Connecting the dots: constellations in business

от ivelina_dev_admin | сеп. 23, 2021 | GROWTH

With one conversation at a time we may not be able to change the world, but we may possibly change someone’s world. There are circumstances in life, as so in business, when it is not about a conversation but is more about creating a space for a person or team, ‘to be’ – to hear, to listen and to sense what is there for them beyond words and thoughts. Such ‘space’ is available, “if only we are brave enough to see it, if only we are brave enough to be it” – to reword Amanda Gorman’s ‘inauguration’ poem from the beginning of this year. One way to create that space for a person, group or team is something I call ‘coaching constellation’. It stems from organizational constellations, based on Bert Hellinger’s family constellations concept and the theory of systemic thinking.

YOUR BUSINESS AVATAR STARTS WITH WHO YOU ARE

“The context this work was born into is that the first ‘team’ to which we belong is the family of origin. In every other team we belong to thereafter (business, organization, etc.), we are either looking to replicate what worked really well in our family or find what we didn’t get. This means that we bring our family system and its stories with us everywhere we go, and that teams for example, often behave like families (with all the function and dysfunction of that!).”, says Laura Beckingham, who enables people to live and lead more consciously, through systemic constellations and more.

“For business owners and leaders, this instrument provides quality time for self-reflection and 360 degrees’ observation of a difficult situation, challenge, as well as potential for business growth. Tapping into something we can call deep data, we can come up with more effective and sustained solutions to complex challenges.”, adds Lachezar Afrikanov, who is using systems theory in his coaching approach towards school and NGO leaders.

“This approach gives you in-depth insight and helps you to establish the source of a problem in a short time. Use business constellations whenever there are repeating problems, patterns that don’t work or issues that can’t be solved with rational thinking”, suggests Martijn Meima, a business coach and trainer, who recently published a book about entrepreneurship viewed from a systemic perspective.

A COACHING CONSTELLATION IN ACTION

A mighty way to determine the effect of something is the Before-and-After approach. Bravely enough, I decided to go this way, while crafting this article. I opened a call for clients to volunteer and Iana Avramova, an energetic serial entrepreneur, was willing to explore her inner journey on a sensitive subject for most startups: money. Hats off to her for being open and authentic in sharing her constellation experience with us.

BEFORE THE SESSION

[putting-the-problem-in-initial-question-formulated-by-the-client] > “How to monetize with ease the products and ideas I have?”[exploring-the-current-state]: Why is it not working so far? >“The sales part makes me anxious; I get overwhelmed from all the things that MUST be done; Negative answers on potential partnerships.”

[checking-deeper-with-pre-session-questionnaire]: How is it not working now? >“My sales are occasional, without a strategy or regularity; My marketing efforts have not brought actual sales; There are so many possibilities to explore that it also makes me dizzy.

DURING THE SESSION

The session itself was a one-and-a-half-hour online coaching conversation. We started with distilling Iana’s initial challenging question about her relationship with money. During the course of the session she gradually moved from [How to achieve financial abundance with ease?], to [How to achieve financial freedom with ease?], to the most resonant to her exploratory journey question [How to achieve financial ease?].

Constellation process needs a leap of faith, in order to reveal new perspectives and insight. As Laura Beckingham put it, what makes a [business] constellation effective is “allowing it all ‘into the room’. It works when the facilitator is letting go of the need to ‘constellate’ literally and working more systemically in a broader way.” A constellation can be set up with people, floor or table markers or objects, representing elements of the question at hand, and from that, the information needed emerges.

I introduced digital version of ‘table markers’, to represent each of the elements playing important role in client’s inquiry. We settled representatives for Ease, Money and for Iana, using virtually the system deck of coaching YOCO cards.

[10 days] AFTER THE SESSION

A week after our coaching constellation session, I e-mailed Iana Avramova with a few questions to reflect on, and a few days later she came back to me with answers.

