SYSTEMIC UNDERSTANDING OF CONFLICTS
Working with conflicts, you realize the need for different tools for different conflicts. If your only tool is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail.
The tool for intrapersonal conflicts is coaching. The tool for interpersonal conflicts is mediation. But what is the tool for systemic or organizational conflicts? It is constellation. This method is able to reveal hidden dynamics and work with a system as a whole.
“The system thinking lens allows us to reclaim our intuition about whole systems.“
Donella Meadows
When you start to work with conflicts from a systemic point of view, you will be aware of the patterns, that shows the imbalance in the system e.g.:
- There is a systemic context overlap,
- Identification with the conflict, where a person or team is unconsciously loyal to something or someone, who is being excluded
- Being stuck in a planned future, while the emergent future is invading you
- The order of the system is not honored
- Not everyone is included and embraced into the system
- There exist a double-bind – you are doomed if you do – you are doomed if you don’t
- People in the system are playing out other parties’ conflict – the conflict has been inherited by them, but do not belong to them
- There is a repeating pattern of the same conflict being played out in the system
- A trauma – e.g. accidents, mass dismissal, fraud – made the system so overwhelmed, that it is fragmented and not able to develop further and will unconsciously replay the incident that took place.
- The conflict is hiding painful insights, that will be revealed if the conflict is solved
- The conflict has a function and is trying to serve from a systemic point of view
By revealing the hidden patterns, you will see the system “as it is” and will be able to make wise interventions into the system as a whole.