This isn’t the next post I’d planned in the transition series. It arrived this morning before my first cuppa, and since I’m learning to go with the flow, I’m sharing it with you fresh. The others in the series are coming soon.
This post is about what happens beyond liminal space, when you’ve stepped onto the new shore and you’re back in the driver’s seat of life. Grief doesn’t stay behind. It comes along as a passenger, mostly quiet, until a conversation, an anniversary or a Grand Final brings the little losses rushing back. And it’s about what I’m finding alongside the pain this time: gratitude, and the lessons Jeff left us.
Yesterday I paced the chocolate aisle at the supermarket, unable to decide which one to choose, and then the tears came. Inconsolable tears. No sunglasses, no tissues. (Chocolate is very much an emotional crutch for me, so it makes sense I was standing there and not in fruit and veg.)
It caught me by surprise. I’ve been feeling stable and strong for about four months now, a far cry from the extensive period before, when I was traversing the depths of grief, lost in the liminal space. It has been such a relief to feel aliveness again, to pop up from those depths into the seeds of a new beginning.
It seems there is a distinct point when you move out of the liminal space and arrive on the new shore. That doesn’t mean everything is settled and the grief goes away. The jigsaw puzzle my life shattered into when Jeff died still has a lot of forming to do. For me, the switch came when I’d had enough time (and therapy) to integrate the loss and could begin to contemplate the possibility of living fully again. I had grown around the grief to the point where it was no longer the lens through which I experienced all of life.
Lois Tonkin’s work on growing around grief describes this well. The grief doesn’t go away. It comes with you. But as your capacity grows around it, you’re no longer held hostage by it 24/7. There’s more mental clarity, and a desire to move forward. There’s an interest in bringing the gifts from the life that’s been and in birthing a new chapter. That starts to buoy you along. For me, amongst other things it was a knowing that it was time to get back to work, it’s as though life itself pops into the driver’s seat, and grief takes its place as a passenger.
But even with grief as the passenger, it can still cry out like an upset child in the back seat and send you swerving.
Over the past few days, I’ve felt emotion surfacing and had been curious about it. The second anniversary of Jeff’s passing is fast approaching, and I’ve been present to how this might be for me this time around. Then that morning, I’d had a conversation with a friend.
Several years ago, my friend separated after a loving thirty-year marriage. The night before, for the first time, he’d gathered with his ex-wife and their three adult children for dinner, the five of them finding their new way forward as a family. The evening went well, and I was genuinely delighted for them all. It takes relationships that are sufficiently intact, and egos and self-interest stepping aside, to make that happen. Sadly, from what I’ve observed from the sidelines, it often not the case.
As he shared his experience, something landed starkly in front of me: our band will never be back together again. Being a family of musicians, we playfully called ourselves the von Vagues (as in the von Trapps), and nothing made us happier than when the band was together. Of course, I’ve known this for nearly two years, but yesterday it arrived like fresh news. While everyone is still living, there’s a choice to come back together. When one of you dies, that choice dies too. Jeff has gone and so has our family unit in that form.
I don’t regret the conversation. In fact, I’m grateful for it. It helped me attend to a micro-loss my mind hadn’t yet caught up with, and it sparked this reflection. What matters is that it’s possible for his family, and that, through choosing love, they’ve created a new ritual to come together, simply because they can. We can all learn from that.
And then there was the day itself. Yesterday was AFL Grand Final Day 2026, and Grand Final Day will always mark one of those harder days in our lives.
Jeff was an avid football follower. His big brother cultivated that love, taking him to games and talking all things Fitzroy (now the Brisbane Lions) from when he was a small boy.
In 2023, not long after we nearly lost Jeff to a severe reaction to a clinical trial drug, he miraculously made it to the Grand Final in person. It wasn’t a win for his team, but he loved every minute.
In 2024, on the last Saturday in September, my dear sister and her husband helped us bring Jeff home from palliative care for the day. It would be his last time at home. He had been slowly drifting away for weeks by then, his mind and soul beginning their journey of departing his body. I now understand this is often the way. It’s another of life’s transitions, as perfectly designed as birth: a process, not a single moment.
The Lions won that day. What stays with us most is watching Jeff muster everything he could to celebrate, when really a football match matters so little when you’re about to leave this earth. All the things that were so much a part of who you were simply fall away. His vacant expression and half-hearted wave of the flag as the siren sounded broke our already broken hearts a little more. And still, I’m so grateful we had that final day together at home as a family.
In 2025, eleven months after Jeff died and in the deepest part of my grief, I prayed the Lions would bomb out before the Grand Final. I didn’t know how we would get through reliving our 2024 experience. They made it, and they won. Jeff would have been delighted. Somehow, we navigated that difficult day, and two of our daughters even made it to the Grand Final in person, because that’s what you do: you get up and keep going.
I thought that another year down the track, yesterday’s Grand Final would be easier. But it’s amazing how our bodies know and our minds remember. Those same heart-wrenching scenes from 2024 replayed in my mind’s eye, and today I feel emotionally hungover without having touched a drop.
