Is our brain trapped inside our skull? We have long since outsourced cognitive functions. We have transferred memory to analogue and, above all, digital storage devices, delegated arithmetic operations to machines, and increasingly handed over our own thinking to AI. We have provided our cognitive system with support and, in doing so, understood that we are neither cognitively nor emotionally confined within ourselves. We are in constant dialogue with our environment and are not left unimpressed.

I sit in my library and, looking at the spines of the books, I am much more inspired than when I try to navigate through twenty open windows on a screen. Different environments make me think differently, open up other paths of thought.

I remember a meeting last week. There is a desire for open, multi-perspective, creative exchange. The room is cramped, windowless, and the notes from previous meetings are written on the wipeable, but rarely wiped, boards on the walls. It is exhausting to resist the presence of this room; it forces you to remain in old patterns of thinking, unable to break away from the everyday. The space and what it can trigger is often stronger than the individual desire for difference.

How different was the encounter the week before, a leadership meeting in a museum. The theme of the exhibition is not so important; what is effective is the environment – different, unusual. It creates a different mood, a different attitude. And perspectives on issues shift, new things enter the horizon of thought.

Where we are, what we surround ourselves with, is not neutral. We are always related to what is around us. Not neutral, but in an active relationship, in active exchange. Spaces and atmospheres should be chosen carefully.

1. The Coaching Landscape in Transition

The coaching scene is in flux. New methods and certifications are constantly emerging. In addition to established psychotherapeutic approaches and business-oriented career coaching, the industry is increasingly integrating esoteric and spiritual perspectives. Social trends are also finding their way into coaching. One example is men’s coaching with traditional male role models. Certificates and training courses are springing up everywhere – some with imaginative titles such as »Value-Oriented Master of Business Coaching« or »Naturopathic Wellness Coach.«

1.1 Regulation and professionalization

The growing number of coaches has triggered a movement that aims to protect coaching by law. Economic interests also play a role here. This is particularly relevant in the digital space: as soon as coaching includes learning and training content, a license is required. The question »Where does coaching end and training begin?« is a hot topic in the industry. Experienced coaches try to set themselves apart by mentoring beginners. This dynamic is reminiscent of the psychotherapy scene, where different schools fought for recognition.

1.2 The decisive factor: relationship quality

A meta-study in psychotherapy showed that the decisive factor is the quality of the relationship between therapist and client. It will be no different in coaching.

2. Current developments and trends

2.1 Challenges of the systemic approach

The dominant systemic approach is increasingly being questioned. Experienced coaches want to pass on their knowledge. The previously frowned-upon practice of »giving advice« is being rehabilitated in favor of the pure midwife approach. External mentoring brings a valuable outside perspective. Contributing experience and knowledge creates a space in which emergence becomes possible. Every participant emerges from a good conversation changed.

2.2 AI as a coaching partner

Advantages of AI:

• Broad and deep data availability
• A shame-reduced encounter is possible; AI is good at simulating empathy.
• Always a valuable source of development when the AI-human relationship can be reflected upon. This is done effectively with a coach. AI as part of a love triangle, so to speak.

Limitations of AI:

• Analog signals (tone of voice, atmosphere) are hardly taken into account in relationship building.
• No perception of body tension, facial expressions, gestures
• Very reduced sensory dimension
• Hardly any possibility to perceive the transfer process and use it as a starting point for reflection.

A coach looks behind the prompts. The relationship between two people always remains a sensory one, not an abstract intellectual one.

2.3 From agility to high performance

In consulting, buzzwords come and go. First it was agility, then purpose, now high performance. High performance is often mistakenly pitted against purpose.

The reality:

• Purpose is the indispensable basis for high performance.
• Having purpose is not an ethical category in itself.
• The company cannot give purpose, it can only create space for it.
• Drive and energy come from the individual subject.

The coaching room is not a place to complain about the company or superiors. It is a space for self-efficacy. This requires self-empowerment.

Viktor Frankl put it succinctly: Without a willingness to make sacrifices, there can be no meaningful life—and therefore no meaningful work.

3. Coaching as an organizational development tool

Coaching is increasingly being used as an organizational development tool. Is this a sign of helplessness or the result of an overly simplistic analysis? Both are possible—but there is also an opportunity here.

3.1 The pitfalls of current coaching programs

Typical process:

• Perceived competitive weakness of the company
• Cause is seen as weak leadership
• Assessment to identify strengths and weaknesses
• Individual coaching to »repair«

The problem: In most people’s perception, coaching is positioned here as a repair operation. Yet coaching was just beginning to position itself as a best practice in leadership behavior.

3.2 Structural problems

Assessment tools:

• Often work with outdated leadership models.
• Do not utilize the social knowledge of the organization.
• Are perceived as evaluation tools.
• And above all, they shift the concrete work on the leadership model that this organization now needs to a third party, instead of the management team itself discussing the concrete, prioritized requirements. If this happens, then this approach is already a learning and coaching process.

