Having a different type of conversation

The value of the unusual

When we have a different conversation, with different people, and ask different questions, we hear and learn a lot more than from the usual conversations.

At Outside the Box we often support people to have different conversations.  Recently, we’ve been trying out a different type of conversation ourselves. We take part in lots of good meetings, but wanted to see where a really open and free-form conversation could take us.

How we set the conversation up

Our topic was human rights and social care – what works for people getting support, what works for families and for people who work in social care.  This is a topic that is not neat and tidy.  There are lots of questions and  lots of experiences.  We wanted to hear what this meant for other people and explore some of the issues.  But our approach could be useful for lots of other topics, and that’s why we’re sharing it here.

We held an open conversation – we shared a topic and a few notes so people knew what they were coming to, but no agenda.  We didn’t expect to come to any answers or conclusions.  The main aim was to listen to each other and explore the topic.

How it unfolded

It was a zoom conversation for about an hour.  We had 5 people at our first conversation. We came from a range of places and types of experience of social care. Each of us knew at least one other person but no-one already knew everyone in the conversation.  We respected each other’s experiences and views, and we were responsible for ourselves: otherwise there were no boundaries on the conversation.

We’ll share the conversation highlights in another blog post soon!

Where the conversation’s going next

We decided to catch up again in 6 weeks or so, to have a more detailed conversation about one aspect of our conversation.  We’ll each ask a chum, but we are not opening up to lots more people because we thought it will work better when it is fairly small.  We might meet again after that, or we might not – we’ll decide later.

We all agreed we like this approach, and it would be good for topics where things are not clear cut and when people want to explore ideas.

Spark your own different conversations

We are encouraging other people to have an open conversation about human rights and social care – like us– or about the things that matter to you.  We’d love to hear from you – what is helping you have open, go-where-it-takes-you conversations?