Practice in the real world

Practice in the real world - a collection of useful tenets, tips and mistakes toward getting your work adopted.   We all know what it’s like learning and practising a new skill. You learn to drive, then you go out for real, and that’s when you learn to drive.   Systems Practice is doubly difficult as, unlike driving a car, there is no right or wrong approach. There are no clear rules for how you orientate and engage with people, how you manifest your practice skills and how you calibrate to the environment or problem situation. With practice, it’s questions of; is this more or less useful? More or less effective? This uncertainty can be destabilising and disabling.  It’s all good having the tool/method/latest gear - but if you’ve no ideal about how to bridge that into the real world then you’ll not make a dent in it. We note craft and intervention skills etc, but focus less on the actual 'inbetween' act of doing this live, with other humans in the real world.   This session presents a collection of tenets, tips and mistakes that will be useful to your practice. Compiled from direct experience, conversations and reading, it promises to offer useful devices for those just starting out, and musings for the more experienced to reflect on.   The main goal of this session is to make practice easier by sharing: -> Ways of orientating to the environment and those you are working with, -> Ways of sense-checking your practice and direction, -> Ways of calibrating to the ‘sweet spot’ of acceptability, -> A whole bunch of mistakes and mis-steps that hopefully you’ll then avoid.   Let’s together enhance this compendium to enable systems practice to become the norm and not the exception.