What were your thoughts and feelings when you entered the session?
Iana: I was expecting that it will help me move at least one step forward towards more clarity. I knew I had a blockage related to money and finances. In the past I have been doing a lot of work on the issue but still, something was obviously missing. So, the session for me was mostly about digging, figuring out, and systemizing what is sabotaging me and preventing my start-up from earning good money.

What made you slightly but markedly change your question a few times in the session?
Iana: What I have found out during my personal and professional development is that desire always beats will. In all three times the question was valid for my case. The problem was that the words I was using were too big for me. Changing the question throughout the session allowed me to desire and feel comfortable with it. If I had kept on the initial question, I would fail inevitably at one point. Now I know I can stick with this final question and the actions it requires for the long term.

What new perspectives did you gain with the final question that you hadn’t had with the one you entered the coaching constellation session?
Iana: A huge discovery for me was that I take money and finances very seriously. When something is so serious, it requires enormous effort, long-term vision, detailed strategy, complete dedication, lack of sleep, personal life, time for the kids, time for reading, sport or anything in general. I do not want to get that serious. I want to keep some independence, some leisure and lazy time, I want to avoid being stressed, tired, overwhelmed and nervous. Changing my perspective and allowing myself to think of money as a means, made it easier to think, feel, and see earning money as a game. The greatest discovery was the change of perspective. Like Wayne Dyer has said it “If you change the way you look at thing, the things you look at change”.

How was the coaching constellation process instrumental to you?
Iana: An amazing process. It allowed me get all my thoughts out, to see them arranged into a visual. It helped me screen out the important and relative thoughts from the rest. For me it was of a great importance to doubt each thought and belief I have, in order to first figure out how I sabotage myself and second to come up with a completely new way of looking at things.

SYSTEM AWARNESS AND A BONUS FOR YOU

What Iana Avramova experienced within the coaching constellation was self and system awareness and letting herself taking the world as it is, through observing reality without judgment. System awareness has four components that we all can focus on too, when we examine a challenge: knowing it > sensing it > asking [yourself and the systems you belong to] and >  doing [taking action towards a new, desired perspective].

DIY: A BUSINESS CONSTELLATION BY MARTIJN MEIMA

“Try it yourself and experience how the process work. Use your intuition to investigate how to get the best out of your company. This constellation can support you to use the full potential of your company or project.

1. Use four sheets of paper and write the following on them:
1) I (or your name)
2) My company (or the name of your company)
3) The full potential of … (fill in the name of your company)
4) The first next step (literally write down these four words. You don’t have to know what this step is)

2. Intuitively place the sheets in the room or put them down where you think they should be.

3. Then step on the sheet of paper with “I” and observe what you experience there. You can pay attention to signals from your body, your emotions, your thoughts. You just observe, without judgment.

4. Investigate how you relate to the other elements. Imagine people standing on the other sheets of paper. If you do this with other people, you can ask them to stand on the other sheets of paper.

5. If you have a sense of moving, move your sheet of paper and let your feet determine its position.

6. Take some time after moving the sheet of paper to observe the changes. What do you experience in this position and how do you now relate to the other elements?

7. Slow down and take your time. If you have registered all information, take another 30 seconds to allow subtler information to present itself.

8. Step off this sheet of paper. Shake, turn around, and stamp your feet, before you continue.

9. Repeat steps 3-8 for the other sheets, “My company”, “The full potential of xxx”, and “The first next step”. Make sure you really step off a sheet of paper, shake, turn around, and stamp your feet before stepping on the next one.

10. Finally, end on the sheet of paper with your name on it and observe what it is like to be on that position now and how you relate to the others.

11. Write down what information you have received about your company and its full potential. Also write down the information you got about the first step. Decide to really take this step in the next few days and be curious to the results this will bring. Don’t expect anything, be open for everything.”

