Reflections in Practice #12
Weekly musings
Boundaries has been a word to pay more than a glance to this last 2 weeks. I suddenly realised that I’d over-extended at a moment when my own business needed my full attention. I am able to, and really enjoy, fullness - with many things happening at one time, but it was good to be able to press pause on things I’d voluteered to help others with for a while. Thank you Maude Burger-Smith for helping to reconnect to those boundaries I’d already set.
I’m really enjoying working with a client to figure out how to really activate their new values in a way that understands where their organisation is on its journey, their readiness for change and the desire to do it in a way that feels like it’s true to the values themselves. The idea that so much values embedding work has historically over focused on knowing the values making the assumption that people actually know what it takes to actually apply the values is kind of interesting to reflect on.
This week we talked about emotions in one of my EDI learning journeys. Actually since starting this business I have always started work in this space with a new group by naming the emotions that are with us. Fear, guilt, powerlessness, anxiety, apathy ... seen these in so many organisations and how the fact that no-one names them means that they quietly lead to inaction, deprioritisation, paralysis, avoidance or keep things in ‘too hard’ box. I also bring it in early because it’s emotional to be a person who’s workplace experience is impacted by how effective EDI work is - its tough to see your needs and sense of importance feel treated in this way. That’s been coming up alot in conversations with Black and brown teams in charities in particular - the emotional impact of seeing leaders in this paralysis space and how hard that is to see and work with.
I’m very excited to be starting a new learning journey with a philanthropy client looking at power and supremacy culture dynamics. I’ve been wanting to work internally with a team in this space with this work for a while, so here we are, it’s happening! It was timely that I came across this great piece of thinking by Urvi Kelkar about making change in this context, and in particular her reflections on dealing with shadows - being honest about who we really are and what we are really doing. Such synchronicity, as I am testing out bringing in shadow journalling into some of work, including this project, with Oliver Mann
The photo of the week was taken walking through the Plaza de Sant Jaume this week - visible leadership in action. There is something so healing in seeing police and institutions connected with messages of resistance as is captured in this shot.
