Exciting signs from the universe
You know those times when the universe gives you a sign that you’re onto something exciting?
A few weeks ago, we ran a Zoom webinar on ‘the inner work needed to change systems’. Andy and I (it’s me, Abby, writing to you this time!) had delivered this session once before, in person, in Oxford. Both times we were delighted (and honestly surprised) at the number who signed up. It was (and is) exciting to find this is a subject that’s sparking others’ imaginations the way it does mine.
The kind of inner work I’m talking about here isn’t about having counselling. Neither is it about ‘personal development’, at least not in the way we commonly conceptualise it in the workplace. It’s about recognising how much we have internalised the systems that we live in (but also want to change), about diving deep into the ways in which our systems shape us and how we think, and doing the hard work of figuring out how we really want to be, once you strip away as much of the old-system baggage as you can.
My experiences of hierarchy, for example, have shaped the attitudes I have towards my own ideas. I was led to believe that some of my attempts to dismiss my ideas were down to a lack of confidence on my part. In reality, in the workplace, my opinions were validated more the more ‘important’ I became. There is a part of me that thinks that the people who are ‘more important’ than me know more than me. The more I learn to disentangle my perception of the quality of my ideas from my perception of where I fit into the space that I’m occupying in that moment, the more likely I am to simply say what I think and probably make a meaningful contribution in the process.
It has felt liberating at times, confronting at others. It’s made me better at calling out BS. It’s not a linear journey either, I might be getting there but I’m not there yet – it’s so frustrating when I realise I’ve exhibited too much status-deference and self-censored unnecessarily even now. But I’m making progress. (I’m still working out how my desperate need to be liked fits into all this but that’s another subject for another day).
It feels INCREDIBLY vulnerable to be writing this stuff down to send out to a mailing list. It felt wildly vulnerable to say it aloud to a room of people during those sessions in Oxford and on Zoom. Sharing this stuff with people I have never met before is hard. But what I’ve been seeing is that if you show vulnerability, you get vulnerability in return.
One of the ways in which we can cultivate the environments where systems-change-focused ‘inner work’ happens is by being seen to do it, by modelling it. So, we have to keep being vulnerable like this, and to try to create the conditions where others feel safe to do so too.
Another thing that has become clear to me recently is just how much ‘inner work’ needs to form a central pillar of Collective Impact Agency’s work as a whole, and how much it has already done so for years without us really staring it in the face. We’ve said ‘no’ to pieces of work where we didn’t think the people bringing us in were really invested in the kind of deep interrogative work that we believed needed to be done. We’ve lost tenders for similar reasons, particularly for learning partnerships – we want to go deep, ask some really difficult questions, facilitate some challenging conversations, focus in on relationships and experiences, and explore what’s standing in the way of meaningful change, all of which involves inner work in no small part.
On many occasions, commissioners have said that they want more clear-cut outputs and they want us to say exactly what change they will see before we’ve even explored the challenges together. (I think tendering processes are, more often than not, completely upside down.) One of the difficulties with demonstrating the need for inner work is that the change is not immediately visible from the outside, at least not in its fullness; it’s both deep and slow and it cannot be codified. And, it is different from place to place, person to person.
What I think we’ve been trying to articulate to ourselves (at CIA) is that some of the most important and valuable work we’ve done has been where people have journeyed together. The best collaborations I’ve seen have been the ones where people connected on a truly human level, putting down their ‘professional armour’ and building the kinds of relationships where they felt safe to have difficult conversations with one another, rather than averting their gaze when tensions or barriers arise.
That’s where inner work happens. It’s where we find healthy conditions for deep and transformative learning within groups as well as individuals, not just the kind of learning that could go on a PowerPoint. I’ve articulated some of the conditions and activities that I see are vital to creating those kinds of spaces in this blog post; building relationships is at the heart of it.
I could write SO much more. If you imagine that this letter is being written on that whisper-thin blue airmail paper, then right now my writing is getting smaller and smaller in my desperation to cram more thoughts in...
So, rather than making this post any longer I’d love to hear from you. What are you feeling right now, about any of this stuff? Let me know! I promise I’ll write back!
