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Systemic Coaching Manual - Jan Jacob Stam
Systemic Coaching Manual - Jan Jacob Stam
Manual
2011
1
The programme
Introduction
Triangulation
Parentification
Identifications
Meditation and inner process: ‘Difficult child’
Methodical:
Explore your position as systemic coach with regard to the system of the client
1e order of help
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Introduction
Compared to Management Coaching (at least in the tradition in which I have learned
it at the time as a consultant/ coach) some differences can be mentioned:
Experiences until now show that systemic coaching in a ‘normal’ coaching process
changes the coaching relationship. Often the coaching is then finished. If something
comes to light in a constellation, this works on in the soul of the client. Constellations
are not work instructions in the meaning that it is makes clear what you have to do at
work the next morning. Systemic coaching has the same effect as a constellation. It
is systemic work without doing a constellation or maybe with only a mini constellation
with some elements, where the coach can be representative.
From systemic coaching another image arises for the client. That image keeps
working. Sometimes it means that in the following months many things shift/move. If
someone takes another inner position in a system, many things change. Many
changes take place on the level of identity, of values and views and on the level of
acting. As mentioned before, this can involve feelings of guilt. Being loyal to what was
before is often easier as it involves feelings of innocence. Falling back to ancient
behaviour is therefore logical. For a coach it must be completely acceptable if that is
the case. Whatever the client does with the insight is ok for the systemic coach. He
does not even ask afterwards. The challenge for the coach is not to want to know if
he has been successful. Already only wanting to know has its effect on the soul of the
client.
That is why the coaching relationship changes. What can you talk about together
when something essential has come to light? Actually it is often so intimate that it is
strange to talk in following coaching conversations about other subjects.
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It is remarkable that many constellation facilitators realise that they quickly forget
about the constellation, sometimes already after some hours. Hellinger talks about a
form of spiritual forgetting. It is as if the system withdraws to where it belongs, the
client.
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The inner attitude of the facilitator
(The scheme is this paragraph has been adapted after Klaus Grochowiak)
There is no doubt that the inner attitude of the facilitator is the most important
instrument ànd condition to work with constellations.
At the same time it is difficult to point out what that inner attitude exactly is and how it
can be acquired. To obtain this attitude needs experience and being continuously
willing to explore which inner processes are involved in the constellation and to
develop them.
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This phenomenological attitude means keeping back/in the background and being
modest. You subordinate yourself to the system/situation as a whole and you look at
it without wanting to explain/to clear up. And you accept from your inner self that
things are exactly as they are.
And at the same time you are also part of the bigger total system.
This is, in my opinion, what Bert Hellinger calls ‘the empty middle.
Besides these aspects of ‘the empty middle’ we want to mention other aspects that
are essential when observing in a systemic way, coaching and guiding / directing
constellations.
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2. Determined /firm leadership.
A constellation immediately loses force when the facilitator loses his/her leadership.
This is something else than letting the representatives follow an inner movement or
letting the representatives formulate an appropriate sentence.
Leadership means the special combination of being simultaneously in the lowest rank
ànd in the highest rank. The lowest rank: meaning a position of humility, the empty
middle. The highest rank: to be able to guide / lead the constellation.
To give the leadership a focus, a direction, it should be:
Directed towards solution. How can energy and love start flowing again?
With the question of the client in mind. When that question is answered the
constellation is finished. Doing more weakens and endangers the resolution.
One step at a time for the client.
5. In harmony with: life ànd death, perpetrators ànd victims, those present ànd
those excluded.
Being able to stand inwardly next to death. Giving the prosecutor a place in your
heart. Bringing an excluded person in the picture. Beyond norms.
Fighting for life may mean, in the systemic sense, not wanting/avoiding to face death.
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Healing in the systemic sense means to be in harmony with both, life and
death, perpetrators and victims.
Let it be clear that everyone is responsible for his/her actions and their
consequences
6. Own themes.
Does the client’s theme approaches/touches yours?
While setting up you should be aware of the difference between the
client’s theme and possibly your own themes that are touched/that come
up.
If your own theme starts dominating, the constellation must be stopped.
When you, as the facilitator, are in touch / in contact with the system-
energy then it is possible that emotions, overtaken from the system,
emerge.
Those are functional and it is useful to (learn to) distinguish them from
those emotions emerging, when your own theme is touched.
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Practice To which systems does one belong?