CONSTELLUSION

Do you remember when you learned to swim? The harder you tried to control the situation, the faster you sunk. The moment when you let go of control, you then stayed on the surface without effort, enjoying the lightness of your body. This is a micro moment and everyone who struggled with swimming at first, can recall it. Reliance meets laws of physics and you are floating. You are a step forward and this is just the beginning of an adventure.

Same thing with business constellations. What does make them effective? Part of me believes it might be our maverick imagination in a freely discovery; another, more solid explanation lays down the principle of quantum physics, revealing non locality and entanglement. Explanation may well be hidden in the phenomenon of social fields.

On the whole, a constellation is about employing the system’s wisdom, beyond tangible, conventional knowledge. It means that the person or the leader, if it is a team work, will not look for a quick fix, but will start searching for the root cause of a symptom. Cultivating system awareness means to expose ourselves to the ability we all have – to look at situations, relationships and challenges as related to the whole system. However, it is about acknowledging world as it is, through observing reality without judgment. It happens when ‘we are brave enough to see it, we are brave enough to be it’.

This article is first published as a guest article in The Recursive Media: https://therecursive.com/connecting-the-dots-constellations-in-business/

Applying Intuition In Business

от ivelina_dev_admin | мар. 19, 2021 | GROWTH

You have probably heard the story of a turkey, fed for 999 days by a farmer, each passing day confirming turkey’s trust that the farmer loves the turkey in a life respecting way. Turkey’s life including. But on the 1000^th day, just before Thanksgiving, the turkey is in for a big surprise…

There is this Bulgarian proverb “Too much good portends no good” and it seems that the turkey from Nasim Taleb’s story was not introduced to it. What is more, the turkey confused the world of uncertainty with one of the calculated risk. And the turkey illusion is probably not so often in turkeys, but mostly in people. We often need to go beyond expectations and that is why prediction is not enough. We need to tap into our intuition.

The simplest science based advice one can give you when it comes to utilizing your intuitive thinking is as follows: ‘If you are in an uncertain world, make it simple. If you are in a world that’s highly predictable, make it complex.’ This simplicity consumed the time of good forty years of academic effort of Gerd Gigerenzer and when it comes to intuition applied in decision making, all roads lead to the German psychologist.

WHERE TO START WITH INTUITIVE THINKING?

Opening the chapter of a new year is a good time to develop a new skill and first thing we need to admit about intuition is that is a skill indeed. As a professional, I often use my gut feeling to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to an opportunity and it usually proves right. The way I apply it is the way most of us would and it is called claircognizance, the ability for a person to acquire psychic knowledge without knowing how or why they know it. You drive to work and you should turn right but for some reason you continue straight and later, while listening to the news on the radio, you learn that there was high traffic on the route you miraculously avoided. The miracle, however, has a name and it is called intuition.

As a coach and NLP practitioner I see that the most supportive way for people to find their own healthy dose of intuitive thinking is by guided imagination, visualization and full presence. What it creates for them is a shortcut to inner wisdom. Symbolic imagination is a limitless source of insight and knowledge, and I am happy to have seen plenty of times how it can help people experience a profound mind-shift. Hence they see new perspectives for themselves. It may sound suspicious to the conventional mind but a rising level of acceptance is nudging towards this way of thinking. One prerequisite for applying intuition is to veer from probability theory and investigate smart heuristics or rule of thumb, as prof. Gigerenzer calls it. Simply put, this is our ability to know things. Heuristics is an unconscious form of intelligence based on our stored experiences and is a human tool we all possess to deal with an uncertain world.

HOW TO HONE THAT SKILL?

Cecilia Yeung, a Canadian trainer and coach with 25 years of experience in sales, marketing and strategizing, echoes the opinion that many C-level executives use intuition in decision making, and they are either not consciously aware of using it or they do not advertise that they access it for fear of being mocked. Yeung leads a virtual program that combines the conventional characteristics of bringing business minds together to solve problems with specific mind conditioning and intuitive techniques that are atypical and novel. The premise of her process is that people already have the answers and by using mind and intuition techniques, will be able to see beyond the plethora of information available externally.

