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Convening and learning:
roles for relational working
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In 2023 Jo Underwood took on the role of Convenor, having started fairly early on as an NHS member of the Stewardship Group. This was a new role for the group, which had previously been supported by a programme manager. Here she reflects on what convening has been like for her, including what she had to unlearn, and what the role means in practice. This isn’t a how-to guide for convening - context is everything. But here’s what it entailed for Jo.
Context is key
We were a group of in-system leaders exploring something alt-system. Statutory and VCSE, county-wide not neighbourhood-based, non-constituted but responsible for a grant via a fiscal host. Eventually, we realised our best work came from not pinning things down. We called this a warm holding space – a place to sit with questions while waiting for answers to arrive.
My own background? An NHS general manager who could run a hospital or a change programme - solidly “New Public Manager” territory. But I am also a business owner, volunteer, Trustee, freelancer, home educator… A lot of different hats, which all show up in this role.
Polarities (both/and thinking)
Convening this space meant holding opposites: grant manager and holder of a fluid space of enquiry. I’ve never danced between roles like this before and it was hard a lot of the time. This type of “all-in” leadership required my own version of radical pragmatism: just the right mix of piracy (unfettered experimentation) and guardrails (the values and principles which demarcate this from chaos).
Leadership, Disney princess style
It’s taken a while to accept my role as a leadership one, largely because the predominant ‘figurehead’ archetype can make leadership a hard word to embody softly. Luckily some kick-ass Disney princesses have trodden this ground before, and their wisdom has popped up along the way:
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Like Elsa, this is about releasing control, abandoning “shoulds,” and trusting in the purpose and process. Magic comes in that kind of surrender, but it can hurt!
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Like Anna in Frozen II, change in complexity is not linear, there is trust and boldness involved in taking the next possible step without knowing where it’s leading.
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I know who you are – Moana’s moment with Te Fiti reminds me: see the human in everyone and give myself that grace too. To be in these spaces needs humanity and humility. Our group constantly had to confront and unpick our assumptions about each other. Over time, the layers drop away.
Learning, not proving
Convening meant protecting non-agenda-driven spaces. We weren’t here to showcase polished outputs, we were here to learn. That meant asking more questions than we could answer, looping back to the same conversations, sitting with not-knowing, and letting insights emerge over time.
It might sound hazy but there’s something serious here: power. The moment we say we know, we reinforce hierarchies and a productivity paradigm that perpetuates injustice. If we’d started with outcomes, KPIs, and proving impact, we’d have missed the deeper shifts.
This is not about doing nothing, this is about working hard to create a space that can hold uncertainty, discomfort, emergence because we think that’s where new answers come up. This is not a ‘job done’ kind of job… and that is the work.
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noticing the dynamics that were happening within the group
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exploring the how and why behind decisions, what they meant and how they were grounded in people’s own assumptions
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reminding people of their responsibilities
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reminding people of the context and why the work matters, holding continuity, shaping understanding, ensuring people didn’t have the same conversation over and over. This takes time, but it means that no one gets left out when there is a different ‘deck of cards’ or group of people at each meeting. This is critical in collaborative action as people have multiple commitments and may not be able to show up at every meeting
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letting go of what and instead focusing on the how
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noticing shifts in people, language, ideas, and “pockets of the future found in the present”
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bringing my own knowledge and perspective rather than being an objective or neutral outsider
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attending to personal and interpersonal dynamics with care and kindness
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between the luxury of time and the ability to sit in discomfort versus action
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when it was not a natural space to play
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empowering people to be curious and not have the answers
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to step up and step in
Convening in practice
So that’s how it was for me. How did the group experience this in practice?
Evaluation or learning?
Traditional evaluation methods are built for fixed plans and predictable outcomes. They ask, “Did it work?” and “Was it value for money?”—assuming that change is simple, linear, and measurable. But when it comes to complex social issues, change is messy, unpredictable, and deeply human. In these situations, much of the important information is not available through fixed data points, but - like Nora Bateson’s concept of ‘warm data’ - is alive in our relationships and interactions with the world around us.
Rather than employing an evaluator to measure success, HCT Gloucestershire introduced an independent Learning Partner. For the last 15 months of the initiative, Mel Scaffold worked in an embedded way alongside the Stewardship Group, listening, asking questions, and supporting reflection as things unfolded. The role was less about collecting evidence and more about creating the conditions for reflective learning. Rather than holding up an evaluation ‘mirror’ - showing a fixed reflection of what had already happened - the learning partner role could be more like a lantern - illuminating what was emerging, what might need attention, and how this could influence the road ahead.
As well as making learning visible and alive, this also highlighted how other types of evaluation were experienced as extractive, flattening insight and lived experience, and creating a sense of being studied like an experiment in a petri dish. The group noticed how this had the effect of separating them from the rest of the system at the very time when they were seeking to create more connection.
The Learning Partner worked closely with the Convenor, including monthly sessions for reflection and sense-making. Together these roles created a learning environment, recognising that change happens through relationships and curiosity not control and measurement. They realised that in fast-paced work environments, previous insights can get lost, and people can need guidance back to the things they had already learned. Keeping the wisdom warm makes a difference, and it needs people and resources to make this happen. We have a hunch that versions of these roles are a vital part of building the next step.