In threes: A, B en C
A goes into the empty middle and asks questions in order to find out from which
systems B is part of and what position B has in this system
B gives feedback to A saying which questions open more and which questions close
more
A tries to answer the question: from which (inner) place emerged the systemic
questions?
C observes it all and gives feedback about when A and B are together in the field and
when not
Change places
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How conscience works in work and organizations
The most important merit of Bert Hellinger is not so much the development of the
method of system constellations but much more the insights into how conscience
works in systems.
Personal conscience and collective conscience and the struggle between the two of
them.
Personal conscience
Personal conscience binds us to our group. Our family, our region of birth, our
religion, our culture, our language and our country. It also binds us to our work, our
colleagues, and the organisation we take part in.
Personal conscience works as a kind of sense organ of equilibrium.
It is in our consciousness and guides by feelings of guilt and innocence. Personal
conscience works directly and gives us information about at least three areas:
Bond: do I still belong to a group or not?
Balance in giving and taking: do I owe someone or does someone owe me?
Order: am I at the right/legitimate place in this system?
Bond
Actions that increase our rights to belong to a group are coupled with feelings of
innocence and pleasure. Things that go against norms and values of our own group
and put our right to belong to this group at stake are coupled with feelings of guilt.
Personal conscience makes the own group feel strong and takes care of keeping the
group together and keeping the distinction and boundaries to other groups clear.
How this works can be easily checked by asking yourself what you do to belong to a
department, an organisation, a professional group, or maybe to an ideal or a trend.
And which effects have the things you do on feelings of guilt and innocence.
So it is imaginable that someone with feelings of innocence does the most horrible
things. The people who crashed into the World Trade Centre in New York with a
hijacked plane did this perhaps with a good conscience: it binds them to their group.
Feelings of guilt appear when someone does something that endangers his/her rights
to belong to their group.
Founding a family with a partner means that sooner or later you have to admit that
the other family is as valuable as your own family. And that makes you guilty towards
your own family.
How it works is easy to imagine: a ten-year old child smoked cigarettes with a friend
in her parents’ house, where nobody smokes and smoking is a taboo.
Some days later she wants to talk about it and says to her mother: ‘Mum, I have
smoked’. Imagine how she feels.
Or she tells her friends when they hang around somewhere: ‘We have smoked’.
Imagine how she feels.
In organisations the question is often about to which group people belong: belonging
to the club of all Heads of Technical Departments in a certain area was sometimes
more important for the Heads than to belong to their own organisation.
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And to which system belong medical specialists in a University hospital? To the
hospital they work in, to their department, to their university and their doctors in
training, to their colleagues? When do you render yourself guilty when you do
something for another department?
How does it come that bond and loyalty are often stronger at the bottom in the
organisation than at the top? And what, in this context, means loyal to a brand?
The balance of giving and taking also works when someone has been done an
injustice. Then a right or a need appears to do injustice to the other one too, or to
demand at least something to reinstall the balance so they can again look each other
in the eye.
But when the one person, in reply to the injustice done to him/her, does more
injustice or hurts the other one more, than that person feels in the position to do
again more harm to the first person.
There is an exception. In families the balance between giving and taking from
parents to children is uneven. Parents give more and children take more. Children
cannot and should not bring this equilibrium into balance.
They can compensate this unbalance by passing on what they have received to their
children or to a social project, without asking something in return.
For some schools or training or teachers the same rule holds. Students can not
compensate for what they receive. That is why they feel they should do something
good with what they learned to others. Teachers or institutions you are grateful to,
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can be respected by passing on new insights by, for example, publishing those
insights.
How big should a golden handshake be so that the person involved and the
organisation feel acknowledged and free again? What is a suitable payment for a
consultant so that the organisation and the consultant feel free again at the end? The
‘inner price barometer’ can give you an idea. Imagine you get twice as much money
for a service or product you have just given. Does it make the transaction and the
whole stronger or weaker? Does it make you and the other system feel freer or more
bound? And what happens if you get one and a half times the amount? Or two third?
Order
Personal conscience is also at work in a third area of feelings of guilt and innocence.
What is the right place for me in the system, a place I can trust, which gives me
safety and quietness so that I can do my work well.
If someone works from the right place it is coupled with feelings of innocence.
In organisations the right place is much more difficult to determine than in families. In
families it follows the flow of life: grandparents come before parents who come before
children who come before grandchildren. And in the family the first child comes
before the second etc.
