How to be human

“We can talk about inclusion. We can talk about diversity. But what we really need to talk about is how to be human.”

Elly Chapple [1]

In their brilliant book about “learning how to make our social systems more human”, Gord Tulloch and Sarah Schulman write that “we have all seen it: do-gooding confused with good doing. That is why it’s so important – if we want real, meaningful, lasting change – to be able to tease apart the convictions that drive our present-day systems, to excavate the historical assumptions that have gone into their construction, and to be clear about the sorts of values that we think might support the future of good work.” [2]

In my previous blog post I explored the words we choose to use about older and disabled people that expose the historical assumptions and fuel the convictions that drive our present-day systems. And in my post on professional language, I explored a variety of reasons I believe underpin our continuing use of dehumanising, stigmatising and ‘othering’ language.

As I’ve said many times, we have to change our language to change our practice. But we also have to change our practice to change our language. We can only build a more human, humane approach if we each have the courage and support to be more human ourselves. And if we create spaces and places where people feel like human beings and feel they can be human too.

So, here’s my starter for ten… my non-exhaustive list of the values and behaviours that I believe are core characteristics of human organisations, with a very big nod in the direction of the ‘Be human movement’ principles, and their assertion that being human “means treating the person as human not a widget or a cog in the system.” [3]

I couldn’t agree more.

1. Trust

“Trust flows from the experience of being treasured, not measured.”

Cormac Russell [4]

First up is trust. Trust is fundamental to healthy relationships, and if we want to create a more human, relational way of working, we have to acknowledge the vital importance of trusting each other. Because right now we don’t. People don’t trust institutions and/because institutions don’t trust people, including the people working in them. So, we create and impose more and more rules and processes and restrictions and boundaries and checks and hierarchies.

Measuring, not treasuring.

We misplace trust, believing in policies and procedures, not people and communities. We don’t trust that people know what will work best for them, will make the right choices, are the experts in their lives. Yet we’re happy to trust that our safeguarding processes keep people safe, that our signposts point to a solution, that our referrals get picked up, that the services we prescribe will meet the outcomes we define.

And we say no, repeatedly, until we finally say yes – prompted either by a crisis (‘come back when things get worse’) or after complaints and appeals and investigations and inquiries and months and years of exhaustion and stress and distress.

Without trust we can’t build and maintain relationships. We can’t be flexible. We can’t promote autonomy, or innovation. We can’t take risks. We can’t share.

Without trust we can’t break free from the dehumanising shackles of our systems.

Without trust, we can’t change.

2. Honesty

To build trust we need transparency. As Simon Sinek says, “trust is built on telling the truth, not telling people what they want to hear.” [5]

Honesty is the best policy.

Blagging and bluffing and distracting and deceiving arouses suspicion and resentment.

Builds walls where we need to build bridges.

We can’t work together as equal human beings, can’t co-exist comfortably, or co-design and co-produce better futures if ideas and knowledge and learning aren’t shared, and when agendas remain hidden.

And as well as telling the truth, we also need to be able to be true to ourselves.

Belong, not just fit in.

3. Challenge

In social care serviceland, to be ‘challenging’ is A Bad Thing. ‘Challenging behaviour’ is something that must be controlled and managed and modified to become more acceptable. More ‘positive’. People and families who question the status quo are labelled ‘difficult’ and ‘non-compliant’. Workers who challenge current practice or decisions are viewed as ‘disruptive’ or ‘troublemakers’.

But this behaviour is usually an indication that something is wrong, something is failing, something needs to change. The communication of frustration and distress. Of not being listened to or heard or understood.

We need to question everything we do. We need to challenge each other and be open to challenge. Encourage feedback. Admit to ourselves and each other when things don’t feel right, and that certain ways of working aren’t working.

Instead of fearing change, we need to fear what will happen if we don’t change.

4. Curiosity

I remember talking with a social worker several years ago about the concept of focusing conversations on what matters most to a person or family, on what they hoped they could achieve with some support. The social worker wasn’t keen on asking such open questions because she might not know the solution.

