2nd day – 19 June

As we learned the day before each day starts at 7am with an hour of yoga. Giving the very tight timeframe that gives me a 30 minute break to shower and grab breakfast and then be at the second steady point in our agenda, the so called "Check in" session, where we as a group started the day together with a short meditation ( - and yes, I can already now tell you that I managed always to be on time!).

We were introduced to the leadership topic by Ralf Schneider and had the first grasp of what the story and our journey might be all about … - more extensively to be discussed over the next days.

After a long day of classes and coaching sessions, where we learned about shadow coaching, applying the GROW model and the Hearon model, we set off late afternoon to the city of Beijing for a dinner at the Beijing Duck restaurant (we are told - the best in Beijing). It was an hour and half journey into the city; the first piece with amazing views of the country side and the Great Wall. The trip was punctuated by a "race car" driver who greatly enjoyed getting the bus sideways around hair pin mountain curves, at 65 in a 40 zone and then crawling Beijing peak hour traffic, including road workers freely wandering about on foot in freeway traffic lanes.

The dinner was with the Chinese partners, including the brand new admits this year. They gave us a presentation concerning the massive growth of the firm there and the fact that the China firm was awarded the role of official Accounting Services provider to the 2008 Olympic Games. So for all who are interested in going to Beijing next year for the Olympics I have the contact…

We there at the restaurant had for the first time the so called Leadership Dialogue, where one team (for this evening it was team Uganda) of us was asked to interview a special guest – in this case it was Rich Baird from PricewaterhouseCoopers US the Global Managing Partner – People. Apart from the food and the experience of a real Beijing Duck (see picture) this was a very valuable session and we returned about 11pm to the commune where I immediately fell asleep, still somehow troubled with the jet-lag

more photos are available at: http://picasaweb.google.com/Guenter.Blog/2ndDay19June