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September 11 is surely one of those dates that will stay in our memories for knowing exactly where we were when we heard the news. Unusually I was at home working that day. My PA called me to say had I heard the news - a plane had struck one of the Twin Towers. We must all know and have seen the rest many times over but I remember the experience of seeing it all unfold before my eyes. I realise now how automatically I dissociated and watched the movie-like sequence develop. I was uncomfortable with my fascination. I stayed fixed to the TV throughout the rest of the day. And so did my son who had shown the same fascination for Diana's funeral. I realise I am unable to predict what events will affect my children in this way. They have been much more concerned with some world events than I could ever have foreseen. I stayed dissociated for the next day too and only on the following day the 13th on my way into London on the train did I begin to feel a surge of emotion as I read the moving accounts and commentary in the newspaper. I stifled what I felt so as not to lose control on a crowded train. Tears leaked out and I found it hard to swallow. It was as if events conspired that day to compel my association. As I sat drinking coffee in Paddington station a woman in the queue caught my eye and when she had been served she asked if she and her young daughter could sit with me. It wasn't as if she could not have sat somewhere else - there were plenty of other tables free and only one chair free at the table where I was sitting. I found myself struggling to drag another chair over so that they could both join me. She was a Texan and had just arrived on route to the US for a stopover from Bali and had only just heard the news. She was in a state of shock and needed to talk. So she talked. I listened and it was through her emotions that I connected with my own. I felt overwhelmed. I thought that it was I that was meant to be helping her but it was mutual - she was without doubt helping me. And she described her feeling of loss of identity as an American. What was her identity now? I had no answers. She thanked me when I left but it was I who should have been thanking her. The work that I did that day was on the twenty fourth floor of the Level 42 office block - the tallest office building in the City. As I looked out and down to the ground from the floor to ceiling windows I was horrified by the thoughts of what some of those people trapped on the ledges of the Towers must have felt. The group of managers with whom I was working that day needed to talk and to share their emotions. It is easy to reframe or analyse when all that is needed is to feel and to be. I have found that many times since September 11th. Never before have I encountered so many people or organisations who are questioning who they are and what they want their contribution to be to life. Never before have I heard so many people describe their experience of feeling attacked and under threat in their everyday work. And never before have I felt the need to share at the level of spirituality. After all where can we go for answers when our whole sense of being is shaken but to the top of the logical levels - purpose and spirituality. Only yesterday did the CEO of the Academy for Chief Executives in a coaching session realise that the role that they wanted to play in influencing the business world lay in how they acted in 'faith'. What he realised was just how important faith was in the business world. Faith that we could carry on rather than reacting by cutting back and battening down the hatches. Faith that if we love each other we will find the resources to succeed. Faith that the goodness in human nature will overcome the evil we experience. It does require faith to believe that we have all the resources that we will ever need to achieve what we want. And that faith is tested most in the turbulence of the events that we have been and are still going through. What has been apparent to me is that those organisations who operated on faith with wisdom are those who have and are still riding the storms of the world economy.

And what can we learn from what has happened? I work on the principle that the structures that we recognise in others exist within ourselves; when we model excellence we are integrating and releasing that very same attribute within us. So what does that say about how we experienced September 11th? In what way do I have the structure of being under attack and in what way do I attack? There is immense learning for me in these questions and not all the answers have been easy to live with. I have become aware of those areas in my life where I have allowed attack personally and where similarly I have turned a blind eye to how I have done the same. I may not have acted in an identical way but there is no doubt that I have that same capability. So how can I hope to influence others unless I am in the process of resolving the same issues within myself? This I believe is where we can make a difference.

And we don't have to look to the world scale events for insight. Last week I opened a file from my vicar, which contained a virus! The virus (the BadTrans virus if you want to know it by name!) worked its way through my address book using the title of the last email that I had sent to each person and reissued an email to each one with the relevant title. Only this time the mail was infected with the virus, which sought to continue to reproduce itself in this way. As far as I can tell it did no more but the consequence of this is enormous in terms of its ability to lock up the email networks. What was interesting was how the recipients reacted. At one end of the scale I had someone on the phone in what I can only describe as a state of panic virtually suggesting that we should come round and fix their system, as 'surely we were responsible?' On the other hand was someone who empathised 'that must have been dreadful for you having your whole address book attacked in that way'. And some interesting variations in between from 'I suggest that you do not send out any more emails to me or to any of your contacts until you have sorted out this virus.' And 'No probs, I am up to date with my protection but thought you would like to know that there was a virus with your last email'. What these varied responses indicated were some of the very different strategies that we have for responding to 'attack'. You might want to ask yourself 'what is your state of readiness for the unexpected?' 'What would bubble up to the top of your criteria in such an event - your personal safety or your thoughts for others? To what extent are you able to put yourself in others shoes to understand how they might be feeling? And to what extent do you attach blame and to whom? And what do you learn from all of that?

What have I learnt? That NLP training can be best put to use in just being there for others. That by managing all the unproductive strategies within ourselves we are more likely to have the flexibility and the compassion to support others. That the decisions that we make in how we respond to crises can be the example that others follow. That if we are leaders today that we have the responsibility to do all of this and more.