CONFESSIONS OF A CORPORATE SHAMAN. Harrison Snow
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organization. Use of self, systems thinking, and the knowing field are the three pillars that form and inform this connection. These pillars don’t replace the usual change practices, however, which still have their place in corporate offices and off-sites. What the pillars offer is an approach that identifies and resolves the hidden blocks that trap an organization and its leaders in their dysfunctions.
Business leaders sometimes ask me, “What’s new in the field of leadership or organizational development?” It’s embarrassing to admit that most of the practices we use today were developed twenty to thirty or more years ago. That right. It’s been that long. One of the first leadership tools, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) questionnaire, was proposed in the 1920s (and is still widely used today).1 Group change processes like Appreciative Inquiry, popularized by David Cooperrider,2 a professor of social entrepreneurship, or Open Space Technology, developed by the organizational development consultant Harrison Owen,3 were introduced in the 1980s. And, as radical as the idea seemed back then, Transcendental Meditation and mindfulness were also offered to the employees of a number of small, forward-thinking companies.4 One of the most recent of the big ideas, the concept of emotional intelligence (EQ) promoted by Daniel Goleman, a psychologist and science writer, debuted in 1995—before the general public had heard of the Internet or could log on.5
Every year neuroscience is revealing still more about the astounding potential of the human brain to access knowledge, make connections, and generate new insights. For the first time in recorded history, we can measure how our brains are wired socially. The English poet John Donne seems to have got it right when he wrote in 1624: “No man is an island,/Entire of itself.” Theories of change increasingly highlight the role of consciousness and neuroscience to explain human behavior. Isn’t it time for a new approach that makes use of this vast, untapped potential?
One new approach, which we will explore in this book, is a method called organizational constellations. This method, based on the work of the systemic therapist Bert Hellinger, is just beginning to be recognized in North America as a tool for leadership development and organizational change.
You may be thinking, quite understandably, that what is offered here is too far-out for the cautious and skeptical people you work with. Anything truly new will naturally meet with resistance. If you are a baby boomer you might recall how the practices just described were considered beyond the fringe back in the 1980s. When I first started facilitating team-building and leadership programs at that time, some doubters would look at me askance and say, “What do you mean teamwork? The boss is going to make all the decisions! Work styles inventory like MBTI are just readings from an astrologer. Emotions have no place in the workplace. And, how could anyone meet without a detailed agenda using Open Space?” Once people experienced, hands-on, the value of the methodologies listed above, however, the biggest skeptics often morphed into the most ardent fans.
If you are an innovator or an early adaptor who likes to be a few years ahead of the crowd, then this book is written for you. You believe it’s time to update our approaches to leadership and change the same way we have been updating our technology and business structures. Yet, anything that is truly innovative will also seem unfamiliar, unpredictable, edgy, or even slightly weird—at least till you’ve had a few experiences with it. Another decade may pass before organizational constellations becomes a well-known brand for solving challenges, making decisions, enhancing leadership abilities, and managing change. Until then, if you are willing to trade the comfort zone of the known for the discomfort of learning something new, you will enjoy a competitive advantage as a change leader.
Introduction
Change leaders typically seek to build a culture in which people are aligned around a shared vision, values, and strategy. As part of that alignment, leadership and team skills are developed. Measures, processes, and norms that foster the flow of communication are introduced. Critical problem-solving and decision-making are team based. Risk-taking and innovation are rewarded. Bookcases and websites are crammed with techniques and models that develop the levers of performance listed above. Still, given all we know about building healthy organizations using these standard practices, HR surveys consistently show high levels of dysfunction and discontent in the public and private sectors. The cost of dysfunction in terms of turnover, employee engagement, morale, innovation, and productivity are significant. As these troubles distract our time and attention, globalization continues to scale up competition. The winners are those who are able to contain the office bushfires while, at the same time, learning and innovating faster than the world is changing.
Dysfunction and denial mark the place where learning and adapting are not keeping pace. When a person, team, or organization is afflicted by a learning disability, small issues inevitably grow up to become big, “wicked” ones. People come and go but the dysfunction stays and becomes embedded in the shadows of cultural DNA. Change is difficult because the dysfunction is not in the individual. It is in the collective space between individuals and groups. Standard leadership practices are unaware of these hidden dimensions. Instead of blaming the toxic worker or the ineffective leader, a radically more insightful approach is called for.
The wise change leader faces the global challenges of a flat world with a new mindset, one that inspires access to the subconscious through the emotions, the spirit, and physical sensations. But such a multilateral, systemic approach has disruptive implications. Why? Most corporate professionals are highly educated, and they mastered a rigorous academic curriculum through the mental powers of analysis and conceptualization. Naturally, when solving problems and making decisions, they rely on the same mental domain. Even popular concepts like emotional intelligence (EQ) are presented in a conceptual way that does little to actually develop a leader’s emotional skills.1 Thinking about emotions is easy, yet learning how to manage them, especially in a group setting, demands a skill set outside the conceptual realm. Not surprisingly, many leadership teams regularly fall into “analysis paralysis” or bog down in emotional gridlock. As long as they rely solely on the analytical mind, they access just a portion of their human potential. If we want our organizations to be more functional we have to find a way to go beyond the limitations of the verbal mind. As Einstein said, “The mind is a good servant but a terrible master.”
Change is driven by insight. These insights emerge when we broaden our spectrum of information. Our visible light spectrum is only a small fraction, “ . . . less than one-tenth of one percent of what is really there.”2 As we’ve learned to take advantage of even small parts of that vast, invisible spectrum, our world has been transformed by such innovations as radio, television, and cell phones.
Like this limited spectrum of light, conceptualization that takes place solely within the limits of the analytical mind excludes a vast range of potential insights. Here is the “gist” of the approach of a corporate shaman. Access more information. Include and transcend the limitations of the mind by making more use of the full spectrum of physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual intelligences. The shaman in some traditions is the “one who sees.” In the corporate world, the aware observer can perceive patterns and implications that others don’t. Although I never called myself, or any of my colleagues, a “shaman,” facilitators of change have a lot in common whether they work in a conference room or a jungle clearing.
One of these commonalities is the skillful use of your conscious mind in a way that enables you to access the information and insights hidden below the threshold of awareness. Tacit knowledge—what we don’t know we know—turns out to be more than we could imagine. If your schooling, like mine, was “mental-centric” then knowledge was exclusively pursued by the intellect. Nonconceptual approaches to understanding were dismissed as “touchy-feely” or “psychobabble.” This denigration of the other intelligences is shortsighted. All modalities, subjective and objective, are necessary to fully embrace the challenges and opportunities life offers.
The nonverbal thinking approach is easy to call for but may seem difficult to do at first. I am sometimes amazed at the white-knuckle grip the verbal intellect