In this blogpost I reflect on my personal development journey as a professional working with people in organisations in various sectors and different parts of the world. I look at what led me to this work, what feeds and inspires it, how my view of what I do and what I say to others about it has changed over time. I explore especially the integration and complementary nature of Systemic Constellations and Functional Fluency, two schools of thought and practice that inform all my work today.
After spending the first 18 years of my life growing up in Nigeria, the home of my father, I moved to Germany, the home of my mother, to study Industrial Engineering, a profession concerned with understanding, planning, implementing and maintaining integrated systems with various elements (resources, equipment, information, people, energy, …). That is quite complex, but also very clear and rational. Qualifying as an Industrial Engineer has given me a sense of accomplishment and certainty in life. Then I went on to work in a consulting firm that specialised in Strategy and Marketing. This involved learning more about how people make decisions and acknowledging influences on human behaviour that are not solely rational or logical. I was intrigued. How people tick, how they feel, think and act and how this is different in the different societal contexts had brought up questions for me for a long time and I wanted to understand more. The next step on my journey was into academia where I dived into management studies to understand more about the interrelatedness between teamwork, organisational culture and societal context (especially in sub-Saharan Africa). What I first thought was a purely professional and academic journey was, of course, also a deeply personal one, as it was fuelled by a yearning to understand my different societal and family contexts and how they impact not just other people and their interactions, but also myself and my interactions with others.
And then I moved from Germany to South Africa, bringing all this theoretical knowledge with me with a strong desire to integrate it, to ground myself and bring my own offering to organisations, enabling healthy relationships (bridging strong divides) and growth (individual as well as collective). Here I positioned myself as an organisational consultant and coach working with ’diversity’. In a meeting of diversity practitioners at the University of Cape Town towards the end of 2007 I first met Tanja Meyburgh, who introduced Systemic Constellations to us with a practical exercise. This was a life-changing experience for me!
Fast forward 17 years, I look back on an incredible time of learning, in which I met and was able to work with many different methods and tools for coaching and consulting. Out of all workshops and trainings I participated in, becoming a ’Systemic Constellations facilitator’ and a ’Functional Fluency practitioner’ have been the most significant for me, from a personal as well as professional perspective.
At this point I notice with great joy that the central aim of my work has not changed over the years. It has just become increasingly clear. I still work to foster healthy relationships and growth for people in all kinds of systems and will continue to do so. This is where Systemic Constellations become important. The phenomenological approach to recognising and resolving issues that was developed and made known widely by Bert Hellinger offers us a way to see the systems we live and work in from the outside. This shines a light on relationships and dynamics within the system that might have been hidden before. Representatives can feel sensations and impulses in their bodies, which are important (additional) information for the person who is open to seeing (the facilitator supports the client in seeing). In this seeing, it is so important to first really just notice and acknowledge WHAT IS, without trying to change, fix or do anything about it. Bert Hellinger spoke about saying “YES” to all that is. This “YES” then allows movement and enables energy to flow again where it was stuck. As an engineer, who likes to analyse’, ’do’ and ’fix’, the part of Systemic Constellations training that is phenomenological observation was especially important for me to learn – and I still need lots of practice! Really learning to notice with all my senses and to simply be with what I notice without having an agenda to change it in any way. As Jan Jacob Stam and Barbara Hoogenboom explain in their book on Systemic Leadership,
“… as long as reality hasn’t been expressed, it works like a demon or a dragon. It keeps coming and drawing attention and energy to itself. As soon as reality is expressed, and acknowledged (…), a new truth emerges, a new movement. Often with an enormous sigh of relief.”
Since I like structure, I have found the Systemic Structural Constellations (SySt) as developed by Insa Sparrer and Matthias Varga von Kibéd extremely helpful. They provide a structural framework within which the Systemic Constellation can flow and unfold.
Both the seeing what is and the structure are elements I also find and love in the praxis of Functional Fluency, the model of behaviour inspired by Transactional Analysis and developed by Susannah Temple.
Functional Fluency can be described as the art and skill of interpersonal effectiveness. At the heart of the Model is the ‘Accounting Mode’: taking account of the present situation and being ‘with it’ in the here and now. Based on this, we have specific options to choose from. We can use ‘Structuring Mode’ behaviours if the situation calls for Guidance and Direction – for others and ourselves. We can choose ‘Nurturing mode’ behaviours if we or others need looking after. We can choose ‘Cooperative Mode’ behaviours to get along with others wherever we are doing something together with other people. We can choose ‘Spontaneous Mode’ behaviours to express ourselves freely, in our own unique way. These are the 5 ‘effective modes’. Since we are all human, stressful situations can trip us up and we may react automatically with less effective behaviours. We may use ‘Dominating Mode’ behaviours when we are trying to guide and direct, but actually do it in a destructive way that is disempowering through our focus on the negative. We may use ‘Marshmallowing Mode’ behaviours when we want to take care of people and do a lot for others, but are not able to respect boundaries and differentiate wants from needs, so that the outcome of our care may be frustration. We may use ‘Compliant/Resistant Mode’ behaviours as we try to get along with others – either saying “yes” for the sake of agreeing and not rocking the boat, or “no” for the sake of opposing others. And we may use ‘Immature Mode’ behaviours as we try to express ourselves, but thereby completely disregard the consequences of our behaviour for others and ourselves. We react with these less effective (purple) behaviours unconsciously under stress. Functional Fluency was created to support people to become aware of what they are doing so that they can react less (unconsciously) and respond more (with conscious choice).
