Advocacy

 
I’m learning more and more about the importance of this skill as my career progresses. Not only are my own advocacy skills being strengthened, but my perception of the importance of, and, the purpose of advocacy, are shifting.
I suppose I have come from a place of understanding advocacy as being in support of those who have some kind of ‘deficit’ or are lacking in ability. It was provided by those who ‘had’ (health, education, intelligence…etc), to those who ‘had not’, those less fortunate who needed special assistance. In some ways I might (!) have been holding a judgement around such a process. Believing that advocacy was hierarchical and focussed on meeting some kind of shortfall in individuals. Goodness I’ve just discovered yet another unconscious bias!
SEAP define the purpose of advocacy as helping when you:
“• Find it difficult to make your views known.

• Need other people listen to you and take your views into account.”

And this gives me a ‘cleaner’ place from which to work. Don’t we all struggle with the above two things at times? Don’t we all have days when we feel misunderstood or frustrated that we cannot explain the point of something that has importance for us, to another person?
That two humans can understand each other in a conversation never ceases to amazing me. When you think of the amount of steps between the thought, the words spoken by one individual, the words received and the way in which they are comprehended by the other, there is already plenty of room misunderstanding. Perhaps this goes some way towards explaining some of the mystifying miscommunication experienced between myself and my Beloved?!
Once you add other filters such as age and gender, and race and culture, one word can have as many different connotations as there are different people. This is because communication is subjective and is always skewed by our personal experiences. So now I begin to see advocacy not in service of meeting a deficit, but simply as a form of translation between ‘differences’.
Two pieces of work I have recently had the privilege of engaging with have involved nurturing potential advocates preparing to translate between ‘peoples’ of different ages. Both have been in service of translating innovative ideas that are common ground amongst Millennials, in order that Boomers or Gen X types, , can overcome their fear of new ideas or new technologies. These people are the ones who have enough seniority to be able to implement the resultant essential solutions. These solutions can provide sustainability for us humans and this planet. This work is not condescendingly meeting any kind of deficit in these powerful business leaders, it is simply meeting a genuine need for translation between two truly different worlds, divided in their perceptions by time. 
The fourth industrial revolution is an essential step in our evolution. As Hamlet said: 
“there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
And it is similar with technology and progress. Neither are problematic in themselves, It is the way that we employ them that makes them so. These people who have the ability to translate the benefits of really innovative technical problem solving ofr new environments, may prove invaluable. They can bring the enthusiasm of those who are just starting their professional journeys, and make it digestible for the C-Suit crowd who may have otherwise rejected them having become more naturally fearful as they have grown ‘older and wiser’. In this way we can harness great solutions with the power to make them real.
How utterly invaluable these advocates are! These individuals who can have a foot in both camps and can ‘get’ the language of both. The advocates who are courageous enough to translate the solutions generate in youth and enthusiasm so that they are accessible to those who have earned themselves the power, over time, to make such things manifest. 
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