Working with the system in mind
“I am interested in every tangle of thread and rope and every possibility of transformation.” - Magdalena Abakanowicz
Although it is not it’s intended context, this quote by Polish sculpture artist, Magdalena Abakanowicz, brilliantly describes the essence of my coaching work and the applied philosophy of systemic coaching and constellations.
Working with the system in mind allows us to explore the tangles of thread and rope that make up the relational system of your life, team, organisation, or challenge you are navigating, in service of the possibility of transformation.
Systemic coaching is standing back and looking at the interconnectedness and the interdependencies of our personal, social and organisational groups.
If you have worked with me or are about to start working with me in one-to-one coaching, we may sometimes work with a table top constellation or ‘living map’ of the issue, change, challenge or opportunity that you are currently exploring. I will ask you to choose an object from the table in front of you to ‘represent’ you, something and/or someone relating to the issue at hand and we will begin to create a 3D map of different objects representing relevant people, places and things.
I’ve been a student of systemic coaching and constellations since 2018 and have been integrating it into my coaching practice since. I started my training in London with John Whittington, a wise teacher, who was recommended to me by a friend and coaching colleague who was applying this stance in her impactful work with leaders and teams. John has run his company Business Constellations internationally for over a decade, bringing the original work of Family Constellations founder, the late Bert Hellinger, and further adapting it for business and organisations to catalyse the flow of leadership and organisational vitality. (You can read more about John and his team’s work here).
Egos, step aside! and acknowledging what is
Working with the intelligence of the system is a deeply resourcing way of exploring an issue from a broader, interconnected viewpoint, putting the rational, thinking mind into the passenger for a while and dropping into a quieter, more considered, somatic state that allows for a deeper wisdom to arise. Both from you, the client, and from the system itself.
Practicing this applied philosophy in coaching means we are coaching ‘in service of the system’. What this means for me is that we are looking beyond you and ‘your problem’, beyond your stories and attachments, to see what hidden dynamics might be at play that may be contributing to a conflict, a blockage, or the sense of stuckness or difficulty that you’re experiencing. What I appreciate about this practice as a coach is that it enables us to work with the unknown and the unseen. Neither of us have the ‘right’ answer, but I am alongside you as we look at this relational system together to see what might be going on, and what might be ‘hidden’ from your mind’s eye. It allows you to create an external 3D map of your internal mental position, giving new space and fresh perspective to an otherwise limited viewpoint (your thoughts and stories) and releases both of us from knowing the ‘answer’ or ‘getting it right’ which is really both of our egos getting in the way of what really needs tending to.
When we explore with a living map in this way, we are mapping what is, acknowledging how things really are right now, not how we want them to be. This is very powerful in itself because in the work and business environment, we are often moving to a resolution or a desired measurable outcome too quickly. When we acknowledge ‘what is’, and allow ourselves to be in the ‘creative tension’ of an issue, we can give space and time to what really needs to be addressed in order to make an intentional movement towards meaningful, sustainable, transformation.
The 3 organising principles of healthy systems
We work with three fundamental organising principles that influence the healthy flow of relationships and the system -
PLACE – everyone and everything is to be included for it to have an equal right in the system, to be respected at it’s different place within it. This is most revealing for clients, you will often find leaders who have placed representatives in their living map, and suddenly notice where they are ‘too close’ or ‘too far’ from a colleague, boss or direct report.
I was working with a client who had recently been promoted and had gone from managing a small local team to now leading a regional team spread across APAC. One of his development objectives in order for him to continue growing and expanding his scope was to build a succession plan and he was having difficulty getting to know his new team leaders across the leaders. His living map revealed the gaps in his relationships with his team leaders the next level down. “I’m too close to XX” one of his local team leaders, he realised. So close that the other team leader (that had now just become a part of his team), couldn’t even ‘see’ him. The representative for his local team leader was completely blocking the other’s view of him. Assuming he was just giving autonomy and not wanting to micromanage as a new leader, he realised he needed to be more intentional at building a relationship with his new team leaders based elsewhere in the region to form the relationship he wanted with his leadership team, and to support them in their development needs and strengths, whilst creating more space and shifting the relationship with his local team leader to be at full capacity in this new expanded leadership role.
Keeping PLACE in view can also mean that clients notice something or someone that has been excluded from the system (they are missing from the map altogether) or where someone or something may be being held in their mind’s eye as ‘too big’ or ‘too small’ - i.e. ‘above’ them or ‘below’ them.
TIME – acknowledging what or who came first. I worked with a young dynamic leader in an investment bank who had been newly promoted in the last 9 months or so to leading a well-established distribution and client management team. She had shared with me her consciousness of coming in to lead this experienced team with more mature and longer serving team members. The longest serving member of over a decade was well established with his clients, very well respected and always quiet in team meetings. She worried about how to engage him, and show respectful authority with the team. A hidden dynamic within teams that can sometimes cause challenges is that ‘secret’ authority can default to the natural order, i.e. the oldest in age or oldest in service years, which can work to undermine the authority of the newly joined leader.
At an in-person off-site with the team I used an exercise inviting each member to stand in order of ‘who came first’. As I moved down the line I invited each team member to share their story with the group of their experience of first joining the team. What it was like ‘back then’, what’s it like now and how it feels to be where they are standing in their place in the team. This simple exercise of acknowledging each team member’s experience and knowledge in order of when they joined, allowed everyone to settle into their rightful place. It released much fresh energy into the room, into the team dynamics, into the new leader’s new respectful (and respected) authority. It was an especially important exercise to acknowledge the most mature, most experienced member of the team, the one that ‘came first’, allowing him to share his story, what he helped build and how he could support those that came after him. This respectful acknowledgment, and fresh energy meant that later in that day, the oldest, longest serving member of the team jumped onto the boardroom table in just his socks (it was a shoes off off-site!) in joyful glee as he was sharing a funny story with the team. Not something you see every day in one of the oldest, most traditional, global investment banks!
EXCHANGE - how is the balance of exchange in this relationship/system - is someone or something taking or giving too much or too little? This often reveals where a relationship dynamic between people or a person and team/organisation is out of balance and creating conflict or stuckness.
For relationships, teams and organisations, key elements of exploring from a systemic view point can also include honouring endings and beginnings (joining and leaving a system). Noticing patterns of behaviour – yours or others, or exploring hidden loyalties relating to belonging to other ‘systems’ you are or have been, a part of (e.g. teams, organisations, family, education, culture).
Including the body
Not only does this approach increase self-awareness and social intelligence (key elements of emotional intelligence), it also allows for the body to be included, which means we explore an issue using our whole system (head, heart, gut, nervous system), and our ‘felt sense’. Both you as explorer and me as coach take an embodied stance. We will include and explore sensations, feelings and thoughts that arise as you explore your particular relational system (or living map). This quote from Coaches Rising says it well “So much of our deep wisdom – including the intelligence of change itself – lives in the very cells of our bodies.” So I invite you to keep an open mind as I support your exploration with questions about sensations and how and where you feel in your body too!
I have been asked how clients find this approach, how comfortable are they with this unconventional shift in gears from a ‘conventional’ coaching discussion? It still surprises me how open and curious nearly everyone I work with shows up to be, even the busiest, most ‘left-brained’, rational, finance leaders and lawyers find themselves slowing down and dropping easily and quickly into this different way of being and fresh way of orientating themselves to a challenge. And it always surprises them what is revealed in doing so.
*The image for this blog is one of Magdalena Abakanowicz’s incredible fibre and rope sculptures from her current exhibition at the Tate Modern in London.