Based on her Functional Fluency Model, Susannah Temple developed the Temple Index if Functional Fluency (TIFF©), a behavioural tool (now online), which gives individuals, teams and organisations insight into how effectively energy is being used in the sense that behaviour is beneficial to self and others and goals that truly matter are being achieved.
In my training to become a TIFF© Provider (a practitioner licensed to work with TIFF©) one of the first things we did was also ’observing what is’, since ’Accounting’ is the big behavioural mode at the heart of the Functional Fluency Model, concerned with taking into account everything that is happening moment by moment, internally as well as around us. Only if we do this, we can consciously choose what to do next from the other four ’effective’ modes of behaviour (’Structuring’, ’Nurturing’, ’Cooperative’, ’Spontaneous’). A client who fills in a TIFF© questionnaire gets a snapshot of their behavioural patterns at a particular point in time, which I (as a TIFF© provider) can support them in seeing and exploring, just like I can support them as a Systemic Constellations facilitator in seeing and exploring the picture that has been set up for the constellation process. In the constellation we are looking at ‘’. In the TIFF profile we are looking at ‘what someone does’. Both the being and the doing patterns first need to be seen and recognised before conscious choices about any change can be made effectively.
In seeing the TIFF© Profile with behavioural patterns it is often useful for me to ask the client how old these patterns are, where they started or perhaps with whom they show up now. My Systemic Constellations training then helps me to recognise systemic dynamics and may lead to mini-constellations within a TIFF© session. During Systemic Constellations sessions on the other hand, my training in Functional Fluency helps me to remember Susannah Temple’s central question (“Do I and others benefit?”), to contract clearly with the client about what will be effective for them, and to recognise effective and ineffective behavioural patterns of the client and their system. The nine behavioural modes to choose from (5 effective, 4 ineffective) give me the structure and language to look at options for change with the client. So, Systemic Constellations and Functional Fluency have worked hand in hand in strengthening not only my work as a Coach and Consultant, but also my personal development. Though tempted to say that these two approaches are all I need to work well with clients in my field of application, I must acknowledge that they also allow me to draw on everything else I have learnt along the way in my life in the best possible way, since they are both inclusive of everything that is effective and life-affirming.
I am not the only one who has connected working with Functional Fluency and Systemic Constellations. For many years facilitators working with Functional Fluency have used a mat with the Functional Fluency Model to step and feel into the different behavioural modes on a visceral level. My colleagues, Leona Bishop and Kamla de Haas, started working with the Get-on-the-Mat (GOTM©) methodology in the Caribbean using the Functional Fluency Model as a structural framework upon which to set up constellations for issues that clients present. Similar to the Systemic Structural Constellations (SySt) mentioned earlier, the 9 modes of behaviour can be fixed elements that the client or representatives can step into and move between, seeing and feeling what happens when energy is invested (or not invested) in the different behaviour modes, both internally and in relationship with others. Alternative options for behaviour can be tried out and conscious choices for what to do next can be made based on this experience. I am currently taking part in the updated GOTM© Facilitator Training by Functional Fluency International, where the Functional Fluency Mat is also the Map (from which to choose next steps). While I see great power and value in this, I can already imagine that taking Functional Fluency as a ‘Map’ into other Systemic Constellations can provide as much or even greater value for the client and their system once it is time to move from seeing and saying “YES” to consciously DOING something different. One example could be to check the Functional Fluency Map to find the behavioural path from ‘current position’ to ‘goal’ ‘around obstacles’ and using ‘resources’ in a way that is beneficial for the client and their system.
These reflections bring me to the realisation that Systemic Constellations facilitator / Functional Fluency practitioner are not titles that I have acquired and need to explain to people. They also no longer feel separate to me. I don’t need to build a bridge between them, as they are already connected, perhaps even through Bert Hellinger and Susannah Temple, both students of Transactional Analysis and also pioneers in their own right who at some point developed their own work beyond the Transactional Analysis circles. Systemic Constellations and Functional Fluency are powerful, complementary approaches – more than that – ways of life, which enable me to fulfil my role for humanity: to support healthy relationships and thriving for individuals and systems in this world.