Team Reflect & Orientate Session — Jan 2021

Last week we came together as a team of seven for a day of reflection focused on sharing our highs and lows of 2020 and orientating ourselves to face the challenges of 2021. One of the things that came up was how important it is to share, reflect and learn together, rather than in isolation, so with that in mind, here are some of my thoughts, reflections and learnings from the session.

After a long, messy week, we began the morning with some breathing and movement exercises to get us in the mood for the day ahead. As a pretty reserved, shy, straight talking Yorkshire lass, this stuff doesn’t always come easily to me. There really aren’t many groups of people I could do this with, without a sense of horror. But, I ignore the inner voice of my dad saying “what a load of codswallop”, throw myself in and thoroughly enjoy every minute. It makes a huge difference to the energy of the session to take a bit of time to let go of the worries and strains of the week and get into a different head space.

Next came show and tell. I get a bit emotional listening to everyone. The objects that people choose offer a wee window into the story of their lockdown. It reminds me of BBC’s classic “The Repair Shop” … and anyone who knows me, knows I love me a bit of The Repair Shop. Thankfully we move on before I start sobbing, and I get a grip just in time. The rest of the morning is spent thinking about and sharing highs and lows from 2020 and intentions for 2021 before submitting our entries for our goodbye to 2020 and hello to 2021 musical playlists. So many amazing tracks which we collate into a spotify play list, which I’m listening to while writing this. We break for lunch for a couple of hours. Everyone has ordered a take-away lunch to be delivered to their house so I enjoy a cheeky Pad Thai snuggled into the sofa on my own, trying to hide the evidence from my husband and kids who are downstairs having beans on toast.

The afternoon session is focused on exploring the question:

“How do we navigate wisely through uncertain times?”

We’ve set ourselves the task of adapting the work we’ve been doing on values into a “team compass” that we hope will help us chose the right direction to move in. We’ve also agreed to come up with a set of questions that can help us better understand the landscapes we’re navigating through.

We use a miro board to help us plot our values onto a compass format. Taking the four value statements that we developed together at our autumn sessions (Knowing our neighbours, Valuing all contributions, Learning & not knowing, Respecting limits) and spend 15mins with our cameras and microphones off exploring different words which resonate with each of our value statements.

I ask if there is one value that jumps out as our “north”, ie something that we can come back to again and again to orientate ourselves. There isn’t a strong feeling on this, but for me I think everything always comes back to relationships, so we put connected as our north.

Conversation flows as we dig deeper into each area of the compass. We talk about NEIGHBOURLINESS and everyone likes like how this brings together ideas of both EXCHANGE and CARE. We discuss the importance of BALANCE which leads on to a discussion about MUTUALITY and COLLABORATION and the importance of two-way relationships. This develops into a conversation about resisting “extractive” interactions and how to exist in greater RECIPROCITY. The centrality of CARE comes up again and again as does the importance of WHOLE SYSTEMS THINKING and of recognising our RESPONSABILITY to the future and the significance of LONG-TERM THINKING. We touch briefly on the idea of SERVICE but run out of time to go deeper. There is definitely more to unearth around this idea.

Throughout the session the idea of INCLUSION comes up. Instinctively I’m wary of this term within a values context and get drawn to the idea of PARTICIPATION instead. As I’m thinking this through now, an Arundhati Roy quote jumps into my head

“There’s really no such thing as the ‘voiceless’. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard”.

Practicing inclusion is obviously vital within the work that we do, but it is required because the systems and cultures within which we all operate are designed to actively exclude and silence some people. Within a values conversation rather than settling for inclusion, shouldn’t we be focusing more on something that seeks to challenge exclusion rather than celebrate inclusion? In a healthy ecosystem the concept of inclusion makes no sense. There is no part of the system that sees itself as including the other part … just a whole interdependent system in which everything has a vital contribution to make to ensure that everything thrives. This thinking is a bit foggy but for now we steer away from this word and focus on PARTICIPATION, POSSIBILITY and GRATITUDE. We’ll need to dig into this more.

We spend the rest of the afternoon working in smaller groups to look at the list of questions, highlighting those that feel like they cut through and adding a few additions.

For the last 10/15 mins we quickly brainstorm some of the stories that have been coming up throughout the day. Thinking about both old stories that we want to challenge and resist and new stories that we want to support and nurture. We only scratch the surface so this is something that I hope we can pick up again at a future session along with a similar exercise on language.

To close the day we choose a couple of songs from the play list and we (well I at least) end up going a bit mad to Stromae’s “Alors On Danse”. It feels pretty liberating, but I’m relieved that we didn’t agree to record the session. I don’t think anyone needs to see that again.

I’m full of ideas and thoughts at the end of the day. Mostly I feel incredibly grateful to be part of such a brilliant team and very lucky to be able to participate in such nourishing conversation and exchange. The questions that linger in my mind come back to my “north star” of relationships.

What if how we’re being is more important than what we’re doing?
What if we stopped thinking about how we’re being as being in service to what we’re doing and thought instead about what we’re doing as being in service to how/who we want to be?
What if we stopped thinking about relationships as something that makes it possible for us to do things and instead thought about doing things as a way of being in relationship with others?
What if our work isn’t about managing relationships which are in service to projects but about managing projects which are in service to being in “right” relationship with the communities we serve?

As I muse these questions our team play list is still going and I feel like John Legend, Beyonce, Tah Mahal, Arthur Russel and the rest are trying to share their tuppence of advice. But its Jimmy Eat World’s lines from The Middle that stick in my head.

“Just do your best, do everything you can
And don’t you worry what the bitter hearts are gonna say.
It just takes some time, You’re in the middle of the ride.
Everything, everything will be just fine, Everything, everything will be alright, alright.
It just takes some time”

Alongside Daphni’s rather more succinct affirmation

YOU ARE SIZZLING HOT!

Thanks Daphni!

And here to prove it, is our TEAM COMPASS. Enjoy.

Aims:

• Bringing people together across difference
• Building sanctuary and safe spaces for communities of experience and interest
• Understanding culture as something we all make and do together in a breadth of ways
• Working together to collectively understand the past and re-imagine the future

Values:

Knowing our neighbours [Neighbourliness, Listening, Trust, Mutuality, Service]
Valuing all contributions [Participation, Collaboration, Gratitude]
Respecting Limits [Care, Future thinking, Integrity, Scale]
Learning & Not Knowing [Exchange, Humility, Possibility, Perspectives]

Questions

• How are we strengthening the connective tissue of the communities we are part of?
• Can our relationship be classified as either ‘giving’ or ‘taking’? Or is there a two-way exchange of knowledge and resources?
• Who don’t we know yet? Why?
• What are the resources we rely on?
• How do we protect, restore and improve our resource base?
• How can we improve our capacity to notice and respond appropriately to the impact of our actions on the situation, participants, ourselves?
• What are our indicators of success and how can we shift what is valued?
• How can we make visible different contributions, skills, knowledge ?
• How can power flow differently so that it is shared more diffusely?
• How do we encourage learning and experimentation?
• How and when do we deal with conflict & friction?
• How do we build in regular space for reflection?