The Glastonbury Company Story
Home of the 7 Keys of Kindness since 1989
With her anaesthetist husband Rob, Wendy Campbell created The Glastonbury Company in 1989, named after the ancient market town of Glastonbury in the United Kingdom.
She loved the story of the town. Its abbey had been the centre of the local community for many centuries. The nuns helped the people of the town and region to unlock their wisdom to adapt and survive the wars, famines, plagues and other devastating challenges of the times.
The purpose for The Glastonbury Company has always been to provide a place for people in need of wisdom like this. And, through The Glastonbury Company, Wendy has been developing the 7 Keys of Kindness ever since 1989, to help people to let go and set themselves free to unlock their own wisdom, kindly.
When it began in 1989, The Glastonbury Company's first focus was the then-new computers which were arriving on office desks all around the world. They were changing the world of work forever. The name Glastonbury was perfect, bringing the ancient culture of the town of Glastonbury into the present. Given that these new computers were completely changing people's working worlds, there was much fear around who would be in charge - the computers or the people using them. Wendy saw an opportunity to create and deliver training to use these strange new machines, in ways that helped people's working worlds to improve. She involved her clients in the design of their training programs, encouraging them to take charge of how their new computers would become part of their everyday work, kindly.
Wendy used her extensive background in coaching, training and technology, to build a team of kind, caring and competent trainers. They co-created a methodology of customised training, to teach and guide people to adapt to the latest change to their workplaces kindly in ways that brought out their own wisdom. Not having grown up with computers, Wendy herself had found them intimidating at first, so she understood how these new machines intimidated other people. The Glastonbury Company's programs focussed on the people as the wise ones in the office - not the machines - and helped them to overcome their fear and find news ways to work that their computers delivered, kindly.
After the need for this training ended, The Glastonbury Company added Wendy's creative writing to its offerings. She wrote her first autobiography and self published it. She then applied her writing skills to create another book to help people to lead themselves and others by tapping into their strength and resilience, kindly. At the time, the human world was reeling from the financial crash of 2007. Wendy saw an opportunity to once again help people take charge of their situations, and adapt to the devastation that the crash had caused, kindly.
Wendy invited friends and colleagues to join her to craft a mentoring program around this book. Between them, Wendy and her group held hundreds of years of learning and experience of then-leading change and development approaches that helped people to embrace change, kindly. During the group dialogues, a program emerged. At first called the Wonder of One - one person, acting kindly, can make all the difference - it finally settled as the Resilient Leadership Program. The book was named the "Resilient Leadership Primer: the 7 Keys of Kindness." The team co-created the Resilient Leadership Community around the program, centred on building wisdom and resilience through kindness that is perfect for a chaotic world. The book was published through the Glastonbury Company website of that time. Wendy's friend Carla Van Raay was their first client.
The community, being global, met online for many years, until 2021 when the wish to meet like this ended. However some members remain in touch, continuing the friendships that have been the great gift of this project.
However Wendy's book, with its additions from the Resilient Leadership Community members, remained. Now, our human world reels once again. We've survived the pandemic to struggle as wars threaten to engulf us. Once again, there is an opportunity to help people to be wise and kind as they adapt. Many people are now comfortable to learn independently online. To use this opportunity to bring more kindness into this shift, Wendy is now using the book to co-create the online 7 Keys of Kindness self reflection courses with help her friend and colleague Dr Sally Paulin, kindly.
The journey of The Glastonbury Company continues to this day, with Wendy as its Kindness Queen, always here to help you learn how to let go, explore how to set yourself free, and discover how to unlock your own wisdom, kindly.
Want to know more? Click here to ask Wendy, our Kindness Queen, today.