Earlier this week, I co-facilitated a session on Courageous Conversations with Ali Gardner. One of the recurring themes on the course is about situations where you have a difficult message to convey and how you can turn these into a courageous conversation – avoiding the information dump in favour of a meaningful exploration of a sensitive issue. To help with this, we introduced course participants to Ali’s me-you-us framework, which she developed as part of her Research in Practice briefing paper on difficult conversations (out soon). The framework encourages you to build an empathic connection with the other person by thinking through how you can best have the conversation and what the other person’s perspective is likely to be. What might be going on for them during the conversation? How can you ensure they feel they have agency and dignity?

Our course participants tried this out in their practice and came back with lots of fascinating insights. They talked about how going through the framework prior to a conversation helped them clarify what was important to them. And by extending their perspective to the other person, they changed how they engaged with that person, offering reassurance and ‘relational certainty’. Connecting with empathy isn’t always easy, particularly when the stakes are high and powerful emotions are surfacing. In these situations, a framework like me-you-us can really help prepare not just for how to convey a difficult message but to turn this into a courageous conversation that deepens relationships. That’s why we thought we’d share the framework with you. So, what kinds of conversations do you usually have when you have to give difficult messages?

If you’re eager to have more courageous conversations – whether in your work or home life – then click the button below to find out more about our course and how it could help you. Ali and I will start with our next cohort in January.

This blog has been written by Rob Hunter from Leicester Ageing Together

I’ve spent most of my professional career engaged with community education. One reason why I see added value in framing this as social pedagogy is the way that the latter works equally across work with individuals (through, for example, the Diamond Model), work with groups (the whole person’s associative groupings) and, potentially at least, with communities in its determination to address structural inequalities and social justice.

Organisations focusing on the individual often underplay the individual’s associative groupings and their lives in community. Organisations focusing on group work often lose sight of both the individual and the wider community. For organisations focusing on community development, the focal task dominates, sometimes at the expense of the individuals and smaller groups involved. For organisations committed to a social pedagogy way of working there is equal weight given to all three dimensions.

Social pedagogues and community educators might both claim strong affinity with community development but I would argue that this needs to be made more explicit in both cases. So, some related thoughts on community and community development.

David Clark conceives of community as an archery target. On the outside circle lies ‘community as people’, the generalised language used by politicians and service providers when talking about ‘them out there’. Next circle in, Clark places ‘community of place’ – the bricks and mortar, the roads and shops of neighbourhood. Further in still comes ‘community as activity’, where people are at least doing things together whether in communities of place, in communities of interest, or in communities of identity. One circle further in, Clark places ‘community as relationships’. He quotes Toennies who suggests that human-scale relationships are usually found in the village and seldom in the large organisation, institution or city – but that Clark’s own experience questions this: the village can be an oppressive place to be different in, sometimes riven with cliques, whereas the system of the large organisation can be stewarded to enable its members genuinely to connect with each other and feel part of something bigger.

So far, on his journey towards the Bullseye, Clark suggests there has been a degree of objectivity in the definitions. One can even map relationships. But next circle in, he talks of ‘community as morale’ where the intangible of ‘feelings’ comes into it: ’community spirit’, ‘a sense of community’. He quotes the American sociologist Robert McIver’s 3Ss of community: a place where the individual feels Significant, where they feel physically and psychologically Secure, and where they feel Solidarity. There is a snag here, however. Members of the EDL, white supremacist, ultranationalist organisations and membership of drug gangs also can experience such a feeling of belonging, of community.

And so Clark moves to what he sees as ‘the heart of the matter’: community as ideology. Here community as morale is transformed into a universal value system: where the value of significance, security and solidarity is pursued, not only for those in the community but those living in other communities, in other systems. And he highlights the value of true interdependence. He talks of ‘building community’, of developing a sense of the 3Ss within and between communities, of community development as ‘opening systems up to each other’ with the community development worker as one who works with each of two systems (for example the ‘system’ of young, bored teenagers hanging out on the streets and that of local adults, fearful and hostile to them, calling the police with a dead-handed frequency) to help them listen to each other, stay engaged when the easiest way may be to pull apart, to communicate, to understand each others’ needs, strengths and perspectives and to co-produce solutions – the community worker as Clark’s connecting system.

In that much social pedagogy practice in UK currently is in work with young people and more specifically with looked after children whether in or leaving care, how might these thoughts on community-building be relevant? Three arenas or ‘systems’ come to mind:

• that of the individual young person, perhaps a care leaver, attempting to find out who they are, who they want to become, build their own community around them and connect to other communities as they struggle for independence;
• that, particularly for those working in youth work projects or residential care, between those ‘organisations as systems’ and the systems of the local neighbourhood which can be aggressive or supportive depending on both the relationships fostered between them and whether they see themselves as ‘together’ or ‘other’; and
• that within our own organisations; framing and building them as learning communities, as places in which staff and young people experience a sense of significance, security and solidarity and model that in the organisation’s relationships with others.

