Worcestershire Ambassadors' Soapbox

Worcestershire Ambassadors’ Heartbeat newsletter

Soapbox feature, Autumn 2010 issue

In each issue we invite a Worcestershire Ambassador to get on their soapbox and share their opinion on a subject close to their heart.  This issue Sebastian Parsons, Chief Executive of Elysia and Chair of the English Symphony Orchestra shares his views on a ‘living business’.

“A business that is alive is productive and responsive, fun and terribly serious, it is the perfect place to work, challenging and rewarding, and it generates profit in an ethical and completely sustainable way” explains Sebastian Parsons.

“For me, a living business is one that is run with the heart taken in to account.  People are alive, they can think for themselves and they have feelings and determination.  So often business leaders wish that staff would just do what they are told… and compare their businesses to machines.  But the advantage a person has over a machine is that they can think for themselves, so that in a living business in which the team are self motivated, a great deal of thinking can be delegated.  This frees up the leadership team to be creative and innovative.  

What else is there apart from relationships?” asks Sebastian, going on to point out that most of us spend most of our lives at work, and that that surely meant we should try hard to ensure our working lives are meaningful and rewarding.  

“The Living Business model for business offers tools such as boundaries and communication channels, much like other models, but it gives these components a broader task by using the human capacity for feeling to drive commitment and empowerment.  This works by overcoming a paradox that lies at the heart of organisational life – the contradiction between on the one hand staff being expected to do what they are told, but on the other hand, no body, actually, in truth, really enjoying being told what to do.  A tricky conundrum…” observes Sebastian with a wry grin.

“All life has movement, flux, flow, pulse, rhythm, and it is with movement that the paradox can be overcome.  We take our clue from the living human being, noticing how we respond, and building that in to our business management processes.  The key challenge is to notice and manage the anxiety around prioritisation through engaged communication and negotiation, and then once that is done, to ensure there is a full engagement and negotiation in the delivery process.”  Sebastian stops and points a finger: “you think we’re creating a talking shop!” he exclaims.  

“It is a tricky path to find, but the key is to focus on listening, and take the attention away from talking. We have a motto: ‘hear what is said, and say what has to be heard.’  When this is really lived then there is a lot less talking, much less argy-bargy, much less going round in circles, much more communication.  In an organisation that is listening more than it is talking there is always enough time to find the right solution, get everyone’s buy in, and still finish the meeting early!

One of the big mistakes people make when watching a Living Business at work is to believe that it is lovely to work in a Living Business.” Frowns Sebastian, “there may be lovely moments, and the feeling of doing something purposeful really lifts the atmosphere, but the moment the aim becomes loveliness disaster will strike.  Loveliness is about putting the person first, when you make how the person feels the most important thing then that is a disaster, because how people feel can be influenced by so many factors, many nothing to do with the business at all!  Feelings can seriously throw a business off track”.  Leaning forward, Sebastian says: “It is the purpose of the organisation that unites it and it is the purpose that must come first.  As long as the human being is included in the purpose, then fulfilment and all the other benefits of a Living Business, will flow from that.  The business has to successfully achieve its task, and at a financial surplus, otherwise the music has to stop.

When people learn to listen and start to take up their roles so that they work to common purpose with their colleagues then there becomes time to examine how things feel, and to work out what is important and what is a distraction.  Suddenly feelings become useful.  Human beings are paradoxical, and we put a lot of energy in to ignoring that.  In a living business that energy is released to everyone’s benefit.”  Sebastian concludes: “Living Business is about taking maximum advantage of the fact that we are people and not machines!”

Elysia is the exclusive UK distributor of the multi awarding winning Dr.Hauschka organic skincare and cosmetics brand, as well as Liv, Elysia’s luxury eco/organic  Fair Trade lifestyle brand of clothing and home furnishings. www.drhauschka.co.uk; www.liv-uk.com

For more information about Living Business try www.grubb.org.uk, or contact Sebastian on sebastian@elysia.uk.com. 

