Living on the Edge of Emergence

For the last 14 years I have been coaching as my main source of income. This work has been such a gift to me. For the first 37 years of my life I was searching for my vocation, and the reason I couldn’t find it was because it didn’t exist yet. 15 or 20 years ago, a coach that didn’t work on a sports field was a rare exception. Why is this? What happened that coaching needed to emerge?

There is no doubt in my mind that humanity is about emergence. If we relate the history of humans on earth to the birthing of a child, we could use the metaphor that we are entering the final stages, where birth is immanent. The mothers womb is no longer able to sustain the baby, and it simply must come out into the world to start to sustain itself in a new way. This is an example of emergence. This is the path of humanity, to emerge and evolve.

While we have come a long way, there is a way to go. And each day, the pace gets just a little faster. Accelerated acceleration. Part of this human emergence has brought us to the place where we can choose what we want to do with our life with a level of consciousness. This did not exist 30 years ago. You followed the rules. If you were a woman, you got married, had children and supported a husband. If you were a man, you found a job, worked to support the family, the provider and protector. These roles are breaking down thank goodness. Women can choose to have babies or work, or do both. Men can choose to work as the provider or work in partnership with a woman or man in the providing and raising of children. Or...men and women can choose to miss the baby creation step completely, and work on creation in a different way...ideas, events, artifacts, relating...

We are sitting, for the first time in history, in the questions...

what do I want to do with my life..?

what is my purpose...?

what makes me happy...?

how can I serve others..?

Your grandparents would not have dreamed to ask these questions when they were young. And if they did, they needed to put them aside and get on with the business of survival. Unless they were the “dreamers,” the poets and starving artists, shamed by “normal” society for not playing by the rules.

Today we are all being called to listen to the voice inside that yearns to express itself in the way of the artist.(See my article on Seth Godin's book, Linchpin.) Whether that be through business, science or art. Simultaneously we are seeking to find out who we really are, searching for our own truth. 40 and more years ago this kind of inner journey was only done in the monasteries. Our task now is to navigate the inner domain while living in the outer world, and at the same time, seeking our own unique expression from within out. “Mystics without monasteries” as Caroline Myss says.

Hence the birth of coaching. (And for me specifically, business leadership coaching.) A conversation we could engage in that allowed the exploration of all areas of our life, including these deeper questions and in all domains. The inner world, the outer world, our relationships, our work, the greater system...there are few places one can go to engage in this multi dimensional dialogue where the conversation is focused on the full expression of you.

Sure, some coaching is more mechanistic than this, and very much built around goals and action focus. To get here, do this...But even great coaching from the sports field transcends mere performance, and is about the birthing of the intrinsic skill/talent/expression that lies beneath and bringing that into the present expression.

The precessional effect of my spending 14 years moving towards mastery in the art of coaching has taught me about staying in the emergent place when working with clients. To not have an agenda, to not know what was coming next, to be able to create and respond to what was next, to trust that I would have the questions, know what to do, only when the moment arrived.

Many coaches and facilitators find this place of working in the emergent space as very unnerving. It appears that there is little structure. It takes tremendous discipline, the willingness to completely let go, the willingness to NOT have the answers, or know what to do, the practice of trusting self, and source. It requires listening till you no longer exist. It requires that I as the coach have done and continue to do the inner work, I can be quiet inside, can listen from a place of not knowing, and in my highly tuned attention and intention, can tap into the place where all the questions and all the answers lie.

As I have evolved in my coaching, it is interesting to observe that I have taken this skill from working with clients one on one, to working with groups. Team facilitation with a coaching frame. This is the work I love. It is very creative, very honest. The more I stay true to the emergent process, to working on the edge, the more the most amazing and incredible things occur. People who have been stuck, or blocked, open. The unspoken elephant gets named spontaneously. When the room gets divided into teams, the teams magically demonstrate exactly what we have been talking about prior to the team activity.