‘What if they ask for something I can’t deliver?’

This exposes our expectation that ‘the system’ has the solutions, and that services are the solution. Our assessment for services approach means that questions are posed by our forms, and answers are predetermined by the drop-down options in our ‘case management’ systems. Our preoccupation with ‘needs’ and what is missing obscures gifts and potential, overlooks what is present, and writes off dreams as ‘unrealistic expectations’.

There’s no place for curiosity – or creativity – in the confines of this system, which traps us in the role of ‘commissioner’ ‘provider’ ‘deliverer’, not ‘enabler’ or ‘connector’. There’s no space for imagination. And there’s no option for people to have any sense of choice or control over the support they require. To have influence or ambitions. To have a life.

We need to make far more space for listening to what matters most to people. Talk less and listen more to what is said, what is not said, the way things are said, and what is communicated without words. Listen without assumptions or judgement, without an agenda or an answer, but with a clear commitment to people living the life they choose to lead, as equal, valuable, valued human beings.

5. Learning

When we listen more, we learn more.

Our current learning tends to focus on how to do things right, and we have endless procedures and forms and checklists and how-to guides and training courses to prevent us from getting things wrong. We spend less time focusing on how to do the right thing. On learning from and with people and families and communities.

And human beings get things wrong. It’s one of the many things that distinguishes us from robots. From machines. Mistakes are part of being human, and part of how we learn.

What’s not human is the way we defend our position, deny responsibility, shift blame.

Continue to believe and assert that we are right.

To be human is to say sorry. And mean it. Not the classic, non-apologetic ‘I’m sorry you feel…’ or ‘I’m sorry if…’. Not the passive, vague ‘mistakes were made’.

Just, I’m sorry. We’re sorry. I made a mistake. We got things wrong.

And then to ask what should be different? What have we learnt? How can we make things better, together?

6. Vulnerability

Vulnerable is a word that pervades social care and the wider human services. A label we readily slap on to people, families, groups, communities to justify restrictive practice, to rationalise decisions made about people without them, and to imply inevitability when things go wrong.

The term suggests weakness exposure danger other and as such it’s a label no one wants to wear.

But being vulnerable also means being open about how we’re feeling. It allows us to let people in to see who we really are, not what we’re pretending to be. It means we can say, ‘I don’t know’, ‘I’m not sure’, ‘What do you think?’, ‘Can we look at this together’. ‘Can you help?’ And that’s powerful, and essential, because that’s how we open up possibilities and opportunities. That’s how we break down barriers. That’s how we connect as human beings.

7. Presence

Not too long after I published my first blog post, I received a direct message on Twitter from someone who I now know and greatly admire. She’d messaged me to share her positive experience of support from a social worker. She concluded her message by saying “We have a life because she stood by my side and didn’t judge, she simply had an invisible hand on my shoulder saying ‘I’ve got you’ and we are thriving because she believed in me.”

The importance of connection and consistency is overlooked in our sorting office, Chronos time approach to practice, with its unrelenting focus on efficiency. Where fast equals good. Deal with, fix, solve, end our involvement, case closed, move on.

Instead of managing and measuring time, we need to invest time, and hold space.

Slow down. Be alongside. Be present. Be there.

8. Kindness

‘Interference’, ‘hindrance’, ‘hostility’, ‘cruelty’, ‘disinterest’, ‘brutality’ and ‘inhumanity’. are terms that are frequently applied to institutional behaviours. And all terms that are antonyms to ‘kindness’.

From individual acts of indifference – not acknowledging the person waiting at a reception desk, a dismissive ‘that’s not my job’ or ‘there’s nothing more I can do’ – to the blanket rules, bureaucratic processes, and divisive policies that lessen people’s sense of identity and agency and choice – our institutions are not kind.

So, kindness is crucial – but comes with a big note of caution.

