Leadership and Well-being

The topic was ‘What does a well-being approach to leadership look and feel like?’

Over the last two years well-being has come onto the agenda like never before. This seems be a big and welcome shift.  But what does this mean for the practice of leadership?

The first speaker was Nick Sinclair, Director of the Local Area Co-ordination Network. Nick shared insights from the New Social Leader network which he founded, noting that New Economics Foundation and Mind have set out five ways to well-being (connect, be active, take notice, learn and give) and that these can all be leadership practices.  

Jordan Smith, Health Equalities Lead and Quality Consultant at Dimensions, and also Chair of Council at Dimensions, spoke of his experiences as someone who lives with autism. His first job at Colchester Football club made him realise that while there is no set path for leadership, it is possible to lead more effectively by promoting the well-being of those you lead. He is ‘not a fan of deadlines’, or of telling people what they must do or not do, nor of telling people how well they have done and what they must do to improve. It is better, he said, to allow people to set their own agenda for what they want to accomplish, and allow them to lead the leader.

He offered some tips. Make time for a 10 minute check-in before a meeting. If you ask someone if they are OK, ask it twice. Find ways to make a personal connection, e.g. ‘what’s been the highlight of your day?’  Jordan concluded by saying, ‘You can do all the training in the world, but it doesn’t mean anything unless you care’.

Jen Wallace, Director of Policy and Evidence at Carnegie UK, shared learning from Carnegie’s work on this theme. The state of being well, she said, is not just about being healthy, it’s also about being able to flourish. This requires, for example, feeling in control over our lives, having personal connection with others, having love in our lives.

But it’s not just about individual experience, Jen said.  The wellness industry is growing fast, turning wellbeing into consumer products, for individuals who are often already doing OK.  We need to go beyond this. Carnegie UK has been exploring the concept of ‘community well-being’ – how can we live well in a place, in a community of interest. Carnegie UK has also promoted measures of economic well-being, to better assess what is required for us all to ‘live well together’. A well-being approach to leadership, Jen suggested, implies that leaders take a holistic view (not putting people in boxes), act radically (moving away from benchmarks and KPIs), and behave in a human way (understanding ourselves and others as human beings).

Here are some of the key points made by speakers and in discussion:

• Workplace well-being feels under threat, not least in public services - people are burning out, financial and emotional pressures are becoming greater.   

• The best leaders pay attention to relationships, and while these take time to develop, they know that without well-being people cannot perform well at work, and organisations cannot thrive.

• Those in leadership roles often neglect themselves – it is OK to be kind to yourself.

• We should not just focus on individual well-being. This is a social justice issue. A well-being focus implies a major shift in our sense of what matters.  Are we here to serve the economy - or is the economy here to serve us? 

• We are exploring a wholly different way of practicing leadership, in place of the command-and control management model.  Those in leadership roles will need to unlearn a lot, and develop a new set of priorities. But this change is not just up to the senior managers, who themselves are likely to be under pressure from funders, investors, regulators, and so on. Re-inventing leadership needs to become a shared endeavour, ultimately beyond individual organisations,  a collective shift in practice in favour of well-being goals.

We also raised some questions which could be explored further:

• How can we create a better working environment for those in front-line roles who have, for example, caring responsibilities.

• As leaders, where does our responsibility for the well-being of others stop? 

Imagining an end to poverty

As part of our series on unlocking our humanity and imagination, we held an event on 18 November 2022 in which we sought to imagine an end to poverty. The background to this - Caroline Slocock, the co-convenor to the network explained - was that during discussions in 2021 the network had concluded that:

• our humanity can build bridges and move us to change

• collective imagination can make a different future possible

• we need to find ways to make a different kind of space to listen deeply to each other, share our stories and tell new ones.

In 2022, we’ve been exploring this further with Phoebe Tickell, who is our thought leader in imagination for 2022. We were exploring the power of moral imagination earlier in the year and, in this session, asking ourselves: what if we could eradicate poverty? If we could imagine a different future, how would we work differently today and what would we do?

Introducing the session, Phoebe Tickell said that she describes herself as an imagination activist and her organisation and collective, Moral Imaginations, trains people to become imagination activists. This is a new kind of activist who is powered by imagination and vision, and is equipped with the tools to make those visions become real, and who is building a new kind of capacity, the capacity to imagine how things could be different and also help others to exercise their own imagination - ‘to stretch a muscle’ that has been underused since childhood.  She explained that her focus was on moral imagination, because imagination can be used for good and bad ends.

She said that problems are often framed as resource problems (not enough money or people), even when as a society we have too many resources, resulting in food waste and garbage, and this creates a kind of learnt helplessness. The real problem is an atrophy of imagination about how to use the resources we have. 

The leader of Camden council, Georgia Gould, is striving for a ‘new era of municipal imagination’ and Phoebe and Moral Imaginations have been working with the council to build capacity and understanding of the importance of imagination in local government and civic infrastructure.  They’ve been identifying the blocks to imagination in how they currently operate, working with central functions to change what is possible, training staff, managers and leaders in imagination activism and providing them with tools, frameworks and new practices to shift culture. The next stage is to embed imagination into policy and projects, working not just with the council but also with local residents. 

‘What if’ is the key question in this and other imagination work, alongside the  question imagination activism is asking which is ‘what would you do if you have the fearless confidence you would succeed’.

Phoebe then took the group through a couple of exercises designed to give just a taste of how imagination can help address the issue of poverty, explaining that in practice this is really deep work which requires much longer than we had available on this occasion.

What if we’d eradicated poverty in 2030?

The first exercise was a form of guided meditation in which each participant was helped to imagine themselves in a distant future where they were able to look back to a time when poverty had come to an end in 2030.  They are asked what poverty was like, what led to its eradication and what it felt like afterwards.  Participants were asked to  ‘journal’ their response. 

We collected pages of shared imaginations using the method of collective imagining, which we’ve brought together into a continuous narrative here - it’s very inspiring to read.

‘We had charities and a welfare system but more and more people became poor’ and it was ‘hard to keep hope alive.’

This is what participants wrote about the causes of poverty and how it made them feel:

We had charities and a welfare system but more and more people became poor….We lost our compass on health and thriving people and communities…We felt painful, deep despair and disappointment in what we have created….There were huge discrepancies between the haves and have nots.

“Othering.” Pitting people against each other….False beliefs. Sides, Disagreements…Individualism….It was restricting - no one understood what it meant to be one human race…Those experiencing pain, stigma and shame were unable to be heard.

It was painful and hard to keep hope alive. People working on the frontline were frightened and tired, trying to do what they could and feeling guilty that they had more than the people they were serving….People were scared and knew there needed to be change.

‘The Great Realisation of 2029’, when ‘we recognised our interdependence’

This is what participants wrote about how and why the changes came about:

It started when we changed who we listened to…..People having realised the deep pain and gaps….We recognised our interdependence - including with the natural world…We realised that we and our interests were inextricably connected and interwoven…‘The coming together.’

It became what we now know as The Great Realisation of 2029. More people started to realise that things couldn’t continue as they were. It wasn’t right that certain people owned all the money and resources. It wasn’t right to have powerful people dominating the rest of us. They also realised that what was important are people and the planet, not money and things. And they also realised there was an abundance of resources on this planet, we just needed to work out how to share those resources while looking after the planet. So they simply stopped. They stopped participating in these domineering systems. Without people participating, these old systems could no longer exist. They were no longer viable. So new systems emerged. No two systems looked the same, but in all places they emerged in similar ways. They created their own new systems that were all in principle anti-authoritarian, inclusive, and environmentally conscious. It was proliferation rather than scale…The fundamental structures were called to change though new ideas and possibilities.

People realised that there was so much waste, we had so much but weren’t sharing it and if we did we’d all be stronger. It was fear about the planet that really triggered this - seeing people across the world starving and their animals dying because of the waste and pollution we caused. We realised that we needed to stop dumping our problems on other people at home and abroad. We saw ourselves as one country, not lots of diverse groups, and we made our politicians decide to do something about it. Making all basic services free, talking to the people who were suffering and asking what they needed, not simply money, but love and hope and we opened up a national debate which those people were leading (not simply commented on as if they were ‘other’ and not in the room). We asked rich people to contribute to a fund, rather like the Bill Gates fund, to make more resources available but also to help innovate. We asked politicians to apply a ‘how can we end poverty test’ to everything they did, health, education, housing, and we held them to account.

