These findings have enriched my learning in multiple areas. Themes 1 and 2 have helped me understand what needs to be protected and promoted, theme 3 has helped me understand what I need to generate and be honest about and Theme 4 has helped me identify what skills I’m actually trying to build.
____________________________________________________
1. Value, Gratitude and Joy
- yellows/oranges/browns, interconnecting shapes, circular forms
- These meetings felt positive and caring.
- They were short and informal, happening between one space and another. They involved someone thanking me for something, someone helping me set up a piece of technical equipment and a conversation where we were helping and comforting one member.
Learning:
How a culture of value and joy is built through small expressions and actions of gratitude and care
This is in line with researchers like Brene Brown who talk about the power of gratitude as ‘a unifying part of our existence’ (Brown, 2018, p.83). Feeling cared for and caring for others has been highlighted in studies, by people like Jim Collins as an essential feature of the success of great organisations. Expressed in the most direct way in ‘Good to Great’ when he says, ‘These people had fun! and they ‘clearly loved what they did, largely because they loved who they did it with.’ (Collins, 2001, p.62)
It might seem obvious to say that interactions like these make you feel better and even to highlight studies that show it is a major part of work and integral to organisational success. However, to have proof of these things is valuable because it is often not acknowledged in the way things are organised.
I experienced these actions in informal, unplanned meetings. However, do we need to create dedicated space for expressing gratitude and care in formal meetings, operating plans or organisational approaches? However, what if it’s not by chance that this only happened in informal meetings? Can the most optimum kind of expression only be found in spontaneous encounters? Would you ruin the quality of this activity and its value to fold it into more fixed and formal situations? Is it important to be more specific? Perhaps you can’t address it in how you facilitate meetings and others, but in organisational structures and work plans? You encourage and protect it rather than trying to elicit it?
______________________________________________
2. Trust, Empathy and Vulnerability
- pinks/blues, feathered edges, diffusion and gradients
- These meetings felt challenging emotionally but made me feel connected.
- They were formal and informal. They involved unpacking the challenges of a particular job role, talking about ongoing progress with my line manager, discussing administrative issues and possible solutions and sharing a new idea for a social justice teaching project.
Learning:
How trust and empathy is built through vulnerability, and how it actually feels
Charles Feltman’s definition of trust helps illuminate this situation, he says trust is ‘choosing to risk making something you value vulnerable to another person’s actions’ (2008, p.9) So in my meeting the people involved are making vulnerable ideas, feelings, experiences, struggles, areas that need to be improved and skillsets that need to be developed. This explains the paradoxical way it feels to practice vulnerability, it feels good in a lasting way because it leads to things like trust but also uncomfortable because its risky. However, this risk is worth it to as vulnerability is ‘the birthplace of love, belonging and joy.’(Brown, 2018, p.43)
These meetings highlight the importance of sharing the negative perhaps even more than positive. Priya Parker illuminates this when she says ‘Darkness is better inside the tent than outside of it… It’s going to be at your gathering. And if you bar it from formal proceedings, it doesn’t disappear’(2018, p.215) and also urges people to create opportunities to ‘consider what is not uplifting but thought and heart provoking’ (Parker, 2018, p.213. These ideas are echoed in Dr Kristen Neff’s definition of common humanity as ‘uniting us is our discomfort’ where suffering and inadequacy are ‘part of shared human experience’ (Brown, 2018, p.160)
These meetings have taught me that we need to be more vulnerable, more often and that negative content and feelings need not just to be tolerated but sought. It also make me see that this shouldn’t just be built on an individual basis but collectively. This is at odds with widely held opinions that uphold positivity.
________________________________________________________
3. Purpose and Productivity
- blues/yellows, upward swoops, waves and flicks
- These meetings felt productive and energising.
- They were informal. They involved an end of the day debrief, the unexpected solving of an ongoing problem and pre, lunchtime and end of teaching day team meetings.
Learning:
What real meeting purpose looks like and how powerfully it affects what is accomplished
The presence of real purpose in these meetings is natural because they were informal and unplanned. They did not need to happen and came into being organically to satisfy a need. When you contrast them with the low energy of other meetings which on the surface had a reason to happen and had been planned, you see the truth of Parker’s statement that ‘when we meet we often make the mistake of conflating category with purpose.’ (Parker, 2018, p.4)
This makes you think about what can be done – not have the other meetings? No, that doesn’t seem right. They are needed but perhaps it is instead important to dig down for the real purpose and make that explicit. So for example in a meeting about checking-in with someone in a new role, the staff member couldn’t think of any issues and everyone was tired. The meeting needed to happen for support, but if this was the paramount need, then the meeting should have been an explicitly fun hangout where we got to know one another.
________________________________________________________
4. Communication, Power and Controversy
- blues/greens
- These meetings was challenging practically and emotionally and I was highly alert.
- They were all formal. They involved a project planning meeting, chairing an operational problem solving meeting and a large meeting about a complex collaborative project.
Learning:
What exactly is challenging about these meetings – managing communication, power, the language of trust and controversy
This understanding means I can build my consciousness and skills more effectively and in a more positive light. The meetings feel challenging to manage and without knowing what is going on you can feel that, that’s because you’re bad at it, when actually it feels complex because it is complex.
Reading was invaluable in understanding these meetings. In terms of communication ‘the continual emergence of a new content that is common to … participants’ (Bohm cited in Popova, 2022) and the constant push towards a clear ‘language of requests, offers and commitments’ (Feltman, 2008, p.35) This is vital in building a culture of reliability and sincerity and thereby trust.
Regarding leadership, the building of ‘power with’, ‘finding common ground among different interests in order to build collective strength’(Brown, 2018, p.97) and practicing ‘generous authority’ which requires the courage to be disliked so that you can protect, equalize and connect guests (Parker, 2018, pp.83-94) It is also vital to welcome in ‘good controversy’ (Parker, 2018, p.225) by making what is implicit, explicit. (Parker, 2018, pp.234-235)