Life serving structures - my learnings from this summer

The contributions that people have made to support my participation in North America NVC Leadership programme July retreat combined with my own ressourses have made it possible to gather many learnings during this summer from different groups in US and Europe. Following will be my notes and conclusions about my learning and understanding about Life serving structures and systems. It is not complete list as it is an evolving document growing together with me and my understanding.

• Structure influences behaviour!
  

It seems very hard if not impossible to operate in a new way while a structures in organisations or groups remain the same (read: dominative). People might have strong wish to to things differently (in a partnership way - look at the definitions from Riane Eisler's work "Power of Partnerhip") but if structure does not support it - those efforts seem to run into sand no matter how hard we try! For example if there is beautiful vision and mission statements worked out but no room is made in the structure (ie daily schedule, monthly routines etc) to implement those new things they will most likely die out and not manifest. For example - I find it very important to have good quality empathy available for my co-workers regularly but if this just remains as my intention and I will not create room in our days as well as provide ressourses (people with certain skills and finances to hire such people) my intention will most likely not become alive.

I suggest to you K.Byron "Don't be Nice, be Real" and M.B.Rosenberg "Life Enriching Education" to read in order to learn what kind of structures we need to support life serving systems.

• Approach to money and other ressourses
  

In life serving systems we need to change our attitude towards money. From seeing money as reward towards seeing money as "nourishment for organism" or one way to meet needs. In my opinion it is radical shift in consciousness and it creates totally different atmosphere and energy. It is shift from "scarcity thinking" (there is not enough for everyone) to "abundance thinking" (there is enough to meet everyone's needs). Shift from "deserve" mentality (some people are deserved certain amount of money, appreciation, love etc) towards "what serves needs best" mentality.

• High trust culture
  

Honesty & openness - willingness to take risks to be vulnerable, to be true first to yourself and then to your colleagues seems crucial while creating trust in a group. There are things that leaders can do in order to support group become more mature and open. And it is also a matter of personal maturity, skills of knowing oneself and connecting with oneself and having inner security.

Reliability - making, keeping or breaking agreements with care towards every part involved. Including or rather starting with personal reliability towards myself.

I have got a lot of inspiration from S.R.Covey work www.speedoftrust.com & "The four Disciplines of Execution."

• Leadership

I have met in many so called "spiritual groups" fenomena that I would call "fear for leadership". It seems to me that we have so much pain around how we have been experiencing leadership in dominative structures that we tend to deny the role and need for leadership at all. At the same time in my experience it is not possible to give away a role of leader if there isn't one who is taking it. For example if you are the one who has been initiating an event or group etc then you have been taking the role of leader whether you admit this fact or not. You put some of you resourses into it and you have certain power. (Power by itself is nor good neither bad - it is rather how do I as a leader use my power. It is leader's choice if to use it as "power-over" or to use it as "power with".)

will be continued...