Critical Companionship

Impact Presentation: Critical Companionship: positive impact at micro, meso, and macro system levels for communities and workforce

Informal means that the critical companionship relationship, whilst it has not been intentionally discussed and agreed between the person/persons being helped and the person helping, its processes and strategies are used when appropriate. So, it is a part of who you are in your organizational role and is congruent with the person-centred values held in your workplace. Examples of informal critical companionship may involve using everyday opportunities to challenge team behaviours that are not person centred or to identify one’s own habituated behaviours (See Donna’s experience in Video 12 Part1).

Formal approaches to critical companionship (whether with an individual or a group) involve agreeing mutual ways of working, learning and inquiring together and areas of focus and action. All this within an on ongoing journey of inquiry and evaluation involving facilitation strategies, learning and inquiry spaces, opportunities and creative approaches, guided by the agreed intention (See Video V7 . Formal relationships, for example, may be initially set up for a six-month period and then evaluation may identify, either the need for the ongoing mutual relationship to continue, or the need to establish a new relationship with someone else, with different expertise, and with whom the individual wishes to set up a reciprocal co-learning/inquiry.

Evaluation may involve providing feedback to each other, for example, on the level of challenge and support experienced and the strategies that were effective to this end. When possible, companions help each other to become conscious of the critical companionship strategies they use and their effect, as they happen (See Video V6).

The Unique Selling Point (USP) of critical companionship (CC) with an exemplar

How CC differs from mentorship, coaching and clinical supervision

Critical companionship shares some facilitation processes with coaching, mentoring, peer review, preceptorship and clinical supervision. However, it is its USP which differentiates its focus from these other approaches and helps account for its positive impact:

· A person-centred, non-hierarchical relationship using co- learning, facilitation and inquiry approaches which involve use of whole self through professional artistry

· Relationship enables holistic learning of all participants and the foundation of learning cultures

· Each person brings expertise to the non-hierarchical relationship

· When and where possible, critical companions work/walk in Nature

· It is a thread that runs through the professional practice domains and

focusses on knowing, being, doing and becoming

All of this is not to say that there is no overlap between CC and these other helping relationships. For example, a participant in the MPCP programme shared at a conference, that she, as a clinical supervisor, had used CC principles which had enabled an important conversation on emotions. Another claimed that, on reflection, she felt as though she was melding coaching and CC together.

Exemplar of USP from the Critical Companionship strand of the Multi-Professional Consultant Practice (MPCP) programme

It should be noted that the critical companions on this pilot programme were external, and they were not, as were the programme facilitators, familiar with critical companionship (CC) practice and theory. Some of the external critical companions recognised that they would be learning a new role, as nuanced in this participant’s account.

One participant shared her experiences of critical companionship at the celebratory conference at the end of the programme and was happy for us to share her experience in this written account which she and Angie created together:

I experienced my CC as a metaphorical and experiential journey. Some meetings involved us walking in nature away from the work environment and we both found that it made a difference to the quality of our thinking and ability to articulate our ideas more clearly without interruptions, with space and importantly, with time. Our relationship gave us a different opportunity to talk, especially as there were no constraints imposed by appraisal systems and workplace pressures. We openly challenged and supported each other. Our discussion was honest, trusting and open without judgement.

This programme and what I learnt from the CC strand gave me space and bravery to look at myself, my goals, how to grow. Also, my critical companion felt that engaging in the CC role gave him time to reflect on his own practice which he found stimulating.

Like others, this participant found the language of CC inhibitory and quite difficult at first. She said, ‘I had to look up definitions of words repeatedly and didn’t do this whilst with my critical companion as I didn’t want it to interrupt or distract from the purpose of the meetings or flow and direction of the conversation. If anything, mobile phones should have been banned!’

Rather, I reviewed the words and themes later as an aside and as part of the course programme learning:

I was better able to understand the words by the end of the nine months, but did not find the language itself helpful and I preferred not to put words or headings into the CC meetings as I found them constraining and for me, unnecessary labels and categorising. I therefore put it aside until the final meeting where I reflected and could see how certain words related to the principles and framework. I still struggle with the terminology and feel it runs the risk of making the process too academic or focussed on language.

But I did value CC as I was able to de-construct the ‘walls’ I had been putting around myself and it helped me to get my feelings out without fear that by talking and expressing certain frustrations or concerns it would be damaging to my career. It also helped me look at myself and make plans.

And despite finding the language of CC difficult at the beginning, Angie recorded that, in her conference presentation at the end of the programme, this participant explained:

‘Mutuality (being with) and reciprocity (reciprocal giving and receiving) helped me to see what my role was and plan with those who needed to be involved to grow the service together. Mutuality became part of our work with staff and at meetings. Together we

moved from meso to macro working across systems. Particularity and Graceful Care played a part too. And I felt less alone and was able to express myself in an open way.'

Over time, she had become more familiar with the language and found she could acknowledge what was being played out and could articulate the terminology to define a particular way of being. However, she felt that it would take longer that the nine months of the programme to be able to use it fluently to recognise what is going on in a CC relationship and the processes and strategies being used. Angie agrees that really embodying the CC framework does take time and when it happens it is often exhilarating. This length of time can be shortened however, through the critical companion pointing out the processes and strategies as they emerge in conversations or observations. Therefore, we conclude that CC is best learned by experiencing it.

Finally, this participant felt as though she was melding coaching, mentoring and CC together.

‘My critical companion recognised that there are different styles of CC and the nature of the relationship would bring this out and be different, too, with different people. Moreover, as my service development work is benefitting from CC, I will continue to use it and have advised that the principles should be used on future Multi-Professional Consultant Practice programmes1. More help and support on the programme would be needed to enable a greater chance of being able to utilise the CC model to its full benefit.’2

After this presentation, an interesting discussion about how important it is, not to let academic language get in the way of embracing new theoretical learning. One participant suggested that it is generally the same with every new academic field we enter and, specifically, with all the theoretical frameworks presented in this programme.

Haven’t we all experienced becoming familiar with theory by figuring out how it relates to actual practice and how it can help me?

She concluded that we can embrace theoretical language and go on the journey. 'It is not a barrier', she said.

Another presenter shared that she, as a clinical supervisor, had used CC principles which had enabled an important conversation on emotions and another that he had intentionally developed skills for high challenge/high support by focussing on his own enablement skills and those of the teams with which he worked. For him, this led to doors opening on developing ways of working, locally and nationally, and ‘breaking patterns on how we do things’ which successfully ‘turned everything on its head’.

In conclusion, ‘Being able to name what they were doing’ appears to have been empowering for these participants.