Endings, beginnings and questions about identity

This week has been about many things, but there all have interwoven themselves across my week, with similar themes popping up into different contexts, converging like a flock of swallows.

On the frivolous end of the spectrum, endings have come in the form of the end of the last series of 24 and Supernatural and the start of new series of Homeland and Gotham (I am very excited about this and you now have an insight into some of the deeper aspect of me). However endings and beginnings were also part of our staff conference on Monday and Tuesday, as we moved out of a period of consultation and into a restructure, and new ways of working. Endings also manifested themselves through the final stages of completing my NSPCC safeguarding trainer training portfolio, although I still have a few thousand words of reflection to write. And beginnings of course as we move into week two of H818 and we start to find our feet as co-learners. It has been particularly challenging to move back into a study routine that involves regular interaction, after studying a module which was predominantly individual working….so bear with me guys!

Power and openness were themes that emerged strongly from the staff conference, where we spent time thinking about identity and team work, and how we can learn to work better together. I worked with colleagues from another department to facilitate the initial team building sessions, which is no mean feat when there are 150 people. We used the activities that we often use with young people, as it generally doesn’t matter how old you are, learning about each other and building trust is the same. The first activity was about asking the right questions and deciding on how much of ourselves we want to give away. People were asked to talk about themselves and then try and find something in common with the person they were talking to. Deciding what to share ultimately leads to different questions and interactions. Some people feel comfortable and confident in sharing more personal aspects of themselves than others do. This is no different online.

We create personas that we are happy with. For some the commonalities may be where they live or the music they like. But if you are willing to give a little bit more of yourself away, you often get a little bit more back, and before you know it a 37 year old woman who works in safeguarding (that’s me), finds that the thing she has in common with the 22 year old male IT service desk analyst is that they both wanted to be vets but got bored of science (teenagers are fickle!).

If we want to be ‘networked practitioners’ then we need to consider identity and openness. I need to identify my role as an individual, but I also need to find things in common with others to start building those networks. And that requires asking questions and giving a bit of me away. We have talked this week, as students, about how we use networking tools like Twitter, and started defining a difference between professional and personal. This is a great place to start the discussions about openness. The more confident I become as a practitioner, the more comfortable I feel about sharing bits of myself, which are maybe more personal.

The connecting cultures iceberg 

(Adapted from L. Robert Kohls’ “Cultural Iceberg”)

 http://www.connectingcultures.org/philosophy.asp

It’s a bit like the cultural iceberg (which came up at a different network meeting later on in the week). As individuals, we consist of our history, experiences and social worlds. Most people see the visible us. But it’s the moments when we share the invisible us, and the common humanity, that we start to develop trust and a better understanding of each other.

For me, my online identity (mainly through twitter), has developed as I grow more confident and share more of myself and my identity, just as it does in the ‘offline’ world. The professional me is the personal me, as it’s all a part of my identity. So it seems that we manage our identities in all aspects of life. We decide when it’s appropriate to share and when it’s not. But of course it’s not always our choice.