CONFESSIONS OF A CORPORATE SHAMAN. Harrison Snow
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Group shows that a simple and specific thank-you for a job well done, along with a greeting like good morning, fosters greater employee engagement.7 Something so simple and effective, quick and free should be in every manager’s repertoire. When those textbook actions don’t help and the problem becomes urgent, then it’s wise to look for a systemic solution. The systemic approach outlined in the case studies I cross-referenced in the preceding lists is the leadership tool of last resort that people turn to when everything else has failed.
Using the computer metaphor once more, if you can find and correct the errors in the source code, the dysfunctions on the screen will be resolved. The hidden component of change resides in the unconscious beliefs that have a systemic impact. Behind the organizational breakdown is a broken order of the organization that can be traced back to a fault-inducing trauma or belief. A skillfully facilitated constellation will provide a visible image of the dysfunctional beliefs or traumatic impressions hidden in the individual’s or group’s subconscious. Once the issue holder finds and names those impressions, he or she can test various solutions to see if they restore the connection between the parts of the system, enabling vital information to flow freely.
Business as Usual
A common concern about a change initiative is that after the retreat is over, people fall back into the same unconscious and unproductive routines. A month or two later they complain that nothing has changed. Even if there have been positive changes, distraction and disengagement keep many from noticing. Action plans and agreements are necessary but not enough. A deeper level of intervention is needed to affect change at the source, which is the collective unconscious of the group. Working with the knowing field illuminates the underlying causes that drive the systemic challenges and conflicts in the workplace. It also identifies the resources and solutions that will address those challenges in a sustainable manner.
No Going Back
Oliver Wendell Holmes famously said, “A mind, once expanded by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.”8 When a person or a group accesses some part of their individual or collective subconscious, the stretching that occurs can’t be rescinded. Consciousness is like a container: as we expand the container and clarify the contents, more knowledge can be held and understood. The Vedic mystic Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj explains what happens when we bring the unconscious parts of us to awareness:
We are slaves to what we do not know; of what we know we are masters. Whatever vice or weakness in ourselves (if) we discover and understand its causes and workings, we overcome it by the very knowing; the unconscious dissolves when brought to the conscious.9
The process of expanding self-awareness requires self-observation and reflection. This is not a comfortable undertaking, yet no one else can do it for you. But, according to Carl Jung, “Until you make the unconscious conscious it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
Chapter 4
Third Pillar:
The Knowing Field
Reality has two aspects. The first is objective. We interact with our world and something happens in space and time. The second is subjective. Our mind interprets what happened and assigns meaning and emotions to the event. The conscious and subconscious parts of our mind cocreate with others the objective and subjective aspects of the world we experience.
Awareness and Cocreated Reality
Most people are familiar with the metaphor of an iceberg and its application to how we interact with the world. What is below the waterline, our threshold of awareness, is much greater than what is above. The model in Figure 4-1 divides our consciousness into three levels.
The first level, cocreated reality, is something we are naturally conscious of. In the second level we are aware of some, but not fully all, of the actions, thoughts, feelings, and sensations that give rise to that reality. Within our subconscious, at the third level, there is a vast realm of impressions and beliefs we are only vaguely aware of, if at all. As a multilevel, non-lateral problem-solving tool, the constellation process accesses these three levels. This process is based on the following assumptions:
Figure 4-1: The Iceberg Model of Awareness
Kissing Your Frog
The first movement in transforming our personal reality is taking responsibility for the impact our other levels of consciousness have in shaping it. The flow of this process is diagrammed in the structure of a typical constellation as shown in Figure 4-2. If we agree that our personal reality is impacted, if not determined, by our second and third levels of consciousness then we are ready to do something about that reality. Letting go of assigning blame and stepping out of the victim-perpetrator dynamic enables us to work with the part of the system we have influence or control over: ourselves. Kissing your frog, defined here as the “Transformation Through Systemic Mapping Model,” starts at the top left side at Level 1 of Consciousness. It moves down to Level 3 then across to Visible Resources on the right and then up to the Desired Reality. The Current Reality, or “what is” corresponds to the first and second levels of consciousness of the issue holder. The constellation can reveal material in the third level of consciousness that the issue holder was not unaware of.
Keeping in mind the desired outcome articulated by the issue holder, the facilitator looks for and tests the Hidden Dynamics at Level 3, within the subconscious, that are influencing the