Even if managers have been involved in deciding on the typical approach described above, it is not a good prerequisite for successful coaching. It may offer individuals an opportunity for development, but whether this will be effective in the organization is questionable.

The fallacy: »If each individual improves, the whole will improve.« In our experience: No!

3.3 Effective design

Two key questions:

• How should a coaching program be designed to have a relevant impact on the performance of the entire organization?
• How can coaching be integrated into a shared leadership process in which leadership skills are developed internally and reflected upon collectively?

There are answers to both questions, which we have discussed in detail. Coaching can then become an effective organizational development process.

4. Who is the coach?

4.1 The coach as curator

In a Chinese desert. Silent. You can hear the earth breathing.
You see and marvel at the starry sky—as everyone before us has done. Marveling without wanting to.
The small group of executives is changing. They are touched differently, in a different mood. And they look differently at what was just very dominant.

Coaching can be: Leading to places. Inviting experiences that lie hidden under the pressure of everyday life.

A trend or a return to the old hierarchical world?

There are already the first posts on social media positioning themselves against »wokeness«. Sometimes with an attack on the »soft« fashions in the people departments and the so-called soft consultancies. There is a noticeable trend towards more top-down and a new »strength« and »decisiveness«. In addition, all programs that support diversity are under considerable pressure. For us, this is an important moment to reflect on our strengths, attitudes and proven skills and knowledge in transformations. In the following text, we confirm what is important and necessary to give the productivity and performance of people in organisations room to develop. How do you reflect on the significance and influence of this new trend from the political arena that is now reaching companies?

A beginning

We have a lot to say. A lot about: New Organisation, New Work, New Mindset. Five years ago, we could have summarised what we have to say in one lecture – we can no longer do that today. It is too multifaced, it is too differentiated. So we pick out the aspects that we are dealing with in our internal discussions and in conversations with customers. We are experiencing upheavals, experiments, outbreaks and new things alongside a great deal of stability – at all levels, in the organisations as new forms of organisation, in groups as new dynamics of social communitisation, individual people with new life plans that do not follow career mainstream.

What is actually driving this?

On the surface, companies are perhaps driven by fear, of losing touch with the Chinese dynamic – perhaps – perhaps – or maybe the loss of confidence in the European success story: the systematic planning, the management of projects, the once so successful waterfall planning, perhaps doubts about the predictive power of strategic departments? Perhaps the confrontation with the doubts of many about the quality of leadership? Perhaps the widespread loss of trust in the »elites«? But perhaps also because it is obvious that we are now more and more confronted with non-linear, dynamically deterministic systems: in the markets, in competition, in society, in the community of our own company, and yet we have worked so hard to make the world linear dynamic deterministic. No matter how often we ask »why«, we will not find the cause – but we will find conditions, contingencies, relations.

For NEW WORK, one condition stands out, a social, a global tendency that has been stable for a very long time: The gain of more and more individual freedom. We see this clearly in the metropolitan regions – where social control is minimised and there is room for many niches, for a lot of otherness, an otherness that can organise itself as a group and group affiliation. It is about self-determination, about one’s own individuality and its social recognition, it is about utilising an old concept, it is about self-realisation. In the current motivation theories, it is labelled with the terms autonomy and learning (growth) and with the idea of self-realisation, that we are purpose-ied. Today, this is an elementary aspect of a corporate culture. With the orientation towards purpose, which replaces the processes of vision or mission, the strenuous, the challenging – how can we balance the individual with the common into a balance that is characterised by a certain consistency. How can our own purpose become a common one and how consistent can this be? In the background is the question of the relationship between solidarity and individual selfhood. Individuality and the quality of communitisation belong together and they make the new forms of work so interesting, so exciting and at the same time so challenging. Because we are in the process of doing without our big, caring brother.

And of course the freedom of the many, the diversity of the many is a driver of complexity, and in allowing this diversity, the idiosyncrasies, we also experience the loss of the one binding moral institution that provides security. This is not only being demanded politically, but also in companies – unfortunately not looking forward, but with a growing longing for the old authority, to use a psychoanalytical image, for the all-judging father. New Work goes the other way – New Work wants to shape freedom so that co-operation and so that collaboration and community are still possible. They allow us to trace aspects that we encounter in our work and for which there are no simple recipes.

The agile organisation – in essence, the search for an organisation that is able to adapt quickly, in which internal orientation is reduced and in which it becomes possible to make an external perspective effective internally in smaller units. Zygmund Bauman called this a fluid organisation decades ago. The blueprints are available – however, the social and psychological dynamics of such organisations still leave many issues unresolved. What can we observe – apart from the trivial issues that not everyone is in favour of such changes, that scepticism is spreading, that the masters of consistency (they are mostly men) fear a loss of power:

Escape into the method
Methods are helpful and necessary – but at best they are only half of the journey. We are somewhat astonished the thoroughness with which the methodological set is increasingly more and more formulated and increasingly resembles the small-scale process landscape that the new organisation was intended to at least reduce. Described methods provide security, they relieve the individual of the burden of personal organisation and are often an escape from freedom. But that’s what it’s all about if you want to achieve flexibility, the richness of polyphony. They are too often an escape from the opportunity of self-efficacy and the responsibility.