Speaking to one of my esteemed colleagues and friends, Cynthia McEwan from Avastone Consulting, who is a master of masters at working with the silent spaces between people (tuning in to the energy of what is going on), she challenged me to realise that while the way I work looks unstructured, there is a structure. It’s not the normal structure of process, which implies a linearity. We do this, and then this, and then that. The structure I work with creates a field, a space, that is imbued with care, the highest of high intents, and allows for what needs to emerge a space to be birthed that is safe and nourishing.

The main action I take in my preparation is to get very clear, not just intellectually, but in an embodied way (as I need to inhabit understanding) of what is the intended outcome for the group. This requires deep listening, maybe speaking to some of the participants, spending time with the sponsor, and his/her senior team. Understanding the dynamic of the group. I must be able to transcend my own needs, my own desires to be good, be seen as smart, or this or that. It is a place of reverent service to the group as a whole and all the individuals within it.

Then I need to get myself clean and clear. Quiet, present, my instrument tuned. Relaxed. In deep trust that I will know, when the time comes, what to do. And even if I don’t, standing in the don’t knowing place is also perfect.

And then it starts. My good friend and colleague, Laurent Labourmene , who co-facilitated with me on a recent event, compares the way I work to music. He said I am not a classical musician, following sheet music. I am a jazz musician, able to improvise, moving from moment to moment with the note after next never evident until the very next note is played.

This morning I was listening to one of our great Elders in Conscious Evolution, Barbara Marx Hubbard. She was describing this principle of emergence, and in her description I was able to see/understand not just what I do, but the very importance of this skill set as we evolve. There is no linear process or formula to emergence. Often what is emerging is unseen/unformed until it is there. People can have a sense of it, but often times they do not have the language for it. I can feel it, it has shape, but I struggle to put words around it. And the words we have are not adequate, because new language is required.

What was google before google? Indeed, what was coaching, before coaching? And the internet, what was that? Where did these ideas that became form exist before they were made manifest? Before the conditions required for their existence became present?

And how do we learn to live in a place of emergence? Present, able to dance and flow to what is emerging, respond from an integrated place, bring wisdom and systemic awareness to the emergent? These skills, the skills that I have learned from 14 years of coaching, and decades of working on my inner world, are vital skills for leadership and leadership development. Yet the skills we teach at the business schools are not these. They are usually the linear, formula - matic, process type skills. Skills of the emergent leader require creativity, flexibility, willingness to dance and flow, the ability to get down in the detail and yet remain with one foot planted in the larger context.

Staying alive and engaged on the very edge of emergence requires the skills and development of at least these domains. Plus...

* a focus on our own inner work as a daily practice, including working on the shadow aspects of self

*the ability to listen beyond mere listening

*the ability to surrender completely to the present and trust fully in self and the connection of self to the greater field

*a highly developed systemic awareness

*an understanding of people, and the human dynamic

*intentionality

*being of service

*trust in the overall perfection of things, no matter what

Where do leaders go to learn these skills? Where is there a requirement for deep contemplation, systemic capacity building as well as the usual skills for leadership?

Finally there is a now a place and space for the highest level of leadership development.

It is these skills that I bring to the table as part of my contribution to a group of incredible people that have come together in the last two months to meet this extraordinary need. To download the PDF on what we are up to, click on this link. Because I am one part of The Constellation, my skills are one piece of the whole. Together we are a symphony, and our work is with emerging leaders. The capacity that we as a group bring; the care and deep respect for people and the process of emergence we have; and our focused eye on what needs to be done at the level of global systemic change, is what makes The Constellation exceptional and unique.

I am in deep gratitude to be a part of this stellar group, and have a peaceful certainty that the people we work with, as partners and collaborators as well as clients, all of us, in a multitude of ways, will be transformed. If there is a stage my life has been preparing me to play on...this is it. Moving from coaching, into the new emerging game change of large scale systemic change.

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