Leadership Workshop

Tom Ravetz and I recently ran a workshop on leadership from an Anthroposophical point of view. Tom and I have both attended BME and have developed an interest in systemic and group relations concepts, and we both work out of an interest in Anthroposophy. Tom is in fact a priest in the Christian Community (he is the Lenka, which means he is the Priest responsible for the UK region).

In these notes from that event there are refences to the works of Steiner and references to Lucifer and Ahriman. Who are they? Maybe you think of them as the Devil and Satan... perhaps you could think of them as two temptations: either to do nothing and just float in luxurious abandon, or to become so utterly absorbed in the specific matter that a connection is lost to the whole.

I hope that this blog can be enjoyed as an experience of the struggle to understand and then frame that understanding in a way that is useful in real life.


Notes on Leadership

Following a day workshop in 11th September, 2010

Notes written by Tom Ravetz and Sebastian Parsons

Finding out what to do

In the Philosophy of Freedom, Rudolf Steiner describes 3 stages that lead to our doing something:
· Moral intuition where we conceive the idea
· Moral phantasy where we imagine how it could work
· Moral technique where we bring the idea into reality

Thinking and imagining (the first two stages) are gifts of Lucifer, and when we work with them we have to resist the temptations of Lucifer (arrogance, vanity, delusion). Having good ideas tempts us to underestimate the struggle of bringing them to earth. We have to grapple with our own shadow, our fantasies and projections, and we meet the double of pride and delusion.
Making something happen inevitably involves us in human institutions - temporary ones like an ad hoc planning meeting, and / or permanent ones, like a company. For this paper, we will call any grouping of people working towards a commonly-held purpose a system. The moment we are involved in a system, other dimensions of reality come into play with an exponential increase in complexity. Now we bring our own shadow-side into relationship with those of the other people, and they become the objects of our projection and fantasy. We encounter too the being of the group itself, the whole which is greater than the sum of its parts, which in turn has a shadow, an unconscious, and a higher being - the angel of the group.

The moral technique needed for bringing ideas into reality in systems is the understanding of how groups and organisations work. The reality of power and what works unconsciously in groups takes us into the realm of Ahriman. In this realm, we are tempted to become cynical or to despair and give up trying to make our ideas come into reality. When we go through this temptation, we are following Christ in his ‘descent into hell’ on Holy Saturday.
When thinking of ourselves as human beings there is a tendency to form a picture that is rather one-sided. Either:
· we think that we are only angels, that we only have to have an ideal and we will be able to achieve it. This leads to being out of touch, and in extreme cases to hypocrisy and fragmentation.
· we think that we are only animals, purely the products of genes and external conditioning. This leads us to become cynical about any prospect of truly working towards ideals.

As striving individuals we know that we need to integrate all parts of ourselves. This is never about finding the fixed position where we have everything in the right proportion; it is about understanding the different forces at work in us and accepting our movement between them, continually seeing where we are on the continuumn and accepting that we will need to move on.

Life-experience tells us too that when we ignore our deepest emotions and motivations, we get cut off from our power. Only when I acknowledge that I am jealous do I go through the process - humiliating though it feels at first - of finding out what I am lacking and getting in touch with my deepest desires.

Rudolf Steiner spoke about this in his lectures about the incarnation of Ahriman, given in the time of his greatest activity in trying to bring about something new in the social life.

It all amounts to this, that modern man only speaks truly of himself when he says that he hovers perpetually between two extremes: between the Ahrimanic on the one side, where he is presented with an outer delusion, a Fata Morgana, and, on the other, the Luciferic element within him which induces the tendency to illusions, hallucinations and the like. The Ahrimanic tendencies in man to-day live themselves out in science, the Luciferic tendencies, in religion, while in art he swings between the one extreme and the other. ... And then, vacillating between all this, there are the people who want to be neither the one nor the other, who do not rightly assess either the Luciferic or the Ahrimanic but want to avoid both. — “Ahriman — no! — that I must not, will not do, for it would take me into the realm of the Ahrimanic; that I must not, will not do, for it would take me into the realm of the Luciferic!” They want to be virtuous, avoiding both the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic.

But the truth of the matter is that Lucifer and Ahriman must be regarded as two scales of a balance and it is we who must hold the beam in equipoise.