In organisation the right place is connected to several, sometimes-contradictory
principles. Seniority is important, the fact of how long a person is part of an
organisation. The place in the hierarchy is important: if someone considers
him/herself better than the boss, this is often coupled with feelings of guilt.
The professional group is important, as well as specialism. In a group practice the
physiotherapists have another place than the doctors.
The order of training someone followed can also be important or the different jobs a
person has had can influence personal conscience.
When an engineer decides to become a social worker he will get a totally different
strength if he still respects his ancient training and job than if he rejects that part of
his life and considers it as a lost part of his life and the wrong choice.
Collective conscience
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individual. The fact that collective conscience works unconsciously and
people can be taken into service of the system as a whole, without
knowing or wanting it, makes it difficult to perceive.
Constellations are a good aid to bring to light those mechanisms. Often
surprising and for the people involved different than they had thought.
In collective conscience the principles of bond, balance in giving and
taking and order are also at work. But in another way than with personal
conscience.
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This function of collective conscience in organisations can be seen when
someone seems to bear a burden out of scale that has nothing to do with
what this person has done in the organisation.
Sometimes you get the impression that someone tries to make up for
something and it is not clear what it is and who for. And it never seems
enough. You can sometimes see it at the body posture of people, head
down and as if loaded with a burden that is felt as unpleasant for
colleagues and unexplainable at the same time.
Order
For collective conscience earlier members or elements of a system have
priority over who or what arrived later. In a certain way collective
conscience is ‘cruel’ because it ‘punishes’ people who arrived later for
injustice that had be done before they arrived.
What arrived earlier is ‘more important’ than what arrived later.
That also means that those who arrived later should not interfere in
matters of those who were there before them, nor should they feel better
than those who came earlier. In organisations collective conscience does
not only work towards those who came earlier or later but also at the
same time in the hierarchy. People higher in hierarchy are considered for
collective conscience as if they came earlier.
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Practice
In your career in the past, where were you guilty in the field of:
-belonging
-balance in give and take
-order
and what was the effect?
If you think about a next step in your career or for example introducing a
change in your company
-to who or what would you render yourself guilty?
-what would you leave behind?
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Dynamics and their resolutions
Dynamics are the heart of the constellation. To recognise the essential dynamics and
those with the strongest weight or power is essential to work towards a solution. In
the training we pay a lot of attention to learning how to recognise dynamics. You can
practise by assimilating the following dynamics, possibly with examples, and by
feeling what the inner movement is, which goes with the dynamic.
Then you can try to feel what the effect of an intervention or resolving sentence is.
And how maybe something gets into movement that can grow.
The dynamics are placed in a number of main groups. This list is not exhaustive. It is
a stocktaking of observations until now. There probably will be more later.
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Practice Recognizing Dynamics
With each dynamic you can do this exercise. The following one is for
Triangulation
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Dynamic: Triangulation.
Triangulation is a disturbance of the order. Someone has arrived at the
place on the above hierarchic layer, often in a conflict situation among
the people concerned. In daily life the client perceives it as a role as a
mediator. And it is also tempting, because it gives status and therefore
this place quickly becomes presumptuous /arrogant and is considered
with suspicion by the others in the organisation. Not seldom during
training the following remark slipped out of my mouth: ‘I think you are at
the wrong place. You should have been the director’ And often it was
purifying. Actually the employees have nothing to do with what is at work
among the managers on the nearest higher level. Conflicts should stay
there. Involving an employee is an invitation to entanglement.
De-entanglement is possible when the employee says: ‘I am only the co-
worker’. The manager says: ‘You are the employee, I am your boss, and
next to me are my colleagues. What is going on among us we can
handle ourselves. Keep out of it’
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Dynamic : Parentification.
I feel better than my boss; I have come in a position above my boss. The
movement is that someone feels above someone who has a higher
position in the order (according to the dynamic of the system).
And then the order is disturbed. This can be seen in the constellation in
several ways. In posture, the head a little bit backwards and sometimes
a disdainful glance. The person lower in rank stays or tends to stay left of
a higher person in rank. The person higher in rank is not looked at.
