Our participants tell us what they made of Agents of Change

It is more than six months now since we finished our Agents of Change programme for 14 young professionals. We are really grateful to our long time learning partner Cathy Sharp for summarising their reflections at the end.  

At our final face to face session in September 2023, the group worked together to chart the course of the programme since the start in January 2023. This short account is issued as an invitation for further comment from anyone who has been part of this programme or who has interests in it. 

The offer

Animate and Research for Real established the programme to celebrate their respective 10- and 20-year anniversaries. We shared a desire to ‘give back’, to share our perspectives and experience, as well as to be able to learn from the group of younger professionals.

We found that there was substantial enthusiasm for the programme – both from ourselves and participants. Our offer was met with openness and curiosity, and willingness to engage. There was a common need for connection of a quality not available in recent years given the disruption to our working lives of the pandemic.  Above all, everyone wanted this to be a space for learning, to have new conversations, explore assumptions, overcome fears, develop curiosity, and build relationships. 

Participants voice: what supported learning?

As participants we found these positive attitudes helped to create space for sharing and learning and there were some significant elements that helped to ‘transform’ our thinking and practice. 

Amongst us, there has been a significant deepening of self-awareness and self-trust, with a new sense of perspective that feels enabling and has made us more ready for the challenges we face outwith the group. It was good to hear that people had found greater inclinations to have, and ideas for how to tackle, ‘difficult conversations’ and ways to acknowledge different kinds of diversity. 

Our view was that the group environment helped to create the right space for this to happen, particularly the co-creation of a working agreement to encourage both support and challenge. 

In our reflections, we talked about our energy, how to use it best and a expressed a greater degree of comfort with the uncertainty of the context and the outcomes. These new perspectives have helped us to develop a stronger sense of confidence in taking action, asking ourselves the question ‘what do I know?’ rather than ‘what do I fear?’

We all had a few favourite things - each of us found practices, lenses, and tools that gave us more confidence and support to find ways to move through whatever difficulties we are encountering, whether just for ourselves or with other people.

In general terms, these helped us to develop useful insights about both ourselves and other people, with consequent changes in our actions: shifts in how we position ourselves and create opportunities to develop more choiceful and skilful responses. Significant elements were going beneath the surface, looking for ‘the light’ and what is valued, being vulnerable, seeking dialogue and valuing strengths and differences in other people.  These ways of thinking and doing have helped us to recast our identities as ‘agents of change’, helping us to own our feelings and perspectives, to become ‘unstuck’, take action that feels more authentic, and find allies within the group and beyond.