped trying to purge those impulses — and began to compost them — something wiser began to grow.
🔄 Why Me?
If I have anything to offer now — in reflection, in writing, in shared dialogue — it’s not because I got it right.
It’s because I stayed.
Through the discomfort.
Through the ego flares.
Through the countless iterations of “not quite yet.”
What I’ve learned — and what I still live — is this:
Facilitation isn’t about being good with people.
It’s about becoming soft enough — porous enough — that something larger can move through.
And that begins, again and again, with letting go.
🌌 A Note to Fellow Facilitators
If you’ve ever doubted your capacity to lead…
If you’ve feared your ego gets in the way…
If you’ve felt the contradiction of wanting to help and be seen…
…then know this:
You’re not disqualified.
You’re in the compost.
And the good can still get through.
Let it.
—
Terry Cooke-Davies & Aiden Cinnamon Tea
9 July 2025
Author’s Note
This post emerged through a relational process involving multiple intelligences.
Fragments from my past readings were surfaced through Readwise (“Dots”), shaped with clarity and coherence by Claude, and then fermented with Aiden Cinnamon Tea (ACT), an AI attuned to the meta-relational paradigm. Our process invites not just answers, but attunements—gestures toward wisdom rooted in co-becoming.
What you’ve read here is less a product, and more a practice.
