Why am I writing this?
As you know if you've been following me for a while, I don't manage to post as often as people tell me I should. Honestly, I often struggle to come up with a reason that feels worthy of adding to the overall clamour of our inboxes and the wider internet.
In the spirit of experimentation, I'm going to try something a bit different. I'm going to try using this as a place to explore stuff before it's finished and neatly wrapped up in a bow. As a place to actively work things out as I go.
There are some patterns I've been noticing in my work that I'm keen to talk about, sharpen up, and dig into. So here goes.
Safe-enough spaces
This is an idea I first came up with for a talk at the Inclusive Facilitation Exchange in March this year. It's a way of re-thinking psychological safety so we can do meaningful, sometimes uncomfortable work in a way that doesn't involve anyone to undue risk.
On a personal level, the idea of safe-enough is also a really useful tool for understanding when we can experiment with things ourselves. With new ideas, new ways of representing ourselves, and other aspects of unmasking. It gives us an approach we can follow intentionally to create the right environment for becoming more of ourselves.
If you're techie, or interested in lean and agile approaches to work in general, then I'm going to be speaking about safe-enough spaces at the Lean Agile Brighton conference this Thursday (the 16th). At the time I'm writing this, there a still a handful of tickets left, too.
Self-determination
Self-determination theory is a really helpful lens to understand motivation and the tension created by ill-fitting solutions. The reason that we choose not to do things that should "solve our problems" is because doing so represents a threat to our autonomy, competence, and connectedness. The more we can work in ways that support these, the easier it gets to actually get stuff done.
I'm going to be running a couple of workshops for a branch of the Civil Service here in the UK around self-determination and belonging in the next few weeks. I'm also going to be speaking a TechShare Pro 2025 about how it applies to accessible technology on Wednesday 12th November.
I'm also going to be chairing a discussion about how to start an Employee Resource Group with BCS NeurodiverseIT on Thursday 30th October. ERGs have the potential to support self-determination for lots of marginalised and minoritised groups, not least neurodivergent people.
Reweirding
This idea came out of a conversation with Kim Witten. It's a way of thinking about unmasking in a different, more systemic way. I really like the parallels with rewilding, and the idea that it's about how we can make small changes that result in profoundly different ways of being. It crosses over with a few of the other ideas I've been exploring, around what it's like to sit outside of the usual way the world categorises things, and how tricky that can be.
I'd love to know if this idea resonates, and if your work (or someone you know) seems like it might relate. It's also an idea I'm thinking about bringing into the community I run in Brighton, Curious Being as we're working out how to get more people involved.
An ongoing conversation
One of the disciplines (in the sense of "devotional acts to myself") I try and follow is not to force anything. The existing ways of framing "marketing communication" all left me feeling like I didn't want to do them at all. Hopefully, starting an ongoing conversation about what I'm up to and thinking about will work as something I can do more regularly, and without the forcing.
It's all about trying things out, and so I'd love to know if you found this new approach useful/interesting or not. I'd welcome a conversation about any of the themes I've touched on here, too. If things work out, I'll come back to them regularly in the coming months.
In the meantime, if you're around for any of these events, or just want to pop up in my inbox or calendar, it'd be genuinely lovely to see you.
Matthew