Who or what do you remember in your team, group, department, or community and how might this impact your performance?

Working in tune with these organisational relationship systems, we know that everyone who has a part in creating, forming, and developing them has a place, and they will be remembered consciously or unconsciously.

These people might include the founders, the funders, the early-stage customers, the first team members, the people who didn’t fit in, the people we let go, the people we took over, the people whose suffering caused the system to exist, the people we include, or the people we other.

When we remember and give place to these people consciously, we feel more in flow and less entangled by unseen forces. When we try to exclude parts of ourselves or we try not to discuss difficult periods or inconvenient truths, we re-member and include our parts in shadow often repeating patterns that now seem unhelpful, or maybe we stay inexplicably unable to change direction despite our best intentions and clear strategy.

However many seats we see around a table there will always be many more behind us. These are in various states of repair, at varying distances and sizes, and some will be more in the light and others the shadow.

Of course, you already know this to be true in your heart and your gut, these truths are present in our earliest learnings as humans, and we can still encounter these teachings in the wisdom of first nations people from around the world. And yet I wonder what permission you feel and find to work with these truths in your organisations and what rules and norms we obey if we look the other way, ignoring our past and so remaining stuck in it.

Working systemically, I like to support teams to acknowledge the contributions and difficulties of all those who came before. If we give them a place in their heart without judgement, we create more awareness, openness, psychological safety, and authenticity in the present, opening the door to an aligned and congruent future.

To find out more about this work could create new possibilities for you or your teams, get in touch.