Arrogant tone and statements by the representative. Asking to say the
employee: “I am only the employee” can test this dynamic.. To restore
the order it is sometimes necessary for the employee to bow lightly for
the person higher in rank. Parentification in organisations leads to
restlessness and loss of energy. The attention is more focused on the
person’s own position than on his/her work. Someone who enters an
organisation and listens and observes, can quickly see if this dynamic is
at work. A specialist can feel superior to his/her boss, which is true
concerning competence. But at the same time he/she can feel superior
to the boss in everything so also as if he/she is the manager.
By looking for the solution it is good to restore the order and the boss
says to the employee: “You are good at your job and that is why I
appreciate you”. If this is said sincerely the employee can say: “And you
are my boss and you can count on me as your employee”. Triangulation
as well as parentification lead to fading the clarity in the order. By
working towards a solution it is important to come to clear statements
about who is who.
“You arrived after me”, “I am the boss and you the employee”. That can
start an inner movement that leads to a clear limit. That gives each one
in the organisation the opportunity to be autonomous and bound at the
same time.
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Dynamic: I carry something for you/ carrying a debt/ carrying
responsibility that is not yours.
I carry an outstanding debt of the company. A product (powder milk)
feels weak because at the time the product caused illness by the children
because of a production failure. The product carries this for someone
else who could not face it at the time. In the constellation you see that
the representative is excessively overloaded and weak. Actually this
dynamic is: I try to do something that someone else can not do. It is an
example of trying to do someone else’s homework. Not only is this an
impossible mission but it is also an endless task as you will never know
when you have finished. As it is not your task you do not have any
reference to know when you have done enough. A good recipe for a
burnout.
This dynamic can be tested by giving the representative something
heavy to carry, for example a briefcase or a pile of books; immediately it
will show if this weight is really carried by the representative;
The direction of the solution lies in: ‘Carrying your own burden makes
you strong’.
The representative gives the weight back to the one he carried it for and
says: “Dear ….., I have carried this for you and now I am giving it back to
you”.
The addressed representative feels if he/she can take the weight, takes it
and observes if it is really his/hers.
It is often necessary to give back a part. It is also possible that the weight
has to be given back further, until it is clear where it belongs.
This is not only noticeable by the verbal reaction of the representative,
but also by facial expression and posture: someone who carries his/her
own weight, even a heavy one, becomes a bit taller and radiates
strength.
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Do you easily find yourself at ‘loaded’ places in the organisation, on
places where other people do not take the risk or where people
before you had a break down?
Have you sometimes the feeling you have to atone?/pay a price?
Are you a workaholic?
Do you know the pattern that, just before success, you do
something to destroy it?
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Dynamic: Double image. I look at someone in the organisation and see
someone who belongs to another system, family, organisation, training.
With a double image the person from one (part of the) system is
confused with someone from another part or other system. When a
representative in an organisation system looks at the boss with the look
of a child instead of the the look of an adult, it is an indication for a
double image.
This can be tested and resolved in an elegant way. Behind the
representative of the boss another representative of the same gender is
placed. After a few seconds the first representative is placed one or two
meters aside, in this case preferably to the left (because of the order).
Then the other representative comes into the picture of the
representative of the client. Then he/she will be asked: ‘who is this?’.
In systemic coaching this process can be done in your imagination.
If this is someone from the client’s family system, the solution is to let
say the family member: “ I am your father. There is your boss. We are
completely different people. We have nothing to do with each other. I am
your father and you are my daughter. And as a daughter you have a
place in my heart”. The boss then says something similar. Sometimes it
is necessary to work on a bit, in this case, on the side of the father.
This dynamic is also called: ‘context overlap’. You can imagine it as two
overlapping films.
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Dynamic: Identifications
Following somebody, leading someone else’s life.
Someone tends unconsciously to follow a person, who has not been
honoured or who left the system prematurely. For example: an
employee tends to follow a founder who was expelled from the
company after a conflict, years before.
Or a member of the management team of an organisation after a
fusion/merger tends to follow dismissed employees.
In the constellation this dynamic becomes visible by someone staring
into the distance, to the back of a representative who is set up looking
outside the circle, or who feels an inner movement to leave the circle
facing outwards. Sometimes a representative stares to the ground.
This dynamic is tested by putting the representative behind someone
else who died earlier or who left the system earlier in another way. If
this feels better for the representative the dynamic is clear.
A direction of a solution is to let the person who was followed turn
round and to let him/her look at the other person until he/she can
really see him.
