Listening to Each Other: recruiting the right people, those best placed to listen and act on what they hear
Summary of key points
The theme of the discussion was ‘How can organisations recruit the right people, those best placed to listen and act on what they hear?’ The main points which emerged from the discussion were:
It is possible for organisations to recruit extensively from within the communities served, and so become mirror images of their communities.
But recruitment is only a first step. Organisations need to enable people who are appointed as staff or volunteers to be comfortable, creative, and accepted.
Flexible working practices, and a working environment that supports well-being, can make a big difference, as well as enhancing levels of team commitment.
It is possible to go further, to establish teams with a high level of autonomy which are of the community, rather than of the organisation.
Organisations constantly ‘other’ those who come from the communities served, thereby marginalising them. Overcoming this, and establishing a ‘team of us’ requires a profound power and culture shift.
By that mustn’t mean patronising these who have lived experience. And we need to establish teams that are truly diverse, even (and especially) when that feels uncomfortable.
In more detail
Steve Wyler, co-convenor introduced the model of change set out in the recent Better Way publication Time for a Change.
In this cell we are exploring the ‘listening to each other’ element of this model while noting that there are connections between all four elements, and indeed that applying them in combination makes each more effective.
Our focus this time is ‘How do we recruit the right people? The people best placed to listen and act on what they hear are most likely to come from the very communities the organisations serve.’
We started with two presentations:
Arvinda Gohil, CEO of Central YMCA
Arvinda explained that we need to start with listening, as the first rung on a ladder, then move to dialogue, to engagement, to involvement, to empowerment, and then to passing on power. But as a sector we have failed at the first step. We haven’t made our organisations mirror images of the communities in which we operate.
When people say, ‘You are not the right fit for us’, what does that mean? It means essentially that those leading organisations are only comfortable with people who are the same as themselves.
Good leaders have to challenge this, all the time. Questioning who we who we work with, who we entice into the organisation. This requires great tenacity, said Arvinda.
Opening the door is not enough. The organisation needs to enable people who enter to be comfortable, creative, and accepted.
The strategies we have tried on the past have failed, and we need to try new things. We have to take risks and be willing to make mistakes, learn from them, and evolve.
For example, leaders can seek out the ‘hidden gems’ within their team, those who are often unrecognised, and invest in them as bridge-builders, giving them time, empowering them to link to the community and to make changes in the ways things are done.
And it is better to ask people ‘What are the terms that would work for you?’ rather than ‘Can you work within the terms we offer?’
Nasim Qureshi, CEO of Inspired Neighbourhoods
Nasim described how Inspired Neighbourhoods started just eight years ago, and now provides a range of services, across four different communities within or close to Bradford. This includes, for example, mental health and physical health support, domiciliary care, employment advice, enterprise advice, and a library.
For each of its locations, the organisation drew a two-mile radius and sought to understand all the networks and communities within that area.
Before any project is started, there is a period of co-design with the community. This makes it harder to apply for grant funding, which usually requires that what will be delivered is already pre-determined. For this reason, earned income is preferable, because this allows the organisation to operate more flexibly.
Each centre has a community advisory Board, and the Chair of each advisory Board sits on the main Board. So community voice travels continually up and down, and this achieves a level of intelligence that could not be obtained from any number of surveys. There is no need to spend money on marketing and promotion to the community, said Nasim, because the connections are already in place.
The process is not just about co-design, it is also about co-delivery. People from within the various communities become volunteers, and they have written roles and responsibilities, and training opportunities. Most of the paid employees started off that way. There are now 60 employees and 42 volunteers. The library service is entirely run by community volunteers.
Staff are employed on a competency basis. 95% of the workforce is peripatetic. Nasim has a simple principle: ‘If we are sitting in a room, we are not working with the community.’
The organisation does not use time sheets, and employees work the flexible hours that are needed to deliver services, often outside standard hours, responding to emergencies, while balancing their own childcare or other family needs. Nearly all staff give more than their 37 contracted hours, and turnover is very low.
Many employees have lived experience of the difficulties the organisation is seeking to address. It is a disability-friendly organisation, and a lot of attention is paid to mental well-being within the team.
The Board composition in 90-95% local.The organisation is responsive to its communities because of the people in it, the informal conversations that happen all the time.