“There is no single template for using intuition and it differs for every individual. The good news is that anyone who thinks, feels and senses could develop this ability. Any leader or business owner with a track record of success will know that even when the evidence or data proved the contrary, certain decisions made from a hunch, a distinct awareness or trusting an inner voice have revealed to be right, accurate or disarmingly precise. Accessing one’s intuition may be as simple as quieting the mind or ascending to a meditative state. For others, it may be engaging in activities that suspend the rational mind’s incessant thoughts such as walking in nature, surfing or listening to music. The focus is on seeking validation from the internal channels of information, which includes the subconscious mind.

I truly wish for everyone to realize that there is far more insightful power, illuminating knowledge and profound wisdom than our thinking minds offer. I recommend reading Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink, The Power of Thinking Without Thinking” and “Stealing Fire” by Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal to learn more about the validity of using intuition in business, how to access the subconscious mind and case studies of how unconventional wisdom may help with business growth.”

Tapping into this unconventional approach, is intriguing as one develops a relationship with the powerful subconscious. Here are a few tips from Cecilia Yeung on how to raise your intuitive thinking:

1. Make meditation a regular practice, even if only for a few minutes per day.
2. Take ‘alpha’ breaks which is the relaxed brain state before waking or when daydreaming. Right before the thinking mind takes over, immerse into the symbols, quiet messages and hypnotic awareness. Meditation is a useful way for the brain to reach alpha state.
3. Be aware of symbols, in dreams and waking moments. The subconscious does not communicate with language but instead, with metaphors, symbols and archetypes. Paying closer attention to the symbols will help you gain access to intuition.
4. Code your subconscious for answers and solutions by giving instructions before going to sleep. Your dreams may reveal powerful insights.
5. ‘Program’ the mind with repeated statements or as they are known in personal development, affirmations. We operate from years of subconscious programming and we have the ability to change the conditioning consciously. ‘I don’t have enough time’ is a typical program that we run on repeat and we can override it with ‘I am using my time wisely’.

BEFORE GOING ALL OUT TO INTUITION

Albert Einstein once said, ‘The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift’. Before jumping on this insight with the determination of a New Year’s resolution, we need to admit that this epiphany to tap into the ‘gift’ occurred for Einstein after gaining substantial experience in the field of ‘rational’. When exploring intuition as a business tool, please bear in mind a few scientifically proven facts:

• Intuition in one domain does not guarantee good intuition in another;
• Intuition leads to cognitive and social biases, like the anchoring effect, where decisions are swayed by the first piece of information thrown at us;
• Stress triggers heuristic thinking – habits and short-cuts – but it degrades more sophisticated intuitive processing;
• We tend to get attached to intuitive beliefs;
• Intuition is highly efficient if we don’t think about it too much.

Intuition is a tool at our disposal and this brings some relief as we carefully open the chapter of 2021 in our lives and business. It can serve us as a torch but we need to discover it as a lantern first. It stems from experience and offers us confirmation in the present moment, in our attempts to sense the emerging future. Whether we should trust our intuition depends not on the strength of it, but on the structure of the domain we are operating in.

The ultimate practical goal in employing intuition in business would be to avoid confusing scenarios of uncertainty with scenarios of calculated risk.

This article is first published as a guest article in Trending Topics: https://www.trendingtopics.eu/applying-intuition-in-business/

From Growth to Great Mindset

от ivelina_dev_admin | ян. 30, 2021 | GROWTH

Growth mindset is a well-known concept of not only the ambitious novice – it is also a conscious corporate target of many renowned employers. Carol Dweck, a lead researcher on the topic and author of the book with the same name, states that as humans, we operate in both a fixed and a growth mindset. Apparently, one should intentionally strive for amending their brain to the growth state of mind.

