What to do when you realise you are the block: A reflection from Saboohi Bukhari

It’s always been close to my heart - amplifying the voices of communities we simply don’t take enough time to listen to and understand and championing the rights of the most underserved and disadvantaged communities. It’s something I’ve grown up doing and also in my career over the last 20+ years.

When I first joined The Giving Lab, I remember feeling that my previous experience of working in this space, of amplifying people’s voices and my passion to make a difference, would be enough for me to connect with our communities and champion their rights. But I really struggled. When I was in spaces collaborating with our community team, we could never reach a consensus. We couldn’t even get through an agenda and there were so many issues our community team were putting forward. As the person overseeing the service, I wanted to move it along, meet the project aims and KPIs. I remember thinking – why is this so difficult, why is it so hard? This is something that I’ve grown up doing, platforming people’s voices and deeply listening.

I remember self-reflecting in those moments and my realisation was that I’m a block in those spaces. It’s me and how I bring myself into those spaces that means I’m not able to embrace the things that community members are putting forward that are genuine issues for them. So it doesn’t matter what agenda I bring into the room, we’re not going to be able to move forward, because there are issues that are more important for community members – and if those issues aren’t being valued, or listened to because we’re not taking them on board, or acknowledging the value of those issues for community members, those frustrations will boil over and it will be really difficult to move on and get through an agenda or get consensus on things we’re discussing.

“Checking yourself and how you bring yourself into community spaces is absolutely critical if you want to be able to listen deeply, and truly understand what matters most to our communities.”

I went through a process of having to relearn so many things. I had to identify my biases and judgements and come into community spaces with no assumptions. My approach changed entirely. From agenda-less meetings where every person has an equal say on putting forward an issue that is important to them, to being more mindful of how I was responding to issues the community were raising, taking a more exploratory approach and trying to understand deeply what the issues were and how it was affecting them.

This led to me having deep meaningful conversations and rebuilding relationships centred around the human person, rather than the previous transactional process of simply getting through an agenda. We spend time in every meeting hearing about what people did at their weekend or listening to something personal that each person’s wishes to share with the group.

A lot of the time, we don’t even realise that what we bring to spaces might create environments that we don’t even intend. Checking yourself and how you bring yourself into community spaces is absolutely critical if you want to be able to listen deeply, and truly understand what matters most to our communities – and that will lead to an enriching and transformative experience. A journey of true partnership working to centre the voices of our communities.