Intro into Systemic Constellations: Part 2

Seeing and sensing systems

Within the complex, ongoingly unfolding and changing world, we are more and more asked to be aware and mindful of the effects our actions and non actions can have, including subsequent ripple effects..

Working with a Systemic Constellations approach, we learn to sense and perceive systems in order to remain agile and responsive while navigating living systems. 

Working with a Systemic Constellations approach, we learn to sense and perceive systems in order to remain agile and responsive while navigating living systems. 

This approach can support us to make meaningful changes and better decisions through an increased awareness and compassion for different aspects of a system and their relationships. 

To create supportive shifts, we must effectively engage (or intervene) in the systems around us by taking the time to let ourselves be well informed by different angles and levels of understanding what is at play.  These capacities build collective system sensing and sharpen our tools to effectively lead. 

Systemic Constellation work and systems sensing supports the re-alignment of the whole by generating grounded intention and presence within us through making space for other aspects of intelligence and wider ways of knowledge to inform us all along.

“The success of an intervention depends on the inner condition of the intervener.” 

Bill O’Brien, former CEO, Hanover Insurance 

Shifting our mindset beyond right and wrong

Systemic Constellation allows us to go under the surface to the less obvious to get a better understanding of hidden dynamics and aspects that may have been forgotten, unwanted or unable to be seen. Even if suppressed, these aspects may play out or have influence on a system without us even knowing. They could be personal and also collective patterns.

We approach the system with a gentle gaze and a non-judgmental attitude. We allow ourselves to see a situation for what it is. We welcome what is actually happening in the moment versus what we think might be happening. This attitude speaks to the ability to know there is not one truth, there are just multiple perspectives and realities that together create a shared weave – and often a quite complex one. 

Acknowledging a situation for what is happening, requires us to use all our senses to illuminate multiple storylines that exist and are co-shaped within a particular system.  As we start to fully grasp and appreciate the complexity of a system, we also more fully recognize the limits of our thinking. 

Working from a place of not knowing

It’s important that we approach a system we want to better understand with a sense of not knowing. We can dialogue with the system through sensing a system and by creating a space for deeper listening.  What is revealed often helps us to better understand what a system requires at any particular moment or phase. 

System sensing requires letting go of what we think we know and stepping back from one’s own idea or conviction, even if our thoughts come from a well-intended place. As we move beyond one or the other idea of what we think should happen, we allow the deeper dynamics to become visible.  

System sensing and the practice of stepping back can allow us to gain a deeper understanding of what is going on in the system itself as well as what may need to be integrated or contributed to create better alignment and balance. The practice of system sensing is also a form of training for our sensing “muscles” to become more refined. 

Mapping 3D to 4D: Adding relational dynamics 

4D(dimensional) mapping is a method that is found to be useful to support those who work in the areas of complexity, emergence and uncertainty.  4D mapping builds upon 2D mapping (drawing and illustration) and 3D mapping (modeling) into the next level by helping make the relationships between elements of a system more visible.  Using the practice of representation, individuals can stand in for specific aspects in a system so that more subtle information about the aspects and the relationships can become explicit and experienced. 

Systemic Constellation and 4D Mapping support organizations and projects to:

  • Understand issues and underlying patterns that seem to block work or project flow 

  • Clarify what is requires at a given stage

  • Build capacity for working more consciously with the system and its underlying patterns

  • Unleash potential and resource flow 

  • Take actions that have more alignment

Luea Ritter