Inspired Neighbourhoods decided to establish a summer school service, to gain greater insights into how lives of children and young people have been changing in recent years. In the area selected for this service, the organisation partnered with a large number of local community organisations, building on their strengths, and reaching people they were not otherwise in contact with. They also involved the police, schools and statutory bodies, and were able to influence the City-wide strategy, inviting the Council Chief Executive and others into discussions with the young people, letting them speak for themselves.
Breakout sessions were then held to consider the question: How can we build teams that mirror our communities and as a result are better at listening and following through? In the feedback and further discussion participants offered the following responses to the question:
Establish teams which ‘are the community’
In the past some organisations have taken a community development approach (employing people with specialist community development skills to enter a community and work with local people), or they have taken a partnership approach (forming partnerships with local community organisations to reach more people).
A more radical approach is to build local teams which are the community, in other words entirely or predominantly made up from the local community, who may be actual or potential service users, and who will be able to act as authentic community connectors. The challenge of an organisation supporting such a team is to provide it with genuine autonomy, so that it is able to operate as the community’s team, rather than the organisation’s team.
To do this well can take considerable time, and it is not easy, especially where organisations already have a deeply embedded way of operating, and it is made even more difficult when funders don’t allow sufficient flexibility.
But it can be surprising and encouraging to discover that quite a few organisations are now going in this direction. (And some funders too. For example the National Lottery Community Fund in Wales has introduced a funding stream to encourage more co-production.)
And it is always important, it was felt, to go where the energy is, building on what is already there.
Reduce ‘othering’
Organisations struggle to reduce the distinctions between those who are staff and those who are service users. How can we genuinely become a “team of us”, rather than professionals on the one hand and lived experts on the other?
We ‘other’ all the time in our language, our service models, our business planning, and the moment we do so we create a power imbalance.
For example a local community organisation run by Asian women immediately becomes ‘othered’ and then marginalised, because they are seen as niche and not mainstream.
We need to shift our perception of value, it was suggested, towards people and organisations which are from the communities served, instead of seeing them as niche and therefore as of less value.
Avoid patronising those with lived experience.
Designating people as lived experience experts, or as co-production partners, can lead to patronising behaviours, where those people are not challenged in the same way as other colleagues would be.
Those with lived experience are often more ready to tell their own story than to listen to others. It is important to recognise that listening is a distinctive skill, which needs to be nurtured.
Sometimes people with lived experience can become gatekeepers, and end up becoming a barrier for others, including those who have lived experience but different interpretations of their experience.
There is a difference between lived experience and lived expertise. Reflecting only on one’s own experience is different from possessing sufficient emotional and mental distance to critically assess what you are offering as an insight.
Build diversity even when that is uncomfortable
The recruitment processes matter, for example establishing balanced panels, not asking for qualifications that are not required, considering where best to advertise the roles.
Mirroring the community must not just become a tick-box exercise in representation.
There is a danger of focusing only on protected characteristics, instead of remembering the importance of diversity of thinking and approach. We need to be more willing to work with people whose political or social views we find difficult. And to establish safe spaces where people can test each other and learn from each other.
We mustn’t be afraid of diversity in our teams.
Shift and share power
We cannot share power, we reminded each other, without leaving our egos behind.
One suggestion was that leaders should always take on a direct delivery project, however small, so that they understand the system, and gain experience at first hand. Rather than simply telling others what to do they will find themselves entering into real conversations.
Now is a good time to shift our practices, it was suggested. Not least because many organisations have recognised that many things went better during the pandemic, when those at the front-line of services were making independent decisions, while office-based staff were on furlough or sitting at home.
It was felt that people from the communities served, who are playing advisory roles, should be given real power to review and shape services.
There might also be something to learn from the retail world, where consumers play a role in determining the success or otherwise of the stores they shop in. In the social sector (bearing in mind that relationships rather than transactions are usually what matter most) can we arrange things so that the success of our organisation is in the hands of our customers/service users?
Listen and engage better
There are challenges of personality – some people find it easier to be present, others have to work hard at this. Nancy Kline’s ‘Time to Think’ describes a practice of listening which fosters an environment where people can do their best thinking together as equals.
Does a flatter organisation produce better engagement? Not necessarily, it is culture rather than structure that matters most, it was felt.
We need to find better ways to engage with people without designating them as a class of people who need to be engaged with. Technology might help, it was suggested, for example by delivering constant feedback in the course of everyday activities.