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What it means to be accompanied and why it is precious

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When a friend calls to me from the road

And slows his horse to a meaning walk,

I don’t stand still and look around

On all the hills I haven’t hoed,

And shout from where I am, What is it?

No, not as there is a time to talk.

I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,

Blade-end up and five feet tall,

And plod: I go up to the stone wall

For a friendly visit.

 ~Robert Frost 

Accompaniment is the act of walking with another person. The root of the word accompaniment is the Latin ad cum panis, to break bread with one another.

Change is hard and when faced with challenges - it is easier to give up or become overwhelmed when we feel alone and unsupported. In fact , research shows that it is not the bad thing that happened to us that causes the worst pain but that we were not accompanied with resonance and warmth that causes the impacts of pain.


“If your parents’ faces never lit up when they looked at you, it’s hard to know what it feels like to be loved and cherished. If you grew up unwanted and ignored, it is a major challenge to develop a visceral sense of agency and self-worth.”― Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

It may well be a challenge , but it is not impossible. For business and teams this means that one of the ways in which we can support employees during times of change and challenge - is to accompany them. Accompanying means to go on their journey with them , without wanting to change their direction or fix it for them. It means listening to them without judging them negatively or positively. It means offering your presence as a witness - a witness that can offer warmth and understanding. Such accompaniment provides solidarity , deep listening, giving the person space to develop critical thinking and inquiry and to "walk with them" , rather than "do for them".

In a world where time is money , and all activities we do at work , need to be "productive" - this could prove difficult to measure. What is the "monetary value" of a person who walks with us every step of the way offering warmth and understanding - as opposed to an "expert" that provides solutions and advice. The reality is that we all need such accompaniment when we face challenges and the value of such accompaniment cannot be expressed. It requires time to be present for a person , it requires attention to understand , it requires skill to provide warmth and a non-judgmental presence.

To accompany someone is to go somewhere with him or her, to break bread together, to be present on a journey with a beginning and an end. There's an element of mystery, of openness, of trust, in accompaniment. The companion, the accompagnateur, says: “I'll go with you and support you on your journey wherever it leads. I'll share your fate for a while—and by "a while," I don't mean a little while. Accompaniment is about sticking with a task until it's deemed completed—not by the accompagnateur, but by the person being accompanied. (Farmer, 2013, p. 234)

It could mean eating lunch together , being present for them while they deliver a bad presentation , being attentive to them when they share their fear or doubts - without jumping in to fix or offer reassurance or provide advice. but to give them the space to work it out within themselves. 

In the race for effectiveness and efficiency , we have neglected the very things that our bodies and minds need to thrive in this world. In our bid to overcome all challenges we have learnt to stuff down negative emotions and become compulsive addicts either of overwork , drugs or phones . Then we are hit by a pain and challenge so grand , that we cannot run away from it or our overwhelm. In times of great change and stress , accompaniment can be the key to help people assimilate the grief , accept the negative event and make the necessary changes that are required. 

When people are accompanied they become more resilient. They are able to bounce back from set-backs and failures to try again. Those that are not accompanied , find it harder to bounce back and remain rooted in the pain longer. We need accompaniment to develop resilient students , resilient teams and ultimately resilient societies.



The root change institute has developed a model of accompaniment that is interesting for working together in a team environment. The planning stage requires you to set aside the time, duration and frequency that work for you and the other party. The presence part is showing up in a way that support the other person. Providing moral and technical support refers to evaluating whether we provided the right empathy , and did we work in a way that was collaborative and helped the other person.

The tool can be downloaded here if you want to implement it in your team :


References 

O'donoghue, Siobhan, "The Phenomenology of Accompaniment: A Journey of Transformation" (2020). Dissertations. 3810. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/3810

RootChange. (2023, March 2). The power of accompaniment in partnerships. Root Change. https://www.rootchange.org/2023/03/02/the-power-of-accompaniment-in-partnerships/

Watkins, M. (2015). Psychosocial accompaniment. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 3(1), 324–341. https://doi.org/10.5964/jspp.v3i1.103

A resilient hug. Relevance of accompaniment in cases of enforced disappearance - Peace in Progress magazine. (2022, April 7). Peace in Progress Magazine. https://www.icip.cat/perlapau/en/article/a-resilient-hug-relevance-of-accompaniment-in-cases-of-enforced-disappearance/

 
 
 

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