It started to change with action groups and peaceful protests - we stopped allowing the government to make decisions which worked well for those who already had enough. We asked people who were seeking asylum to come into the UK and to teach us how to live better - their experiences were so valuable and we came together as community. The Green party joined forces with Labour and started to ask residents for their ideas and help - we moved away from deceit and towards integrity, serving one another and sharing. People were caught up in a joy in the little things - much like during the pandemic - and remembered that smaller acts of connection are what we really valued.

It was SUCH AN EXCITING TIME! It was absolutely CRAZY that we realised that this was something we WOULD NOT STAND FOR and everyone joined together to rule out poverty once and for all. First we said poverty would be stamped out completely, and we set a time by which that would happen - 2030. Then we started working backwards and deciding how we would go about doing that. If the poor person was not to exist again, they had to be able to access resources, services, clothes, food - in short, everything they needed, to be able to live a life of dignity and well-being and joy without needing to rely on money. It was around about that time that a Universal Basic Income and Universal Basic Services came into being…. Universal basic income started in one place and was so successful. After that there was no stopping it coming into place everywhere….And we set the global minimum for a quality of life that all of us, billionaires included, would be happy to stand behind. We’d be happy for any of our family members to live that life, that quality of life.

‘People were all flourishing, like never before’, it was ‘a great awakening of love’

Here are some of the feelings and experiences that participants described after poverty ended in 2030:

A calm descended over the earth and people began to flourish rather than just survive, for the first time ever people were all flourishing, like never before….It was the strangest thing in the world. Everything had been the same for so long that nobody could imagine anything any different. Then suddenly everyone had a new idea and the world became a very different place.

Realising that connections between people and ideas and resources made us richer and helped us build systems that were kinder….People became kinder and empathetic, realising that we are not the only ones suffering, many people suffer way more than us and if we help each other, we can not only achieve goals - eliminate poverty, hunger, war and all these big, horrible things happening in the world -  but also feel better for ourselves because we helped each other and because the people who we helped do now have a better life…And we felt as if a great burden of guilt had been lifted, and we found we were all so much richer.

Our minds became freer when we learnt how much they were shaped by messages that kept us focused on being apart from one another, and that others were enemies…Accepting that others have different needs, that some need more of some things than others because of their health, their family situation, etc, and that’s ok, made it easier to let go of resentments….Discovering that if we listened close enough, we could hear what places and the land wanted, was a shift.

People all got along and helped each other more than they ever did before…People were concerned for each other….People cared about the experiences of everyone - before people were blamed for their life disadvantages - like whether they were born into not having enough love or support or material needs and instead society stood together and took responsibility jointly. Everybody shared responsibility for their part and, when they started to see this working together, people were less afraid of not having enough and stopped stockpiling and instead would share together. Before individuals or organisations would take the blame for things that went wrong but blame was no longer a thing, instead ‘mistakes’ were seen as learning opportunities and people would join together to find solutions.

Living in a fairer society made everyone happier….People gathered in communities to celebrate what was best about each other and the world around them…There was music and dance in the streets….Culture was valued and everyone had access to the humanities, philosophy, music, arts etc.

Greed was rare….Not many people were greedy for more than what they already had….There was equality of access.

There was a great awakening of love for fellow human beings.

What if we all had good food, housing, low cost energy and access to green spaces?

We then went into breakout groups to brainstorm a number of ‘what if’ questions that might help address different dimensions of how to eradicate poverty.  Here’s a selection of some of the points coming out of these:

• What if our energy supply was low cost and locally generated?  This break out group thought that we needed an energy policy, informed by more voices, eg children including under 10s, as well as over 70s.  It was concerned that the media were pushing false narratives about the lack of energy supplies in the UK, creating a belief that the public don’t have the power to generate power and stifling imaginative solutions, and they wanted to see more positive reporting about green alternatives, the creation of a genuine public square forum and new ways of sharing information locally.

• What if everyone had access to beautiful green and wild spaces?  The group thought that there needed to be more cross-party agreement on action to tackle climate change, advocated changes to planning laws to require new buildings to have access to green spaces, thought there should be more challenge about who lives where, called for a focus on making places safe for women and, to improve access, wanted to see a commitment to subsidised public transport (and politicians should be required by law to use that transport so that they were aware of where changes were needed).

• What if everyone had access to food abundance and low cost, nutritious food? This breakout group thought that the root causes of food poverty and lack of low cost good food included people not having enough money, an over-reliance on unregulated and profiteering markets, lack of knowledge about food preparation and lack of time and lack of access to affordable, local food in some ‘food deserts’.  Their ideas for achieving the goal included a higher living wage and benefits, better education on food, local growing and sharing food schemes, universal free school meals and more supermarkets donating unused food to people who needed it.

• What if everyone had access to low cost, good quality housing?  This group reflected most on the root causes of a shortage of affordable housing, including the high cost of land, a market controlled by a small number of property developers, and housing being seen primarily as an investment, rather than accommodation.  The result was that not enough houses were being built, and overseas investors were leaving some housing empty. At the same time, there was abuse of the private rental market.  They wanted to see more common ownership.

In conclusion,  Phoebe said how inspiring the session had been and how it highlighted that collective imagination was not about fixing things as they are but changing them to how they should be, exercising the power of active hope for change (as opposed to hope which can act as a sedative to taking action). Caroline Slocock, the co-convenor of a Better Way, said she had been struck by Phoebe’s point that lack of imagination, not lack of resources, was the reason why so many problems seem apparently intractable.  She reflected that some of the  big moments when the world had changed - from the abolition of slavery, to the building of sewers to create clean water, to the introduction of votes for women -  had happened because people had had enough imagination to see that was possible and had the courage to make it so.  The exercise where we projected ourselves into the future really brought this home to her.   She said that we hoped to continue with this strand of imagination work in 2023 and Phoebe added that if anyone was interested in the work with local councils or is interested in embedding imagination in their own council or organisation they should get in touch with her at Moral Imaginations.

Roundtable on the NHS and communities

On 31 October 2022, we held a roundtable to consider how the NHS and communities can join forces, including looking at how Better Way principles and behaviours can help and discussing new NHS England statutory guidance on partnership working with people and communities to improve services.

Opening speakers

The NHS Guidance

Olivia Butterworth, Deputy Director, People and Communities at the NHS, opened the roundtable with an introduction to the guidance and the challenges and opportunities in implementing it. The guidance covers a hierarchy of activity - from informing, consulting and engaging, to co-design and co-production - and in all of these cases the place to start is with people and communities, the guidances says, not from institutions. Statutory guidance has been in place since 1972, she explained, but with this new guidance they hoped to change practice fundamentally. They wanted to move away from a situation where institutions seeking to communicate with communities adopt a medical model of health, start from problems rather than strengths, and often use their own jargon and language, which puts people off. Another common pitfall to avoid is simply bringing people into governance structures instead of genuinely reaching out to people on their own terms.

The guidance sets out 10 principles, all of which would probably be familiar, she said.

The challenge now, she explained, is to really live the principles - building on what’s strong, not what’s wrong, listening to people and their stories, rather than attaching labels, and allowing communities to tell their own stories and set their own agenda. That requires a different kind of partnership working for the NHS and is especially challenging given the power imbalance that naturally exists because it holds the purse strings.

Healthy Communities Together

Our second opening speakers, Clare Wightman and Sarah Raistrick, talked about the Healthy Communities Together initiative in Coventry, where public and voluntary sector partners are working with people in communities to shift inequalities and redesign services. Clare is the CEO of Grapevine, Coventry and Warwickshire and Sarah is a local GP and a non-Executive Director with the Herefordshie and Worcester Integrated Care Board.

Clare said she wouldn’t normally start by talking about resources but it was important to realise that this partnership was made possible because of resources from the Kings Fund and the National Lottery Communities Fund, which were specifically aiming to shift inequalities by building public and voluntary sector partnerships. Grapevine’s lens in approaching this work is about shifting power and ‘diving right back down to reality’, being strengths based and working with people to identify their ambitions, she explained.