The lack of group dynamic competence
What happens when we level out hierarchy and describe the role in such a way that it becomes more of an enabler for personal responsibility. In fact, we lack an understanding of group dynamics and social dynamic processes. The concept of empathy is waved around, but that, difficult in itself, falls short if we want to support people in the informal, i.e. emotionally unrelieving, social leadership processes. It is time to practise group dynamic competence again. Informal leadership opens up a wide field for egomaniacs and narcissists and we know the devastating consequences of bullying in the school context. Group dynamics as experiential learning is needed.

We want your soul, your heart
This becomes all the more important the more we begin to no longer separate our work and private lives. We are merging two previously separate identities. And we are doing it, because we have understood that in the new organisations we need the whole person and not just the time that they make available to us. The old deal was clear: you get money and security (the famous gold watch later) and you give us your agreed limited time, your obedience and your loyalty. If we believe in the motivating power of a purpose, i.e. the fact that a person commits their whole existence to something, because their own deep sense of purpose and that of the work increasingly coincide, then the old deal no longer works. I can’t buy the heart, the soul of a person – the company has to offer more – places, rooms, spaces, relationships, social structures, meaningful concepts that enable people to make a full contribution. And also the freedom to accept what is on offer, for a time, the freedom to leave them again – in the longer term, company boundaries will become fluid. And so the attractiveness as a »place to live« will become increasingly important.

The finite nature of purpose
Purpose often comes across as very gravitational – with such a hint of eternity. But that is a constriction. We do not follow the one purpose in our lives that we must somehow have to discover on this journey through life. Our energy, commitment find many »senses« and they seek out social contexts in which they can be lived. They are guiding for a time, then we leave them for something that is now in this phase of life, in this social context touches us more. This is where we find the second meaning level of Zygmund Bauman’s concept of the fluid organisation – we also flow within our organisation, but also increasingly between organisations and more and more also between different concepts of life. Organisations are faced with the task of repeatedly and to create inviting places and structures that offer meaning and are thus able to attract those seeking meaning. We will have to learn to experience the flowing itself as stable.

The psychological focus
For us, in our working tradition, the psychological focus, i.e. the constitution of people in these changes, is of great importance. How do people learn recognise their roles, their possibilities in the new forms, how do we give them a chance to realise themselves in the new to reinvent themselves in previously closed possibilities? This requires, for example, deep interventions in the rarely thematised normative basic assumptions of coaching or leadership training. If we work laterally and explore more lateral possibilities, then we leave behind the previously dominant vertical aspect that organisations today primarily offer as a career. Career, previously linked to advancement as hope and as pain, is defined differently – more and more as the ability to repeatedly find places of attractiveness, to see oneself as fluid. However, companies quickly come up against the limits of society, which still celebrates the hero of advancement.

How do we learn?
Ultimately, the question arises as to which concepts of life we train people for. More than ever, Gregory Bateson’s distinction between first-order learning and second-order learning. We will make little progress with a PISA-orientated approach, because that which has trains and teaches what has been tried and tested, in an old and stable world. Learning for the new, that which we have not yet practised, that requires an opening to the part of our part of our society that we like to marginalise with the words art and describe as a place of bliss. But it is precisely there that we can learn more about the future than in any strategy or marketing department of large corporations and consultancies. Long before companies could call what they call VUCA today, art has showed us with a performative twist what event means, what ruptures mean and what it means to be able to act fluidly. But our current management elites have become quite art-averse.

The happiness of otherness
For us, the focus is also shifting to what is dealt with under the keyword diversity. This is about more than statistics showing that we have diversity… quotas for women, quotas for Indians, LGBTIQ* quotas and so on. How do we actually learn to respect each other, how do we learn to talk and act about differences in such a way that they mean wealth rather than exclusion. There will be no real agility without addressing diversity. And that starts with the smaller differences that were not talked about in the old world of work (separation of private and work) and which hold back considerable energy in the form of silence or the lack of a platform for expression. In my work in the diverse Asian cultures, I know that we have really achieved something when people say »you have touched my heart« and when they have touched my heart. Then we start to have respect for each other and thus for each other.