Every task, in David Clark’s thinking, has two dimensions: the focal task –i.e. the purpose of whatever we’re doing, be it developing an activities programme or going shopping in the local cash and carry. – and the communal task – the need to take the opportunity of building community as we carry out the focal task. We can carry out any focal task in an instrumental way – or we can use it consciously as an opportunity to strengthen people’s experience of the 3Ss e.g. asking a marginalised member to help you or delegating to a particular subgroup. In our increasingly atomised and divided society it is important for those of us in social work, social care, formal and informal education to help each other and young people both experience community and develop the skills of building it. If we leave it to divisive and destructive groups alone to meet the human need for community and belonging, then we’re leaving those who are most disadvantaged to face a stark choice between isolation or being recruited by those who prey on this human need. We too miss out on the opportunity to release the potential of people acting collaboratively and collectively as a massive social good in itself.

Endnote: I’ve recently been working more with older people in community and residential settings and believe the thinking above is just as relevant to their lives and to this work. I’ve also been introduced to Human Learning Systems thinking and practice and found much rich and complementary thinking here too, in its focus on the whole human being (whether young person or staff) in their associative grouping, on management as learning, and on system stewardship. Perhaps the concepts of community-building and community development have something additional to offer?

Human Learning Systems and Relational Leadership

Tuesday 11/10/22 – 10am-12pm

We warmly invite you to join our next virtual event for the social pedagogy community. If you’ve been connected with us for a while, you’ll have noticed a few references to Human Learning Systems, which offers a pioneering approach to changing the way public service works to make it more human and adaptable.

Public service, and other purposeful work for the public good, has become fragmented, dehumanising and wasteful under the influence of targets and markets. Human Learning Systems is being created by workers, managers and leaders who are fed up of the blindness this creates to the complex reality of people’s lives. It has a lot in common with social pedagogy – most importantly to enable people and communities to flourish.

From 10-14 Oct, HLS Week 2022 will bring together people like yourself to share, learn and celebrate all things HLS like never before through webinars, discussion, storytelling and networking! Designed for all those who want to change the way public service works, the week will highlight the potential for taking a more human and collaborative approach and adopting system-wide learning to achieve better outcomes. The events are hosted by our HLS Collaborative partners at Collaborate CIC.

Obviously, we felt that this calls for an event on social pedagogy! Together with Lowis Charfe from UCLan, we’re co-hosting a 2-hr webinar on 11 Oct about HLS and Relational Leadership designed with the social pedagogy community in mind. In this in-depth learning session, we’ll explore how Human Learning Systems can support current and potential leaders who want to place values, relationships and learning at the heart of their team culture. By connecting HLS with insights from social pedagogy, we’ll offer some practical ideas on how to bring Human Learning Systems to life. You’ll hear from some of the organisations involved in our peer learning community about their experiences. You’ll also have an opportunity to explore the questions you might have and make new connections with others in the field. We hope to see you for this special event!

HLS Week – A week of learning, sharing & reflection   

Whether you are new to HLS or a seasoned practitioner, or starting to experiment with the approach, the Human Learning Systems National Event Week (10th-14th October) is for you. The week will kick off with a ‘Welcome Event’ hosted by Lord Victor Adebowale, with speakers sharing the story of HLS so far and why it matters to them. We also have a session about how we can work with other movements, such as TLAP,  to make more progress with the change we want to see. Presentations and webinars will set the scene and show what Human Learning Systems can look and feel like in practice.
In the next three days, we dive deeper into stories of change, how organisations and individuals can practically begin their HLS journey, what it really takes to shift systems, and our collective challenges and successes. We also begin to identify the outstanding questions we are holding about HLS principles and practice, such as how to ensure that HLS centres equity, how HLS sits alongside community-led approaches and the role HLS can play in the NHS. 
The final day will see more opportunities to network and establish partnerships across our system and to share resources with those who want to take this work further in their own lives and contexts. We’ll aim to launch new HLS Peer Learning Communities and will close with our HLS Celebration Event, bringing together contributors from the week’s events to share their learning and reflect.

Welcome to Berlin – HLS as an inspiration for Public Service in Berlin and Beyond

Thursday, 13 Oct, 9.30-11.00

In this German-speaking session we-re running together with Berlin-based MitWirkung – an organisation supporting families affected by poverty – we will introduce you to HLS examples from social care in Great Britain, how it fits with work at MitWirkung in Berlin and explore together with you how HLS could help other professionals in Germany to create systems that work better for everyone.

How Can HLS Help Us to Keep the Promise in Scotland?

Using HLS approaches to explore accountability and support a systems approach to making The Promise a practical reality

Thursday, 13 Oct, 14.00-15.30

Scotland has an ambition ‘to be the best place in the world to grow up’ so that children are ‘loved, safe, and respected and realise their full potential’. In October 2016, the First Minister made a commitment that Scotland would “come together and love its most vulnerable children to give them the childhood they deserve.” This became The Promise.

Join Iriss and ThemPra to explore how HLS could support organisations to make The Promise a practical reality. We will be looking at how HLS can support learning as accountability at team, organisation and system level and making space to explore ideas for practical HLS framed experiments in this area. An event for those working in/towards making The Promise a reality, who already have a basic knowledge of HLS through previous work or attending an intro session during HLS week.