Daniel Emmerson 00:02

Welcome to Foundational Impact, a podcast series that focuses on education and artificial intelligence from a non profit perspective. My name is Daniel Emmerson and I'm the Executive Director of Good Future Foundation, a nonprofit whose mission is to equip educators to confidently prepare all students, regardless of their background, to benefit from and succeed in an AI infused world.

Liz, thank you ever so much indeed for being here as part of Foundational Impact. It's wonderful to have you with us. How are you feeling today?

Liz Robinson 00:34

I'm delighted to be talking to you and yeah, I'm good. I'm excited.

Daniel Emmerson 00:39

Amazing. What's, what's happening this week in your world? What have you got going on?

Liz Robinson 00:44

Gosh, that's a big question. What's going on in my world? Yeah, I mean, a whole bunch of my job is characterised by vacillating between the massively big picture and strategic. So I was on a call this morning talking about how is public policy made. Like, what's the, what's the mental model we're holding of how public policy is made, which is fairly kind of meta, and then at the same time dealing with really operational issues going on in my schools and delivering training for people and everything in between. So it's a wonderful mix.

Daniel Emmerson 01:19

It feels like those are two, two very different things. And your role is super interesting from that perspective. So you have Big Education Trust, so you have your, your schools that you're working with. And I'd love to hear a bit more about that and to talk about what that involves for the benefit of our audience. And then there's also the professional development piece where you're work, where you're doing a huge amount of community outreach for professional development in the leadership space. And I'd love to, to be able to talk more about that as well. But maybe let's start with the Trust. Can you tell us a bit about your schools and what your role is in terms of, you know, guidance and leadership in that space?

Liz Robinson 01:56

Yeah, of course. So my background was as a head teacher. So I was head of one of the schools that's now in the Trust, it's called Surrey Square, which is in kind of southeast London. And a really challenged, social, economically challenged community. And I guess the history there was my core belief, which is that young people, children are whole entities. They're whole beings. Right. With all kinds of different needs. And that the job of a school is to be a part of developing them as a whole, as a whole young person towards adulthood. So my whole philosophy around education is about meeting every child where they're at and experiencing them and attending to them in their entirety. And part of that means looking beyond the academics. So yes, it's about academic achievement in school, but it's about a bunch of, a whole bunch of other things and it's about attending to them in the context of their family and their family in the context of their community. So it's a kind of very holistic view of what school can be. And I became a headteacher back in 2006 when we were in a very different political environment in England. So I had four years under what was the then New Labour government in a sort of policy environment which was very much aligned with those kind of views. So subsequent to that time when there has been a kind of narrow, they would say a focusing, I would say a narrowing of the kind of orientation of the school system in England since 2010, which became very much about knowledge and disciplinary knowledge and academic achievement as defined in exam success. I found myself kind of on the rock on the other side of like where the dominant policy environment was going and so really looked to find like minded people, find the people, the places and the spaces where I could enact my leadership and that vision in what had then had become fairly sort of hostile environment basically in terms of the English education system.

Daniel Emmerson 03:56

So can you, can you unpack that hostile a little bit?

Liz Robinson 04:00

Sure, yeah. I mean, choose that word carefully. It wasn't just kind of not conducive, it was actively hostile.

Daniel Emmerson 04:06

Right.

Liz Robinson 04:06

You know, the political changes in 2010 onwards were, were very focused, very uncompromising and very aggressive. So that the way that those changes were kind of implemented through the system, it was very aggressive and I just repeated myself. So very smart and very effective. So, you know, the, the kind of, is this an example that that whole movement became associated with? If you take something like a knowledge rich curriculum, which was the language that got kind of used, knowledge rich. So it suggests that if you're going to argue against the knowledge rich, somehow it's like it's poor. Right? Because if it's not rich, it's poor. So it was so clever kind of linguistically and like having high standards, you know, the standards agenda. So it's kind of like if you're not in favor of a standards agenda, somehow you're in favor of like low standards. It's like, no, it's a false dichotomy. That's not true. But, but like it was very hard intellectually and practically to kind of counter this, this agenda in terms of how it was articulated and how you know, the government, which is the job of the government of the day, you know, created control over the significant institutions, over what curriculum looked like, over what examinations look like, over, you know, sort of school structures, what Ofsted was interested in. So the whole system became oriented towards that.