Healthy Communities Together first spent time building relationships within the partnership itself - Grapevine, Coventry City Council Public Health Department and Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Partnership Trust. Then they brought professsionals, the Head of Acute Services, the local GP, the vicar and other players in the community into one room to listen deeply to a person with experience of mental health issues. After further intensive engagement with the community, this led to a wider plan to improve the support available to him and others. Clare explained that over time it had not proved possible to keep the same team together in the same room. So they had responded by setting up core teams, with a changing membership, to regroup and flex around issues. They also shared learning continuously - ‘working out loud’.

Sarah told us that a lot of what they’d learnt they had already known intuitively, including the link between mental health and social circumstances, but the act of a person telling their own story proved very important, not just for them but especially for those hearing it. They asked, ‘What keeps you well?’ and heard that it was often family, friends, a job, their house and their pets; and they learnt a lot about what people need, how frustrated they are by the way we set up structures and how they could work better together. As a result, for example, men’s groups had been set up that were transformative for those involved.

Both Sarah and Clare talked about the challenges as well as the achievements. It was hard to achieve change at scale, turning round the oil tanker was difficult, and they’d found a gulf between board level and community commitment to this approach and the buy-in of middle levels. Keeping partnerships going was also challenging - keeping commitment live, staying human and being human with each other and moving forward as a team.

Creating new sources of power in the community is critical, Clare concluded: empowerment of people is the only way to change things. To do that, you need to get to know your patch, and get into every street, and bring local people into services, as volunteers and in advisory groups. And she emphasised the power of shared stories - with people and professionals listening and talking to each other.

You can read more about this partnership here.

Inspired Neighbourhoods

Our final opening speaker was Nasim Qureshi from Inspired Neighbourhoods in Bradford who told us how they co-create and co-design services with their own community and empower people to change their own lives, which is critical to creating better health and well-being. Nasim told us about a number of strategies that help it to achieve this:

• The organisation is made up of its community. 95% of its supply chain and staff are local, starting with the volunteers, and 90% of its Board. Inspired Neighbourhoods has 109 staff and 26 volunteers.

• They get to know their patch, drawing a 2 mile radius around each of its 6 centres, spending time with the community on the streets, working peripatetically, and finding out about all the organisations operating there.

• They provide well-being services across a full range, and all of these are inter-related. They don’t send people from pillar to post.

• They work with local partners on an equal footing and support them - delivery matters, not who delivers them.

You can find out more about this process from this blog by Nasim.

Nasim ended with a plea for a different form of commissioning of services which is relationships based.

Points from the breakout groups and discussion

Some of the points made in discussion and breakout groups include:

• It’s important to join forces to work with communities, take the time to build relationships within partnerships and with communities, listen deeply, share and build power and demonstrate that change is happening.

• For people and communities, there can be a sense of fatigue to be overcome (will I be heard? Will anything happen?). This is especially true if there are lots of different people talking to them and not talking to each other. Join forces with other organisations - no one organisation can bring about this change.

• Talk human, and be human when you work with people and communties. You need to avoid labels and the medical model to really communicate with people and communities.

• Professional boundaries are a barrier and need to be broken down so that they can work with the whole person, rather than passing them from pillar to post, and bring their whole selves to the job. People working inside the NHS are themselves under enormous pressure and it can be challenging for them to find space and time to work in new ways. Both sides, communities and professionals, are lifted by shared stories and this process helps to break down those barriers.

• The door is open to change the wider system but culture change in the NHS is an enormous task. The mental health system itself is broken. It can seem overwhelming but you have to start small, with pockets of good practice, to achieve scale over time. Take risks, make mistakes and take multi-pronged actions.

• Make sure the community ‘sees itself within you’.

• Money matters, unlocking the time and resources required.

• Mutually supportive networks, like a Better Way, help to share knowledge and insights.

The respondents

We concluded the event by hearing from two respondents.

Samira Ben Omar, who has extensive experience of working in the public sector and the NHS and deep experience of putting it into practice, made a number of points:

• Don’t forget that the NHS and social care workforce are themselves part of the community, so listen to them too and use their contacts.

• People and communities are already empowered - the reality is that institutions need to relinquish power rather than to empower, a truth seen during the Covid pandemic.

• Communities understand complexity: it’s institutions that don’t.

• Words matter and it is progress that we are talking about people and communities and have moved from the market paradigm and the language of patients and clients.

You can read more about lessons from Samira’s work with communities in this Better Way essay.

We then heard from Steven Platts, the CEO of Groundswell, a homeless charity which deploys peer support and peer research to help homeless people access services and which has also recently worked with the NHS to bring ex-homeless people into support and other roles in the NHS. Steven’s reflections included:

• The NHS guidance is an opportunity to elevate what’s already been happening over the years.

• He encouraged the VCSE to take this opportunity to reach out to the NHS. There has been a trickle down in the willingness of the NHS to engage, with resources - eg Groundswell are now undertaking training in co-production paid for by an Integrated Care System.

• Building relationships takes time.

Next steps

In conclusion, Olivia Butterworth said that we needed a new model for working, with true collaboration. The NHS is working with a Better Way to see how this network might help and any ideas for topics we might explore would be welcome. One suggestion was that we might look further at how to address the barriers within the NHS to this way of working.

Sharing and building power: Levelling up

This event , which took place on 19 October 2022, is part of a series held by our sharing and building power cell. We discussed the topic: ‘What does it mean for the state to share power in Levelling Up? What are the limits and the potential and how can we shift the culture to give more power to local people and the organisations that support them.’

Our opening speakers were Nicola Steuer from New Local, who told us about why and how the most innovative councils who are part of their network are engaging with communities in order to share power; and Tony McKenzie from Engage, which provides a platform for people’s views to be heard by politicians, including through a recent Reconnection Tour and Summit. Tony spoke about the nature of power and how to give people more control over what matters to them. Caroline Slocock, the co-convenor of a Better Way, also reflected on the challenges and opportunities for central government of sharing power, drawing on her own experience of government at No 10 and the Treasury.

Key points made by speakers and participants in the breakout groups and plenary discussion include:

• the challenge for central government is that it has to demonstrate to the electorate to whom it is accountable that public money is spent wisely and efficiently, and that has led to tight, centralised controls and targets. Caroline said that she had become convinced that the best and most efficient way to achieve levelling up is to put money into the hands of local people, who know what the needs are and how best to respond to them. More needs to be done to make that case, as central government in this country is highly centralised, and in many ways has become more so in recent decades.

• Nicola reflected that previous exercises in levelling up over two decades, which had not really involved communities in a sustainable way, had consistently failed, providing nil levels of relative change, so a new approach was needed.

• How you do it is critical. Local communities should have greater influence and you need to build on what is there, building up from communities, not imposing it from above. New Local’s research had found that the public also think people should be given more power and communities are better placed to make positive change happen.

• Nicola said that the characteristics of local authorities who are trying to shift power toward communities are:

  • They are intentional about the power shift, with a narrative about why and how they are doing it.

  • They are building a different relationship with communities - they engage, listen and are open to new ideas. This needs a cultural change that involves everyone in the local authority.

  • They invest in infrastructure and support for communities, ensuring they have the skills and capacity.

  • They practise at it, taking risks and giving space to try out different ways of doing things.

  • They use data, alongside community insights and use levers such as community wealth building, not just the main funding pots.

• There is an imperative to work in a different way and huge potential but there is still a long way to go.Some examples of councils following this approach are Cornwall, Wigan and Warwickshire. That said, as Tony pointed out, Cornwall has its Eden project and its new university but it still has a housing crisis, low wages and poverty. Change needs to go deeper.

• At Engage’s recent Reconnection Summit they’d heard that people want to contribute but feel they are not able to. Tony said it helped to understand the different forms of power and how they can manifest themselves, breaking power down into four elements:

  • Individual power, though often when people feel powerless through ‘learnt helplessness’ it can be misinterpreted as apathy.

  • Collective power, of which the Better Way network is an example.

  • Civil or social power, which can bring about change but can also be expressed in the form of resistance to change, for example, to specific regeneration projects because people haven’t been able to shape what is happening.

