I'm an onion.

Last year, as part of my ongoing CPD, I asked people what they thought a statue of me should hold in its hand (see https://thirdsectorexpert.blogspot.com/2022/07/molotov-cocktails-jelly-babies-onions.html for the full story...)

And whilst some of the suggestions people made caught me by surprise (such as a Molotov cocktail!), a couple of people suggested an onion.

And one of them added an explanatory note as to why they thought an onion best symbolised me: 

- It has many layers

- It has a heart

- It has a tough skin 

- It is an essential part of the majority of recipes 

- It represents good food and people coming together

- It is versatile 

- If you give it care and attention it becomes sweet and mild (although I'd like to think I'm sweet and mild to begin with?)

- It is a vegetable that is important to all sectors of society

And so I think I'm quite pleased if people see me as an onion.

But what vegetable do people see you as?

The blind leading the blind? (is it any wonder people are confused about social enterprise structures when national sector bodies' advice is lacking or wrong..?)

Some of you will know that I seem to have a reputation in relation to legal structures and social enterprise. Based on ongoing research and evidences I try to source about all the claims, experiences, and realities made about them, I:

• get asked to deliver masterclasses for university business schools' MBAs on the subject;
• am the lead adviser in some national bodies' mentoring programmes on the subject;
• 'accidentally' changed CIC legislation so it stopped forcing the governance of social enterprises to act in ways that were contrary to the sectors' values;
• am commissioned to create resources and train sector advisers on the subject;
• have created a simple framework that people say is a great way to help them better approach starting to think through/navigate the options available to them;
• help unpick and restructure social enterprises who realise they've incorporated with the wrong form (which they usually picked on the basis of an 'expert advisors' encouragement); 
• have been subject to personal attacks, and investigations by regulators, because I've spoken out about when research and evidence seems to contradict the policy and direction of some sector bodies'...

But whichever of the above guises I'm working in, people usually have the same starting point of feeling "confused by it all" - and after recently sitting in on a national webinar designed to help social entrepreneurs best think about how they choose a legal form, I'm worried that future social enterprises will be in even bigger messes.

Over the course of about 20 minutes the lead adviser of a national social enterprise sector body revealed that:

1. they were unaware of how many options there currently are that a social enterprise can be created with (14);
2. they didn't understand why Companies limited by guarantee, despite being the most popular choice for social enterprises to always adopt, are able to be recognised as legitimate 'social enterprises' (Companies Act 1986);
3. they weren't able to state what the potential benefits of having exempt charitable status might be if you were a Community Co-operative Society (less tax on trading surpluses, greater ability to apply for grants than a limited company, business rate reliefs); 
4. and that they didn't fully understand what the rules around 'Persons with Significant Control' were, which apply to all companies and CICs, and form part of the legal statutory rules which a social enterprise would have to comply with if they chose this form.

On the basis that you don't know what you don't know, and the questions people brought with them to this session highlighted that the lead adviser's knowledge about the scope, range, and detail of what relates to the subject of legal forms for social enterprises seemed to be more limited that they realised it was, is the sector increasingly becoming "the blind leading the blind"..?

How, as freelancers, we sabotage ourselves without realising it

Being self-employed/freelance is often presented as an aspirational lifestyle: with freedom from bosses, the ability to choose more of the work that makes us happy, greater flexibility to work when and how we prefer, and such like.

I'd written elsewhere about some of the downsides to this model of employment (no sick pay, precarious income, etc), but this time I wanted to explore a possible blind spot that many of us haven't thought about which means that we're likely going to trip ourselves up without realising it.

As freelancers and sole traders, we live and work in a bubble.

You may be aware of the risk of 'bubbles' from things you've read about social media: the algorithms show you more of what you like, and so it creates an echo chamber of your own exiting preferences and biases.