Daniel Emmerson 05:29

Was that entirely antithetical to what you were trying to achieve as a head at the time? Were there bits of it that worked for you and bits that didn't?

Liz Robinson 05:36

Yeah, I mean, it, it wasn't entirely antithetical. I mean, I believe in. So this is the point is, of course I believe in high standards and I have high expectations and I believe in strong academic rigor. So I, I just don't believe that's the only thing. So this kind of. And rather than, or has been a really important part of that argument now, when you're in a sort of political environment which is, you know, wants simplicity and clarity and isn't interested in, oh, and, and this. And it's another thing, you know, that's how, you know, they, that's what they have, isn't it? Every time you see a politician making announcement now they have their like two word thing on their pedestal, you know, making change work or, you know, up ready Brexit. It's like this, things have to be condensed into. If it's more than three words, it doesn't make the cut. So kind of saying actually education's like a really nuanced and sophisticated thing, thinking holistically about children and young people and yes, it's about their architectural achievement. So I guess where we've got to with nailing that simplicity. At Surrey Square, for many years we use the kind of mission statement phrase personal and academic excellence. That was our sort of way of expressing it. So kind of personal. Well, what's personal excellence? You can unpack that, blah, blah. So that was one way of articulating, which we use, used for many years. Now as Big Education, we've adopted this phrase, which is not unique to us, of head, heart and hand. So an education of the head, the heart and the hand. So which I think is really neat. It's sort of. It does the job of being a three word, a three word summary.

Daniel Emmerson 07:06

You can have that on your plinth.

Liz Robinson 07:07

Yeah, you can have it on the plinth. Right. And without me even needing to unpack that. You know, you get it. It's like, yeah, head, yeah, get that. It's about academic stuff. Heart. Okay. Yes, it's about personal development, well- being, etc. Identity. Hand. Yeah, it's about doing stuff, making stuff, being empowered, having agency, creating things, doing real work. Right. So it's neat and so that. So the journey just to sort of finish answering your question about Big Education, the provenance of that it is a multi academy trust. We were, you know, I was head teacher of a maintainer equipment authority, maintained school for 13 years at Surrey Square. Didn't particularly want to get involved in the academy movement because a lot of what was happening in the early days was I refer to as the wild west days of the academy growth movement in England, which was land grabs, people, you know, building empires and a very much a mental model of school improvement, which was coming from a mindset of a successful usually secondary head teacher who thought they knew how to do school, then imposing their methodologies on schools at scale in fairly crass ways, which is like the antithesis for everything I believed in. So I was like, I don't want to do that. I don't really part of that. But got to a point of thinking actually maybe being, being a map, being a multi academy trust would be, you know, a vehicle to do some of, to enact some of this wider working system. So that was the decision we made and we joined forces with School 21, which is a very kind of innovative free school, which had been set up with a sort of similar philosophy around curriculum and pedagogy and thought they were kind of good partners to join up with. So kind of gathered, that was our intention, was to gather some of the innovative schools together to be in a kind of collective, sharing collaborative space as a trust.

Daniel Emmerson 08:54

So we're talking about a trust at that point, right? The grouping that was intentional with what that would look like.

Liz Robinson 09:00

Yeah, yeah. So it was a decision. We'd come to a Surrey Square perspective, we should set up a trust.

Daniel Emmerson 09:05

Okay.