GROW INTENTIONALLY

Growth mindset is an attitude that allows us ‘to understand that [our] abilities can be developed’ (Dweck, 2014). It is often intertwined with the idea that if someone demonstrates a growth mindset, they are coachable – open and dare to change. Even with the best coaches at your disposal, it is your coachability combined with first-rate coaching that will ultimately determine your progress.

A Google search of what being coachable means, will stumble you across virtues, values and good behavior features like “humble”, “respectful”, “eager and keen to learn”, “curious”, even “inquisitive” and “unafraid of mistakes and change”. It all sounds like the perfect wish for a Christmas card. And it is not to say that there are not such super-humans. They are sometimes around us and every once in a while we even see them in the mirror.

GROW PURPOSEFULLY

I now invite you to build on the idea of possessing a growth mindset with something I’ll call a great mindset. It is an attitude that every time I witness as a coach fuels my belief that people actually can change for the better. Great mindset in my view is the ability of a person to admit and acknowledge their individual pace in achieving a goal. It is a matter of velocity and a matter of momentum too.

GREAT MINDSET BASICS

Great mindset is about Growing Reasonably, Eagerly, in an Admirable manner that makes you Thrive à feeling GREAT.

How will you know that you experience the great mindset yourself?

While fulfilling a desire or a goal, climbing the career ladder or euphorically launching a startup, here are five signs of that unmatched mindset as an acronym for GREAT:

1) Growing

The change is going through your veins. You are partially out of your comfort zone, but you are savoring the effort of, for instance, waking up an hour earlier to learn the alphabet of a new language or code.

2) Reasonably

Growing reasonably is growing in a satisfactory way at a price that is not too expensive for you to pay. It means you know your Why, and the gravity of the change you want to create or the milestone you are about to accomplish.

3) Eagerly

“Go the extra mile, it’s never crowded there” they often say. You pursue your better self in a joyous and fulfilling way, you have the energy to go that extra mile, and you are exhilarated to do so.

4) Admirably

You follow your way in a fashion worthy of admiration. Moreover, a tribe of followers, inspired by you, is about to form and it seems that your goal or cause is enlightening others too.

5) Thrivingly

This is the thing and this is the way. You feel it, you see it, you know it. What differentiates it from bare enthusiasm though, is that it doesn’t appear as a sprint, but is much more like a marathon and you have the capacity to endure it. You don’t need a special energy recourse to fuel your stamina, by taking action itself you gain the energy to keep going towards the direction you have chosen.

The great mindset is the sweet spot of doing and being altogether. This is a territory where there is no need to define yourself. You are a work in progress and a will in action and it feels… yes, it feels exactly great!

Here I am, an ACC!

от ivelina_dev_admin | ян. 23, 2021 | GROWTH

I now hold an ACC credential by the ICF. What does it require and mean?

It means I covered 60+ hours of onsite training, in my case it was 125 hours outstanding coaching program with Intunity Coaches, Gergana Pavlova~Petrova and Plamen Petrov, in 2016.

It means I have been mentored to polish my coaching skillset, in my case it means I worked 10 hours with my mentor coach Teodora Kamenova in 2020.

It means that recordings of sessions of mine was examined by ICF and I have demonstrated knowledge and emerging proficiency in the application of the ICF Core Competencies, Code of Ethics, and definition of coaching. If you are curious about the standards, please see the links, following the badge https://www.youracclaim.com/badges/57c44f69-a078-46d6-ac6e-d02a4acf5094

It means also I have experienced coaching as a coach in 100+ hours, in my case it was 160 individual coaching hours so far, starting in 2019. These are, however, far more than hours to count, these are 71 coaching clients so far, 71 individuals who trusted me to support them in their journey to a better and fulfilled self, 71 persons who partnered me so far in my journey to a more fulfilled self.

It has been quite an adventure, and the best about it is that kind of starting off now. For me it means keep relishing the positives that the ‘beginner’s’ mindset brings along – dedication, curiosity and readiness to learn and grow. Because this is the only way one can [try to] serve efficiently.