And in being self-employed/freelancing, that bubble can easily start to form without our realising it - unlike our salaried counterparts, we don't have any line management, regular appraisal, or desk buddies. These are the people and systems who might help otherwise highlight potential self-limiting beliefs or emergent prejudice within ourselves before they become a major problem.

In the absence of such 'relatively safe' professional challenge to our thinking, it becomes very easy and automatic to start to entrench bad habits and practices, missing opportunities, and not recognising options we otherwise might and should.

Fortunately, the way to mitigate this risk is actually quite easy - we should form and become part of groups that will allow us to share our stories of "is it just me...?", and equally have people who we can trust as our peers, constructively challenge us over our thinking, attitudes, and approaches.

Whilst this may sound like a 'nice to do', surely it's better to identify and 'air any dirty laundry' with friends in private, than publicly with our clients or HMRC, etc?

And the good news is that such places already freely exist - Freelance Heroes, Being Freelance, IAF meetups, etc are all good starting places to start to create ways to have sanity checks for yourself, and to start to create 'accountability buddies': people who can take the place of a missing line-manager in helping you make sure you're actually getting on with those things that you keep saying/meaning to, but somehow never seem to get done... 

It's that time to get nostalgic again

So, here we are - it's the end of another year, and traditionally a time to reflect and reminisce about the period that's just been since the last time we did this: what we've learnt, what we wished we'd known sooner, and the hopes we'll take with us into 2023...

Previously, I've approached this through looking at what generated the most interest/uproar across my social media channels, but this year I had the opportunity to spend a morning with fellow facilitators as part of an informal process with Paul Kelly and Caroline Jessop of IAF England and Wales fame.

Everyone in the session all seemed to agree how well structured it was, and how expertly guided we felt we'd been (possibly with the exception of Paul's ever-changing Christmas jumpers), and whilst others will be sharing on their own blogs, etc their views of it, I wanted to capture the reflections I took from it about myself and my business over the year that's been 2022, here: 

CPD

I realise that the most beneficial things I've found this year with regards to my own professional CPD have been:

1) getting interviewed for various people's podcast series and radio shows* - it's a fascinating way to reflect on what I think I know, how I came to acquire this 'special knowledge', how it's influenced and continues to influence how I think, and so much more...

2) start a TikTok channel - like with interviews, it's such a wholly different way of having to approach how you think you know what you do; and with so much encouragement to indulge your creative impulses, I can see why some people are so deep into this social media channel...

NETWORKING

We often think of (formal) networking as a semi-regular forum or group we check-in with either virtually or in person. And reflecting on my involvement with several over the year has reminded me how important they are as a source of mutual and emotional encouragement.

However, it also struck me that as valuable as such support is, it's usually with the same people (otherwise it wouldn't work) - what I've also experienced this year are a couple of 'exceptional events' (including being asked to draft an opinion piece on why CICs may have been the worst thing to have ever happened for the social enterprise movement, by an international media agency). These generated new opportunities to meet and speak with people who would normally be outside of my circles, and only with hindsight do I realise how reactionary I was in exploring these (note to self: be more organised and methodical next time!). 

And whilst these new contacts are exciting, they're as equally scary (owing to the pay grade that some of these people operate at!), so knowing that there's a community I can check-back in with for some encouragement and assurance around them is important also... 

WALKING

The session concluded with trying to look forwards, having now looking back - and generating an analogy for what we want to achieve in our business over the coming year.

Mine turned out to represent how I've always tried to approach my professional ways of working - walking:

- it's intentional; is recognised in supporting our well-being; allows us to explore new places; and has moments of serendipity in the people we encounter as we travel in this way.

- But of course, there's also a balance to this in that walking also always includes a risk that we might get lost, or find ourselves ill-prepared for rapidly changing circumstances (such as it starting to rain, but when we left it was sunny so we didn't bring a coat or brolly...)

Overall, it was a morning I'm glad I invested in with my peers, and will definitely be looking out for opportunities to again when the end of the years start to roll around again in 2023, 2024, 2025...

