In the first of a series on systemic coaching, John Whittington sets the scene and shares some key principles, as he looks through a constellations lens

Clients dealing with inertia or who are repeating patterns of limiting behaviour that seem beyond conventional intervention, may have issues rooted in the system. It makes sense, then, that a systems-orientated perspective, stance and methodology may help.
Relationship systems are full of vast fields of interdependent patterns, hidden truths and unspoken loyalties. They create sources of entanglement and limit, or support, the flow of leadership.
Anyone supporting the growth and development of leaders, teams and organisations, needs to access and work with such complexity in a practical, respectful way.
The application of constellations makes this possible, practical and desirable. As a result, constellations are used in executive and leadership development, supervision and team coaching, as well as in organisational design and development.

Constellations
Systemic coaching gives priority to the system. A systemic constellation is a three-dimensional expression of a relationship system, whether that is made up of people, or abstract elements like ‘my objectives’, ‘our purpose’ or ‘the culture’. Constellations begin with an embodiment of what is – just as it is.
Even at the first stage, simply mapping what is, the ‘inner’ becomes ‘outer’, and the client sees the issue with fresh clarity and perspective. As insights emerge, the next stage, a facilitated process, goes further and illuminates patterns, locates hidden resources and moves to resolution.
The process is a catalyst for a powerful inner change. The change in the constellation is embodied in the client.
An inner movement
Systemic coaching and constellations aren’t another coaching tool, they are a tuning in, an alignment with the forces that sustain systems (see box, The systemic coach’s inner stance). That alignment, that movement, has to begin in the coach.
It creates a corresponding movement in the client, and then the wider system.
This subtle shift in our stance, as coaches, leads to a deep shift in our clients’ systems. Once we start to offer system-orientated insights and facilitate system resolutions, something changes in the client and the system around them. Systemic practices start to emerge in their life and leadership.
It’s in this way that a system intelligence and systemic leadership grows in the organisation with which we are working – well beyond the individual or team. This creates, over time, organisation-wide behavioural change, flow and vitality (see box, The organising principles of systems).

Organisational health
‘Healthy’, in the systemic perspective, means a system that is constantly rebalancing to support movement towards coherence. All systems are attempting to make that movement. Leaders, sometimes their coaches, may innocently and inadvertently slow down the system by attempts to ‘move on’, impose values, set new goals or focus their work at individual or team level. This can lead to a complex organisational culture and inertia in leadership – and, indeed, coaching. That, in turn, limits the flow of leadership, teamwork and organisational health. And when organisational health is absent, so are the people.
Organisational health, and the flow of leadership, are possible when the underpinning principles of systems are taken into account in the recruitment, retention, leadership and departure
of individuals and teams. Organisational culture and shared values emerge naturally from the level of the system; they can’t be imposed or willed into life. Organisational health emerges from system-orientated leadership.
If our work as coaches is to support a move towards sustainable, organisational health, we can start by sharing the principles and practices of healthy systems with the leaders who can manifest and embody it. It’s only when leaders and leadership teams apply the principles and practices, that organisations will truly be able to access the wisdom in the system.
Systemic coaching and constellations start by offering fresh insight and resolution when things are stuck. After a while it becomes clear they offer much more – a path to whole system vitality, to organisational health.
John Whittington is a systemic coach and constellations facilitator. His book, Systemic Coaching and Constellations (Kogan Page), was published last month.
www.CoachingConstellations.com
See also: “Upwardly mobile”, Coaching at Work, vol 4, issue 3.
Next issue: John Blakey, author of Challenging Coaching (Nicholas Brealey, 2012), on how systems thinking can enhance coaching.

Learning tips
Constellations:

  • create a spatial relationship model, a living map that externalises and illuminates the client’s inner picture.
    respectfully reveal the underlying architecture of relationship systems, the unacknowledged, the blocks and the hidden resources.
    show where the real flow of energy and attention is in an individual’s development journey, in a team or across a whole organisation.
    provide a respectful methodology for illuminating the source of under-performance, limiting behaviour and inertia.
    offer a way of liberating individuals and teams from system entanglements.
    provide a practical way to access the intelligence of the whole system and give it a voice.
    are an event. They change something in the client and in the system.
  • The systemic coach’s inner stance
     You must have no intention of helping, yet be useful in supporting coherence of the whole.
     Step back, see the hidden interconnectedness. Prioritise the system.
     Acknowledge and agree to everything just as it is, without judgment on right or wrong.
     Listen to the system. Support your clients to move past the stories and judgments and tune in to what’s true in the system.
     Mind your language. A ‘dysfunctional team’ may be highly functional if you consider that its purpose could be to express something unspoken in the system.
     Support movement towards organisational health. That movement begins in the coach.

    How the principles work
    The following exercise is for application with a team. If using with an individual who leads or works within a team, use objects as ‘representatives’ for each team member and follow the same process.
    If you work with a team and would like to respectfully open up a view of the system dynamics in which they operate, invite them to stand in a semi-circle in order of TIME – who joined the team first, who next, and so on. Invite them to do this in silence, trusting their ‘felt sense’ of the underlying order. Then ask them to check the accuracy with those adjacent to them, adjusting if required. (If you are working with a mixed group from the same business rather than a team, invite them to place themselves in order of length of service in the whole company.)
    Starting with the person who has served the longest, who joined first, invite each to speak from their place, simply reporting what is. You’ll find that a new kind of language emerges, that people feel acknowledged and respected, that those who have contributed and have left are remembered and their contribution acknowledged – given their PLACE. You’ll find that imbalances of EXCHANGE are brought to light and into better balance and that the team settles into a more cohesive whole when everybody and everything is acknowledged.
    This simple ‘standing in what is’ – an exercise that respectfully surfaces the three core principles that sustain systems – often has a profound effect on teams and group dynamics. It creates a sense of order in the chaos of modern organisational life and touches something inside every person, giving each a respected place in the whole.
    This opens a systemic perspective during a team workshop, on systemic leadership and systemic coaching itself, whether or not you stay with system-orientated interventions.

    The organising principles of systems

    Time

    Those who joined first need to be acknowledged before those who follow can find their place and fully occupy their role.
    Acknowledgement of who and what contributed first – founders, original company or team, previous role-holder – generates clarity, order and flow in systems.
    When a new leader joins with a recognition that they are in the last place in the context of TIME, their authority can manifest and have influence.
    Application of this allows the past to stay in the past. The system can then move into the future.

    Place

    Everybody in a system has an equal right to belong. When that right is denied, by sudden exclusion or dismissal, the system will attempt to ‘re-member’ them until their place and contribution is included.
    People who leave systems under tough circumstances leave a part of themselves in the system and bring entanglement into the next.
    Organisations spend significant amounts of time and money excluding people or events that have belonged. Exclusion draws out the energy and focus of the system.

    Exchange

    There needs to be a continuous balancing of giving and receiving so the system remains in flow.
    An imbalance of EXCHANGE is often present in corporate life, in between parts of the system, trading divisions, supplier and customer systems. A violation of this is also seen in M&A work and often lies at the root of later difficulties.
    The impact is also felt by coaches, and voluntary organisations, where over-giving weakens clients.
    An imbalance creates a deeper bonding than a balance, which sets both free.

    Acknowledgement
    One principle runs through systemic leadership, systemic coaching and the application of constellations like a stick of rock: the principle of acknowledgement. Acknowledging what is, just as it is.
    The combination of acknowledging what is, and the illumination of what’s possible that systemic coaching offers, releases fresh energy in individuals, teams and whole systems. In this way, organisational health can emerge and endure.

    Volume 7, Issue 4