Reflections on practical self-management: week one.

Roles, agreements, expectations…thrown into the deep-end from day one. This course will be demanding and challenging, in just the right way!

I am writing my reflections at my usual hour: the very last minute. Years of promising myself I will never do that again haven’t quite managed to shift this pattern. So instead, I will simply apologise for the stream of consciousness mode in which this will be written, and also hope that by virtue of that fact, it may be a more genuine and useful expression of “thinking out-loud”.

I had been looking forward to the start of Practical Self Management course, lead by Susan Basterfield since early summer. After years of being rather immersed in researching collaborative, self-managed networks (OuiShare primarily), I had been completely out of the loop for the last 2 years (the story of the burnout that led to me staying away will have to be for another day…). After a few months of trying to figure out the best way back in, I realised there’s only one way: head-first. As I transition out of full-time employment, into the work that matters to me and start getting involved in some projects, I couldn’t think of a better way to get up to speed than through PSM.

This first week’s focus was on roles, expectations, agreements and responsibility. After an incredibly stimulating kick-off online workshop, we had two tasks to complete. One solitary: map out our role expectation canvas. And one all-together: create our team agreement. Here are some of the learnings for me this week:

One person; many roles

One of my favourite bits of using the lens of roles over jobs is that each person can hold many roles, and that these are as dynamic as a person is. To me this is a key way in which people are able to bring their “whole selves” to work. So when I sat down to populate my own role canvas it felt really intuitive to me to realise there are two roles I would want to step into: the first is the most obvious, that of the the learner, the curious, intrepid Explorer venturing out to discover new things and experiment, the one that will soak up all the knowledge and learn from the experiences of others and ask all the questions. This role was easy to write; we are on a course and all fill that role, both for ourselves and within and for the group.

The second, what I’ve called the Mirror, is all about reflection. When I was in this “space” a few years ago I remember all the rhetoric of transformation, personal growth and so on. And I ‘got it’ its importance on an intellectual level…but I’m not sure I would have got it got it, without the challenging past few years where that side of things became front and centre for me, and now colours everything I do. I knew that self-managed working environments can act as an incredibly powerful catalysts (if one is open to it) for greater self-awareness and growth. These are spaces where you are almost inevitably confronted with yourself, your limits, strengths, weaknesses, triggers, unhealthy coping mechanisms… And I knew going in that this was one of the things I wanted to get out of the course, and that I would go in with a very clear intention of being curious towards myself and my reactions. That is the mirror to the self. This is important work for my own development, but I also think it can be incredibly valuable to see others doing it, as this can help lift a mirror to yourself; to, in a way, see yourself in someone else’s self-reflection.

But, for me, this mirror has two side: one side points in, the other is an offering outward. To be a mirror is to offer reflection, not in the sense of assessment or judgement or critique, but of pure observation and thoughtful reflection. It is to tell someone what you see, so that maybe they can see themselves in that light. So often we don’t have the time or the perspective to be able to look at ourselves — often judging ourselves far more harshly than we do others, or fully unaware of how we are coming across leading to misinterpretation and frustration. The times that others have held mirrors up for me, to help me see myself as they did, were incredibly powerful, and in such a hands-on learning environment I believe that is a value I would like to try to bring. And very much hope to receive.

The expectation divide

To my mind, in a group like this, there are 4 roles (reminder, roles, not people): the explorer (all us peers learning together), the leaders (the same people, but emerging in moments of leadership in certain moments on certain tasks), the mirrors (a role open to every person, facilitators included) and the guides (these are our hosts, guest speakers and facilitators). The final part of the role expectation canvas is to map the expectation that each role hold of you and you hold of them. It seems simple and clear enough…so much so that I wasn’t expecting the ‘aha’ moment I experienced.

I wrote the expectations that other explorers would have of me, and at first wrote this:

To contribute. To be inquisitive. To bring my own experiences as learnings. To listen, actively. To hold space and to be accepting of their needs and circumstances. To do what I say I will do.

All flowed fairly easily: great, I thought, onto the next! And then I started to write the expectations I had of others:

To contribute, be inquisitive, to offer their own experiences as learnings. To push me in my thinking and in my practice, to challenge me and my assumptions with kindness and without judgement, but also without fear…

I re-read the two and all of a sudden it hit me: We are peers, why would my expectations of them be any different than their expectations of me? I realised I was expecting them to push me more than I was expecting them to ask me to do the same. So I realised I would have to go back and find something that would work both ways; written both in the first person and the third, something that I was just as comfortable to give as I was to ask. This is what I landed on:

To contribute, be inquisitive, to offer our own experiences as learnings. To listen, actively. To hold space. To push each other in our thinking and in our practice, to challenge each other and our assumptions with kindness and without judgement, but also without fear. To hold each other to account. To do what we say we will. To be accepting if someone cannot give as much as they would like. To seek workable solutions, together.

Responsibility is taken, not given.

Integral to the discussion of roles, expectations and team agreements is the issue of accountability and responsibility.

In our call, Susan made a really important distinction that has sat with me as I review my own accountability over this week (I am paraphrasing but hope I capture the idea):

Responsibility is not something you give, it is something you take.*

So as I sit in my mirror role and look at myself and my own behaviours this week I realise one of the key challenges was to hold myself to account. I admit, I was caught a little unprepared: I was not quite aware of the work that would be needed, I had not made enough time and it resulted in me not being able to focus on the tasks with the care and attention I would have wanted.

I know this will be a constant struggle for me, mostly because I am still very much in a full-time job, as well as working freelance along-side. But key learning number one from this week is: plan ahead, schedule time in my calendar for deep, focussed work, prioritise this (which means giving up some other things — bye, bye lindy hop) and be honest with myself and my fellow PSMers when I start to feel overwhelmed. This is and will be a difficult one for me, as I have a tendency to want to do everything and people-please. But here is hoping that by being aware of it going in, by being honest with myself and my group, I will at least catch the pattern as I start to fall into it and course-correct.

I am grateful, going into week two, to know that I am going into it with a group of inspiring, passionate and committed people — and it makes me realise the power of the group in holding you accountable not by telling you off, but by inspiring you to want to step up.