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Togetherness - Otherness

Captain’s Log - Issue #133

As my main projects for the year draw to a close, i’m using these last few weeks to open up new space to think: to plan the research threads and programmes for 2023, my writing schedule, and prepare for the launch of the new Publishing business in the first quarter. One of the ideas that i’m considering is that of ‘Togetherness - Otherness’. I’m lightly considering it for the next Guided Reflection in the series that launched with ‘The Humble Leader’.

The origin of this work goes back to the Social Leadership Handbook and Landscape of Trust research, both of which considered how we belong, what we belong to, and what holds those spaces together. Latterly (through the Community Builder research) i’ve been thinking about the ways that walls are built, and how togetherness is held. And now i’m extending that thinking into the space of ‘Otherness’.

https://julianstodd.wordpress.com/2022/12/08/togetherness-otherness/

It’s the flip side of the coin: to be together, we have to have the other. To be coherent there must be a boundary. But what is ‘Otherness’ and how does it work?

A story we willingly adopt, or one that is written onto us? Well, both i suspect, depending upon the context. Some people seek to be the ‘other’, whilst some are unable to escape it.

The Identity Project research this year has helped inform my thinking: people describing the tensions between identity and belonging, sometimes leaving an identity behind in order to explore the other. Sometimes finding themselves ‘othered’ and building an identity out of that.

There are plenty of reasons why we may consider this idea of Togetherness - Otherness to be important: we saw in the Quiet Leadership research that people are more likely to be kind to people they know and like, and indeed more likely to be fair to them. So to be ‘other’ even if within the same employment framework, may inherently leave us disconnected, or at the least outside the networks of communities that enable us to be effective.

But we cannot avoid the ‘other’ - it is inherent to being together. But what we may be able to be is more mindful of how it’s cast, and where our actions are mindless, or careless. The role of a leader, Formal or Social, is a responsibility to the whole, not simply the subset. To those who are other or together.

My Writing

This week i’ve shared further extracts from the Learning Science Guidebook: this work is tacking shape, although i expect us to be both indulgent (Sae’s words) and lost (my word) for some time to come. Till April in fact: i’ve suggested we remain willingly lost up until that point. There will be plenty of time after that to sketch our maps. For now, we are defining a landscape.

https://julianstodd.wordpress.com/2022/12/02/workingoutloud-on-learning-science-learning-ecosystems/

The Learning Ecosystems piece is incomplete: we have written a series of connected monologues, but not yet stitched it together, largely due to time constraints (my excuse). But what has been interesting is how well we have found our differences, and explored them, something i talk about here.

https://julianstodd.wordpress.com/2022/12/07/learning-ecosystems-workingoutloud-on-the-learning-science-guidebook/

Coming Up

There are two new cohorts of Quiet Leadership opened up for mid February, with 600 free places in total. You can find a space here.

Also, i’ll be guiding a cohort through the Community Builder Certification (paid programme) also starting in February, which you can read about here.

Next time i’ll share more about some of the Publishing plans for next year, but the Social Age Handbook is on the agenda, as are a couple of interesting magazine publishing projects.

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