The magic word – mindset change
Sounds simple enough. But what is it all about? There are many descriptions. For example, from inside-outside thinking and acting to outside-inside thinking and acting. Or from being trapped in the inbox to opening up to the outbox, or in the word game play on words, your goal is to come forward or to come along. Whatever it’s called, it’s about getting out of the perspective of self-centredness, of the ego. Not really new, but important, because in business and economics the egomaximiser has been at the forefront of business and economics for too long. was at the centre. The egomaximisers in their competition for ever diminishing resources were seen as the guarantor of dynamism – the co-operating members of the community as the somewhat stupid members of the herd. A very truncated Darwinism, in which it was clear early on that the real egoist is not one, but rather someone who co-operates and is successful as a result. In the Christian world, there used to be the saying it is more blessed to give than to receive. Co-operation here is not just another method or, according to Buddhist concepts of self-optimisation a new trick of egoism, but the self-awareness that the joy, fulfilment and happiness of cooperation can be found in a self-enclosed ego. So what cooperation or today often also called collaboration, can reveal the deep structure of our own thinking and feeling in which we encounter the world. And this makes it possible to create common ground across differences, boundaries and affiliations.

Mutuality
I like to remember conversations with Helm Stierlin, one of the founding fathers of systemic therapy, who understood co-operation as mutuality. Not in the sense of a deal, but rather as a gift that establishes a relationship that allows the other person freedom. This seems to contradiction to the thesis of individualism – because in the new forms of work, the collective is the hero. Now we live our individualism in collectives, in groups in which we feel that we are in good hands and which we change depending on the course of our identity. In mutuality of co-operation, I maintain my individuality and at the same time I am part of a collective that is responsible for the whole. This is the point at which the discussion about the mindset, which sounds so abstract and neutral a spiritual note penetrates. It is the idea of all-connectedness, which in turn corresponds to the experience that we live in a non-linear, dynamically deterministic world.

Organisations or finally thinking politically?
And with all that we are already doing today, we are falling short, if we do not intervene more deeply in the way in which the future is negotiated in companies today (the future here means market, product, process, strategy, etc.). If we only anchor the basic idea of agility, the ability to react quickly and flexibly to changes or to act iteratively and with foresight, in the operational units, then we will not be able to realise our full potential, then we will continue to remain slow and do what has been successful in the past. If we continue with the oligarchic structure of companies, where a more or less homogeneous group that has been organized long time in large programmes, and which has been south, west and east to determine the topics of the organisation, then New Work will not find a place in the organisation. This raises the question for organisational development: who is allowed to speak, who is heard, who has places to speak and to be heard? It is about a genuine discourse process in which the many different people participate in the decisions that determine what should happen in the company and what should happen in the markets. Socially, there will be hardly be a participation in the ownership structure, but a genuine participation in shaping the community with dedicated commitment. With our through-route concepts, we have shown easily practicable ways to break up the oligarchic nature of companies oligarchy and thus created space for voices that are much more likely than long-serving managers to understand what the future will mean and where the place can be that place the company can occupy in this future.

And finally, looking a little further ahead – how do we change our inner attitude towards what is coming as new concepts of life? How do we understand them? An excursion into the pop world of a generation that doesn’t yet has no letter.

Demography – how radical are the changes in life plans?

BTS – a Korean boy band (No. 1 in the US Billboard charts as the first Korean band with »Idol«): A fully staged boy group – every piece of information, every utterance, every movement is choreographed or curated. At the same time the only K-pop band that sends political messages – strongly core message strongly related to individualism: Be yourself, whatever you are or want to be. The videos send, in addition to the offer of identification – the groups always consist of a mix of people (would significantly change the recruitment strategies for management boards) an inclusive message – you are part of us – we are diverse and you belong to us. The videos are also described as representing a hyper-inclusive aesthetic. In the performances, there is no longer a difference between the surface (the performance) and the actual identities – the surface is the whole. Thus Beuys has arrived in youth culture.

Our deep thinking – there is the foreground and the background, there is the appearance and behind it the real thing, the deep-seated Platonism is cancelled out here. The question behind it becomes obsolete because the surface is already the real thing. What does this mean for the world of work? Dissolution of the difference of private and work? The end of role-playing and with it a new kind of authenticity? Places of work as places where identity is formed and lived. Places of work as event spaces – which are passed through quicker – the weakening of continuities in favour of fault lines and lines of rupture and leaps in life? These are also aspects of New Work.

A look at recent coaching experiences. On what background of life plans do I formulate my questions? How much is the whole setting characterised by the old expectations of the companies’ expectations? In her autobiography, Michelle Obama writes about her grandfather, in whom she saw the bitterness of shattered dreams. A bitterness that I encounter again and again in middle management of large companies. While this bitterness can be felt in the background of organisations, the young world is moved by the power of dreams.Let us follow hope and not bitterness.

Appendix: Stories about the lecture

I.
The group was silent, silent for more than an hour. It was traumatised. It was such a good start – working without hierarchy, working in small groups with a common interest, being able to do what you always wanted to do. Then came the setbacks – first the cancellation of projects that were still seen as very promising in the group, but now had no longer had a budget for strategic reasons. How to say goodbye? And how to deal with the fact that you were now also redirected yourself and found themselves in projects and groups that they would not have chosen without need. Then the group dynamics took their course – informal leaders emerged who had good social manipulation skills but were not really suited to the task of exercising a steering function and then the organisation’s desire to make it truly hierarchy-free and the introduction of peer evaluation. The last one was definitely too much – so the group fell silent and had lost all the energy and commitment of the beginning.

