Weeknote #9: Be more kind my friends

For the past three weeks or so I have been doing a lot of thinking along a similar theme and trying to organise my thoughts into something coherent and constructive… but this is about as close I have got… please forgive the absence of weeknotes for the past few weeks and the half-formed ideas that make up this weeknote… as I have struggled to piece together my thoughts.

I have been doing a lot of thinking about roles (organisational and individual), perspectives (professional and personal) and responsibility. This thinking was triggered by an amazing early morning breakfast event in the Chapter House of Lincoln Cathedral, hosted by Transform Lincoln

I was struck by the closeness of the messages that came from different organisations and the often personal motivations that people shared for doing what they do – whether that be as a private business, a City Council, or a community organisation. I was left wondering why then, when we come into contact with each other in working groups, committees and boards or during contract discussions, procurement exercises or whilst developing new projects we often feel as if we are at odds with each other.?

As I thought about this I was reminded of the great workshop by Vicky Thomson of Every-One at the #ItsAllAboutPeople conference. That workshop drew our attention to the importance of recognising other people’s perspectives and of recognising the things that shape our own view of the world... and I think this may be where (some of) the trouble lies.?

We are not good at acknowledging our own starting points or the things that shape our personal perspectives and we are also not great at recognising our organisations perspectives and how they are communicated when we meet around an issue or objective. And this led me to wonder why this might be…?

This is where I have really been struggling to put my thoughts in to coherent form. Is it fear? A lack of confidence? To stand up and say ‘this is my perspective’ especially if there is a mismatch (no matter how large or small) between our own view and that of the organisation we represent? Are we in roles that don’t encourage us to show vulnerability or uncertainty when we are in ‘work mode’. How comfortable are we as leaders to say ‘I don’t know’ when somebody in ‘authority’ asks us a question? But when we are in a less formal setting are we more willing to share the personal – our own perspectives and to be more authentic?

And I wonder if part of that fear is because we have stopped seeing people when we meet – we meet as organisations, as roles (I have tried a number of different workshops starters that ask people to introduce themselves without reference to their job and that is quite revealing) and because we meet as organisations and roles are we more combative??

Do we ‘attack’ because we don’t see the connection between the organisational and the individual, between the professional and the personal? And is it also a defence mechanism for ourselves – by meeting as our role or our organisation do we somehow avoid taking responsibility for the position that we take – we remove our personal perspective from conversations and in so doing we protect ourselves from feeling vulnerable or uncertain when that position is challenged or questioned? I think this may be especially true in situations where there is unequal power in a meeting space.

And this finally gets me to my point – if we are going to work together to address the big challenges that our world faces I think we need to try to forget about our respective roles and organisational boundaries, we need to be open and honest about how our own values and perspectives come into play and to acknowledge when they don’t sit well with an organisational vision or goals and more importantly we need to create equitable spaces where we enable other people to do the same, without fear of judgement or reprisal, without fear of being attacked for sharing the personal and at all times remembering that behind every strategy, policy, plan, decision, email, procurement process, funding decision there is a person trying to do their best and to do so in a way that doesn’t cause themselves mental harm by doing things that are at odds with their personal view on life. So, in the words of Frank Turner; ‘In a world that has decided that it's going to lose its mind. Be more kind, my friends, try to be more kind’. And with that kindness we can lift each other up and open our minds to new thinking.