And how can we train ourselves to do this? — By permeating what takes Ahrimanic form within us with a strongly Luciferic element. What is it that arises in modern man in an Ahrimanic form? It is his knowledge of the outer world. There is nothing more Ahrimanic than this knowledge of the material world, for it is sheer illusion. Nevertheless if the Fata Morgana that arises out of chemistry, out of physics, out of astronomy and the like can fill us with fiery enthusiasm and interest, then through our interest — which is itself Luciferic — we can wrest from Ahriman what is his own.

That, however, is just what human beings have no desire to do; they find it irksome. And many people who flee from external, materialistic knowledge are misconceiving their task and preparing the best possible incarnation for Ahriman in earth-existence. Again, what wells up in man's inmost being to-day is very strongly Luciferic. How can we train ourselves rightly in this direction? — By diving into it with our Ahrimanic nature, that is to say, by trying to avoid all illusions about our own inner life and impulses and observing ourselves just as we observe the outer world. Modern man must realise how urgent it is to educate himself in this way. Anyone who has an observant eye in these matters will often come across circumstances of which the following is an example.

A man tells him how indignant he is with countless human beings. He describes minutely how this or that in a, in b, in c, and so on, angers him. He has not an inkling that he is simply talking about his own characteristics. This peculiarity in human beings was never so widespread as it is to-day. And those who believe they are free of it, are the greatest culprits. The essential thing is that man should approach his own inner nature with Ahrimanic cold-bloodedness and dispassion. His inner nature is still fiery enough even when cooled down in this way! There is no need to fear that it will be over-cooled.
...
What I have just said may make you think that all these matters are very paradoxical. But in reality they are not. It is man who is paradoxical in his relationship to truth. What he must realise — and this is a dire necessity to-day — is that he, not the world, is at fault. Nothing does more to prepare the path for Ahriman's incarnation than to find this or that tedious, to consider oneself superior to one thing or another and refuse to enter into it. Again it is the same question of finding the point where everything is of interest. It is never a matter of a subjective rejection or acceptance of things, but of an objective recognition of the extent to which things are either Luciferic or Ahrimanic, with the result that the scales are over-weighted on the one side or the other.

To be interested in something does not mean that one considers it justifiable. It means simply that one develops an inner energy to get to grips with it and steer it into the right channel.
GA 191 II 2.11.1919

I wonder whether we could apply this to our relationships when working in groups. There, we encounter an Ahrimanic world that needs our enthusiasm and idealism ‑ the gifts of Lucifer. If we ignore the unconscious and shadow realities of groups, we are falling into the same error as when we want to ignore our own anger, jealousy and other less palatable emotions. However we speak even less about the fact that groups have these aspects than we do about our individual shadow-sides; there is much light to be shone into group (or organisational) life with a deepening of awareness and consciousness.

Doing this empowers us by overcoming any tendency to think that we are the idealists, cut off from the problems of the nasty world. When we grapple with the realities of groups, we are in touch with the same world that seems so far away when we criticise politicians and other leaders.
There is strong evidence that historically, anthroposophically-inspired institutions have been strong on moral intution and moral phantasy, but weaker on moral technique.
This manifests in many ways:

· a reluctance to acknowledge the political dimension, and what rises from this, a lack of interest in it;
· an allergy to the word leader, and the making 'leader' mean the same as 'tyrant';
· a tendency to tolerate secret leadership groups, power cabals, and group bullying and scape-goating;
· polarised thinking about such issues, for example:
· either we believe in the spirit, and uphold the idea against all the evidence that human beings are only motivated by their consciously stated ideals,
· or we are reductionists saying that there is only power politics.

Recent developments in some anthroposophical institutions have given more evidence for this one-sidedness. The move to employ professional managers could be seen as making institutional the divide between power and ideals that existed before. Now that there has been time to accumulate experiences and reflect, this becomes more apparent. The employed managers state their admiration for the ideals held by the staff, and their dismay at the social and political reality: cliques, bullying, lack of effective mirroring and mentoring.
The staff describe a reality where the managers want to solve everything with regulations and rules.

