What Do We Do?

Ah, a great question! I have my brightspaces to do my ‘unreal world’ work, that of an academic challenging conventional wisdoms, so I can work with others in the real world where coaches and leaders need wisdom to fit what they face amidst complex organisational dynamics.

I could talk about and map all kinds of locations, teaching spaces, meeting spaces, cafes, galleries, organisations, conferences, cities. But when I think about it my brightspaces, where focus is gained, problems are solved, learning takes place, and the way forward becomes clear, though incorporating all these, are actually closer to hand. My ‘brightspaces’ are key rooms, environments I make ideal for a mix of reading, comfort in personal space and reverie. I reflect on this and see that I mix three great life long loves in these key rooms, my Plato’s caves!

First, a love of libraries; born in the first Tardis-like mobile library van that visited us weekly during my childhood, to the colossal internet resource we now take for granted. Second a love of personal ‘dens’; since enjoying the simple, childhood hideaways I made with siblings and pals in the countryside around my father’s farm, to the sophisticated metropolitan interiors I live and work in now. And third a need for lots of reverie and all kinds of dynamic daydreaming (sometimes we challengers of conventional wisdom call this research).

Now I see how these always work together. My key rooms include my home office of the last 15 years. This was an attic conversion in my City home, with just a very small Velux window in the roof. Item 1 lots of books? Yes! Item 2 a ‘den’-like feel? Yes! Item 3, good for reverie? Yes! This works. I found focus, solutions, learning and ways forward. I coaxed into being many ideas, wrote books and articles, prepared lectures and projects, and then went about the real world with them - and got paid for it!

The other key brightspace in the hall of fame of my rooms was my first University office; a wee space on a corridor of wee spaces in a rather dire, dilapidated, grey converted office block amid our sprawling city centre campus. When I started there in the early 1990s we novices would envy the more palatial rooms and grand Plato’s caves of the venerable professors. Whatever the size of room though, all were thickly lined with shelves of books (old truths, real worlds now gone), piles of papers the skeletons of current projects and plans, all lit by the brightness of candles burned at both ends. In our wee rooms we entertained wisdom and its challenges with colleagues welcomed or endured. Likewise students and the occasional ambassadors from the ‘real world’ came to see how our challenging wisdom might benefit them. Now we call this Knowledge Exchange.

My least favoured room, puzzlingly at the time, had none of these characteristics. I moved into a larger office when I progressed in my University career, one with a whole wall of windows and a big sky to view and be enjoyed in whatever mood it came. There was prairie like space here, enough to kit it out with a huge and important desk, a meeting table with snazzy chairs, and still space for a wee area with comfy chairs and more informal discussions. But some things were missing; I was glad to see the back of it, and I better understand why now.

I found my brightspace strategies revive and work once more in my current work rooms which are well and truly book-bound, perfectly private, and reverie positive. In these rooms I can continue my unreal work, before I go to all those other locations, the lecture theatres, the conferences, the meetings and the complex organisations, anywhere coaches and leaders with an appetite and capacity to learn and further master real world needs go to learn.

Dr Stephen Gibb
www.strath.ac.uk/business/cee/