  • power in society, its structures and cultures, which needs to be understood and addressed. A lot of structures are built so people don’t exercise power. Tony said he’s spoken to many people in different places who say the same things: ‘We only get the crumbs from the table’.

• There’s a need to build trust and relationships, which takes time, engagement and investment over the long-term. Turnover of public sector staff can be a problem, which is one reason why culture change as a whole is required.

• The focus should be on delivery not ‘management’ of what communities are doing, developing an ‘adult to adult’ relationship rather than hand-holding, and letting them run with projects.

• Greater ‘cultural competency’ is needed as often engagement fails to extend to non-white communities.

• Investing in capacity and skills is important and that includes knowledge in how government works. In Scotland, training is offered for organisations and people engaging with the public sector on this, which has proved useful.

• Too often strategy in organisations of all kinds, including the voluntary sector, is built from the top down but in reality the knowledge of communities is often greatest amongst front-line staff. We heard of one organisation that consciously built a network of front-line staff to feed into strategy.

• Although some progress has been made, there’s a need to bring grass roots knowledge and practice to the wider attention of national and local politicians and to national influencers and policy makers, so as to make the case for sharing power more concrete and make it more commonplace. This is partly what the Better Way network is seeking to achieve.

Joining forces: unequal alliances

The topic was ‘Where there are big differences between organisations, in size, resources, status, for example, what are the best ways to join forces?’

The first speaker was Cate Newness Smith, CEO of Surrey Youth Focus, who drew on her experience of setting up Time for Kids, an alliance across sectors which aims to make Surrey a better place for children and young people. 

The second speaker was Steve Wyler, co-convenor of the Better Way network, who reflected on his experience in the 1990s when running Homeless Network, a coalition of charities tackling rough sleeping in central London. The charities were very unequal in terms of size, profile, and influence, but nevertheless various strategies were used to encourage collaborative working, including for example a requirement that members would share their development plans at an early stage.

Here are some of the key points made by speakers and in discussion:

• Unequal alliances should be celebrated – good things can come from bringing large and small, included and excluded, into a common collaborative space.  And it helps to be honest about the imbalances, to call them into the room.

• Most can be achieved when starting with a blank sheet of paper, rather than addressing the detail of an agenda that has already been set. Therefore, it is important to seek out places where influence is possible, operating outside the formal established structures if necessary, and go where the energy is.

• Those who work in small organisations may need to change their mental model, and build confidence in their own voice when engaging with those who have senior roles in large institutions - remembering that small organisations have real strengths, not least that they can be fleet of foot.

• There is always a tussle between self-interest and mutual interest.  People may be willing to set aside organisational rivalries and jealousies, in favour of pursing a common goal.  But pressure and stress can close down creativity and reduce mental capacity to join forces with others.  So, this often needs skilful management, and the presence of an independent and trusted convenor can be very helpful.

Removing the roadblocks: what can we learn from the last crisis?

This event on 11 October 2022 is one of a series looking at how we can unblock the roadblocks, where we’ve heard that many people at every level can play a part in driving change by:

• Challenging and changing whatever stands in the way, including the deep-seated assumptions that can prevent us from being our best selves.

• Calling out inequalities and abuses of power, and making sure everyone can participate on their own terms.

• Assuming the best in others and seeing difference, conflict and division as an opportunity to pause, seek to understand, and find a fresh way.

But we’ve also heard that resistance to change is widespread, whether through culture, systems or practices. So how can we get better at overcoming the resistance and removing the roadblocks?

On this occasion, the specific question we explored was what can we learn from the last crisis to help us tackle the next. Our thought leader for this topic, Neil Denton - a community mediator and Professor in Practice at Durham University’s After Disasters Network - explained Britain is facing crisis after crisis, lurching from the pandemic to the cost-of-living crisis and a recession, without having healed from the last, and the effects are deepening divisions. Finding space for that healing is important and there are also lessons to be learnt from the last crisis to help us tackle the next, as set out in A Sense of Connection, a report by the Relationships Project. He was joined as opening speakers by Christine Frazer from Age UK Gateshead, who gave moving examples of how that community had supported each other during the Covid crisis - ‘the light than shone during the pandemic’, and Grace Sodzi-Smith from the Social Change Agency, who spoke about the valuable support they were giving to mutual aid groups to enable them to flourish.

Here are some of the key points made by the speakers and participants in the breakout groups and plenary discussion:

• ‘In our darkest days we saw the brightest version of ourselves’ - not volunteering but helping each other, and we still have that memory and can rekindle that spirit.

• Many people want to move on from the pandemic but we cannot move forward if we ignore the pain and distress that some people are still experiencing. Christine told us about the people who were still angry and upset by what they’d experienced - including a man who hadn’t been able to be present as his wife gave birth to their stillborn child, a woman who hadn’t been able to attend her best friend’s funeral and another who depends on a foodbank that is now closing. Professionals who are helping people in these situations are also experiencing mental health difficulties. What she’d found through her work in supporting and listening to people in Gateshead is that it helps to gather people together to find common cause - in the case of the individuals she described, they were brought together in a mental health support workshop, learning about mental health in order to help themselves and support others.

• Many deprived communities are suffering from deep-seated trauma that goes back much further than Covid.

• You need to keep fighting the fire as well as working for a brighter future with a sense of hope.

• Burn out and compassion fatigue is common especially amongst first responders and organisations need to be much more aware of this - training can help professionals recognise the signs and techniques for managing stress. ‘Unless you put your oxygen mask on first you can’t help others’.

• Larger organisations have the capacity to provide vital support to small-scale mutual aid groups. Grace told us about how the Social Change Agency was providing such groups with banking services, to make it easier for them to raise money transparently, and other tools, including listening and creating a space to have conversations and give advice and support. We heard that this was kind of support was also happening in other places and could be a model that could be adopted more widely.

• Time is needed to allow for healing, with permission to be sad and negative. Just as we come together as a nation in exciting times, for example, the London Olympics, so we should also be able to do in times of grief.

• Strong communities are critical - those who stick together recover best. Relationships are the foundation of communities and need to be nurtured in order to build resilience at a time of crisis. Relationship building needs to happen in the good times so that they are there in times of crisis.

• We need to design stronger services, not keep on repairing them.

Leadership: does strategy still matter in times of crisis?

The question we addressed in this meeting was as follows: ‘In these turbulent times are we shifting away from a conventional planning approach? What does this mean for how leaders operate?’

The first speaker was Nick Sinclair, from Community Catalysts, who runs the Local Area Co-ordination network, and the New Social Leaders network. Nick shared a recording of an interview he conducted on this topic with Professor Donna Hall, architect of the Wigan Deal.

The second speaker was Kate McKenzie, from Power to Change, who manages the Leading the Way learning and grants programme for community business leaders in the North East and Yorkshire.

Here are some of the key points made by speakers and in discussion:

• Strategy does matter in times of crisis.  It is not enough to address the immediate presenting problems, important though that is, if we are also wanting to bring about a wider and deeper social change.

• But we need a different approach to planning:

  • When it is difficult to foresee very much beyond the next six months (if that), the plan needs to make more allowance for emergence.  

  • Rather than a set of objectives or targets, the plan should provide an overall vision (a ‘North Star’), and a set of relationships or principles which can guide decision-making and behaviour.

  • It also needs to allow maximum operational autonomy. (It was noted that Mencap, for example, is working towards a model where people at the front end of the organisation can set the strategy for their own work, within an overall framework. In a large organisation this requires a big culture shift).

  • The key elements of the plan should be developed with the community affected by the plan. 

  • The plan should be set out with simplicity and clarity.

  • And it should place significant weight on the process for review, reflection and adaption.  A ‘discover, design, test’ method, capable of being applied quickly to aspects of an organisation’s work may be preferable to an ‘epic’ effort to design a single all-encompassing strategy.  The Human, Learning, Systems approach developed by Toby Lowe and others is felt by many to be very helpful in this respect.

• In summary, a good strategy in turbulent times should be much more about establishing the right culture, to help people ‘do the right thing’ and reflect and adapt, and much less about imposing a rigid work plan.