Each side can easily feel the victim of the other, and in some instances there have been tragic breakdowns of trust. Turning the situation around and seeing a challenge instead of a threat, an opportunity instead of a dead-end, we might see the following openings:
· the managers might choose to find out more about the founding ideals of the institution and see in them the resources needed to work to their purpose of helping the institution to work well;

· the staff might look at the world through the managers' eyes and use this as a tool to hold themselves to account.
· Both parties might discover a need to describe more clearly what the purpose of the institution is, so that the arguments are around what will serve that purpose and not around an endless reworking of assumptions and habits.
I remember hearing staff working in an anthroposophical institution in the 90s telling me how relieved they were that the authorities had forced them to have proper procedures for reporting stress in the workplace, with legislation for free time etc. Publicly those same staff would bemoan the fact that the authorities were stopping them from living according to their ideals.

The Goetheanism of Groups
Goetheanism tries to find the way of looking which is appropriate for the thing being looked at. In The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception, Rudolf Steiner describes how one can train oneself to find ways of looking. He makes a huge distinction between the tools we need to look at nature, and what is needed to look at Man. Looking at Man, we are beholding the being that has within it to create new laws. He goes a step further when he speaks of the fact that human beings are social creatures. Their humanity unfolds in wider systems:
But the human being does not belong only to himself; he also belongs to society. What lives and manifests in him is not merely his individuality but also that of the nation to which he belongs. What he accomplishes emerges just as much out of the full strength of his people as out of his own. With his mission he also fulfills a part of the mission of the larger community of his people. The point is for his place within his people to be such that he can bring to full expression the strength of his individuality. This is possible only if the social organism is such that the individual is able to find the place where he can set to work. It must not be left to chance whether he finds this place or not. It is the task of ethnology and political science to investigate how the individual lives and acts within the social community. The individuality of peoples is the subject of this science. It has to show what form the organism of the state has to assume if the individuality of a people is to come to expression in it. The constitution a people gives itself must be developed out of its innermost being. …

The constitution of a people, however, is nothing other than its individual character brought into a definite form of laws. A person who wants to predetermine the direction a particular activity of a people has to take must not impose anything upon it from outside; he must simply express what lies unconsciously within the character of his people.
(Chapter 18: Psychological Knowing Activity)

Rudolf Steiner spoke here about the widest ‘system’, the people, of which we are all part. What he says holds true however of every system – every grouping of human beings working towards a commonly-held purpose. Saying that there are dimensions of our experience in groups that we are at first unaware of; that there are motivations that spring from unconscious depths – is not the same as saying that we are purely determined by these factors. It is precisely in the meeting of our ideals with the realities that psychology describes that the struggle with Arhiman takes place.

If the gifts of Lucifer were enough to guarantee that our moral intuitions became reality, every institution based on Anthroposophy would have no problems. Facing those problems can make us feel a deep despair, particularly if we are unwilling to acknowledge that they will inevitable exist.

However, if we see what we encounter in working with groups not just as a problem but as a challenge that will allow us to develop new faculties, there is hope. The world into which we enter ‑ Ahriman's realm ‑ is the place that most urgently needs redemption in our time. We can experience a Christian task - the task of facing, acknowledging, learning and integrating this realm into our striving.

Understanding leadership
What is it about the concept of leadership that arouses such strong feelings?
We explored some of the words we associate with “leader”:
· old-fashioned
· arrogant
· follower
· (blind) obedience
· dictator
· charismatic leader

We remembered a model that we had encountered in anthroposophical circles of evolving modes of leadership: in Ancient Egypt pyramidal; in ancient Greece / Rome democratic; in the Consciousness-Soul consensual. Historical evidence flies in the faces of this; after all, Plato saw enlightened despotism as the ultimate form of leadership.

The work of Daniel Goleman suggests a different quality for our time. This would be that there is a process not of succession but of accretion, ie that one style doesn't replace the last but is added to it. He makes it clear that successful leaders can move between different leadership styles. They range from commanding to consensual, so could be placed on a continuum from pyramidal to community (see this summary). This works well with the image of the Consciousness Soul not as a fixed state, but as a willingness to move on a continuum, to oscillate or, to use Adam Kahane's image, to walk.

