A new beginning follows a good ending
Organisations, associations, religions, cultures, groups, teams, friends and families are all bound together by rules of belonging. Some of these rules are written down explicitly, maybe on stone tablets or in working agreements, and some are understood implicitly, established by pattern and handed down through time, like half-time oranges.
It can be a great cause of personal tension when we perceive these rules as being breached. Subconsciously, this triggers our sense of what should and shouldn’t be, our sense of right and wrong. It challenges our view of the world and on some level our view of who we are.
Within us, this sets off our fight or flight reaction and surfaces deeply laid emotions and patterns that we carry with us for just such circumstances.
As leaders, or anyone with a change agenda, we owe it to ourselves and our teams to develop our systemic awareness of:
- the implicit and explicit rules that exist
- the people who care about them
- the influential parts of the system
- the loyalties that these rules belong to
- the potential impact of breaking them
With this awareness, we can start to support people in the complex human process of personal transformation aligned with our organistional change.
This personal journey, which we often neglect to our detriment, involves softening our loyalties and ties, saying goodbye to what came before, what we believed lay in our future and acknowledging what we are losing. When we pay deep attention in this way, it allow us to open ourselves, our hearts and minds to the potential of new possibilities.