Liz Robinson 09:06

And then it was a case of finding like minded partners. We had this idea, this, the metaphor at the beginning was about a constellation. So we were looking for, you know, distinctive schools that kind of were a star. It's a bit cheesy, but like a star in their own right, you know, had their own stuff going on and that. You see the trouble with that of course is always about egos and hubris. They've got people who are successful. It's like, well, why do we need to join forces? Because we're doing our thing, you know. And what my instinct is always to sort of gather people to have more impact together and to share and collaborate. So that requires us to get over our ego. So the met, the star, the constellation metaphor was kind of, you know, we can all keep being the stars that we are. We don't need to sort of fundamentally change by coming together. But if we join up, you know, if we join the dots, suddenly we have more meaning, you know, we have more impact together because we stand out and we're a constellation together. So that was sort of the sort of way we thought about the formation of the trust and deliberately doing it in a very different way from the way that most trusts were developing, which was kind of very top down. Here's a central model, everyone has to do the same thing. We were sort of the opposite of that in terms of we actually want innovation and creativity in different solutions. So that's not to say we shouldn't learn from each other and do things the same way if that's the best solution. But we're not going to do that for the sake of it, for the sake of it being neat and tidy with a bow to say, oh, well, we all do this. It's like, well, maybe we're exploring different ways of doing that. And that's, that's cool too.

Daniel Emmerson 10:38

It's the innovation and the creativity that I want to try and tease out a little bit later on. But what was it about School 21 that struck out for you that you thought, yeah, this is, this is an alignment here, this is going to work?

Liz Robinson 10:49

Yeah. I mean, School 21 obviously been set up as a free school with this absolutely kind of bold and uncompromising vision about empowering young people to take on the world, which is the mission statement, you know, from the beginning. So, and been very loud about it. You know, it was set up by big personalities, you know, who, who kind of, from the word go, were putting it out there in terms of bringing the debate, being part of the debate. So it's a very high profile school. It was sort of, you know, one of the two major schools that would get name dropped all the time as being the examples of the sort of more progressive inverted commas, you know, more expansive view, particularly of secondary education has School 21 and XP and noncast, you know, they. And so it was sort of on the map and I knew, you know, the people involved, so it was an obvious choice really. So, yeah, that's, that's how it happened.

Daniel Emmerson 11:36

So that's the trust side and that's how that, that came about. I will come back to innovation and creativity and we are going to get to artificial intelligence as well. Because change is also something that you've alluded to a couple of times and I want to, want to speak to you about that. But we also mentioned at the beginning the leadership, professional development side of I guess the trust and the work that you're doing. Could you tell us a little bit more about that as well?

Liz Robinson 12:01

Yeah. So in forming the trust it was as I said it, of course, primarily we exist to serve the students in the schools that we run and you know, we are directly, I'm directly responsible and accountable for those students and what happens to them on a daily basis, which is a huge thing in itself.

Daniel Emmerson 12:17

How many students are we talking about in the trust?

