Interpersonal Relationships: using Photography to support learning on an MBA module. Part 1

I am hugely grateful to Dr Nic Stenberg from Huddersfield Business School for the opportunity to co-facilitate a module around ‘Interpersonal Relationships’ as part of an MBA course that the Business School offers. It was a fantastic experience and my thanks to Nic and the students for inviting me into their learning journey.

This is the first of a 3 part series reflecting on the experience. In part 1 I’ll set the scene for the role of photography in this context and outline the methods used. Part 2 will highlight the results of two Photovoice activities from those who took part part and in the 3rd and final blog I’ll share some of our reflections on this journey.

The focus of the MBA module was Interpersonal relationships – which to my brain sounds like one of those things that you kind of already know what it is. I was fascinated to learn from Nic about the theories, frameworks and tools that offer us different ways to explore interpersonal relationships in organisational contexts.

As well as having a strong association with our personal lives, interpersonal relationships are the lifeblood of organisations:

Interpersonal relationships are “all relationships in which individuals engage as they perform their jobs, including supervisor-subordinate relationships, peer co-worker relationships, workplace friendships, romantic relationships and customer relationships.” (Sias, 2008, p.2)

Immediately I could see the potential for photovoice in this space. Given that organisations are where people gather to do stuff (and things) then it’s clear that interpersonal relationships have a HUGE impact on the way organisations operate such as building and maintaining relationships, effective communication, resolving conflicts & misunderstandings and finding mutually beneficial solutions to problems.

Organisations are much more than merely the sum of all the systems and processes that exist within them. In my experience the effectiveness of an organisation is more deeply impacted by the people within it - whether they feel heard understood and valued for example. On the MBA module students discussed the role of emotions, power, diversity measuring competence and impact.

Throughout the module students were invited to use Kolb’s ‘Experiential Learning’ framework - Experience, Reflect, Think and Act which provided prompts for students to consider their responses to the photovoice activity and to think about how they could relate this to their work place.

Nic and I were keen to explore whether photography could work as a tool for examining interpersonal relationships and as a practical and visual aid to support students’ learning and the development of ideas for their assignments. We were also interested to examine the role of photography in a classroom context and whether it had the potential to support the students learning by inviting them to consider concepts from a visual perspective.

Photovoice activities were embedded within the learning materials for the module and formed part of the assessment criteria too. We began by using activities that encouraged students to chooses from a selection of postcards a photograph which appealed to them and then discuss why they had selected that image / what they liked about it.

After exploring interpersonal relationships and communication in an organisational setting further through the taught materials we then invited students to use a selection of newspapers and magazines to consider how images are portrayed in the press, looking at the different themes we find there and deconstructing the visual language that is being used to present stories and portray events from different standpoints.

A Photovoice activity was set as as a homework assignment where students were asked to take a photograph that represents what interpersonal communication means to them - drawing on content and information shared during the module so far. An ‘exhibition’ was held at the next session where students viewed each others work and shared the ideas behind their own photographs.

We also invited students to take part in two photowalks during the module as a means of inviting them to reflect on the course content in a visual manner and as an opportunity to move around and explore their immediate surroundings. In the first instance we invited them to walk around the University campus and take photographs which represented what positive communication looks like to them. In the final photowalk we asked students to take a photograph which represented what they had learned during the module.

This first blog serves to set the scene and to whet your appetite to see the results of all the students photography! In the next blog we’ll take a look at the results including the students reflections on Photovoice in this context as well as some of my own and Nic’s thoughts on the process too.