Systemic Coaching and Constellations

The Principles, Practices and Application for Individuals, Teams and Groups

John Whittington

• Publisher: Kogan Page
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780749475505
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

Systemic Coaching and Constellations offers a refreshingly uncomplicated path into a potentially complex subject, demonstrating how this approach can provide access to systems and deliver enduring benefits for coaching clients. This new edition offers a comprehensive introduction to the principles that sustain systems, real world descriptions of what systemic coaching is and how it can be useful as well as a step-by-step guide to integrating the principles and practices into coaching.

Highly practical, Systemic Coaching and Constellations includes a wide range of exercises for application with individuals and teams. It also includes a brand new chapter on Belonging, fully updated case studies from coaches who have taken part in John's trainings, a joint ICF/EMCC constellation workshop and examples from coaches around the world, including Australia, Mexico, France, Spain, US and the Netherlands. Whether used in an initial selection meeting or to underpin all your coaching conversations and interventions, Systemic Coaching and Constellations offers an accessible, practical starting point to transform your coaching practice.

Part one

Principles

01

The universal language of systems

In all chaos there is a cosmos

In all disorder a secret order.

CARL JUNG

There are many kinds of coach. Some work one-to-one, while others work as facilitators, working almost exclusively with teams and groups. Some set goals; others use a psychodynamic or psychometric framework. Some use models that support the growth of emotional intelligence, team function and leadership presence. Whatever kind of coach you are and whatever your preferred approach, you are just as likely to come across systemic issues as any other. The dynamics that surface in systems and present themselves as ‘difficult behaviours’, ‘dysfunctional teams’, ‘stuckness’, ‘repeating patterns’, ‘conflict’ and ‘difficulty in occupying role’ are familiar to all coaches. When these dynamics are an expression of something in the system as they very often are, then only a systemic approach will have an enduring effect.

Whatever your background, orientation or context, this approach – the systemic coaching stance and the principles and practices described in this book – offers an opportunity to illuminate, clarify and resolve system dynamics while also integrating your own particular style and orientation. This is an approach underpinned by universal principles that maintain system coherence. And we all work, no matter in which context, in and with systems, whether we are aware of it or not.

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In the sometimes apparently chaotic dynamics of our client’s world, the quiet but persistent voice of the system can often get lost, misinterpreted and misnamed.

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The universal language of systems is one that we all know, but most of us have forgotten how to speak. This approach gives the systems we belong to and work with a voice.

The order of things

Some simple truths, common to all human relationship systems, underpin this approach. These were expressed by originator Bert Hellinger as ‘natural orders’ and were discovered through a great deal of experimentation and observation. The reason it took him years to develop the methodology of constellations within family and then organizational systems is that he wasn’t looking to create a new theory. He was looking, searching, for something more essential. He was searching for what is. What he found and uncovered were timeless truths that underpin human relationship systems.

The insights and understanding that inform this way of working were discovered, not dreamt up by the rational mind. When you’ve experienced them you almost immediately ‘know’ them, as truths, at a deep level. This experience leads to an understanding of these ‘natural orders’, ‘organizing principles’ or ‘forces’ that sustain systems. That’s why this approach is referred to as profound and phenomenological, the investigation of truths through experience. At first the truths seem to be our own, personal truths. Constellations show them to be universal to the human experience.

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Many people, on first approaching this way of working, do so with a degree of scepticism, the author included. Where is the evidence? What research has been done into these claims about ordering forces? Why would dynamics discovered in family systems have any relevance in business, organizations and executive coaching?

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These are important and valid questions which have a place in the evolution of this work. Without these questions there may be a danger of this approach looking like some sort of ‘belief system’ or series of ‘rules’ that mustn’t be broken. With the questions comes a continuous commitment to searching, to exploration, to experience. A search for the consistent truths of the human experience in life and at work.

It’s interesting to observe how people who’ve just experienced a constellation about their own issue ask no questions about ‘how it works’. They are too occupied with a new sense of spaciousness and resolution around the issue or question they had previously struggled with. A theoretical model or a leap of faith is not required to validate the experience. Those would add a layer of complexity and rational thinking that is simply not required and would diminish the simple power of a direct experience of system dynamics, hidden connections and resources.

The principles that underpin this approach are, just like the issues it’s so effective at tackling, invisible yet tangible in their effect. Identification and understanding of them is based on close observation, experience and testing that leads to insight and resolution.

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What emerges is an understanding of the interconnected nature of everything and everyone in systems. Changing something in one part of the system has an effect on the rest. We knew that already, but this approach explains why and then shows how to work with the resulting dynamics.

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The immutable natural orders, the forces that appear to govern systems, seem to be protecting them in an attempt to achieve coherence and flow. These are forces that many individuals, teams and whole organizations continue to work within, without conscious awareness. As a result individuals, teams and businesses are unwittingly caught up in the dynamics that ignoring or disregarding the organizing forces create. These dynamics are manifest as inertia, difficulty with leadership, lack of role clarity, high staff turnover, conflict and other challenging symptoms and behaviours. These are signs of system issues and, through a systemic lens, they offer a window into the underlying forces at play.

Constellation workshops, the environment in which this work was developed, offer a visceral experience of these hidden organizing forces; an opportunity to stand, literally, in the invisible forces and feel their effects. Surprisingly, the experience transfers with ease and impact into a one-to-one coaching relationship and process where objects, not people, are used to represent the various elements of the system.

Whether in a workshop, team application or working one-to-one, constellations are underpinned by the same principles and practices as are described throughout this book and in every workshop and training environment. It isn’t the setting in which a constellation takes place that makes it a constellation; it’s the systemic perspective and attitude of the coach or facilitator. This comes from an understanding of the underlying organizing forces in systems, the way of accessing them and knowing when a constellation may be the appropriate intervention.

More on all that soon, but first let’s broaden out the view and look at coaching from the systems perspective.

From individual and team to system

There are many ways of supporting professional development, resolving leadership challenges and illuminating organizational complexity. There are multiple theories and models available to leaders, coaches and organizational consultants. Each of these perspectives and sources of guidance can and do play a useful role. They each have a place.

In the human and organizational development aspect of business leadership it’s incumbent on leaders to ensure that they are creating and modelling strong interpersonal relationships and building high-functioning teams throughout the business. That people find their voice and learn to influence others in effective and motivating ways. That skills such as delegation and assertiveness are learnt and developed to support high performance across the business. That emotional intelligence and leadership, aligned with who you are as well as what you do, is encouraged. Self-awareness increases and self-management may often follow.

After all, business performance improves when you do. Unless you build a good understanding of yourself, your natural strengths and blind spots, it’s hard to exert your influence. Building higher self-awareness and emotional intelligence so you can respond to different situations and influence others through a range of styles is an essential ingredient of successful leadership and is especially important in the knowledge and service economy, where clients are buying people and high-performing teams, not products. But that alone – interpersonal, professional and leadership development – is not always enough. Something else is required in addition.

Working at the level of the individual is essential for clarifying and resourcing, but unless a wider perspective – a view of the whole system and the field of information available within and between systems – is also included, crucial information may be missed that can build enduring organizational health and resolve complex or apparently intractable issues. However well an ...