Liz Robinson 12:18

The constant score is just over, it's about 2,200 something like that. Okay, so it's three schools. So compared to many multi academy trusts, we're tiny. But you know, it's all relative. Like it's, that's quite a lot of students to. Well it depends how you look at it. It's quite a lot of students to be responsible for. It's like a £20 million of taxpayers money. You know, it's like it's a thing, it's not an inconsiderable thing. And the, you know, the, the driving motivation behind the trust was also to be a positive disruptor in the system. And going back in time, this was a point when it was really rigid. I said that word, hostile. You know, there were not many examples of schools and trusts sticking their heads above the parapet and saying actually yeah, I'll take your academic rigor and I'll raise you two which is heart and hand as well actually. So more aspiration. But trying to make that argument and, and enact that practice was challenging. So it was a kind of sense of the gathering, a bit of, you know, we do use that phrase of the Star Wars, you know, the Rebel Alliance. It was kind of coming together and so the outward facing work, we're really clear on it now. To say we were completely clear on it, of course when we started would be untrue because you do evolve as you go. And so really we think of that in three buckets. But I suppose the way of putting it as a trust, we work in the system, we run schools in the system, but we're also working on the system. So that's kind of how we think about it. It's work in the system and then how we're working on the system for wider systemic change. And that work on the system falls into three buckets. One is about developing talent, the second is designing and sharing new practices and the third is kind of movement making and movement contribution, contribution to movement making. So the talent piece really comes from the point in time when we work, when we formed. It's still relevant now. But it's interesting how that's shifting, which is really taking a kind of bottom up guerrilla tactics. How can we empower and skill up leaders in the system to crack on and as the late great Tim Brighouse would say, find the gaps in the hedges. So Tim was actually one of our members of our, of our governance structure. So you know, that find the gaps in the hedges has been a massive sort of driving design principle for us. You know, it is possible. It, you know, we've got examples of practice, we've got example like it is possible. But what makes it possible is extraordinary leadership and capable leadership and bold leadership. So how, you know, that was kind of the driving force behind the talent development is yeah, gathering, supporting, nurturing, skilling up, you know, firing up, nurturing leaders and teachers who are in this quite challenging, hostile environment, but doing it anyway. So that's been really exciting. Loads of work on leadership development, programmatic work, thought leadership work, etc etc.. And then the second bucket which is designing and sort of creating and sharing new practices. We're quite distinctive as an organization, but we operate in a sense as a think tank and we put lots of thought leadership out there. But we've also, we actually run schools and we work with other schools. So the actual, like, what does it actually look like? What does it actually look like in practice is critical. And so that's really developed with our schools, but lots and lots of schools that we now work with which is asking the big questions. So how might we design a curriculum that is genuinely relevant to our community? Right, big questions, not how do we design a curriculum that gets better? Key stage four results. Right. So asking bigger questions and then what happens when you empower leaders and help them skillfully use design thinking and other methodologies to create new practices and new solutions? It's like, oh wow. Well, you get these amazing answers. So then the sort of sharing piece has been about how we help distill, capture, codify those practices in ways that then allow us to play the map back into the system in different ways. So that's, and that's programmatically developed from a kind of individual leadership program into a school based program. So it's called Rethinking Schools Project. So we have cohorts of 10 schools that we work with each year, kind of a deep two year collaborative learning project where they're learning with and from each other.

Daniel Emmerson 16:44

And those schools find you do they or you reach out. How does that work?

Liz Robinson 16:48

Yeah, also. Yeah, exactly. I'm increasing now schools find us, but we kind of out and about talking at conferences and you know, doing that sort of. Yeah. Through the network. It's amazing how all the sinuous tissue of all the mycelium kind of, you know, works. So that's. So we sort of created it into a programmatic form which structures that work because it can be a bit nebulous. But yeah, that's creating toolkits, creating frameworks that are creating resources which then are all sort of available free at and system, which is really exciting. Running conferences. So sort of building and also building the voice of lots of different people in systems. So it's really conscious that School 21 had this enormous reputation. Everybody you know, anyone you talk to, oh, everyone knows School 21. And whether that was justified or not, whatever. But it's like there's lots of amazing leaders and amazing schools that are innovating in different ways with real rigor and we want to also amplify that. And it can't be that innovation and creativity are something that just a few people in the system who happen to be this sort of person or whatever can do. It's like we've got to is a sort of the equality of it or the like, you know, making that the accessibility of like, you don't have to be, oh, I'm this far out high profile school in order to do something a bit differently. It's how do we support school leaders up and down the country to be, you know, as I put it, asking different questions and skillfully having approaches to getting better answers to those big questions that they ask themselves.

Daniel Emmerson 18:20

And how much does advancement in in technology in particular come into that? Because you spoke about being relevant as well. Right. And the importance of this being relevant for the community. There's a fair bit of debate about the relevance of AI in mainstream curriculum at the moment. I'd love to get your thoughts on that. I know it's a big part of strategic thinking around the trust and the work that you're doing, but. Yeah, how, how might that play into some of those initiatives?