Listening well in a digital age

The topic was ‘What are the digital methods that can build good conversations, including with those that are often left out, and allow people to develop solutions together?’

The first speaker was Karin Woodley, from Cambridge House in Southwark, London. She is the ‘thought leader’ for the Better Way on the theme of radical listening – not least listening beyond the surface level, and framing conversations in ways that challenge the prevailing top-down methods.

The second speaker was Paul White, from eCulture Solutions. Paul has a background in local government and is now developing a digital platform so that those engaged in social action in Devon can more easily discover each other and combine their efforts.

Here are some of the key points made by speakers and in discussion:

• We should not remain stuck in old ways. Digital methods can have positive and liberating effects – not least opening up access to events for people who would not be able to afford the cost of travel, or who are time poor.  Moreover, digital conversations can have an equalizing effect, with contributions given more equal weight, and no ‘top table’.

• There are of course negative aspects. A significant minority experience severe digital exclusion. Digital communications can be shallow, with less opportunity for informal encounters, and less ability to explore ideas together.  And because digital meetings operate according to a similar template there is little that distinguishes one digital discussion from another – they all blur into each other, and are easily forgotten.

• But these are not good reasons to turn our backs on digital methods – all forms of communication have limitations and can produce exclusionary effects. We shouldn’t become over-protective or paternalistic, it was suggested.

• And some of the negative effects can be reduced by the design of online meetings – allowing more time for meaningful engagement, with more space for introductions, and for post-event reflection.   

• In order to ‘animate the quiet voice’ it can be helpful to start with an in-person connection, then make digital tools available which can add further value.

• And what can matter most, whether in the online or in-person world, is learning to listen without an agenda, and learning to listen to those who are raising a concern with you to understand, not to respond. And people need to have confidence that they can manage their story, and that it will not be exploited for the benefit of others (including by social sector organisations).

• Where the means of communication is shaped by the users themselves (with assistant from professionals when needed) a digital platform is more likely to be widely used. Karin Woodley gave an example where young people concerned about relationships with the police gathered data via social media channels which they designed - 4,500 young people across the country took part.

• Looking to the future, things will continue to change with Virtual Reality, and Avatars opening up new ways to interact online.  We should embrace such change positively, some felt.

Putting relationships first: ‘liberating the method’

The topic for this meeting of our relationships cell on 22 September 2022 was freeing up staff to build relationships.  Against a backdrop of ingrained command and control cultures and contacting practices in many organisations, we considered how can we ‘liberate the method’ to do things differently, a phrase used by Mark Smith in this essay from Building a Bigger We about how they are trying to achieve this in Gateshead council.  Mark has identified four operating principles:

·         Front-line authority to make decisions. No assessments. 

·         Instead, they should ask people ‘what can we do for you?’ and try to discover what a good life looks like to them. 

·         No referrals – because we know that this just leads to people going round and round in circles. 

·         Measure only to learn and improve, not to keep scores or to make a point. If we learn something’s working, that’s great, and if it isn’t, we adapt.

The topic was introduced by David Robinson from the Relationship Project, our thought leader for this cell, and by Mark Smith. Key points made by speakers and participants include:

• good relationships at work lead to higher productivity, less burnout and staff are less likely to leave - ‘high performing teams don’t leave relationships to chance’ (attributed to the Harvard Business School).

• At Community Links, David Robinson had chaired a Council on Social Action which promoted ‘deep value relationships’ in services, and Community Links had recently commissioned a report on deep value to update an earlier literature review. David said that the evidence showed that people using public services put great importance on the quality of relationships, and where these are effective it brings a range of valuable benefits.

• Mark Smith described the transformation that had been achieved in Gateshead’s Council Tax Department by giving front-line staff autonomy and delegated authority to solve the problems of people who cannot pay their council tax . As an experiment, they set up a team, including people from the benefits agency and Citizen’s Advice and experts on housing, with its own budget to spend as they chose. They had only two rules - do no harm and don’t break the law - and a number of guiding principles - focus on what matters to the individual, rather than assess them, seek to understand what matters to them, build relationships, and don’t refer any case to others (which often leads to a revolving door) and if additional expertise is required bring it to the individual. Measurement of performance was used only to learn what works so they could adapt. Staff were given the gift of time to talk to people in depth, Mark explained. Teams had purchasing cards which enabled them, for example, to take a client for a coffee. Benefits claims could be resolved in an hour, not the typical 6 weeks.

• Freeing up staff in this way worked, Mark told us. Of the first 40 people held, 32 ended up living a better life having spent years in difficulty, 7 had profound mental health difficulties and had a longer journey and 1 didn’t engage. Having tried this in one Department, they then did the same thing in homelessness which was successful and were now trying it in other areas, including adults with complex needs.

• It requires a different relationship to risk - managers must create an environment in which staff have the license to get it wrong. Mark told us that he had to make it clear to staff that ‘I’ve got your back’ and that not everything works, and when that happens it’s an opportunity to learn. Moving to becoming a generalist, with no clear protocols, pathways and procedures was difficult for some. Some embraced freedom, some felt exposed if things didn’t work. But most involved felt purposeful and no-one in the original pilot wanted to go back to the old way of working.

• The job of a manager is to remove the barriers so can staff can do what they want and need to do - help people, but it is a big cultural change. It involves ‘unlearning’ the old way of doing things and liberating the creativity and sense of purpose that everyone has.

• New models of working are required that are tailored to people. The system defaults to specialists when the most important thing is being able to forge good relationships and have a person centred approach. The challenge is to make that normal and it starts with leadership.

• Longer term funding is important for this approach, with commissioning that allows for the complexity of lives and for learning as you go along.

• Principles are better than targets, one of our Better Way principles.

• This approach requires continuity of staff and, most importantly, time.

• Start anywhere - and you will see that this approach works.

• We need to build the story of change, to give more people confidence to do this.

Joining Forces for Levelling Up

In this meeting we explored the following questions: ‘What types of local or regional collaboration are most likely to generate the shared purpose, determination and energy needed to drive the Levelling-Up agenda. What should a community covenant (as proposed by Government) look like?’

(The community covenant idea is described as follows in the Government’s 2021 Levelling Up White Paper: ‘A Covenant approach would see local authorities and communities work together to take a holistic look at the health of local civic and community life, set out a driving ambition for their area, and share power and resources to achieve this.’)

The first speaker was Cate Newnes-Smith, CEO of Surrey Youth Focus and ‘thought-leader’ for the Joining Forces strand of our work. She was followed by Sally Young, former CEO of the Newcastle Council for Voluntary Service.  

Here are some of the key points made by speakers and in discussion:

• From on high, it can appear that Levelling-Up requires first and foremost a set of structural solutions (combined authorities, powerful Mayors, investment plans), with tangible outcomes (new rail links, for example).  But Levelling-Up requires more focus on community development, and less on physical infrastructure, it was suggested.

• This implies an appreciative inquiry approach by national and local government, not ‘This is what we are planning to do, what do you think of it’, but rather ‘What matters to you, what do you want to see happen?’

• Where possible, there should an asset-based approach, building on existing and potential community strengths, along the lines of the Community Catalysts model for example.

• Action should take place wherever possible in small places, because the wider the geographic scope, the more likely that significant local characteristics will be overlooked. The concept of 20-minute neighbourhoods is a good starting point (everything people need should be within 20 minutes travel time).

• The conditions should be set so that many brave leaders can come forward (not a single person for a region) to drive the necessary changes.

• Collaborative efforts can be encouraged in various ways, e.g. though Community Improvement Districts, or local tech platforms. Investment in community anchor organisations is one way to ensure long term coordinated community-led effort on the ground.

• There is a need for better methods to help people operating at local level to make common cause with each other, and with those at regional and national levels. The principles of ‘sociocracy’ – decision making by consent rather than majority voting - may be useful.

• We must not repeat the mistakes of previous regeneration programmes or the Big Society initiative. In England there may be positive things to learn from efforts elsewhere, including the Community Empowerment Act in Scotland.

• A sustained effort will be needed over many years. Short term initiatives by themselves will not bring about Levelling-Up.