Another quality was brought in when we looked at the concept of containment. The leader's task is to make a safe container for the inevitable tensions that exist in groups, eg the tension between freedom and directedness. The strength of the leader can make a safe space in which consensus can unfold. If the leader uses his or her authority to make it clear that everyone is called to speak, to contribute; if he or she is not frightened of conflict, but allows the issues to be addressed, showing that he or she is interested not in siding with one or the other party to achieve some personal objective, but in making a space where an honest process can take place, trust will grow and the group will take up its agency and make good decisions.

This is not the same as saying that the leader does not, or cannot have a view, belong to one side or the other. In reality, the leader usually does have a view! However, if that view is stated along with everyone else as part of the process, then transparency and trust are actually enhanced. Alongside this there is a deeply experienced but rarely noticed paradox between the freedom of being an individual and the directedness of working in a group or team to a specific purpose. The desire to resolve this paradox without conflict arising underlies much of what has already been discussed and always results in more conflict and conflict that is often veiled and therefore all the more painful.

How a leaders supports a group in managing the tension between freedom and directedness has a lot to do with the space that is given for sharing views and the authority that is deployed to ensure the discussion resolves to a purposeful outcome. This authority could come through a simple rule such as in the case of a tied vote the leader will have a casting vote, or in the case that a consensus cannot be formed the leader will decide. Rules such as this provide a boundary within which the discussion can blossom in an open, frank and creative way, and it is exceptionally rare that such a contained process produces an outcome cannot be owned by everyone.

Something that was touched on but not overtly discussed, and perhaps deserves to be discussed more in the future, is the way a leader has a responsibility to the thought of the enterprise, and therefore the spirit-being of the enterprise. The leader is a lens through which that thought shone in to the world and the decision of who should be the leader is an important one (no kidding!). The deeply experienced fears, conscious and unconscious, around the appointment of a leader can, in themselves, prevent such an appointment ever being properly made. However, if the purpose is clear and the leader is consistent, then the question of how the organisation works in detail recedes in importance. Through the many psychological / spiritual gestures of human interaction, harmony and transformation can be achieved by any endeavour that is consistently managed and is directed by a clear purpose.

When we dig a bit deeper into the matter of consistency and purpose and it begins to become apparent that the success of an endeavour is deeply connected with its founding impulse. We have experience of many organisations and institutions that have disintegrated when their activity has ceased to be aligned to their founding purpose. It must be through the conscious / unconscious grasp that the human beings hold of the organisation that the authority of the founding gesture is mediated, and for those with a perspective informed by Anthroposophy, supported by the Spiritual World. The founding purpose can be rapidly intuited and the extent to which the current action is true to it can be deeply, intuitively and accurately grasped by team members. In every moment trust is growing or being eroded. In the light of this, the task of leadership begins to become clearer and the tools of Anthroposophy begin to seem very relevant.

The Dr.Hauschka Adventure Continues...

On the 9th of May 2010 Dr.Hauschka appeared in the Sunday Times Style supplement. It had been voted the Best Natural Brand in their 2010 Beauty Awards. It may be only thirty nine words long but every one of those words is perfect! ‘Not only are its organic formulations gentle and effective, but the celebs’ fave Dr Hauschka is one of the hottest brands to flaunt right now. Even the organic army can now get in on the beauty “It product” act.’ We set out at the start of the year with three clearly stated intentions for Dr.Hauschka. First to make the brand more visible, second to develop stronger relationships with our customers and third, to strengthen our communal faith in Dr.Hauschka.

Those 39 words not only strengthens our faith in Dr.Hauschka, but will strengthen many others’ faith in it too. Great press coverage like this supports everyone who works with Dr.Hauschka and I should think that there are quite a few users who will be sharing our warm glow too! It helps the Dr.Hauschka community to feel that the brand is being represented well and builds trust. However, I have to say, what could be more visible than this call to flaunt?!?!

Sunday Times Online