Title: Understanding the Impact of Building Relationships
Organizer: The Tamarack Institute
Date: February 1, 2023
This webinar recording features a conversation with David Jay, founder of Relationality Lab, who takes us through scientific perspective on the relational work that is essential to almost all meaningful social impact.
Speakers:
• Lisa Attygalle, Tamarack Institute ([ Ссылка ])
• David Jay, Founder, Relationality Lab ([ Ссылка ])
Have questions? Contact Lisa Attygalle (lisa@tamarackcommunity.ca)
Learn about upcoming webinars at [ Ссылка ]
Overview of webinar:
0:00 Land acknowledgement (Lisa Attygalle)
01:12 Introduction to the speaker (Lisa Attygalle)
02:32 Question 1 for David: To get us started, can you share a little about what brings you to your work at Relationality Lab? (Lisa Attygalle, David Jay)
06:55 Question 2, for David: Let’s ground further in this topic of relationship building and why it’s important. Many of us here who are working towards large scale community change would be familiar with the Water of Systems Change ([ Ссылка ]) – developed by John Kania, Mark Kramer, and Peter Senge. They describe 6 conditions of systems change and how if we want to change a system, we need to shift these conditions that hold the system in place.
One of the conditions is Relationships & Connections, which is about the quality of connections and communication occurring among actors in the system, especially among those with differing histories and viewpoints.
Relationships & Connections are one of these things that seem a little nebulous, and it’s often hard to describe or define, or create an action plan around.
How does one go about building relationships? (Lisa Attygalle, David Jay)
17:06 Question 3, for David: How can we learn about the relationships we’re building? (Lisa Attygalle, David Jay)
23:09 Question 4, for David: What are the things, in addition to creating that free-flowing space after an event, that a host or convenor or a funder can do to create more of those environments for relationships and the evolution of relationships (Lisa Attygalle, David Jay)
26:37 Question 5, for David: How do we drill in on that thing that’s interesting to every person. It’s not about becoming the same – can you say more about that? (Lisa Attygalle, David Jay)
27:43 David unpacks three components of conversation for relationship-building
33:43 Question 6, for David: You’ve mentioned a few times some of the indicators we can be looking for to understand the strength of relationships and relationship-building spaces. What are some of the other indicators people can use to understand the impact of relationships? (Lisa Attygalle, David Jay)
37:55 Question 7, from a participant: One of the challenges I seem to be systemically experiencing over the past few years is that, because relationships are so important to me [as a leader], I really lean in to them – including ones where it feels like a square peg in a round hole. What do we do when we get into those in our work environments? (Participant, David Jay)
44:47 Question 8, from a participant: How do you keep fundraising sustainable when funders don’t seem to understand the relational/relationship-building work. (Lisa Attygalle, David Jay)
47:51 Question 9, from a participant: We find that caring, kind, authentic space can be triggering for people who come from large, institutional structures where the control dynamics are high. We try to let people know that how we work is different, but it can still be jarring and take a lot of time. Any guidance? (Lisa Attygalle, David Jay)
50:12 Question 10, from a participant: Does this work for all communities? Are there differences we should be thinking about when working with marginalized communities? Are all stories created equal? (Lisa Attygalle, David Jay)
53:14 Closing remarks (Lisa Attygalle)