II.
From a conversation with a works council member. He was really worried. He looked into the room and saw that all the ergonomic achievements of organised labour had been lost. Employees were sitting on wooden pallets, the tables that were occasionally available were completely unsuitable – and he said, what will their backs look like when they have been working for twenty years? The young people have no longer understand that the company and the works council are fighting against each other to find a better solution for them. They are completely at the mercy of the upper echelons.

III.
From a coaching session. I met this very talented person, when he was still a team leader and had learnt from the CEO that he had been appointed across all hierarchical levels to the board of the the most important division for the future. In that first meeting, we talked a lot about theatre and literature in particular – we compared our reading experiences and it was a tender and very energetic conversation. A year later, I spoke to him, who was still fiery and energetic, about his reading experiences over the last few months. And he blanched because he realised that he had only read management guides and in his reflection he understood, that his deepest source for »leadership« did not come from the guidebooks, but from the deep layers of literary experience. He is now reading again.

IV.
A completely clueless manager. In his management area he has a very talented woman who does much more, does it successfully, than she should and what would be appropriate for her position. So he struggled in his care and his sense of justice, he fought for a promotion and could then proudly offer it to the young woman. He expected joy and gratitude, but received a friendly but firm no – she didn’t want it. And he asked why: And she said, what I’m doing now, I’m doing voluntarily and I enjoy it, if I accept your offer, then I have to do it and I don’t want to.

V.
Another conversation with a messenger who brings you the food you have chosen on the Internet from a restaurant. I said, you know you’re being taken advantage of? You get little money, you only get good shifts if you are fully committed to the needs of your company, which has no duty of care towards you, and you even paid for the box on your back yourself, the bike is your own – why are you doing this? But I am free he said and that was all.

VI.
One last one: An expat manager in Thailand. She mocks about the Thais’ belief in magic, laughs at their offerings in the temples and this daily worship of a shrine. shrine. He is enlightened, hypermodern, rational. The evening is long and after the ritual intoxication process has come to an end (it was mainly cocktails) he talked about his great experiences with positive affirmations. He had found a service provider (they used to be called priest) who, for a small fee, would send him a positive affirming sentence every morning and he then to himself. It was very effective, he said, not realising the irony of the situation.

VII.
It is now 30 years ago. I was talking to a Franciscan woman in a hospital, pushing trolleys of books around the rooms and talking to the sick – talking was probably the most important thing. We talked and that’s how I learnt that this woman, who was now in the lowest rung of the Franciscan hierarchy Franciscans, had been in Rome just a year ago and was the abbess of the entire order of women. And there was no bitterness in her. She was happy and cheerful. It has been around for a long time, the other occupation of the hierarchical posts.

Almost all companies have, now quite some time ago, dealt with their values, often writing them down and distributing them throughout the company. A significant source was often the memory of the founders’ »philosophy« and their words, often late words. The values formed the backbone of the organization and complemented the vision processes. Guiding this was a quote from Odo Marquard: »The future needs origins«. Today, they are a foundation of the »Purpose« processes. It is always about the answer to the question: Who are we and who and how do we want to be?

Now these values, which are often understood as temporally stable, even supratemporal, are actually values of an old world. And so the question arises: Do we need a new value process? And should it this time be designed less top down and more with the inclusion of the socio-ecological environment?

Values, shared, are all the more important the more autonomy and self-control an organization strives for. They are an indispensable part of indirect control, giving the relatively freely operating units a common foundation and thus increasing the possibility of expanding degrees of freedom and reducing hierarchical, direct control.

The importance of new, participatory value processes can be clearly seen in the topic of diversity. In an attempt to increase the diversity of a company, we are designing inclusion programs today, and although we want the difference, the background logic is often »to fit in«.

The contradictory message is: be different, but please be within our culture. So we want a discrimination-free coexistence in the context of our culture, culture of origin. If we really want to be a global company and truly a common house for »diversity«, the old values will have to undergo an intensive revision. This must be done in such a way that diversity is not merely thought of and included, but in such a way that a common identity of differences is formed.

New values emerging from the diverse collective could give members of other life concepts, other cultural origins and other life stories the opportunity to find themselves reflected in the values of their company. Then it would also be justified to speak of global companies and not only of globally represented companies.

SYNNECTA has described a process with TheQuestBySynnecta, which can be an important guide here.

People in organizations expect a credible answer to this question in order to be able to establish a context for their work that delivers a sense of both purpose and meaning. Reacting to such challenges, companies position themselves with a company purpose. Until now, this purpose has almost always been developed from an inside viewpoint. However, organizations always exist in the context of an ecosystem. A meaningful purpose can only be developed in dialogue with the stakeholders of the company‘s own ecosystem. At SYNNECTA, we endeavour to give a truly multi-perspective design to these dialogue processes and thereby foster a deeper understanding of the company’s identity.