Liz Robinson 18:48

Yeah, I mean it's, it's, it's huge. So we're just delighted to be working on a huge project around AI, which we're delighted to be working with you on as well. And where we've started from with that is our lived experience, or my lived experience as a CEO of one of the most sort of, you know, people would say forward thinking you know, creative, whatever, innovative trusts and feeling I really don't have a clue. So that was our kind of use point was me and had this moment of realizing sort of thinking, well, if we think about a bell curve of all the trusts in the country, all the trustees in the country, I'm probably in the top quartile in relation to this because by dint of the fact that I am very out there and engaged and forward thinking in terms of how I'm thinking about things. And I was thinking, crikey, if I'm probably in the top quartile. And I feel like this, like holy moly, we've got a long way to go as a system, right? So it was like this weird insight moment. It's like, I think a lot of the stuff around AI and tech generally is people in the, in like the 5% at the top of the bell curve talking to the other 5% of the people in bell curve. And you know, and then everybody else is like, okay, there's some people over there talking about this, but the rest of us just sort of oblivious. So I've been on this journey of kind of, well, what possible contribution can we bring to this? Because what do we know? But actually that insight's been really powerful in terms of saying, well actually, yeah, that's fine, well let's. How do we, how do we help people go then from, you know, 101, like where do we start? And so that's the very sort of tangible work that we're building, which is demystifying, getting out of the noise, clarifying, understanding, really practically pragmatic, tangible route maps for people to start navigating this.

Daniel Emmerson 20:49

Can I just go back to that moment? And this might not be possible, but I'm really interested in this. And I think that listeners would be as well. As a leader of, as you said, the forward thinking trust, you had that moment of realization where you're in the top quartile of leaders that might understand the relevance or the impact or the implications of this technology. What happened that sort of triggered that thought as to why that's important and why you need to do more about it. Was there something that sparked that?

Liz Robinson 21:24

I think, to be honest, it was my own feeling of increasing overwhelm about it, to be honest. And that, you know, the sort of in the last, I would say two years in particular, sort of once the COVID noise settled down, just every agenda, everyone, everywhere, it's just AI, AI, AI. And it sort of felt like it just was there. And of course it was had been coming for a long time but you know, you don't, you don't hit, you don't listen to you until suddenly you're like shouting, okay, okay, I'm listening. And and then it was like had. It was at such a point of sophistication. There was almost like, oh God, I already, it's already completely out of my grasp but it's already so mind blowing and now I've just started listening. I've just sort of not let, let that in through my ear defenders like okay, there's this thing I need to engage with and it all. It's, it's not in, it's not in its infancy, it's like already out of my grasp kind of thing. So it was that and I hope this doesn't sound like really like just design old project about my own personal needs. It was, it was, it was being honest about that lived experience of that reality. And yeah, having been a school leader and a trust leader for, for 20 years and, and knowing the sheer relentlessness, the sheer intensity, you know, of, of the day to day and the level of challenge and it is. School leadership has. Sorry, should be talking about it. Possibly it's the most amazing job and it has got harder and harder in that over those 20 years in terms of funding restrictions, level of challenge, post Covid and, blah blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So just inverted commas just. I mean, no, I'll get rid of the just. Doing the job and running an inclusive, happy, positive school in England at the moment is an extraordinary, wonderful, gargantuan task. It's hard and there's all sorts of contextual challenges, blah, blah, blah. And then completely reimagining every aspect of your entire operating model from curriculum, pedagogy, assessment, operations, you know, workforce development, ways of working, physical, physical building, like, it's like, it's so massive. It's kind of like, oh, when do I, you know, when do I just sort of get to stop driving down the fast lane? Of course at the, at the speed limit of 70 miles an hour, you know, foot, foot flat to the floor and like completely rebuild this whole car that I'm driving. It's like, it's so mammoth. And the intellectual, and emotional kind of demand on school leaders is, is. I just, I've, I live it, I am it. I am, I'm subject to all those things as well as having, I suppose 20 years of experience to be relatively sort of, you know, in the zone with it, whatever. So I think it's like how on earth can we help? You know, your average trust, there's always going to be the shiny ones. There's always the 5%, whatever. Clever. And they go, you know, I don’t mean clever but you know, please with themselves and done all this stuff on a very fizzy and wizzy and that's brilliant.