Putting relationships first: working relationally with communities

The topic dicussed in this meeting of the relationships cell on 13 July 2022 was working relationally with communities. As public bodies seek to plug into community power, how can they do this in a ‘relational’ rather than an ‘extractive’ way? The risk for public bodies, as they try to help communities build connection and strengthen relationships, is that they try to turn voluntary organisations and community groups into instruments, rather than letting them do what they do best, or that they are overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of relationships they have to build.

Our opening speakers were David Robinson from the Relationships Project, who is our thought leader for this group, Lara Rufus-Fayemi, the Strategic Partnerships and Engagement Manager at Newham Council, and Paul White, from e-culture solutions. David told the group about the work from the Relationships Project’s Relational Councils Network, a peer learning space for anyone working in or with local authorities seeking to make relationships the central operating principle. Lara talked about the work Newham Council is doing to create people powered places. Paul, who is a former Chief Technology Officer at Devon County Council, is now working with the voluntary sector in Devon to help transform the relationship with the public sector and unlock community power. He talked about the untapped (and undervalued) potential of the sector and lessons from what is happening in Integrated Care Systems now in Devon.

Key points made by the speakers and in discussion include:

• Relational councils are drawing on this Relationships Framework, which includes good advice about how to build strong relationships with the community. Relationships need to be nurtured at many levels, from relationships with colleagues to communities to the places and spaces in which people meet, as shown in this slide.

• There are many cultural and other barriers which need to be addressed by the public sector, from institutional language which is not centred in real lives and prevents good communication, lack of the time needed to build trust with communities, too much bureaucracy, to turnover of staff just when good relationships are formed, to underfunding of the voluntary and community sector to do the important role that they play.

• There’s a need to develop a more relational language, listening, focusing on people’s lives, not jargon, and allowing local people to tell and celebrate their stories. It can help to engage champions within the community to deliver messages.

• Newham Council has set up a permanent, ground-breaking Citizens Assembly to learn about what matters to local people, and is also trying to establish people-powered communities by setting up local community assemblies which engage in decision-making about how funds should be spent in their area. They are also working with UCL to train up local people as ‘citizen scientists’ to research their own communities. They remunerate citizens who take part in these exercises and provide technical support to help them participate.

• Lara set out a series of principles for how to work with communities, which are set out in her blog about creating people-powered places here, including focusing on the people first and finding common cause, taking calculated risks, being open, investing in funding and time and really listening.

• Place has to be considered holistically and a conscious effort made to engage everyone, not just the groups that are first to come forward. It’s important to look at the collective resources in a community but often knowledge of local groups is sketchy at best, Paul told us. He said that there were 6,500 registered voluntary organisations in his area, including social enterprises, with considerable potential to help the public sector to meet the high levels of unmet demand that exist. He is setting up a local directory to help in this. Local businesses are part of the community and should be engaged too.

• Lack of resources in the voluntary sector to engage is an issue, they are already very stretched and their capacity to take part is often taken for granted by public bodies. Grants to help them engage in the Integrated Care System, for example, are essential. Too much paperwork should be avoided.

• Time has to be invested to truly understand the community and what motivates them, and it is very unlikely to work if responsibilities are contracted out to consultants from outside the community, as trust is key.

• Training can help to ensure local people have the skills to engage.

• You have to take all of your team with you on this journey.

• It’s important to be honest about power imbalances and find ways of ‘holding the space differently’ which allow local people to be the vehicle for change, not an instrument.

• Accessing community power, when it is done well, has the potential for the public sector to address deep-seated issues such as poverty much more effectively and to address needs which are currently unmet.
  

From Listening to Action

The topic for this meeting was ‘How to turn listening into action, balancing the urgency of what we hear with the complexities of achieving it? ‘

The first speaker was Nick Gardham from Community Organisers, who drew on Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals as well as the Operation WiFi campaign led by Community Organisers. 

He was followed by Tony McKenzie, who is leading the Re-Connection Tour for Engage Britain, who spoke about the responses to the Hebden Bridge floods, as well as insights from the Experts by Experience panel at the charity Crisis.

We also heard from Emma Sandrey, from Co-Production Wales, who shared lessons from the practice of co-production.

Here are some of the key points made by speakers and in discussion:

• Good listening is first and foremost listening to understand, not to respond.

• Active listening is action, because it can bring about change in both the speaker and listener, and can open a doorway to a different future.  

• ·       As community organisers know, it is important to learn to work with self-interest. Not everyone will be driven by altruism, but self-interest (not selfishness) can lead to shared interest and action.

• It is important to be honest and human in our interactions. Listening well builds relationships, and that can have lasting value.

• Often an agile, iterative approach is needed, to generate a virtuous cycle of listening–action–listening. It is important to move fast when needed, and not become encumbered by bureaucratic rules.

• Every organisation should be willing to say to those they work with, ‘You are allowed to drop the ball and pick it up again’.

• Local authorities and other government bodies should sometimes be willing to step back and say, ‘What can we do to support you to bring about the change you want to see?’.  There are usually people in a local authority who want to work in that way, and others who have very different entrenched ideas.

• There is a great deal of frustration when things don’t change. We need to get better at recognising and channelling the anger in ways that can drive change. 

• For those confronted with institutions that find it hard to really listen, it is necessary to keep the pressure on, and to remember that ‘a good tactic is one that your people enjoy’ (Alinsky).

• Energy and enjoyment can come in various ways, e.g. from being part of a group with a common cause, from being heard, from a realistic sense of hope (not false optimism), from a sense of humour. High energy and enjoyable activities will encourage far more people to take part, and amplify the power of the message.

Putting relationships first: building connection in a place

This meeting, which took place on 28 April 2022, is one of a series looking at putting relationships first. The topic considered on this occasion was how to build connection, inclusion and social capital in a place. After some reflections by our thought leader for this cell, David Robinson from the Relationships Project, we heard from Nicola Baker from Social Life, which specialises in research and community projects exploring how people are affected by changes in the built environment, and Olu Alake from the Peel, a charity that has been building a connected community in Clerkenwell since 1898.

Key points made by the speakers and participants in the subsequent discussion include:

• Many businesses, from the local corner shop to supermarkets are natural ‘bumping places’ where people who would otherwise not meet rub shoulders and, although some people want quick transactions others want a chat. We need to design relationships in, not out of these places, said David Robinson.

• Social infrastructure needs to be defined widely, including the formal and informal spaces in which people meet, if we want to understand and make good places. Social Life had worked with Hawkins Brown for the GLA to look at how social infrastructure, including businesses, helps social integration in London, with this final report, Social Connection by Design: How London’s Social Spaces and Networks Help Us Live Well Together.

• They had identified a ‘social structure eco-system’, studying three areas where they asked people what they valued and where they liked to meet people like themselves and where they go to meet people who are different. Formal spaces, for example schools or a hairdressers, are where they meet the latter. Informal spaces, for example coffee bars and restaurants, are where they spend time with people like themselves. Food networks, such as Pembroke House and Homerton food network, are important not just for people who may be food poor but also those who may be relationship poor, Nicola told us.

• It’s important to map what’s there and understand the eco-system of social infrastructure, really listening to people, finding out what people value, and then to nurture it. Rural areas may be very different from urban ones, having very few corporate organisations but lots of small businesses and a lack of physical assets. Big businesses, like supermarkets, can also be very local.

• Local authorities can be important connectors between different groups and have a role in improving local social infrastructure. The GLA now have a Good Growth by Design programme, for example.

• Often places consist of different communities who do not mix at all and a conscious effort needs to be made to bring them together. In Clerkenwell, for example, Olu pointed out, there is a very high concentration of creative industries alongside housing estates with a high child poverty rate, and they never mix.

• Community hubs don’t just deliver services, they can also be a facilitator within the community to make lives better and promote well-being. This is the new strategy being adopted by the Peel, Olu told us, based on the view that ‘resources are the people, not in us’. They developed a community newspaper, with wide circulation, facilitated activities such as a street party and a basketball team that were led by the community and were what local people said they wanted to do, recruited community organisers and worked with the local businesses community, approaching them with clear asks. All their community led projects are sponsored by local business.

• It can be the connections that are made, not the service, that matter. Olu told a story of a single mother who popped into their centre and seemed to enjoy it, staying for hours, but she never came back. When he met her in the street he asked why. She said that she had met so many people at the centre with whom she had since maintained a connection that she didn’t need come back.

