There are beginnings and endings. The exciting part often will be the beginning. It is also the part that easily receives most of the attention.

Endings receive much less attention. Sometimes people are not even aware of them.

When a headache starts people notice it. When it is gone, it is a sliding back to the normal situation, and one in which it feels better not even to remember that there has been a headache.

I’ve just finished my Group Coaching Practicum. A dense and enriching program helping me to enhance my team coaching skills. It has been a series of ups and downs filled with engaging and deep learning. In essence, we practiced group coaching and learned how to be ourselves as team or group coaches.

Our last module lasted for a whole day and was all about ending the journey and letting it come to an end. We revisited the work we have done and shared in many different ways what our learning has been and how it came about. We also received reflections from our supervisors as well as Manfred Kets de Vries. He is an initiator of group coaching as such and has been promoting it for many years. These reflections were a parting gift for our way forward and part of the celebration with which we ended the program.

What we did today, was to give the learning another chance to sink in and to multiply itself through the respective sharing. And we did it to shape the memory of our time together as a group and remember once again, what this group was about for us.

Learning happens in many ways, one of which is through our capacity to belong to a group.

Closure brings the experience to an end and makes it memorable.

This opens the space for a new beginning.