It may help to let the follower say: “I follow you”. Then the pressure in
the system is enhanced and works as a waking-up signal for the one
who is followed. He can say then: ”Please, stay “. “I appreciate that
you see me, but you do not help me, nor the company, by following
me”
The follower can say: “I will stay a bit longer”. This inner movement
sometimes needs time. This process can be done in imagination in a
systemic coaching situation.
This dynamic is sometimes more difficult to see through questions.
But we give some suggestions so that you have an idea in which
direction to search and we complete that inner image with a
meditation ‘difficult child’.
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Do you sometimes behave in such a way, that you do not
belong somewhere anymore?
Do you sometimes behave in an inexplicable way?
Do you hear voices?
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Systemic coaching
Bibi Schreuder
What about belonging? Maybe questions arise in you such as: who or what is not
named or seen? Maybe someone has been excluded? Someone is missing? Or you
ask: Has a goal or ideal been lost? Or Who do you honour with this?
What about order? Maybe questions arise such as: Could it be possible that you feel
bigger or better than your director? If you imagine your school class, than where is
your position ?
What about the balance in give and take? Maybe questions appear such as: Are
you very good in giving? Can you also take? For who are you working so hard? What
does your illness do for the system actually?
You can drop politeness, curiosity, asking about feelings. Listen in silence… and only
if a question presses on, you ask the question.
Unfortunately the coach has not much to do and is more silent than speaking. By
questioning you can let the client explore what resonates, where maybe there is a
context overlap (something old from the own family system melted with something in
the present work situation). Then you can explore if you want to differentiate the two
contexts.
You make suggestions, starting with: What if? (What if you turn round and you know
that the director is behind you? What if you see the parents behind the children? And
what if your parents stand behind you?
Always with considerable time and silence between the questions, so that the client
can let appear the images.
You observe where and which changes you experience in the client and you follow
the process. You stop if a first movement perseveres, in agreement with the client.
For example with: I see that you expire deeply and that you nod; does that mean that
it is sufficient now?
Round off with the client in a way that your both are free again and so that the
process in the client can continue. So resist, and endure, as a coach, your curiosity,
your amazement (about how simple it is or how quick) and your worries if it all will
work out well. Keep your leadership and say: Ok that was it!
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Practice
Systemic coaching interview, conditions for excellence
In threes: Client
Facilitator/coach
Meta-coach
The client goes into an inner state of remembering where he or she excelled in his or
her work
Meta-coach: his or her role is to take care that the coach keeps working on the
systemic level.
Feedback:
What teaches this about the dynamic in successful work situations?
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Practice
Systemic Coaching Interview, ‘Looking at it as a whole’
In pairs: one person is the coach, the other person has a coaching
question.
Ending.
The person being coached and the coach look together at what this
discussion has brought up, which questions had more effect and which
had not.
Change places.
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Inwardly process: explore your position as a coach with regard to
the system of the client.
Open yourself to the client and open yourself to his or her system: the
employer, colleagues, employees, maybe his or her professional group
or clients… Open yourself also for his or her family, cultural background,
countries of origin, events in the past….
Maybe see them in front of you, even if you do not know them all.
And then wonder where your own place is.
How far away are you from the client? And if you increase the distance a
bit, does it make him or her bigger, smaller, stronger, weaker, more or
less dignified? Does there come more flow or less, more or less potential
in the group?
And what about the employer, where does he stand? Can you include
him or her in your heart? Change the distance and your position in the
triangle you form with the principal (the one who gave the assignment)
and the client. What is the effect? When are you needed more and when
less? When does the relationship between the principal and the client
become stronger, more fruitful, when more difficult, drier?
And continue this exercise when you include colleagues, the
organisation, clients, society, family…
And if you change your position, what changes that in your relationship?
When are you more partner, more helper, more problem solver, more
coach, more mother or father of the client? Can you bear that the client
suffers? Can you bear that the organisation of the client suffers? Can you
bear that society suffers?
And observe then your natural tendencies: what position do you naturally
prefer to take in regards to the client.
And if you would do systemic coaching would another position be more
suitable or helpful?
Are you more in service of the client or more in service of the
organisation of the client or maybe more in service of society or forces
beyond that?
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Practice
1st order of helping
Practice:
Then the client invites two people to stand behind her/his chair as her/his parents.
What changes in he relationship coach –client?
Then the coach invites two people to stand behind him/ her as his/her parents
What changes in the relationship coach-client?
The coach collects which insights this exercise gives him/ her about him/herself.
Enjoy!!
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