Some describe working with partners as being like ‘dancing with a gorilla’ – and many / most would say that they are in partnership to change others to be more like themselves (rather than the idealised, both change to be differently different to one another, if you will). It could ironically also be the case that those that are active in partnerships are so because of a desire to change the other in them, or cohere all those others into a gorilla with whom they can dance. I want to focus in on the ‘felt experience’ in situations where others’ seem to overlook, or disparage, or have some kind of blind spot in relation to what I know, and what my experience brings.
I recall from somewhere the phrase, ‘the tragedy of living is that no one wants to know what you know’ – hence – perhaps – my instinct to be tentative in much of what I say to you – I don’t want to appear to know these things – I want to invite you into dancing with the gorilla of my experience if I can dance with yours.
So, picture a partnership in which a group of professionals, from various disciplines, have varying motives for involvement. Each of them could be employed by another organisation, yet feel the partnership is in some ways an entity to which they are accountable, yet which is accountable to their employing organisations. Often, there is an ideal of mutual accountability within the partnership – and an expected hierarchy of accountability outside it. So, within the partnership we are all accountable to one another – yet outside it, we are more accountable, and accept more accountability from others. And significantly, this will be mixed in for professionals with their
- own sense of professional accountability to their ‘peers’,
- to the canon of their profession (however subject to revision that might be),
- to their model of change, and
- to their professional sense of values (often translated into standards or definitions of entitlement).
So, we have one dimension of problematising professionalism – in becoming accountable to a group of multi faceted professionalism, I am asked to view my professional identity as a carrier of practice values – my what-ness and my it-ness – in a sceptical or ironic way. If one were to visualise the dialogue inside our imaginary professional, in a partnership, it might run something like this…
‘Maybe, I am not right; maybe you see something that I do not see; but …..if this is case, can you be right? If you are right, how can I be wrong?….. I am a professional – part of the reason I became a professional – became this specific type of professional – was to be right in this particular way.’
And something like this dialogue will also be played out in the inter-actions within the partnership, and between the partners-as-professionals and the surrounding communities of practitioners and professionals with whom it interacts. One can see something of a play within a play within a play – the dynamics of each acting like a knowing commentary on the other.
So, I am proposing that there is something intrinsically unsettling – one might almost say – disorienting about being-a-professional in partnership relation to other professionals. It leads to relationships in which it is common to exaggerate small differences. It commonly leads to disputes about ‘diagnosis’, to strained agreement over ‘presenting problems’, and about what to do in response. If one accepts our earlier suggestion about partnerships as an ‘arena for conflict’, then the contesting of professions is a special instance of conflict. It is hoped that the conflict will be agonistic; but it is often felt to be antagonistic.
Slingshot