People need to work in meaningful contexts

The mindsets of societies change and shift in ways that are especially tangible to the younger generations. There is a growing desire and need for meaningful work contexts and an intention to contribute something useful for a greater whole while working. In short: living meaningfulness.

At the same time, societies are asking companies what contribution they are making to people and society. It is a question that both citizens and employees want answered.

Reacting to such challenges, companies position themselves with a company purpose. However, this purpose is still often strongly driven by a marketing outlook. The company purpose is therefore worked out within the old structures: A selected group of managers formulates a purpose that is then communicated inwards and outwards with considerable effort.

A range of perspectives – those that have developed out of the highly diverse employee population, from the clients, sectors of society and the markets – are hardly represented. So far, there has been a lack of real and open dialogue between the interest groups. A shared understanding to provide a basis for a company purpose cannot be developed this way.

Understanding our own identity in the context of the ecosystem: »What are we for?«

Organizations evolve and exist in the context of various stakeholders: markets, clients, competition, partners, society, employees, etc. All of these systems are in continuous exchange and yield an influence on each other. Together, they make up an ecosystem. Since organizations are always part of an ecosystem, they can only arrive at an understanding of their own role within the context of that ecosystem. The identity of an organization is defined through a constant exchange with the ecosystem.

Developing an organization’s identity that can provide meaning and a sense of community must therefore focus on asking:

• What are we for? What is our contribution to our ecosystem?

Any answer to this question that is found only from within the organization will establish a limited and frequently distorted perspective. It is based on hypotheses about the self and the world that were developed along many paths, but never in exchange with that very world, the stakeholders in the own ecosystem.

A true understanding of the own identity requires direct dialogue with the various stakeholders that make up the own ecosystem. It needs to come from a perspective that goes from the outside in:

• What do you need?
• What can we do for you?
• What can we do together?
• How should we be from your point of view, what makes us attractive partners to you?

Dialogue and joint examination of the own ecosystem

We create shared dialogue spaces with the stakeholders of the ecosystem and therefore make it possible to create a joint, multi-perspective debate to achieve a common and shared guiding theme. All relevant viewpoints will find a place where they can learn from and with each other: about themselves, about joint interests, about shared potential. This process then underlies a grasp of the own identity and the own purpose. This guided dialogue allows synergies to emerge. The multi-perspective process expands everyone’s thinking. The processes of creation and implementation come together and establish a high degree of commitment for the joint cause.

Our Approach:

• The organization chooses an overall guiding theme for the dialogue in the ecosystem.
• A suitably wide spectrum of various stakeholders is invited to join in and explore this guiding theme together.
• Shared, relevant questions that pertain to the guiding theme are developed together with the stakeholders.
• Further guiding questions will support the moderation of a substantial and demanding dialogue that is fundamentally set out to take in many perspectives.
• Promising impulses from the dialogue can be adopted and can kick off future initiatives and joint projects.
• The stakeholders can develop further individual conclusions and measures from the shared insights.

The choice of stakeholders is essential to the success of the process. A successful dialogue fosters new insights and therefore needs to start from a sufficient degree of difference. It requires constructive juxtaposition. Here lay the great challenges and the opportunities of multi-perspective dialogue processes: allow differences, let them have an effect and develop deeper, shared insights together with them.

We view with concern the emerging opinions and gossip directed against »foreigners«. A form of nationalism is emerging that is defined primarily by blame, suspicion and hatred towards others. At present, it is the Chinese who are feeling the effects of this negative self-definition. In Italy, it is the Germans, hopefully only temporarily. In both cases, those who are isolating themselves can build on historical prejudices. The attitudes that are spreading virally on social media will not remain without consequences for the ‘restart’. We are currently damaging a long-established basis of trust and respect for the differences of others.

There is reason to fear that these attitudes will become stronger the longer the various communities feel the restrictions and losses caused by the current pandemic. And in doing so, we are jeopardising an important, but often overlooked, positive effect of globalisation.

With open markets and close cooperation between different cultures and traditions of thought, all sides have been given the opportunity to see themselves reflected in others. This process has not only served to improve understanding of other cultures, but also, to a large extent, to broaden understanding of one’s own culture, and has thus been and continues to be a springboard for personal development – or, in the jargon of organisational developers, for successful transformation. We learned to understand our respective intuitive worldviews and self-perceptions as the unconscious background to our actions, and with this understanding we were able to look at our part of the world differently, which in turn enabled us to act differently.

It is one of the foundations of our innovative capacity, which would not exist without the challenges posed by the unfamiliar. These are reflexive processes that enable us to expand both our understanding of ourselves and our understanding of the world. Specifically, diversity, with the right of diverse people to speak and be heard, is an accelerator of reflexive self-assurance and world assurance, and thus the basis of innovative strength and competitiveness.

