Welcome!  You’ve likely come to this page because:

You want a deeper understanding

of how this unusual approach allows you to work effectively with the high levels of complexity in organizations.  Read the synopsis on organizational constellations below, click here for a short white paper describing this approach in detail, check out the link to resources at the end of this page, or to really dive in, sign up for one of our courses.

You are a coach or consultant

and you want to incorporate this powerful approach into your practice so you can offer your clients one of the most effective new approaches to working with their organizations.  Check out our Facilitator Training Programs.

Or you want some systemic expertise to provide you new ideas for working with a particularly challenging client situation or project. Check out our Consulting for the Consultant service.  These brief and relatively inexpensive sessions can quickly show you where you have the greatest leverage in a siutation and what you can (and sometimes can't) accomplish from the consulting position.

You are an executive, business owner or leader in your organization,

and you want tools to help you work effectively in the increasingly complex and uncertain decision-making environment you face.  Check out our Embodied Leadership™ Series.

You are the owner of a family business or you work in a family business ,

and you would to understand the dynamics of family business so you can make the business and the family thrive in these challenging economic times.  Check out our Family Business Series, starting in May 2009.

You want consulting for your business or organization and/or coaching

that encompasses a dynamic systemic perspective for your self and/or some of the key leaders in your organization.  Check out our services.

WHAT IS AN ORGANIZATIONAL CONSTELLATION?  

Working effectively where we have the greatest influence. 

A recent New Scientist article pointed out that our systems have become so interlinked that we can no longer use linear cause-effect thinking to understand or predict what they will do.  Complexity science now defines our lives.  Given the complexity of the systems that executives must now manage, seat-of-the-pants decision-making sneaks in where rational solutions fail.

Systems have organism-like qualities that don’t show up in cause-effect thinking but are properties of complex living systems.  The initial conditions set in motion a series of events that unfold to lead the organism to its present state.   We call this an organization’s genome – unless you know the whole history of the organization, it’s difficult to know what genes have been switched on, and which have perhaps inadvertently been switched off.

What can we really do as organizational leaders in such complex situations?  How can we make wise decisions?  If we realize our direct sphere of influence extends to approximately two levels of management, two above and two below, as well as to our peers, then we know that this middle zone is where we will have the most impact.  Beyond that our influence is dependent on others to carry our message and intentions.  It is within this five level sphere of influence that we can have the most direct and lasting positive impact on our organization.  While IT and expert sources of information are essential in running today’s large far-flung organizations, the web of relationships we work in, on a day-to-day basis, is where we will have the most influence. 

We have a lot of tools for working with individuals, from Myers-Briggs to Whitelaw’s four essential energies.  We have a plethora of whole-system change methods, from Appreciative Inquiry to Open Space.  All of these are valuable at addressing their chosen areas, however, where we as organizational leaders, or consultants who work with those leaders, have the most influence isn’t on either of these levels.  It’s in that circle of people we work with day in and day out, even if our contact is “virtual” and they are physically on another continent.  How can we be most effective where it counts?

We have an approach now that lets us map the hidden traces of the past in the organizational present, and also see directly the underlying tensions and reactions in the teams and work-groups where we can have the most positive impact. Not since the days of Kurt Lewin and the National Testing Laboratories has an innovation come along that more aptly addresses this “middle” area.

There is a lot of talk about intuition and attempts to introduce “other intelligences” into organizations.  To know how a system works requires an intuitive connection to that system as an organism, with a past, and a current set of actors and challenges.  Systemic knowledge is often intuitive knowledge.  Intuitive knowledge is tacit knowledge, and tacit knowledge is embodied knowledge.  Constellation work brilliantly combines a deep and thorough investigation of the function of systemic conscience – that sense which subtly shapes our decisions and behavior – with our embodied sense of “where we stand” in relation to the important people and issues that make us effective (or not!) in our work world.  The process itself is relatively quick, taps into the embodied knowledge we have from living directly in the organizational system, and makes visible the dynamics at play in a way that is easy to grasp and points to possible options.  The results are often startling in both their clarity and accuracy.

I WANT TO LEARN MORE

Facilitation for Professional Practice is a program for coaches, therapists, consultants, and those in the healing professions.  The course focuses on adapting the constellation approach to work within a one-with-one consulting framework.  For more information on this program, click here

Why Organizational Leaders Should Care About Somatic Knowledge: Organizations are made up of human beings. Leaders in organizations benefit when they have deep understandings of the nature of relationships. Somatic knowledge (body-mind and whole-person knowledge) is a vast and largely unappreciated resource available to leaders who appreciate and learn how to tap this knowledge. This paper (2012) by Dr. Peterson describes the science and value of somatic knowledge for leaders in organizations.

Embodied Leadership™ Series: Based in emerging understandings of dynamical systems and complexity, new discoveries in neuroscience, human development and communication, and the wisdom of indigenous perspectives, this program will teach you how to lead with courage and congruence from deep within the core of your authentic being.  TBA in 2011.

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International offerings

Especialização International em Constelações Organizacionais (In Portuguese)

Location: São Paulo, Brazil

Organizer: Richard Hoffmann

Working Group for Systemic Constellations (English)

Location: Bernried Cloister, Germany

Organizers: Lutz Bessel

SERVICES at H.S.I.

Relational Mapping: Surface the hidden dynamics in your or your client’s organization and uncover the pathways to improved performance.

Consulting: Leading wisely in complex times, rebuilding your organizational DNA

Consulting for the Consultant: Brief single session consultations that enable you to make the best of challenging situations.

Coaching: Enhance your systemic perception, build strong teams, retain key individuals. Individual and team coaching sessions that are brief and effective.

WHY H.S.I.?

Our programs and services are developed and delivered by one of the most experienced organizational constellation trainers and facilitators in the US.  The Institute has been in operation since 1999.  We are a well established and internationally acclaimed training institute, known for our high standards in the field, and solid, practical knowledge base.  Our training and consulting is based in a results-focused approached and using understanding of how mid-career adults actually learn and use new material. Our principal trainer, Jane Peterson, has recently completed her doctorate in Human and Organizational Development from Fielding Graduate University.  Her dissertation examines the links between the language we use, the technology and mind-sets we create, and the social worlds that result.

RESOURCES
We have translated several papers from the German journal, Praxis, published by www.Carl-Auer.de.  They are free for you to download from our E.L.S.C.I.E. Articles database.  The most comprehensive introductory article is:

Organizational Constellations: Basics and Special Situations

By Gunthard Weber, Translation Jane Peterson & Ute Luppertz

Also read:

Setting of the Inner Team: A Procedure for Personal Development, Group Coaching and Organizational Consulting.  Also from Praxis

Gert Metz and Werner Messerig, authors, Translation Jane Peterson & Ute Luppertz

Some additional papers are:

Managing in the Age of Complexity: An executive brief on Organizational Constellations (to be published soon)

written by the Institute’s Director, Jane Peterson

The Branding Constellation (.pdf format)

Wim Jurg, José Bloemer, Hans Doorewaard, authors

Validity of Branding Constellations (.pdf format)

Wim Jurg, author

For more information about Branding Constellations, go to Wim Jurg's website, www.brandingconstellations.com.

For books on Organizational Constellations, systemic coaching and consultancy:  Visit carl-auer international’s website: http://www.carl-auer.com/