Leadership needs systemic awareness. That starts by knowing that systems lead. Not the leader. Systems Lead. They lead the whole and they lead the individual. This applies to leaders too. And this makes leadership about leading and following, about knowing and acknowledging, about going with the flow ánd about swimming against the current. Because sometimes you need to swim against the current of life to find a meaningful source there, before allowing yourself to flow with the force of the organisational system. This book will tell you what a system demands of leadership. How organisations can flourish and flow from a systemic perspective. Authors Jan Jacob Stam (1954) and Barbara Hoogenboom (1972) are seen as authorities in this area worldwide. Much of what we know today about organisations on a systemic level, was discovered and given form and language by the Bert Hellinger Institute the Netherlands. Stam and Hoogenboom are founder and owners of this leading institute. Contents Introduction 1 1 Summary and Reader’s guide 5 2 What is ‘systemic’ all about? 11 2.1 It is about systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 2.2 Systems have (repeating) patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 2.3 Change starts with acknowledging the world as it is . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 2.3.1 You become what you try to avoid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 2.3.2 Acknowledging reality: a healing movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 2.4 Problems are solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 2.5 Perceiving without judgment, in the present . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 2.5.1 Systemic perception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 2.5.2 Not-Knowing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 2.6 Three Survival Mechanisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 2.6.1 Survival of the individual (unit-conscience) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 2.6.2 Survival of the system as a whole (system conscience) . . . . . . . . . 37 2.6.3 Surviving the large flow of development (Evolutionary Force) . . . . . 39 2.7 The workings in survival mechanisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 2.7.1 In the Unit conscience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 2.7.2 Within the System-Conscience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 2.7.3 Within the Evolutionary Force . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 3 Nurturing your systemic leadership 67 3.1 Two basic needs of every system: autonomy and well-being . . . . . . . . . . 68 3.2 Systemic Leadership in three survival mechanisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 3.2.1 The unit conscience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 3.2.2 The System Conscience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 3.2.3 The evolutionary force . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77iii 3.3 Completeness, including truly everything (Belonging) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 3.3.1 The origin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 3.3.2 History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 3.3.3 Systemic ownership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 3.3.4 Can you fúlly welcome your new colleagues? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 3.3.5 Place and function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 3.3.6 Loyalties, conflicts of loyalty and Objections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 3.3.7 Terrible things . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 3.3.8 No and Yes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 3.4 Everything has a place (order) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 3.4.1 Order in Leading principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 3.4.2 Order in functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 3.4.3 Contribution to the whole . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 3.4.4 Seniority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 3.5 Honesty in taking and giving (exchange) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 3.5.1 Between the mutual parts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 3.5.2 Exchange between the organisation and the outside world . . . . . . . 108 3.5.3 Funding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 3.5.4 Money . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 3.5.5 Influence and Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 4 Patterns 113 4.1 Patterns, Habits and Procedures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 4.2 How patterns form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 4.3 The function of patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 4.4 Patterns attract patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 4.5 Getting rid of patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 4.5.1 Becoming aware of the pattern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 4.5.2 Untangling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 4.5.3 Growing beyond . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 4.5.4 Disrupting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 4.6 Common Patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 4.6.1 Ending up at your managers level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 4.6.2 Ending up above you managers level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 4.6.3 Taking on someone else’s tasks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 4.6.4 Carry out a task because of an unconscious promise . . . . . . . . . . 143 4.6.5 Seeing something different than is there . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 4.6.6 Connected to what is no longer here . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 4.6.7 Extremes collide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157iv 4.6.8 It will go south if we do it and it will go south if we don’t . . . . . . . . 165 4.6.9 Success prevented! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170 5 Organisational topics from a Systemic Perspective 173 5.1 Innovation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174 5.2 Person and function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174 5.3 Presence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176 5.4 Which system? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 5.5 Freeing the function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 5.6 The face of competition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 5.7 Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 5.8 Feedback or Feedforward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 5.9 Love and dedication: curse or blessing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 5.10 Naughtiness as a source . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 5.11 New function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 5.12 Filling the post . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 5.13 Systemic Competence Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188 5.14 Cynicism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188 5.15 Skepticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 5.16 Judgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 5.17 Three kinds of ‘we’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190 6 Transformation 193 6.1 Elements of Transformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 6.2 The Unit Conscience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 6.2.1 The principle of Belonging, during transformation . . . . . . . . . . . . 198 6.2.2 The principle of Exchange, during transformation . . . . . . . . . . . . 201 6.2.3 The principle of Order, during transformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202 6.3 The System-conscience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202 6.4 The Evolutionary Force . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204 6.5 Ba and Ya . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206 6.6 Holding Liminal Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 6.7 Facing future trauma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 6.8 Transformative Phase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214 6.8.1 First order interventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214 6.8.2 Second order interventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214 6.8.3 Third order interventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217 More from these authors 221 Sources and Literature 222 Jan Jacob Stam 224 Barbara Hoogenboom 225 Guest writers 227 Bert Hellinger Institute the Netherlands 229 About Barbara Piper 230 About Systemic Books 231 Index 231