A leap of faith

We had our first meeting with service providers yesterday about the evaluation plan they will begin developing in a couple of months. It's an exciting time!

This evaluation is based on the work we did last year and the community findings the previous year. I was both anxious and excited about our meeting yesterday: anxious in seeing how people would respond to our outline and second would they "get it", plus excited by the fact that we were beginning the journey with them in earnest (after months of planning and talking about and with them!).

As a project team, we've also been synthesizing our thinking around connecting the personal/individual journey with the systems change journey - a "leap of faith" in some ways. We tentatively tested our thinking with the service we met with yesterday, and we didn't sense we were "off track" with our message. Mostly non-verbal indicators; nods, leaning forward, a sense of warmth in the room, and I am somewhat relieved.

It's also got to do, I think, with taking your message out, to really test it and see if it lives or dies. If it contributes to the ongoing dialogue, then it's valuable.

Reflecting on that phrase, "a leap of faith", I'm reminded of The Matrix and in particular, this excerpt:


What I've noticed in this scene are my own feelings as Morpheus takes the leap: taking a deep breath and jumping, the hard work required to take the jump, the effort to gather energy to leap, letting go in my mind, trusting the process, tolerating uncertainty...! I've noticed this based on our team meeting earlier today and our discussion around connecting person to process and the bigger picture (i.e. the system, where systems are people anyway).

And so, the inquiry spirals...


Further reading:
Katie Armstrong (2013) Tolerating Uncertainty, Changerous Blog. changerous.wordpress.com/2013/03/08/tolerating-uncertainty/ March 8, 2013.

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Seikkula J & Olsen M (2003) The Open Dialogue Approach to Acute Psychosis: Its Poetics and Micropolitics, Family Process, 42(3), 403-418, http://www.theicarusproject.net/files/OpenDialog-ApproachAcutePsychosisOlsonSeikkula.pdf

Meinhold, Roman (2009) Being in The Matrix: An example of cinematic education in philosophy, Prajna Vihara. Journal of Philosophy and Religion. Vol.10, No.1-2, http://www.academia.edu/232464/Being_in_the_Matrix._An_Example_of_Cinematic_Education_in_Philosophy

Reflection: the art of noticing

"What do you notice?"

A small, but powerful question, when you involve people in some self-reflection.
We are putting together a workshop for mental health service providers at the end of the month and part of the process during the workshop is to encourage and support participants to 'stay with their hearts' and not to too quickly seek out solutions to issues raised during the workshop.
It's tricky to ask people to reflect when they are not always open to, nor experienced in, reflective processes - some are more naturally adept at reflecting than others.
The art of reflection can be viewed as the art of noticing. You can notice things around you by looking, hearing, feeling, tasting, and so on. You can also notice things within: what are you feeling? resisting? holding some tension about? loving? dreaming about?

Andrew LaRowe beautifully explains some of his noticing in his comment on Elizabeth Cottrell's blog post about noticing:

In all of my years of walking down the beach looking for seashells, I had never found a sharks tooth until the day someone taught me how to look for them. I remember the first one I found after that, and how easy it became to pick them out as I walked along. Within a few months and several trips to the beach, I literally had collected hundreds of sharks teeth. If a person can learn to see sharks teeth in the sand, then I believe we can guide ourselves to notice the many things in life that need not pass by like ships in the night (July 10, 2011).

How do you cultivate this process of noticing? Practice, practice, practice! Nothing is more habit-forming than practicing something regularly.

Paper, Pen, Post by margoc.

Throughout this project, I've come to rely on our team meetings and phone conversations as a way to stay with the process and its emergent nature, as it keeps me in a 'noticing mode'. It keeps me connected and open to ideas (or the echo of ideas, that is, before they fully form and come into view). I have also taken up my pen and paper journaling again, which has really added another dimension to my process of reflecting (and 'staying with the question' - whatever that has come to mean for me from time to time).

Often there's a crossover between reflection and feedback. While these two processes are useful together, there's a need to be careful not to mix them up. Feedback is more about returning information in a situation (think of feedback in a sound system, for example). I explain reflection further on in this post.

There's also parallels between reflecting and debriefing. Again, you need to be aware of when you are reflecting and when you are debriefing.

I like to think of debriefing as a time to download and outwardly express thoughts, feelings, concerns, experiences. How do you think that went? What did you notice about X's reaction? It was good you prompted me when..., and so on. There's an instructive sense to debriefing, as in gaining knowledge and understanding.

Reflecting tends to be more inward: what will I take away from this experience? How will I connect this to future activities? What does this mean for me in the bigger picture? How would I do things differently next time? What did I notice about me? There's a consequential sense to reflection, as in deepening understandings and follow-on actions.

The debrief unpacks to experience; the reflection connects it to the bigger picture.

And so, here's Elizabeth Cottrell's question to finish:

What do YOU notice? What do you think it’s saying about who you are and what you value?

Some further reading:
Jennifer Stanchfield, 2011, Reflective Practice Versus Debriefing, The Inspired Educator Blog.
URL: http://www.experientialtools.com/2011/02/19/reflective-practice-versus-debriefing/
Joanne Roebuck, 2007, Reflexive practice: to enhance student learning. Journal of Learning Design, 2 (1). pp. 77-91.
URL: http://eprints.jcu.edu.au/2764/1/2764_Roebuck_2007.pdf
Prpic, J. (2005) Managing academic change through reflexive practice: A quest for new views. Research and Development in Higher Education, 28, 399–- 406.
URL: http://julianakaya.posterous.com/managing-academic-change-through-reflexive-pr