• This is a very different way of operating for many charities and it is important to celebrate and share the stories and find the right partners at the right time and ask them to do the right thing.

• Not all relationships are constructive and some may be cursory - it’s important to focus on creating positive connection that makes a difference in people’s lives.

Joining Forces: learning from campaigns

The topic for this meeting was: ‘What can we learn from tenacious and well-supported campaigns about joining forces for the long term?’

The speaker was Ollie Hilbery, Director of the Making Every Adult Matter (MEAM) coalition. This is a coalition of national charities, Clinks, Homeless Link, Mind and Collective Voice, representing over 1,300 frontline organisations across England. They are working together to bring about systems change in local services for people facing multiple disadvantage.

Here are some of the key points made by Ollie and by others in the discussion:

• Resources.  To manage and sustain a partnership requires resources.  This includes money (ideally core funding) but also leadership commitment from all partners, and continuity of key individuals.

• Strategic recommitment.  It is a good idea to periodically ask the question ‘Are we still up for this?’ and to have an honest discussion about that.

• Managing the ebb and flow. There can be risks when the partners drift too far apart, but also when they come too close. The partnership needs to be alert to these risks, and take action if necessary.

• Unwritten rules. There may be a partnership agreement, but some things which may not be written down must be observed. For example: no bidding against each other, no surprises.

• Size of the partnership.  A small number is best suited for intense co-operation over a long period. When the campaign requires a much larger alliance to be successful, there might be a core group and a wider membership, with a clear purpose and a strong and respected brand to hold it all together.

• Inequalities within the partnership. Larger organisations need to behave with humility, not claiming power they don’t deserve – the small organisation may be able to offer insights or specialisms which are larger partners don’t have. In a good partnership all have equal weight, regardless of size.

• Disagreements. Relationship need to be strong enough to have a falling out and get back together again.

• The inherent value of partnership.  For some the partnership is a good in itself, for others it is a necessary means to an end - many sit on a spectrum somewhere between the two.

Further reading: See this blog by Cate Newnes-Smith.

Sharing and building power: community power

This event, which took place on 29 March 2022, is one of a series under the theme of sharing and building power. It considered the question: what is community power and how can we make it happen? The main opening speaker was Hugh Rolo, from Locality, the national membership network supporting local community organisations. There were also some opening from Steve Wyler, our co-convenor, based on his research on community power in the past. Our thought leaders for the cell, Sue Tibballs and Sarah Thomas from the Sheila McKechnie Foundation, also reminded us of SMK’s practical guide to power, It’s All About Power, reflecting learning from their Power Project.

Key points made by speakers and participants included:

• Community power happens at all levels, is not finite and has driven social change for centuries. It can be expressed through individuals, for example Marcus Rashford on free school meals, or groups. Sometimes it is directed at seeking national change, sometimes local. Sometimes it is targeted around a single idea or sometimes it about place or focused on specific resources, such as community buildings, land or energy. It happens in every community.

• ‘Community power is a dandelion that grows in the cracks of other power structures’ though sometimes it is co-opted by by charities. It is incredibly difficult not to corrupt the ‘dandelion’ when this happens and charities need to work in a different way to avoid this.

• Public bodies and voluntary organisations need to be enablers of community power, not blockers, acting as facilitators and servant-leaders.

• Community power often comes alive in crises, most recently during the Covid pandemic but it has also been important in previous pandemics. History shows it is almost always suppressed because of wariness about community attempts at self-organisation.

• Community shares are a really good way to invest in social causes, and community ownership of assets including land is valuable too.

• Participatory grant-making is being used creatively to develop and harness community power.

• Sharing power is very difficult, it takes time and patience and investment in capacity building and developing leadership. Relationships are important.

• We shouldn’t lose sight of the national dimension of community power. Governments are far more interested in harnessing local community power while nationally it is closing down opportunities for campaigning and dialogue.

• There’s a need for a deep reimagining of community power and of charity.

Listening to Each Other: Inclusive Practice

The topic for this meeting was: ‘Why is it that some groups of people don’t get listened to properly, and what can be done about it?‘

The first speaker was Karin Woodley, CEO of Cambridge House in Southwark, London. She is the ‘thought leader’ for the Better Way on the theme of radical listening. 

Our second speaker was Helen Phoenix, Head of Co-Design & Improvement at the South Yorkshire Housing Association.            

Here are some of the key points made by speakers and in discussion:

• Many organisations are structurally resistant to sharing power and control. The philanthropic tradition may be well intentioned but is often paternalistic in its practice and can stigmatise groups of people. We should guard against a ‘saviour’ mentality.

• There can be a lack of cultural competence – poor diversity, at the front line of a service, as well as in management and governance, contributes to this.  We need to employ different people.

• We should be ‘person-led’ not ‘person-centred’ - inviting those who are outside to step in and take charge.

• We need to shift our efforts from an equality agenda to an equity agenda, it was suggested. This means, for example, understanding the circumstances that enable or constrain people’s lives, and taking action accordingly.  And wherever possible taking a strengths-based approach, not focusing only on the problems.

• We need to invest in small locally-rooted neighbourhood organisation, and be willing to reach out more widely, including beyond ‘professional lived experience’.

• When listening we should be aware of power dynamics.  Where there is an agenda we should consider whose agenda this is, and be willing to discard it in order to listen properly.

• We should ask rather than presume.  We recognise that many organisations suffer from ‘fear of what we are going to hear’ – being challenged to do something they feel they cannot do. Rather than closing down the conversation there may be things they can do, for example acting as a bridge to those who can respond.

• We need to practice ‘conversational leadership’ it was suggested, hosting discussions that can scale up from the personal to the system.  Those in positions of power need to become a ‘river’ allowing the ideas of others to flow.

Removing the roadblocks: bridging the divides

This event on 15 March 2022 is one of a series looking at how we can unblock the roadblocks, where we’ve heard that many people at every level can play a part in driving change by:

• Challenging and changing whatever stands in the way, including the deep-seated assumptions that can prevent us from being our best selves.

• Calling out inequalities and abuses of power, and making sure everyone can participate on their own terms.

• Assuming the best in others and seeing difference, conflict and division as an opportunity to pause, seek to understand, and find a fresh way.

But we’ve also heard that resistance to change is widespread, whether through culture, systems or practices. So how can we get better at overcoming the resistance and removing the roadblocks?

The specific question we considered at this event is how to bridge the divides. Our thought leader for removing the roadblocks, Neil Denton - a community mediator and Professor in Practice at Durham University’s After Disasters Network - kicked off the discussion by talking about the Bridge Builders Handbook, which he had compiled for the Relationships Project, focusing on this slide.

Key points made by the speaker and participants included:

• It’s important to avoid ‘enemy thinking’ and ‘othering’ and encourage instead curiosity and kindness. People on the receiving end of violence often see no choice and use words like ‘I can’t, I have to, I must’ and ‘I know what they’re thinking and what will happen’ and difference and division becomes destructive.

• Building bridges is not about starting in the middle with talk about similarity and points of connection. That way, the bridge falls down. It should begin with understanding the foundation stones of different communities - what’s really important to them, their values, needs and activities.

• Bridge builders need to listen with their eyes and their hearts, working out underlying motivations and needs and building a story that makes sense to that community. By working in this way differences then stop becoming deal breakers and become areas of curiousity. You then can identify the basic needs and values and activities on both sides and find common ground. An example of a shared activity that might result is moving away from ‘keeping out a group in order to feel safe’ toward ‘making a space safer for all our children.’ The keystone that leads to bonding must include goals that do not harm the other group.

• Community mediation is hard, exhausting work and sometimes it can feel like a ‘bucket in a drought’ but at best it can lead to ‘a million little drops that can make a difference if you carefully place them.’ It’s a messy process, working with a compass not a map - an uncertain journey which takes time and can be a cyclical process.

• Labels and language matter. For example it’s odd that people of colour are labled as a minority in this country, when they are the global majority.

• Building bridges is also building the social fabric, creating bridging as well as bonding social capital.

• Community spaces can really help build bridges, for example allotments.