In a »restart«, we will also have to pay attention to this aspect and work together to build mutual trust in each other.

In our coaching sessions, something new comes to the fore. It is like a breach in people’s personal stability. Fear, anxiety and worry dominate, accompanied by feelings of powerlessness or aimless activity. Another possible reaction to the current situation is radical denial. We do not hear from or see people with this coping strategy in our coaching sessions. They will probably come later.

We encounter thoughtful people with a good and sometimes impressive educational background who are currently hesitant to face their own feelings of fear, worry and helplessness. However, they sense that they need something that they cannot do on their own. Some begin to brood, while others give way to irrational suspicions, insinuations and even conspiracy theories.

What they all have in common is that they find themselves in a situation where the external structure is weakening and they are struggling to adapt flexibly to a changing, partially threatening situation. Many want a cause that can be eliminated, or, if necessary, a strong authority that will come to the rescue. The path to serenity, which knows how to adapt flexibly (agilely) to changing conditions, is still rare.

For us as coaches, what is referred to in ancient philosophy and later in Christian teachings as parenesis comes into play here: encouraging, admonishing and comforting words of reassurance. And that is our task at present – to help people find their own serenity, to give them the stability they need for a time to find their own again. It is a wonderful task and one that can also be carried out very well digitally.

Time brings us the chance to have increased experiences with non-analogue workshops using different digital tools. We see the value in this form of collaborative working whenever we have to exchange facts and figures, whenever we have to inform and to get feedback. It makes things easy and fast. In our webinars we already know, that exchanging knowledge and informing about skills is working well. We also get step by step good results by working with non-analogue breakout groups and doing so we have the element of social calibration of the group at least partly solved. Our first steps to integrate group dynamic elements in this form of workshop.

Nevertheless, there is something missing.

Words without body

Voltaire put the topic boldly in one of his aphorisms: »One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.« Bodies, eyes do not lie. So, when it comes to confrontation, to bring people out of their comfort zones, when there must be addressed group dynamic topics, we encounter the limits of the non-analogue working form. We miss, what our Chinese friends‘ phrase so well: We do not reach a heart to heart talk.

But we are working on it. Do not hesitate to contact us – developments are fast in this time.

There is now a lot of talk about education, political education, education in general and leadership development in particular. However, if you look at the educational landscape of companies, there is little education to be found. What is to be found is rather an attempt to search and exploit the rich treasure trove of cultures for suitable tricks and methods to increase performance. It is about tools that can be implemented directly and that bring the greatest possible measurable benefit. This is understandable, because it corresponds to the logic of entrepreneurial systems. Unfortunately, the potential of culture and education is missed and the methods and tricks fall flat after a while, like any fad.

Education is about the ability to distance oneself, which makes reflection and differentiation possible on the basis of a great deal of experience gained for no specific purpose, because a wide range of different perspectives can be adopted.

Education needs time, free, unburdened time and, in addition to the courage to engage in debate, the inner freedom to engage with the richness of culture and to allow oneself to be shaken in one’s secure models of thought and judgment. With the pressure to perform and the ever-increasing investment of life time for a career, where is the unburdened time supposed to come from?

There are such time spots in the corporate world – they used to be called seminars and are now training sessions. Unfortunately, they are increasingly becoming training courses, spaces for teaching techniques that training strategists hope will bring quick benefits under the pressure of their own leadership. Empathy thus becomes a psychological technique, a management tool to better assert one’s own leadership will and to achieve performance improvements in employees. Narcissists, and they make up the majority of managers, are good at using empathy as a tool.

If we were concerned with education, then instead of empathy we would speak of compassion and recognize very quickly that this is only possible if people live in a broad horizon of understanding of human possibilities and not only know this as a storage medium knows something, but have gained it as experience – in other words, have something that used to be called heart education.

Talking about this with training specialists, who are themselves under pressure to perform, often leads to results such as: Can we do this in two days? Or can’t we do it through blended learning? Again, this is very understandable in terms of corporate management logic, but certainly not very clever. People often forget how important it is for educational experiences to meet people and often with a teacher who is passionate about the educational content. In India, there is still the knowledge that it takes a guru to give people the opportunity to grow on the path of education and thus become better leaders in the end without the short-circuit of purpose.

Schiller’s aesthetic education remains the key text for education and his advocacy of purposeless play is the royal road to an educational journey.

As organizations are growing increasingly sensitive to agility, we gain new ground for experiments. This blog text will introduce a sprint workshop format, which has evolved from such an experiment and has yielded good results in several projects.

I developed the first prototype several years ago from a certain sense of frustration when a leadership workshop with 50 high-ranking managers focused on the topic of agility had come to a dead end. Instead of working on the topic, we had got stucked pseudo-discussions, which had prevented any form of deeper reflection. A tactic of constant commentary had made it impossible to draw any conclusions. Even continuously making the group aware of the destructive patterns at work had not generated any effects. Somehow we still managed to take the workshop to a minmal goal. Yet participants and moderator alike were left with a sense of frustration.

