I have joked for years that there are only seven, dear, beloved readers of this blog. Well, there are more than just you seven – you know who you are — but you have at least a little bit of company! If you are a regular reader, post a comment so I can add you to the list of the sacred seven!
This post from Carol Kinsey Goman from 2014 still resonates with me. Goman shares how we use our body language to impact our intentions. I am always amazed at how some people make major power plays with their bodies and I always wonder how intentional they are.
While some of these 10 tips don’t fly via Zoom (have you tried to sing together? It’s a mess!) they are still a good reminder, starting with breathing.
10 Simple And Powerful Body Language Tips For 2014 – Forbes.
7) When you want your team to collaborate, start marching.
Jenny’s reflections apply to far more than learning contexts! It connects with the recent post on Stewardship.
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So a key aspect of support is fostering a sense of self-reliance and this might require some ‘de-schooling’. It gets away from the ‘what can we do to support you’ approach, to ‘what can you do to support yourselves’ approach. The support is still there but it takes a different form.What would this mean in practice? Some of the following thoughts come to mind:
- Explicit, up front discussion about the meaning of ‘support’ in these terms.
- Clarity about and discussion of expectations
- Provision of an environment which is ‘true’ to these principles such as described by the factors we have used in our research on emergent learning
- Provision of tools that maximize the power of individuals to manage their own learning
- Modelling and demonstration of self-organisation by the course conveners
- Standing back and letting the learners get on with it, i.e. letting go of control
And perhaps the last point is where the shift might be difficult to make. So much of a traditional course is based on authority and control. Learners will not learn to self-organise unless we ‘let go’, even if that means letting go of traditional ways of thinking about learner support.
via Learner support in MOOCs. An alternative perspective | Jenny Connected.
So much has been written about the stresses and upheavals of the pandemic. I am saturated and, if f truth be told, I’m mostly avoiding reading these things. (My solution? Bookmarked a ton of them to ‘read later!” Ha!)
On one hand, the changes we’ve had to make have both punished us and created new insights, practices and opportunities. On the other hand, we are so friggen worn out, that reflecting and acting on those insights seems to be a dream at best.
For me the call is to lie fallow. To rest my mind and my body. This is nothing novel: I am not alone. Like a piece of precious farmland, there was need for recovery. No disturbing the soil and all its amazing underground microbes and insects, making the soil appear at rest, while still vibrantly alive.
I realized I was REALLY worn out and took the summer off to make some space. My pull towards letting my professional work lie fallow for a while was to understand what I want to say “yes” to in the future. Reorient my purpose, maybe even hone it down a bit.
It felt good. Then the Summer spilled into the Fall and then Winter and I was still on pause. I had no pull to return to my previous pace. I started playing around by saying I was on sabbatical, but that has an academic connotation to it. And, at age 63 and as someone who HAS saved for retirement, I could not exclude the possibility that I was done with being a more-than-full-time-workaholic consultant. Who knows? It is an open question.
What has emerged is that this resting period is a dance between listening for my purpose, and a good dose of creative destruction – that space of stopping things, of purposely destroying things to understand something deeper than a well-honed practice of my professional work. Sure, I can facilitate. Sure, I can help with deep strategic work. But what is happening at a deeper level? Is the work actually changing anything? Getting something significant done? Or is it just more consultant process? Stopping became a recurrent theme.
For a long time I’ve resisted the call to lie fallow. First there was the scarcity mindset (“I have to keep earning!” “If I stop, I will disappear!”) Then the pandemic produced a surge of need around warm, human electronic mediated connection and work. We all responded. Now those skills that I’ve honed since the late 90’s are well distributed. There are many wonderful, particularly YOUNGER practitioners to whom people can turn.
Now I have said “YES” to a rest. It is already paying me back.
That last one goes to purpose. What do I want to plant in my fallow field? In the spaciousness of that field, I need to cultivate a better understanding what I mean by “a space of expansive learning,” “substantive change,” and the “who I want to work with.”
One thing that I’ve learned more deeply over the pandemic months is to ask myself “how will I know if I am making progress on my purpose?” What indicators will help me reflect, notice and iteratively move forward?
There are a bunch of things that I’m now turning to/revisiting to make progress on my purpose. “Braiding Sweetgrass” by Robin Wall Kimmerer. “Learning to Make a Difference” by Bev and Etienne Wenger-Trayner. “Initiating and Inviting Generative Change: entry and contracting for emergent outcomes in results driven organizations” by Tova Averbuch. “Burnout: the Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle” by Amelia and Emily Nagoski. Browsing is probably a better word than reading. Like wind blowing across the fallow fields. I’m building a list of people I want to reach out to when the field is ready to be planted.
What is happening to your fields? Join a conversation Acute Incite is hosting about pausing on March 28th – details here. And look for a follow up post with some broader reflections on how we work, how we might rethink work interspersed with fallow periods.
Ready for a Monday Video? Time to HEAR climate change.
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