Thinking of MacIntyre in this way helped me as CEO to be clear about my purpose: to create and sustain an organisation that focused on and developed the quality of interactions- for each adult and young person supported by us to be enveloped by hundreds of positive moments each and every day. Great Interactions for me became the driving force, the mega magnet that lined up everything we did with the goal of improving the lives of the adults and young people. By everything I mean everyone; colleagues in supporting roles, administrators, advisors, technicians, managers etc all playing an important part in creating the ideal circumstances for our practitioner colleagues. All of you doing your bit and doing your best, interacting with each other with the same facilitative thoughtfulness as we interact with the students and adults we support.
Over the years we have used the MacIntyre profile to carefully select you from the pool of people in society who are particularly facilitative in the way you work. We have selected you because of your openness to learning and then helped to develop that facilitative way of working and surrounded you with like-minded colleagues who, despite their differing roles and expertise, all are working in the same way for the same goals. Over recent years we have encouraged you to create your own one-page-profiles because we want to celebrate your individuality and tap into your personal talents- things that help you enjoy your work more and will be of value to others.
The students and adults we support are raising their expectations of us- this is a joyous challenge. Years ago people with disabilities were taught to be compliant, to not have ambition, to know their place and be grateful- thankfully not any more. A revolution is taking place: our Great Interactions, our facilitative way of working is encouraging everyone to take ever increasing control of their own lives, no one is excluded, and each one of you, in whatever role you play, should be proud.
I am proud of you; of what you have achieved and of your commitment to do more. Sadly this will be my last Great Interactions blog, it has been a weekly pleasure to read your stories and I will continue to do so. You can keep in touch with my stories on my blog: http://cairnstones.org/ and please feel free to comment as you wish. Keep interacting…
Bill Mumford
Specialist Advisor MacIntyre