During a follow-up, the courageous internal project leader and I concluded that if this group was to be given value and effectiveness, the next workshop would have to utterly break the pattern. From this insight, I developed the sprint workshop format, which I will describe below. This new model not only helped to introduce the group to a productive discussion of relevant topics and allow them to develop tangible and significant measures, it also proved of value to several other large groups in other contexts. I now use this format on many occasions in order to achieve an effective approach to agile principles within concrete work on pressing and complex issues.

On the one hand, the format aims to trigger the three intrinsic motivators of the human being as prominently described by Dan Pink: Purpose, Autonomy and Mastery. On the other hand, it adopts the advantages of Scrum or sprint logic combined with continuous feedback. The following framework is given:

1. Creating a topic backlog (90 min)
The participants are grouped into small teams of approx. six persons each. Together, they begin by gathering the challenges and impediments they face in the current situation under the lead of an appropriate guiding question. They then write user stories from the perspective of appropriate stakeholder or target groups (there are templates to support this process), in order to work on the given challenge or remove the given impediment.

In a leadership workshop, the user stories might, for example, look like this:

• »As an employee, I want to regularly be given guidance about goals from my management, so that I can plan for myself appropriately.«
• »As a colleague, I want to receive maximum support from other managers, in order to really be able to fulfil the complex goals I am responsible for.«
• »As a supervisor, I want managers in my charge to inform me of problems early on, so that I feel secure.«

All user stories emanating from the discussion are then presented in a plenary session. The next step is to order them by priority. This works well with simple swarm evaluation: each participant has the same number of points that can be allocated to the user stories. These are then sorted into a topic backlog according to the points they received from top to bottom.

2. Sprints (90 min each)
Once the topic backlog is done, we enter the sprint mode. The participants are divided into cross-functional/diverse sprint teams (five to seven members each), whose work on the backlog topics from top to bottom. The target is to conclude concrete measures in response to the user stories and conceptually secure their realization.

2.1. Work phase (45 min)
The work phase of every sprint sees each sprint team ‘pull’ the given top topic and work on a prototype of measures, which is to be presented on a poster board. The provision of canvas posters has proved helpful; with the help of guiding questions these canvases provide a rough frame of orientation, but are completed in autonomously organized brainstorming, discussion and conclusion phases that are not externally moderated. It is the aim that each sprint team presents the prototype of measures on the poster board in such a way that it can be presented without further explanation. Once the sprint team considers a user story sufficiently translated into measures, it ‘pulls’ the next top user story from the backlog and immediately starts work on that story. Each work phase begins with the nomination of a silent observer from among each team. This person will silently observe the team during the work phase in order to provide feedback later on.

2.2. Review: market place (15 min)
Following the market place logic, the work phase is succeeded by a review of the measure prototypes. In this phase, a representative of the sprint team will remain with their own team’s poster board, while the others swarm out in order to view or be introduced to the prototypes developed by the other sprint teams and provide feedback on the given progress status. The sprint team representative will collect the feedback given, so that the team can optimize their prototype of measures during the next sprint, where necessary.

2.3. Sprint team review (15 min)
Each sprint team will then come together again. The observer will take five minutes to inform the group of their insights, address impediments that were observed and provide suggestions for improvements to be made during the next sprint. Within the next five minutes all sprint team members briefly reflect on their experiences of the team perfomance during the work phase. The last few minutes of the review are to be used for one-on-one dialogues during which the sprint team members each provide feedback on their observations of their opposite’s individual behaviour during the work phase.

2.4. Break (15 min)
There is a break before the next sprint begins.

The next sprint takes the same form as the first sprint. If the sprint team has received feedback from the other participants that the measure prototype is not yet sufficient, work continues on that prototype. Once the entire group has approved of the prototype, the sprint team will proceed to get the next topic. A new observer is chosen and autonomous work on the topic will begin…

3. Concluding session (60 min)
The finalized measures will be briefly presented once more during a final round and will then be concluded together, unless there is a veto. The sprint workshop ends with a final round of feedback, during which individual experiences with the format will be shared and conclusions may be drawn for a follow-up event.

A one-day sprint workshop of this type can include a total of four sprints and thereby achieve great effectivity. A workshop of this format over the course of one-and-a-half or even two days can generate an impressive number of measures with a great likelihood of realization. Templates of measures, guiding questions and sprint duration can be individually fitted to the given target group, thematic focus and duration of the workshop; even intermediate plenary sessions or general reviews can be included. The overall framework of the format described above, however, has proved to be particularly sustainable and especially productive in this shape. Participant feedback has time and again stressed the amazement experienced in the face of the focussed and productive effect of the format. At the same time, many participants have reported that they themselves attained a valuable approach to agility from their own experience of sprint logic, reviews and feedback.