* podcasts and radio shows I've appeared on this year:

We're not selling shoes - https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/6-adrian-ashton-and-focusing-on-relationships-not/id1620033728?i=1000558069656 

Facilitation stories - https://facilitationstories.libsyn.com/fs42-designing-the-space-for-others-to-learn-in-conferences 

and Facilitation Stories: FS50 Wrapping Up the Year Reflecting on Our Meetups 

Connections radio - https://wiz-media.co.uk/2022/12/08/the-business-of-surviving-flooding/ 

saturday night in front of the TV

Those of us of a 'certain age' (older generations) will remember a time before digital and streaming TV services - a time when people would would sit together with their families and friends, with their teas on their laps, watching Saturday night TV together.

We'd laugh and cheer together as contestants and teams undertook increasingly wacky challenges, all of which were compared by a comedian (or would-be comedian...) before an amassed studio audience.

And at the end of the show, the compare/host would turn to the camera to wish us all a good night and wave their farewells as the credits starting to roll and the theme tune played.

It was a shared experience between us at home and those in the studio - we felt connected not just with our immediate family and friends who we'd shared the experience of watching the TV together with, but also a wider kinship with the audience all those miles away: linked by the act of someone waving goodbye to all of us at the same time.

The formality of the goodbyes and physical act of their waving also gave us a sense of closure to that experience. We knew it was concluded and we could go off to the next thing without any FOMO.

And it's why when I've led a group workshop or seminar on a video call, you'll see me grinning and waving at you all as you press the red button to leave the session - I'm trying to help maintain some of these practices I experienced and appreciated whilst growing up, in attempting to contribute to us remaining as 'human' as possible in our relationships with each other in an increasingly digital and physically dispersed world of working and living. After all, if we'd met IRL and were seeing each other off at a train station or driving away, we'd think nothing of waving as we left each others' company, so why not try and keep the habit when we're on screen together?

(but if you're meeting me in a more straightforward meeting on line, don't worry - you won't see me suddenly start to manically grin and wave at you, but rather raise my hand in a Star Trek Vulcan wish. More on that in a previous blog post here:

https://thirdsectorexpert.blogspot.com/2021/08/aping-spock-why-you-see-me-go-star-trek.html)

Faith in facilitation

Amongst other things, I sometimes support clients and groups in the guise of a facilitator – which has led to my hosting a monthly meetup call of similar people to share stories and encouragements, and also having been part of the internationally acclaimed IAF England and Wales hybrid conference earlier this year.

But more recently, it led to a group of facilitators coming together to risk of being heretical and incurring divine retributions by openly talking about Faith – how our approaches to working with clients who are rooted in it may differ from those that don’t; if we profess a personal faith as facilitators, how this impacts on our work; and generally trying to avoid being blasphemous…https://www.meetup.com/iaf-facilitators-and-friends/events/289026521/

 

Don’t mention God?

A quick round of ‘hello, how do you do?’s identified that most people in this conversation professed a Christian faith of some type – although many are actively seeking ways to ‘deconstruct’ this in crossing traditional boundaries of denominations and traditions, to explore how their faith remains relevant and pertinent to the issues we face today as individuals and society.

This realisation that we were then having a conversation in something of an ‘echo chamber’ in not having a wider diversity of beliefs and non-beliefs gave us pause to wonder if this had happened because we’d self-selected ourselves on the basis of the session being explicitly around this theme? And in turn, that led to our realisation that in being part of a wider body of facilitators, we don’t actually know how far faith is or isn’t a part of our shared cultural identity within this community of practice – and that we never ask each other about this: perhaps because it’s a legally protected characteristic, and so we fear accidentally falling foul of the law?

