What do we value?
By Bronwyn Bowery-Ireland
CEO
ICAIn our last newsletter I wrote about a conference I attended in Sydney Australia. To follow on my thoughts from the last article I wanted to write about Peter Senge’s notion of System Thinking and how this relates to the world of coaching.
Systems thinking is based on system dynamics; it is highly conceptual; it provides ways of understanding practical business issues; it looks at systems in terms of particular types of cycles (archetypes); and it includes explicit system modeling of complex issues.
“Systems thinking is a conceptual framework, a body of knowledge and tools that has been developed over the past fifty years, to make the full patterns clearer, and to help us see how to change them effectively.
Also, The essence of the discipline of systems thinking lies in a shift of mind:
- seeing interrelationships rather than linear cause-effect chains, and
- seeing processes of change rather than snapshots
The practice of systems thinking starts with understanding a simple concept called “feedback” that shows how actions can reinforce or counteract (balance) each other. It builds to learning to recognize types of “structures” that recur again and again: the arms race is a generic or archetypal pattern of escalation, at its heart no different from turf warfare between two street gangs, the demise of a marriage, or the advertising battles of two consumer goods companies fighting for market share. Eventually, systems thinking forms a rich language for describing a vast array of interrelationships and patterns of change. Ultimately, it simplifies life by helping us to see the deeper patterns lying behind the events and the details. ” Senge, Peter. 1992 The Fifth Discipline, Random House, Australia.
Systems Archetypes are basic and understandable cycles that systems go through. So how do we apply this thought process to coaching? With the focus being on the system and interrelationships it allows us in coaching to work through issues that our clients are experiencing and to get them to look at all the components of the system rather than just the area they may have identified or the problem they have found. It’s about looking at the big picture, the deeper picture. Once we see all the interconnected components we can then move away from the problem and start and identify the cause and effect of it. It also supports us to look at a situation from a distance, with greater objectivity. Through doing this we are less likely to continue to ‘bandaid’ problems but rather work to the core of the issues.