Last month, Lemonade from Lemons had the pleasure of sharing our Inclusive Conversation Training with eight lovely staff members from Retirement Villages Group.
Retirement Villages Group has 16 villages across the UK and is a big part of the UK retirement living world. And just like any proper community, it thrives on connection — the kind that goes beyond just saying ‘morning’ or ‘afternoon’ as you walk past each other.
If you’re not exactly sure what we mean by a ‘retirement village’, watch the BBC’s Old Hands, New Tricks on iPlayer. It is an insightful and touching look at retirement village life and the very real issue of what can happen when someone has a communication difference (in this programme hearing loss). The programme shows just how quickly a communication difference can isolate you in a room full of people.
This is one reason why we were so excited to be invited into Retirement Villages by the fabulous Jo, the Director of Wellbeing. Jo understands that communication is a two-way street. Good communication and inclusive conversation is about how we as conversation partners listen, adapt, and respond.
Ben and I spent the day chatting with Retirement Village’s warm and wonderfully curious team about how brain injuries and illnesses can change peoples’ communication, how this can break our rules of conversation and what we can do as inclusive partners to get conversations back on track. The group discovered that nearly all of us had personal or family experience of communication differences, and the support attendees offered each other with this in the brief time we had together was great to see. Talking about talking got people talking. Funny that.
One conversation that really stuck with me was when we were discussing social rituals. The example I gave was starting a conversation with “How are you?” with the British unwritten rule being to answer “Fine, thanks!”. Two team members shared how this conversational opener baffled them for ages when they first moved to the UK. They answered it as a genuine question, but soon realised this was ‘wrong’ and could not work out why – but the end result was that those conversations stopped. It just goes to show how our everyday communication is riddled with invisible cultural tripwires that can result in you tripping flat on your conversational face.
And that’s the whole point of what we do with Inclusive Conversation training. By the end of the day, Retirement Villages staff had not only deepened their understanding of how communication can change after injury or illness, but they were now equipped with a basic framework for thinking about how conversations work and what we do when they go wrong. Most importantly, they practised what it’s like to be on both sides of a conversation and found out that living with a communication difference is not straightforward.
A great moment was when one staff member said at the end of the session: “I never realised you could just pick up a pen and paper.”
Yes! That’s it! Sometimes the smallest adjustment — writing as well as speaking, giving someone more time to respond, summarising what you have understood rather than guessing or correcting someone — can open a door to a connection that would otherwise stay shut.
The truth is, we can’t change the way we communicate until we realise what we didn’t know in the first place. Retirement Villages are well on their way. We’re so excited to keep working with them and see how their energy and commitment turn every one of their villages into places where everyone can feel heard. Because inclusive conversations don’t just pass the time — they change lives.
Firle.
