Communitas Philosophy 4
Applying modern neuroscience and leading-edge 21st-century psychology to groups and organisations as communities is at the heart of the Communitas Project.
This involves several distinct steps:
1) recognising the diverse stakeholders (which make up and surround an organisation) as constituting a whole system which can be understood as a community
2) understanding the interpersonal, group and collective dynamics which determine the behaviour and evolution of that system (including insight into those dynamics and conflicts which block functioning and further evolution)
3) finding ways to lead such organisational systems, (i.e. to intervene and facilitate the evolution of that system, for the benefit of the whole and the people within it), by flexibly drawing on the wide range of available methods and techniques.
The experience of our events will help you expand your skills and capacities as a leader in each of these three areas.
Communitas within the field
The Communitas Project is not at all unique in 1) recognising organisations as systems: the application of systems thinking to businesses and organisations has been evolving for some decades and is well established. All we can claim here is that we are up-to-date with the latest developments in this field, some of which are profound and innovative and have as yet not filtered through into common practice.
Where Communitas is unusual is in extending systems thinking to human and social systems as communities. But where Communitas is unique is in regard to 2) and 3) which require the application of new psychological paradigms and ways of working to organisations and social systems.
Step 3) relies on a special feature of the Communitas approach: its integrative perspective. Over the last two decades the integration of psychological approaches has been accelerating strongly in relation to work with individuals. However, the field of group psychology is still as fragmented and dogmatic as the field of individual psychology was 20 years ago.
We bring together the diverse groupwork approaches in an integrative, flexible and practical way, so that it becomes easy to learn and applicable to everyday organisational life.
1) Organisations as systems
A simple analogy would be of the organisation as its own eco-system, with a community of diverse species. In the field of biology we are only beginning to grasp the full extent to which all members of such a community are subtly interdependent on each other. The same could be said for human systems and organisations.
As soon as we think of systems, a whole new interdisciplinary range of innovative scientific perspectives becomes relevant.
These include: field theory (as used in Gestalt), cybernetics and general systems theory, non-linear systems as researched through chaos theory, complex systems as researched through complexity theory.
All of these have begun to be applied, at least theoretically, to the field of organisational development and business. However, their application stands and falls with the psychological attitudes and paradigms through which they are communicated. Of the various branches of systems thinking, field and complexity theory have the most immediate and profound implications for the role of the leader, and what position he or she takes up in relation to the forces operating within the organisation as a system.
Much of modern management is concerned with visions, targets and an overall linear theory of change and progress. Complexity theory, however, sees linear change as an abstract ideal which the human mind imposes on reality. In nature, systems do not conform to straight lines which can at best roughly approximate development, at worst be grossly misleading. Non-linear change can be gradual and incremental, or sudden and radical, but in complex systems is never entirely predictable. Rather than pursuing the idea of a good leader strongly imposing their vision on an organisation, based on their best predictions, complexity theory suggests that good leadership depends on other kinds of strength.
Communitas events work with the group as a complex self-organising system, and you will be able to experience the basic principles and laws of such systems for yourself. You will be able to experiment with different leadership responses and observe their effects, recognising their respective advantages and disadvantages.
One of the most basic principles in how systems operate and which can fundamentally transform how we approach leadership is the notion of ‘parallel process’. It describes how key dynamics in a system can be replicated in other systems or sub-systems. This is such a crucial notion that we have devoted a whole special section to it.
Organisations as systems - keywords for further research:
- field theory (Gestalt), systems theory, complexity theory (Stacey/Wheatley)
- linear versus non-linear view of systems (linear directiveness always produces resistance)
- complex systems = not predictable, not controllable, but can be influenced through alignment
- established structures versus emergent processes = the leader as facilitator of the conflict between these two polarities
- the use of self in relation to systemic forces
2) The interpersonal, group and collective dynamics in human social systems
One of the starting points for Communitas is the recognition that the predominant psychological principles applied and practiced in today’s management and leadership are so out-dated. This applies to the psychological understanding of individuals and it applies equally to organisational psychology. Interestingly, it does not apply to advertising psychology which is quite sophisticated: we are better at selling to strangers than managing our own staff.
We cannot hope to run a productive, modern business or an effective, successful organisation based on psychological technology that is 50 years old.
In order to get the most out of the people in a 21st-century organisation, we need an up-to-date psychology that does justice to how modern people tick. A psychology that extrapolates from the behaviour of laboratory rats to humans does not do justice to people’s complexity.
With a little interest and openness, with a little effort and empathy it is perfectly possible to understand the inner world of another human much more deeply. Why would we not want to apply such ‘inside’ knowledge to the way we lead, communicate, interact at work ? Why would we not want to use such understanding to inform the way we organise ourselves ?
Now you can. There is no more excuse because such insight and knowledge can become available to you, in your own experience. Neuroscience shows us that we all have the capacity for far greater right-brain understanding of other people than is commonly used.
What that boils down to in simple terms is an in-depth rather than a superficial, exterior or merely behavioural understanding. We’re interested in a psychology from the ‘inside’, that comes closer to the individual’s experience of themselves, as a subject.
For practical purposes, such a depth-psychological perspective needs to attend to the various habitual patterns and behaviours that are outside awareness and/or unconscious.
3) How to intervene and facilitate the evolution of a social system ?
This is what Communitas events are all about - the practical experience of learning these skills through live experimentation and reflection. As indicated in more detail in other blogs, some of the groupwork traditions, models, techniques and approaches we draw on are:
- Gestalt psychology and field theory as applied to groups and organisations
- theories of group dynamics and group analysis (Bion, Foulkes, Hopper, Wasdell)
- parallel process (Hawkins/Shohet) as a fundamental organising principle both intra-psychic and interpersonal
- chaos theory, systems theory, complexity theory (Stacey/Wheatley)
- integral, holistic philosophies (theories of change, evolution of consciousness, Wilber’s all quadrants/all leves model)
- Spiral Dynamics (Graves / Beck)
- Large Group Process (LGI’s) incl. Open Space and Mindell’s Deep Democracy (“Sitting in the Fire”)
- theories of facilitation (Heron: 6-category intervention, Southgate) & facilitator styles including use of self
- Body Psychotherapy
- Family & Organisational Constellations (Hellinger)
- Psychodrama (Moreno)
- work with trans-generational trauma in both individual and collective experience, incl Hellinger’s constellations
- Process-oriented Psychology (Mindell)
- working with multi-cultural diversity and polarisations around gender, race and other cultural identities
- Jungian & post-Jungian Psychology (incl. Archetypal Psychology - Hillman)