Daniel Emmerson 24:44

Headspace. Right. They have the capacity to be able to, to engage with it. They have to have.

Liz Robinson 24:49

That's why I come to. It's like what your average school, you know, and then what about those in the bottom 25% are. Because it's about the kids, it's about equity. And you know, I think that the disparity and the, you know, the, the sort of. The range gets bigger and bigger. You've got, you know, the outliers over here. But then it's like holy moly. Yeah. So it's really sort of anti tech. Not anti tech, but like the opposite, like yeah, non tech way of us of where we're approaching it and then getting the technical expertise of course gathered around us to help navigate that. But actually very much coming at it from a sort of person centered, leader centered, student centered view of how do we navigate this new layer of complexity in what's already a very complex environment.

Daniel Emmerson 25:37

But you, you made the decision to grapple with it. Right. This could be something that you just said. All right, this.

Liz Robinson 25:44

Yeah, that's true.

Daniel Emmerson 25:44

We did die down. We'll get over this. Go away, give it a couple of years. No one's going to be talking about it anymore.

Liz Robinson 25:51

Yeah.

Daniel Emmerson 25:51

But you've decided to sort of lean in the ball by the horns and, and, and wrestle with it. What made you decide to, to do that?

Liz Robinson 26:01

Yeah, and it's a bit of like if not us, who and if not now, when. So that's the sort of spirit of Big Education really which is showing up for stuff and. Yeah. Feeling a sort of sense of responsibility and a sense of agency in relation to this kind of working on the system, which is. We could do that. And so grappling with should we, could we? What are our other priorities? And so on. It was a sort of rising tide of the whole AI noise and feeling. I think there was just a point of quite. Not quite. Not sink or something we would have sunk, but kind of like are we gonna just be part of this rising tide or are we gonna do something in relation to it? And I think it was that really it was responding to those circumstances and it was the point when we recognized that we didn't need to be expert in order to and that that actually would probably be more helpful not being experts that we were like, oh, maybe we could actually do something really helpful here. And then the pieces sort of fell into place.

Daniel Emmerson 27:11

Well, you've. You've brought in at least one fantastic person that I've met who's helping with your upcoming initiatives. I'm wondering how much we can say about what you've got planned, if anything.

Liz Robinson 27:22

Yeah, yeah, I think we can. So the project is about really equipping the school in. It's a sort of strategic strand around leaders of schools and trusts and how we start to help them navigate this from a strategic perspective and creating tools and frameworks and working, you know, with experts such yourselves to really practically kind of create tools that help people start to make sense of this and navigate it. And then there's a whole big strand around essentially teacher education, teacher professional development, which is demystifying with a focus on a head, heart, hand education. So criticality is a huge sort of strand of that. So it's. It's sort of how. How can we help the humans be driving. Drive the bus rather than be run over by the bus? I've never used that metaphor until this moment. I don't know if it's good or not, but that's. That's the sort of. It's. So it's juggling the human intelligences versus the machine intelligences and, and how can we help the adult. Help the adults. We help the humans.

Daniel Emmerson 28:47

You know, we're at that level of magnitude. Right. Where what. What is happening and you know, what we're seeing in terms of the way that the technology is already becoming and has become mainstream in some schools for sure, but also in the world of work. Right. It's used for absolutely everything and across so many different sectors. So it does feel imperative. Right. It does have this sense of, my gosh, like, we really need to do something about that. I'm not sure that we're experts at all as far as Good Future foundation is concerned. We're here to support and to collaborate and to help with that headspace and with that capacity. And we're very, very pleased to be working with Big Education on what we've got coming up. So there'll be more news on that, I'm sure soon.

