Beverly W

The key message I'd share with others wanting to work this way is that it can seem a very complex mechanism at times, although there is always tremendous growth and learnings. Also, even though for me personally it can be frustrating and hard work at times, the upside is that it's highly rewarding in many ways, especially when we receive lovely praise.

For instance, on the one hand, there needs to be an enormous amount of cohesion between the participants and researchers. On the other hand, everyone is an individual with different needs, influences, experiences, and reasons for being here. However, ultimately, this can provide powerful emotional content, which is very helpful for getting our message across.

As well as relying heavily on the fact that people from all walks of life can get along together, it cannot operate without a great deal of flexibility or give and take between the team and participants.

For me, transparency and respect are top priorities when working together. In my opinion, respect comes from being listened to with the intention of understanding the other person's point of view. Which is what I find so engaging about listening to other participants' stories. For this reason, researchers need excellent listening skills. In Steven Coveys’ ‘7 Habits Book’, he says "Seek first to understand. Then be understood". As most of our communication is represented by our body language and not as much by the words we speak, and as a mainly online community, we don't get to meet up in person on a regular enough basis for my liking. But I can live with this.

In my experience, some of the positives from working in this way are that it delivers a sense of belonging and satisfies my desire to give back and help towards a greater good. It also offers me improved self-esteem, providing me with 'a voice' through the media of a platform where I can be heard in a rational and powerful manor. Ordinarily, I would struggle to access such an audience.

Personally, I sometimes wonder whether there's an occasional push for a particular narrative, to be told, rather than the one in which the writer wants to share. This can and does lead to a clash of understandings, and perspectives between people however for me personally, I'm comfortable enough to put aside any bias and see it all as an opportunity for self-development. I'm not certain whether other people feel the same way as I do.

Finally, for me, 'trust' is another important feature of how we work, and nobody would really know what is going on behind the scenes in any given scenario. However, I trust those I work alongside and hope they feel they have trust in me.