These posts focus on prioritising human connection, trust, and authentic relationships as central to all interactions in community building and system change. It promotes relational ways of working that move beyond transactional relationships and recognise all interactions as a many-to-many system.
Key elements include open communication, building psychological safety where people feel comfortable to express themselves without fear, and fostering humility and curiosity to welcome diverse perspectives and overcome traditional hierarchies.
Journal
Collaboration, systems change and relational working
Social change and personal transformation go hand in hand
When we step into “different”, more emergent ways of working and being, there is a process we are stepping into ourselves as individuals as well. This process is an ongoing practice that inevitably wi...
One cause of Difficult Conversations
A key shift in moving towards more relational practice, referred to in threads running through many of these blog pieces, is building trust and a shared sense of psychological safety. One early way of...
Storytelling
Do you remember what your favourite book was as a child? Or perhaps your current favourite film or TV programme? My favourite book, as a child, was Alice in Wonderland. A well-read, well-worn book th...
A perspective on System Change
Currently, a phrase very ‘of the moment’ – highly desirable to get engaged in…and a complex concept with varying degrees of success…yet, perhaps, a victim of its own popularity? As with many popular c...
The Art and Craft of Listening
“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand, they listen with the intent to reply” - Stephen Covey. As a world, we focus more on how to speak than how to listen. It happens all around us....
Who else did we speak to in 2023?
63 people shared who they connect to the most in their work, representing a snapshot of connected life in Plymouth. https://wordart.com/5z5h5h8wx5m9/plymouth-network We shared considerable frustrat...
What do we mean by 'the system'?
While working on the Belong in Plymouth programme, we often found ourselves talking about ‘the system’ when we were discussing how things currently work and how we might effect change in our city. But...
Psychological safety and trust
Background In the winter of 2023-24, in my role as Learning Partner for the project, I interviewed 11 of the 18 ‘core team’ members of Belong in Plymouth. A common theme was psychological safety and ...
Personal Development within an Emergent Programme
Friends and family frequently ask, "So, what actually is an 'emergent programme'?" and "What does that actually mean for you day to day?" This post aims to answer those questions by sharing my experie...
Navigating uncertainty and emergence
Uncertainty and emergence have characterized all aspects of the Belong in Plymouth journey. From the time we wrote our successful funding bid, things were kept pretty open. The core team wanted to all...
Relational ways of working
Building Trust, Connection, and Authentic Relationships As time is given to the understanding of the context and in the building of relationships, this starts to push us into a way of working that is...
The areas we can be certain about
There is a long legacy of work that the Healthy Communities Together programme builds on. This written and embodied knowledge and experience is held in all of us. We know it as individuals, as colleag...