The Spanish November sun was rising as I had breakfast with Tony Brown. Taking three days out with 120 of my European colleagues was both refreshing and mind-expanding. I’ve known some of these people for decades.

My colleague Benjamin from Geneva wasn’t there, so I will need to catch up remotely and see if our October discussions about doing Habits of the Heart with some UN ambassadors are going to land or not. I’ve asked Rezi to follow through on this, alongside her discussions with Tom in Beijing. I did however reawaken a connection with Paris, recalling that Anne-Marie, who lectures in Business School was going to attend our next Habits course in London, currently delayed by illness, but hopefully getting going in February or March. And it was good to get a better understanding of what Triin is doing in Tallinn.

One of the reasons for exploring some of these international connections in the shorter term is that three UK opportunities look as though they will not now land until 2015.

I was all set to deliver the Habits of the Heart and Relationships Course material to the entire January cohort on the Middlesex University MBA programme, but that entire cohort has been axed. Support for the concept is growing, however, among the decision-makers, so I hope that by 2015 we will find ourselves in a very solid position. The “we” here refers to three of us who are among a dozen or more trying to challenge the way Business Education and leadership development have previously excluded the spiritual dimension from their scope.

I have also been talking to the Head of Diocesan education in Birmingham about training 12 C of E Head Teachers. In a phone call this morning, we discussed the probable start for this in early 2015 too. The longer term hope is that this could roll out much further to other head teachers and senior leadership teams.

Finally, I had a very interesting 90 minute conversation yesterday with the Head of Democratic Engagement for John Lewis, who is taking bold and courageous steps to challenge the Board to live up to its stated values, and to truly empower their staff. It was an open and tentative discussion, but it might just land somewhere concrete.

In the meantime, we have two Habits courses going strongly in Birmingham, one based at the Agape office, another based at Yardley Wood Baptist Church. If the Education or John Lewis connections lead to a successful pilot training opportunity, we could quickly find ourselves needing to mobilise a large number of coaches and facilitators from among the community of Habits “graduates”, including some of those we are training this year.