Kick-starting a career transition in San Miguel de Allende
by Peter Jones
Travel is often promoted as an enlightening experience. And so it is, even if you only discover the difference between a well-made margarita and a not-so-well-made one while lounging on the beach.
But what if you travel to the town of San Miguel de Allende, a key player in Mexico's silver boom in the 17th century, the cradle of the country's independence movement in the 18th century, and a vibrant cultural and artistic centre today...to attend a workshop on how to plot a path forward in your working life? Well, for me and my fellow workshop attendees, this combination of purpose and place proved positively transformational.
Ten of us, mostly Canadians, answered the call of our workshop leader, Linda Oglov (www.oglov.com), to come to San Miguel. Step into Your Future, as Linda called it, would require that we openly share our stories of past accomplishments; candidly examine our skills, talents, and interests; and choose and commit to a way forward.
This sounded like a heavy workload, at least emotionally -- change is never easy -- but a closer examination of the workshop schedule revealed that the working sessions were only about three hours a day spread over five days. This "pacing" of the week's activities turned out to be a key to both personal and cultural discovery.
San Miguel charmed us and enthralled us. There are few places in the world where creative energy is concentrated like it is here. A region of about 100,000 inhabitants, San Miguel today boasts a broad and sophisticated arts and culture scene, sparked originally in the 1940's by the establishment of the art institute, Instituto Allende. Most of the galleries, shops, restaurants, museums, architectural and historic sites are only a few minutes walk from hotels near the centre.
San Miguel teases you with its cobblestoned streets and its Spanish colonial architecture, and as you allow yourself to be drawn into the courtyards behind the facades, you discover a graceful centuries-old way of living. Many former private colonial-era residences are now restored to their original use, but also many have been converted to hotels, restaurants, libraries, museums and other public spaces.
"La Parroquia", San Miguel's main parish church, faces the city's main square, "El Jardin", on a plateau about halfway up the area's steep hills. The church's neo-Gothic tower is visible for miles, while the town arrays itself above and below. The sometimes steep slopes, combined with narrow cobblestoned streets throughout the centro historico, earn San Miguel de Allende (SMA) high marks for promoting fitness through walking (low heels, please).
And so workshop participants began each morning with Linda's (optional) "highly-recommended vigorous SMA walk" at 8AM, straight uphill from our magnificent hotel, Casa de Sierra Nevada (www.casadesierranevada.com.mx). We climb streets and long, steep public stairways to a road cresting at a lookout offering superb views over the town below. The air is chilly because in December, at about 6300 feet above sea level, San Miguel temperatures dip overnight to near freezing. But as we pause to gaze over the beautiful valley and town, the day is warming already, to an eventual predicted high of 26C! We easily manage the downhill walk back to the hotel to shower and breakfast in the hotel's graceful courtyard before the workshop session begins.
For me, there are three key aspects of Step Into Your Future that allow me to candidly examine my working life to this point (I'm 63), and chart a path forward that re-energizes me. First, the program is skillfully planned and led over five days by Linda Oglov, combining intense daily working sessions of about three hours with plenty of down time for reflection and diversion. We are not in San Miguel to merely learn a new skill; we are here to make a fundamental shift in our lives. Even if we've been mulling over change for a long time, we can't make a plan and commit to it in, say, three days. We need pacing that accommodates fundamental change within each of us, and this program does that.
Second, the program is designed to take us from 'blue-sky' brainstorming to practical action plans and accountability mechanisms. Linda's repeated refrain is, "ideas are only as good as the action you take to make them real." We are a group with impressive career achievements to our credit, and none of us are making a plan for the first time. Many of us are change-agents in organizations we work for or consult to in our careers. However, going within ourselves, changing yourself, may be the hardest change of all, and demands an even tighter and more accountable action plan.
The third key aspect of Step into Your Future for me is the group dynamic. The other participants are broadly at the same stage of life, and examining the same issues in their lives as I am, even though we are from widely differing backgrounds and career paths. However, within minutes of meeting each other, mutual trust flourishes. Very quickly each of us knows that we are part of a rare, nurturing group experience. Personal stories that mark key life experiences are shared with emotional candor, and as people open up, we realized we are with supportive others, in a place in which we have every opportunity to succeed in planning our future.
And while Linda led us through a series of sessions to address, among many others, the age-old questions, "what are you doing now?" and "what do you want to do?", San Miguel continued to work its magic. In the lead up to the holiday season, the city's music festival climaxed with a nationally-televised live concert from a stage in the Jardin in front of the flood-lit Parroquia. Mexico's leading tenor, Fernando de la Mora, backed by the Guanajuato Symphony Orchestra, sang traditional Christmas carols, operatic arias, and Mexican national songs. The square was packed, shoulder to shoulder, with locals and ex-pats alike, celebrating the birth of Christ in one of the most deeply Catholic countries in the world. Our group had dinner at restaurant Hecho en Mexico and enjoyed the incredible musical group Zambe, led by Cuban violin virtuoso, Pedro Cartas. And some of us visited the extensive arts, crafts and fashion development, Fabrica La Aurora.
What career transitions got a kick-start in San Miguel? A former small business owner who had acquired, divested, merged, partnered or un-partnered over a dozen times mapped out a plan to become a mentor/consultant to young entrepreneurs; a senior executive in a multi-national technology services firm laid the foundation for a food and wine tourism company; a physician, head of a medical education organization, created the framework for how to transition to consulting in health systems change. And we each addressed where we were coming from and where we wanted to go, and made an accountable plan to get there. We all felt invigorated about our futures.
Peter Jones is a self-employed corporate communications consultant and aspiring travel writer.