  

Faith vs. Secular

In further establishing that we’d all had experiences of facilitating groups of people who shared an identity rooted in faith, and well as those that didn’t, we mulled over what different this makes (if any?) through a sharing of some of our experiences and stories together (all of which were safely anonymised and sanitised):

• Faith groups will have values that are more visible and influencing on their decision making and how they reflect – such groups can therefore sometimes expect that their facilitator “sings from same hymn sheet” in having enough commonality with those values to offer them an assurance over how the facilitation process will be managed and delivered. But this risks facilitation losing its neutrality (part of the defining nature of the process). 
• People draw on faith for personal security, and informing their identity in ways that go beyond and further than a person would view their personal relationships with their (paid) jobs – and as facilitation should push people into spaces that they may not always be comfortable in, there needs to more time spent in careful planning to ensure sufficient psychological safety has been created for the group. 
• The ‘maturity’ or extent to which a faith community has engaged with wider cultural norms and practices in society around them were felt to be a key factor in how facilitation processes could be best designed with them – for example, if people feel their theology is being threatened, they can quickly withdraw and disengage from a process. But if they have already been part of conversation and debate that has allowed them to critically reflect on their beliefs, creeds, and dogmas, then they will be more able to constructively engage with a more open facilitation process.

Godly Gaffes

In following the adage “to err is human, to forgive Divine”, we also sought to explore what learning we might draw out from where we’d worked with faith groups and things hadn’t concluded with them in the way we had anticipated at the outset…

• Having a starting point in a process of trying to create the perfect (church) community was felt to be an ‘own goal’ with hindsight: in this story it was only as the agreed process proceed and started to become unstuck in places was it realised that the point of a church isn’t to be perfect: it should always allow space and opportunities for growth (a core tenant of all beliefs). 
• Having an assumption that the outcome of a process will be able to be adopted and acted on was another ‘gaffe’ shared –facilitation often crates new outcomes that existing systems may not exist to accommodate. This can be challenging enough for secular groups, but as faith communities can often be culturally steeped in maintaining and celebrating traditional practices, this makes introducing and managing change more difficult for them.

Helpful hints for facilitators

In trying to draw some points of learning from these stories that we might use as ‘initial hints and tips’ that we might share with a fellow facilitator who is thinking about/starting to work with a faith community, 2 key insights were agreed: 

• think of everyone in a faith community as a volunteer (even if they’re paid) - the culture of faith means their organisations will be closer in feel to community groups and smaller charities than formal organisations. 
• be prepared to practice grace in terms of patience and acceptance: although issues that arise when working with faith groups are usually similar to those with secular groups, they are more explicit and manifest to greater degree owing to faith being a bigger part of people’s personal identity than their job is.

Faithful facilitators 

Finally, we turned inwards to ourselves as facilitators to begin to consider the influence that any faith we profess might/should have in informing how we work.

This identified that for some, we saw our work as our ‘calling’, whilst others saw their role as such in a more pragmatic way to work – a means to a (greater) end. Understandably, depending on which position you hold, your response to the question of “would you ever turn work down because of your beliefs” drew contrasting responses that might be expected.

Those for whom work is more than just a job were more explicit and open about how this informs their choice over clients they choose to work with. But briefly exploring this from faith-based perspectives and the scriptures of different beliefs, highlighted various examples of where a person of faith deliberately chose to put themselves, and work, in both places and with people that their wider community of faith might not otherwise feel comfortable with nor appropriate.

 

Heading to the promised land

In seeking to draw conclusions from the conversations, it was apparent that we’d probably created more questions than we’d been able to reach a consensus in answering. But this in turn prompted some in the call to want to keep exploring these ideas and themes further – so they’re now off finding times to convene to start to explore and design what/when that might look like. If you want to remain updated as to when more details about it are confirmed, please contact me and I’ll start a list….

 

when leaders are struck by doubt, it's their whole organisation and communities that suffer, not just them..

Locality (the sector body who support and advocate for local community organisations of all types) recently invited me to be part of the line up for their ongoing 'lunch and learn' programme, which sees leaders of all types of community businesses, charities, social enterprise, etc come together to reflect on shared issues.

