Our thinking

Turning to the light

9 April, 2021

We have written regularly about the progress of The Relationships Project, which helps us all put relationships at the heart of what we do. Their new report, Turning to the Light, marks a watershed moment.

The report charts our relationships over the last year, plots the evolving challenges at different stages of the pandemic and advocates “building energetically on the many positives from this period, not because it hasn’t also revealed enormous challenges but because it has.” Crucially, it then presents five powerful, practical and beautifully simple resources that can help us all, individually and as a society, build more meaningful and productive relationships.

Among these resources is the Relationships Heatmap, a tool for evaluating your connections with others in a certain place, for example at work. Our team at Good Business was privileged to be a beta tester – you can read our case study here. Another resource is an enlightening handbook helping you think like a ‘bridge builder’ to bring together people and ideas from different groups. Another is an insightful guide exploring the community response to Covid-19, and how we can help people continue to care and volunteer post-pandemic. 9m people cared for others during Covid, 39% of them did little or nothing in their communities before, and 70% of them want to continue. The guide sketches out five different archetypes among these people: their motivations, needs, and how their energy can be maintained in future.

We urge you to visit the Relationships Project website and explore how you could use the resources in your own life, work and community.

By Ben Wood