Kindness isn’t a word that sits comfortably in our conversations. It’s easily dismissed as ‘soft and fluffy’, ‘non-essential’. As Julia Unwin notes in her Carnegie UK Trust paper on kindness in public policy, “usually there is a strong sense that the person mentioning kindness has unhelpfully interrupted the adult flow of conversation about public policy. About planning targets, and about economic benefit, and value for money. Somebody is bringing a fairy tale to a meeting about Real Things.” [6]

Assertions to ‘be kind’ also have negative associations with the patriarchal mantra stitched on to ‘girls’ clothes’ and into their minds, along with hearts and rainbows and flowers and butterflies (while ‘boys’ clothes’ carry phrases like ‘unstoppable’, ‘awesome’, ‘ready for adventure’).

And there’s the “bad kindness” Maff Potts talks about, that lessens people’s own sense of identity and agency and choice. Patronising, sympathetic, pitying, charitable, interfering kindness “drenched in ‘I’m the benefactor, you’re the helpless beneficiary. You’re grateful and I’m amazing.’” [7]

The kindness we need to cultivate is the loving kindness highlighted by the Archbishops’ Commission on Reimagining Care. “It is about an attitude that is oriented towards the good and flourishing of the other. It is a primarily relational concept. It is not simply used as a one-off act of kindness. Loving kindness is therefore not simply a choice but an obligation to act with justice and kindness towards others over time… Loving kindness is a call to wider society to be organised for the long term flourishing of every person.” [8]

9. Empathy

To empathise is to identify and understand and feel the emotions of fellow human beings. But if we don’t view the people we serve as fellow human beings, it’s unlikely we can show empathy. If we frame people as less than human, we perpetuate an approach based on charity and sympathy instead.

Cormac Russell writes that sympathy “divides the helper and the helped, the haves and so called have-nots, the good guys and the bad, the rich and the poor, the needed and the “needy”…  Sympathy creates soup kitchens and traditional food banks; empathy creates community kitchens, where the harvests of local foods are prepared by neighbours, where everyone’s gifts are needed to create the feast”. [9]

10. Care

Empathy fits hand in hand with parity and mutuality and reciprocity. With caring about and supporting each other. With the relational approach we are seeking, rather than the transactional approach we have now.

“Care is an art, a craft, a relationship. It is about entanglement in the lives of others and in emotions that are not always comfortable.”

Hilary Cottam [10]

Caring is acting with love. Understanding. Nurturing. Tending.

Wanting the absolute best for people, to see people flourish and thrive.

And to really care, we need to feel we’re cared about too.

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These ten values and behaviours are essential to strong, healthy, reciprocal relationships. Colourful, liberating, open, real, raw, exhilarating human behaviours that offer sharp contrast to the uniform, sterile, closed, predictable, computer says no, dehumanising, and inhumane systems we’ve created.

They are at the heart of co-production and the core of rights-based / strengths-based / personalised / person-centred / relational practice.

However, like all those terms, they are in danger of becoming empty buzzwords if we just keep slapping them on posters or in charters and continuing to maintain the status quo.

If we don’t reflect on them and invest in them and nurture them and experience them and demonstrate them in everything that we do.

We have to change our practice to change our language.

We have to change our practice to be human.

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References

[1]  We can talk about inclusion… Elly Chapple, Twitter. 14 December 2020.

[2] The trampoline effect: redesigning our social safety nets, Gord Tulloch and Sarah Schulman, Reach Press, 2020.

[3] The 7 principles of Be Human, Be Human, 2020

[4] Rekindling democracy: the professional’s guide to working in citizen space, Cormac Russell, Cascade Books, 2020.

[5] Trust is built on telling the truth… Simon Sinek, Twitter, 2 September 2020.

[6] Kindness, emotions and human relationships: The blind spot in public policy, Julia Unwin, Carnegie UK Trust, 2018

[7] Bad kindness, Maff Potts, You Tube, 21 May 2020

[8] Care and Support Reimagined: a National Care Covenant For England, Archbishops’ Commission on Reimagining Care, Church of England. January 2023

[9] Rekindling democracy: the professional’s guide to working in citizen space, Cormac Russell, Cascade Books, 2020.

[10] A radical new vision for social care: How to reimagine and redesign support systems for this century, Hilary Cottam, The Health Foundation. November 2021.