Liz Robinson 29:38

And lots of what chance has lots of people to get involved. So, you know, definitely watch this space or get in touch with either of us if you're kind of interested in. Intrigued.

Daniel Emmerson 29:46

That's absolutely, absolutely. Liz, I'm wondering just to, as we, we're wrapping up, if you know that there will be school leaders who are, who are listening to this, who are possibly at that moment, at that, that juncture when thinking about, you know, are we going to go all in with this? Are we going to sort of dip our toe in? Where are we, Are we, are we thinking about banning it? Are we thinking about a best practice approach? Very difficult to think objectively about how it might be used in a specific school context. What might you say to these leaders at this point if they're uncertain?

Liz Robinson 30:24

I hope that by me being open about where I see myself sitting in an entirely novice position, I hope that's helpful and in, I suppose de-stigmatizing that for school leaders to sort of think you don't need to be an expert. So I think that's really, really important and seeing it as a journey and a process and that in the way that we've integrated and learned as a school system, many other things, it's really, in essence, it's about our capacity as leaders and teachers to learn. And as adults, we can have a funny relationship with learning. So I really love the model. I don't know if you know, around learning, which is going from unconscious incompetence when you don't. So we, you know, until this became, until we, until we took our ear defenders off, right? We were all unconsciously incompetent about, about AI and what it meant. And then as it gradually, you know, the noise was so loud we had to listen. We moved from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence. So that's where a lot of school leaders are sitting and teachers are sitting in this conscious incompetence. Like we know that we don't know now that is not a comfortable position to sit in. So when we feel that discomfort of, of knowing that we don't know, that can cause us to, to act in different ways, right? So we can, you know, we can push it away and say, well, that's stupid. I don't like it. We're not going to do it, we're going to ban it. So that's kind of one reaction, you know, or we can feel overwhelmed or we can get stuck and frozen, or we can, you know, overplay it and say, Right, Yes. We're going to burn every book in the building and, like, nothing. So it's sort of emotionally regulating ourselves as, as. As the adults that we are. Yeah, we're in a conscious. We're consciously incompetent. And what our intervention is aiming to do is to move people from conscious incompetence to conscious competence. Right. So it's literally sort of just seeing it as like, there's some stuff to learn here, and here's some tools and some frameworks and, you know, some stuff and some learning, and then you'll be more competent. And then, of course, the next level is unconscious competence when you're then, you know, doing things without even sort of thinking about it. But that's fine. So it's that threshold of learning, I think, us all acknowledging that and noticing the emotions it brings up, because of course it brings up emotions. And you feel overwhelmed, or you might feel excited, but you might feel, you know, right, this is my moment to bow out. I just can't handle it. It's just another thing. Like, it's all. There's all sorts. That's all true. And so just, I think, naming it as, yeah, I'm. I'm. I'm consciously incompetent. And I'm gonna sit with that and allow myself to be supported and find the right people to work with so that I can get to a point of kind of conscious competence, really.

Daniel Emmerson 33:13

Liz, I'm sure that many will be comforted by your approach and inspired by what you're doing. We can't wait to see what materializes from this. It's always a real pleasure as well, being able to speak with you and learn from you. So thank you so very much. Pleasure time of being with us on Foundational Impact. Look forward to seeing you again very, very soon.

Liz Robinson 33:36

Great. Thank you so much. Thanks for all the work you're doing, which is awesome.

Voiceover 33:39

That's it for this episode. Don't forget, the next episode is coming out soon, so make sure you click that option to follow or subscribe. It just means you won't miss it. But in the meantime, thank you for being here and we'll see you next time.

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