As a long standing member of this body (I remember when Steve Wyler was promoting it as part of a tour of conferences he was doing several decades ago after it was first formed!), it seemed a good opportunity to share some of my thinking around imposter syndrome - and in turn, have that challenged and expanded through the stories and experiences of leaders of different local communities of all types.

And as in previous instances where sector bodies have invited me to facilitate conversation around the topic of 'imposterism' with their respective constituencies, I wanted to share a summary of my notes so that the learning and insights people offered each other might have opportunity to be of benefit to others who weren't otherwise able to be part of it as it happened.

Having led similar conversations in other sectors, what struck me initially was the overlaps and similarity in how people shared that feeling like an imposter had impacted on them:

- it meant that they hadn't put themselves forward for new opportunities; 

- it had stopped them from speaking out, or challenging others, in the belief that the other person(s) were more expert and qualified than they were;

- it undermined relationships people felt they were able to create and manage with their colleagues, as they felt that their team mates were seeing the person to be a 'fraud' in the same way that they saw themselves;

- some recognised that bouts of anxiety are quicker to surface whenever any crises in personal or professional circumstances arise, or we realise that "maybe we could have done that better, after all..."

What also struck me was that the ways in which people initially shared how they'd approached managing these feelings to date also echoed the practices that people in other sectors use.

Such overlap in how these feelings impact on how people feel they're able to do their jobs, and in how they try and manage them, suggests that we shouldn't only be looking to our immediate peers in our own sectors for encouragement and support - it could be equally valuable from anywhere?

However, there was an additional dimension to this conversation that I was keen to explore with participants - most of the published material on imposter syndrome seems to almost exclusively focussed on the individual experiencing the feelings of doubt. But if a leader (such as the people in this shared conversation) is so afflicted, what does this mean for their wider organisation?

This prompt drew out some observations and ideas which perhaps aren't that surprising when you start to think this through:

- because they doubted their own judgement, people's decision-making abilities were compromised which meant that things sometimes take longer to be agreed or enacted than they might otherwise have needed to. And in turn, this means greater costs are incurred from delays or missed opportunities; 

- as leaders, people look to them to model behaviours and identify 'norms' in that organisation: if feelings of imposterism are limiting that leaders' ability to be decisive, pro-active, speak out, etc, then these behaviours (or rather, lack thereof) can quickly spread to the detriment of the organisation delivering on what it's supposed to be.

The conversation then moved back to revisit the ways in which people had initially shared how they are/have approached managing feelings of doubt to date, and in particular, seeing if there may be factors that are specific to leaders of community organisations that might mean they need a different set of tools and resources.

Two key themes seemed to emerge from this:

1) the inability to feel that as a leader, you are able to receive robust and honest feedback on your performance (i.e. no matter how you ask your colleagues, they'll always say they think you're a great boss, regardless of what they may actually think). And without such validations or encouragements to challenge them, leaders can quickly find themselves in a lonely vacuum where damaging self-perceptions can become quickly entrenched;

2) as leaders, we're looked to by our colleagues for support and encouragement to them. Because of the nature of some of the responsibilities we may hold in our leadership role, we can't easily (if ever) feel able to be fully and completely open and honest with our team about how we may be feeling in turn. We therefore need a space where we can meet with equals in honesty, safety, and openness, to be able to voice these feelings, as part of reconsidering them.

And it's this last point that affirmed why Locality's Lunch and Learn series is so important and needed; and also why I'm glad that I say "yes" to every invitation I receive to speak about my book - because I always use it as an opportunity not to try and flog more copies of it (although all sales are always gratefully received), but rather because it means that a body of people will gain an opportunity to have a shared conversation about something that's currently holding them back, or acting to the detriment of themselves and their wider organisations.

(and if you want to know about the book that prompted Locality to ask me to guest lead this session: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09V25N8G6)