Rewilding Work Relationships
What do these things have in common?
Deaths after homeless people are housed
Decline of the crested newt
Isolation of women and gender minorities in tech bro culture
They're all caused by a lack of relationships
Relationships to friends, family and community
Relationships between humans and nature - nonhuman beings, the land, etc
Relationships of solidarity, information, job security and psychological safety
For the last 5 years I've been thinking and learning about relationships. I've consulted alongside experts on team relationships. I've studied and practiced psychological safety. I've read about indigenous thinking, indigenous approach to narcissists, indigenous relationships with land and nature. I've been learning to parent a trauma- affected child to rebuild foundations of trust in relationship. I've connected to the UK Relationships Project (where I learnt about value of relationships in homelessness). I've talked to lots of people I used to work with to reflect on past work relationships and culture.
What I've learnt is
There's not only a theoretical connection between the challenges people face - relationships are important - but a practical solution to solve multiple challenges.
Foundationally, this thinking is rooted in the Relationally Responsive viewpoint. Described in Doris Shillingsworth and Yunkaporta’s paper for indigenous academics, this viewpoint is relevant to all humans:
Valuing, Relating, Knowing, Doing
I’ll provide examples of this when I have more time.
Practically, we need to responsively relate and enable responsive relationships in our culture - with humans and with Nature. One way to do that is both at the same time.
Having worked in the early-middle era of agile digital technology, I've seen a utopic view of building technology on the foundations of good relationships - worker to worker; worker to customer; etc. It was an outcome of our collaborative approach on Stockport Council's Digital by Design (link to follow) to resolve past conflict between IT and other departments then creating common ground to build common services - whilst also making efficient use of code and budget.
But now we see how technology has sped up our daily overconsumption of the planets resources and AI threatens to take fascism, the worst of humanity, to the next level.
So how can we make a cultural shift in our workplaces- whether technologists, social impactists, whatever?
There's lots of ways which are already happening. Boundaries on relationships in terms of accountability to our affect on nature - eg Client Earth- or to our affect on humanity - eg UK Post Office Inquiry.
But what about deepening empathy and receiving empathy in work relationships - between humans and with Nature?
Whatever the long term solution, we've got to start with Respect. How do we show Respect? We show up.
Respect Challenge: show up as a work group - teams, partnerships, students, service users - together in nature.
Many of my work community have become adept at group facilitation in meeting rooms and Zooms- enabling participation through post it notes and Miro /Mural boards. But have we forged responsive relationships? Have our organisations throw out the relationship- forging roles and the time to listen under the pressure of austerity, techocracy, the broligarchy?
When I started to think how I would tackle this challenge a year ago, my first reaction was - oh no, the post it notes will fly away in the wind! But as I got to thinking about a group of people in a field, I started to see the possibilities, the opportunities it opened up for listening, calming the sensory sensitivities - especially for neurodivergent folk like me - and how we can't get our organisations to care about nature, unless we're working in it. I'm thinking about this even for technologists.
What I'm doing
I didn't just want to think about this, I wanted to do it. I've linked my Respect to my relating and my knowing, now to let it drive my doing.
I’ve created two types of events for groups to relate to each other in nature: Team with Nature days and launching today: Camp Connection.
These are my experiments but I'm betting you've been forging new ways of working too. My hope is that you have even better ideas. Maybe if you live close enough to come to one of these events, we might inspire something bolder. But if not that's OK, living near to me is a good boundary to find relationships that will be relevant to the land I live on/ near.
The good side of technology is that we are sharing ideas wherever we live and accelerating our repair of relationships. We just need to go deeper in our love and care of each other and nature, than depths of harm wrecked by the fascists, narcissists and broligarchs.