• Understanding differences can unlock real power and potential.

Leadership as facilitation

In this session we focused on how leaders can operate as facilitators, rather than managers. What are the benefits, what are the difficulties?

The first speaker was Nick Sinclair from Community Catalysts.  Nick runs the Local Area Co-ordination network, and the New Social Leaders network.  He is also the ‘thought leader’ for the leadership strand of Better Way’s work.

Nick introduced our second speaker, Shelley McBride, who set up the Derby Community Parent Programme. 

The final speaker was Helen Goulden, CEO of the Young Foundation.  Her presentation drew on Young Foundation’s research, and the experience of its Leadership Academy, as well as her own personal experience as a leader.  

Here are some of the key points made by speakers and in discussion:

• A core role of established leaders can and should be to grow leadership in others.  To act in this way challenges the traditional ‘command-and-control’ leadership model, and opens up space for more people. 

• We should remember that leaders are not all a good thing – some set out to promote vested interests or sow division. Our efforts should be directed towards leaders who are willing to work for the common good and who value inclusion.  

• There is far too little investment in leadership development in the informal community sector, compared to other sectors, even though community leaders are so fundamental to social change. Many community leaders feel anxiety and unworthiness in their role, and we need to build a better system of support around them.

• We need to distinguish between management and leadership, and place more emphasis on the latter.  Most organisations, it was suggested, are ‘over-managed and under-led’.

• The term leader is an uneasy one.  It implies that someone is ‘in charge’. Perhaps we need a different word.

• A switch is needed, from efforts to support ‘leaders’ to support for ‘leadership’ – for example ‘how not to be a leader’ training, encouraging people to think of leadership as a group dynamic, not just about the individual.

• We don’t need to start from scratch. Over the last 30 years or more there have been excellent examples of leadership training, that place high value in qualities such as curiosity, collaboration, enabling others, humility, empathy, emotional intelligence.

Listening to each other - learning from Scotland’s Community Empowerment Act

The meeting considered Scotland’s Community Empowerment Act which places a responsibility on central and local government to listen, and asked ‘What can we learn from the experience so far?’

 The Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 was designed to empower community bodies through the ownership or control of land and buildings, and by strengthening their voices in decisions about public services. Provisions include:

• A set of national outcomes drawn up by government.

• Community Planning Partnerships (CPPs) for each local authority area, to produce a local outcomes improvement plan (LOIP) with 'locality plans' at a more local level for places experiencing particular disadvantage.

• CPPs are required to support community bodies to participate in all parts of the process, ‘in the development, design and delivery of plans and in review, revision and reporting of progress.’

• Participation requests: where a community body believes it could help to improve an outcome which is delivered by a public service, it is able to request to take part in a process with the public service authority to improve that outcome. 

• Measures to achieve more community ownership of land and buildings, including the right to request asset transfer from the public sector to communities.

The Community Empowerment Act is part of a longer story in Scotland, including the earlier Community Right to Buy legislation, the Christie Commission, etc, all broadly pushing in a similar direction, i.e. a shift in the role of the state towards an enabling function, empowering local communities and citizens to do more, and to encourage partnership working.

The speaker was Maddy Halliday, CEO of Voluntary Action North Lanarkshire.   

Here are some of the key points made by speakers and in discussion:

• The Act is regarded as successful in several respects. It has been widely implemented, and has produced some improvements. For example, it has led to somewhat greater investment in capacity-building at local level, and it has produced a more nuanced balancing of interests in local planning activities, with more community influence in decision-making, and a growth in participatory structures (e.g. participatory budgeting for small grants schemes).

• However, as a Caledonian University assessment found, there has been some public sector resistance, and progress has been strongest in rural areas, and less so in some urban areas. Moreover, the impact in areas experiencing disadvantage has not been as great as hoped for.

• Overall, participants in our meeting felt that this type of legislation does not necessarily advance the practice of ‘radical’ listening. A key test is what happens when those in positions of authority hear something they don’t like, or which doesn’t fit.

• For radical listening to flourish, a formal set of structures or practices, as set out in the Act, may be necessary but is not sufficient, when what is also required is a shift in culture and behaviour that allows relationships to flourish, including among people who may disagree.]

• Critically, public bodies need to signal an intention to really listen, not just to confirm or negate a hypothesis.

• A shift in culture and behaviour may require a significant and sustained investment of effort, including training in new skills.

Putting relationships first: mutual aid

The topic under discussion on 23rd February 2022 in our putting relationships first cell was mutual aid: how can we do more to support it?

David Robinson from the Relationships Project, who is our thought leader for the cell, opened the discussion by reflecting on the context and what we had learnt from the pandemic, which had demonstrated particularly in its early stages the value of mutual aid and the positivity it can bring. In the repeated cycle of lockdowns some of this had partially faded, and for some there was a feeling of exhaustion and fears about the economy had led to a sense of helplessness. But there was still learning and potential on which to build.

We then heard about the We-volution model of self-reliant groups (SRGs) from its founder Noel Mathias and Deborah Murdoch from one its groups in Greenock.

Debs explained that 7 years ago she had joined the SRG as a young mother to meet new people and was introduced to the philosophy of ‘meet-save-create’. The group built mutual trust and through these connnections she and others had learnt that they had skills which they can share and transfer, sometimes leading to the creation of new businesses or to people taking on leadership roles, helping to train other women. She had started working with Ratio, collecting data on how connections helps their groups and creates power. For her, the SRG and We-volution were ‘a movement and a family’, not an organisation.

Noel told us how the idea of SRGs had come from the practice of self-help groups in India. Their key impact is to put people, primarily women, in control of their lives, often in places or amongst people who are stigmatised in the way others, incorrectly, see them. We-volution see individuals as entrepreneurs rather than consumers - everyone is an entrepreneur, not least in the ‘enterprise of being human’. It is a relational model, he explained, where people learn to empower themselves and find their own agency, and a major shift in thinking away from ‘fixing to connecting’.

We-volution helps set up these groups but also creates peer groups from across the individual SRGs who become friends within the wider SRG family and learn from each other, with wisdom percolating through connnection. We-volution see their role as movement building, enabling access to financial support and capacity, mobilising participations and creating learning.

They’ve found SRGs and the wider movement can have huge impact in terms of systemic change - growing social capital, improving mental health and positively impacting the lives of children, he concluded. You can read a blog by Noel for a Better Way about We-volution’s work here.

We then heard from Richard Harries from the Institute for Community Studies, formerly from Power to Change. He has written a blog for a Better Way in which he invented the word ‘takepowerment’, which he said might capture the We-volution philosophy. Richard explained that the Institute for Community Studies would shortly be publishing research looking at mutual aid at home and abroad. He highlighted some lessons, including:

• they found that there was a correlation between community wealth, community owned assets and well-being.

• The location of community assets, including places to meet, and the level of grants mutual aid groups received, made all the difference.

• Levels of trust, access to digital tools, support from local authorities and the existence of faith based groups were also important.

• Working with mutual aid groups can be scary for local authorities because of the level of risk but in the pandemic they were forced to do so, with good results.

Other points made in the break out groups and plenary discussion included:

• charity and mutual aid are very different models. ‘When we do change to people , they can experience it as violence, when we allow people to do change for themselves they experience it as a liberation.’ As Mother Theresa said, ‘the poor will never forgive you for the charity you do to them.’

• Mutual aid is a relational model, one of ‘takepowerment’, with potentially huge social impact, unleashing the ‘enterprise of being human’.

• The pandemic had challenged local authorities to do things differently, and conquer their normal risk aversion, and their support for mutual aid was important.

• We heard of community based organisations which were also a form of mutual aid and where people would not be able to tell who are staff, volunteers, or local people, as they work together mutually.

• Mutual aid does not have to be small-scale and it is not new either: for example, in the 1790s it was widespread in relation to famine support and in Mumbai, when the mills closed, the women got together and set up a popadum business which was worth £250 million.

• Mutual aid is not exclusive to any demographic and it works.

• There is no one model, it’s important not to be prescriptive and it comes and goes. The use of IT, free access to community spaces, the ownership of community assets and capacity-building support are factors which can aid success.

• The key to making it work is to create the conditions in which human beings can be human.