But something has shifted. Alongside the pain in the memories, I can now feel immense gratitude too. I’m grateful Jeff came home that last day to sit in his favourite chair with a bowl of Haigh’s chocolate caramels, hot chips and sausage rolls, as was always the way on Grand Final Day. I’m grateful for the people who held us so we could make it happen. And I’m grateful for what Jeff taught us through his courage over those 15 months.
Gratitude was one of Jeff’s greatest qualities, and he never stopped expressing it. On our fridge there’s still a torn scrap of paper in his handwriting, from a family practice we started during the COVID pandemic to lift each other’s spirits. It simply asks: What are you most grateful for in this moment? Even as the effects of the brain tumour took so much of his understanding, and amid his intense suffering as he faced his own mortality, he would tell us each day that he felt loved and held, and how thankful he was. He extended that gratitude to everyone in his path, and to this day I borrow his words that he would always use to thank the cleaner, the doctor or anyone else helping him: “Thank you for your work.”
So, the tears in the chocolate aisle weren’t a step backwards. This is what grief does, even after you’ve stepped onto the new shore. As you engage with life, you’re reminded of the thousands of little losses, the things no longer possible because they ended when your person died. I recognise this will happen forever more. We grow around grief, and it comes with us. That’s the nature of loss, because that’s the nature of love.
We only feel the depth of the loss because of the depth of the love. Fortunately, love doesn’t leave when the person dies. We feel Jeff’s love with us every day. He taught us what truly matters when everything is stripped away. That wisdom guides our choices still, and it is shaping our daughters into three young women he would be so enormously proud of.
Great work from above, Jeff, helping your team to three in a row. Go Lions. They’ll be counting on you for the fourth victory next year.
We miss you more than words can ever hold. Thank you for being our teacher, for being the bass in our band, and for your eternal love. We will love you forever x
And in Jeff’s words, from our fridge to yours: what are you most grateful for in this moment?
www.evolvingleaders.com.au
Photo: 28th September 2024. The von Vagues, Grand Final Day 2024. Jeff’s last day at home.
As humans, our tendancy is to focus the external changes in our lives, and rarely on what they ask of us inside. In this post I explore the difference between change and transition, why grief and loss are part of every transition, and why the in-between is where so much of our growth quietly happens.
Change is what happens to us. Transition is what happens within us.
I’ve spent three decades working with humans and the systems they gather in, and I’ve come to believe that much of the unsettledness we feel around change lives in the gap between those two sentences. We plan carefully for the first. We barely notice the second.
Perhaps something in your life has changed: a job ending, children leaving home, a separation, a diagnosis, or the death of someone you love. Or perhaps nothing obvious has happened, and you simply feel off, not quite yourself. There can be many reasons for that. But when the feeling follows a change or arrives with a quiet sense that who you’ve been no longer fits, it may be an internal transition asking to be noticed.
We mostly turn away from our life transitions. We ignore them, or we don’t recognise them. We rarely name or acknowledge them, and sometimes we don’t even know they’re happening. We just experience and grapple with the symptoms without understanding the cause.
This isn’t anyone’s fault. Most of us never think beyond the change itself, so the transition it asks of us goes unnoticed. It’s rarely something we consider for ourselves or support each other through. We simply have no map for it.
Transition is part of being human. So are grief and loss. And yet we were never taught how to notice or attend to either. We learn to read and write, to drive a car and to perform CPR. But when life changes, no one shows us how to grieve what we’ve lost, or how to navigate the internal experience of transition. It’s not a failing on our part. We have simply never been taught.
William Bridges, who spent his life studying how people experience change and transition, made the distinction that has shaped my work.
Change is the external event: the diagnosis, the ending, the restructure, the unexpected news. We can be the initiators of change, and we can also be the recipients of change that is desirable and change that is devastating.
Transition is the internal process we go through to integrate it. It’s the messy, disorienting, confusing, discombobulating, non-linear part that is so often brushed over. It throws us into disarray. It can leave us drifting through our days on autopilot with little to hold on to. It challenges our identity. And, well supported, it fuels our evolution and strengthens our resolve.
Change can happen in a moment. Transition takes as long as it takes.
We can let transition simply happen to us. Or we can turn towards it, listen to what it’s asking, and let that guide us forward. That is the work of transition.
From first breath to last (and beyond)
Transition begins before we even take our first breath. Perhaps the first great transition of all is the soul’s journey into physical form. From conception to embryo to human baby, we arrive carrying so much capacity and potential.
Life, by its very nature, is a series of thousands of tiny transitions. Together they map the path of our growth and evolution, all the way to our final transition for this lifetime: the end of life itself, and whatever lies beyond it.
Then there are the macro transitions. Some we consciously choose to enact, like the decision to leave a marriage or walk away from a friendship that no longer serves us. Others are inevitable at various life stages: becoming an adult, becoming a parent, losing a parent, traversing menopause, to name a few. And others are simply thrust upon us.
All of them involve grief and loss, because change always involves loss. Even the changes we choose. Even the ones we celebrate.
A map for messy territory
I said earlier that we have no map for transition. Bridges offers us one. He described transition as moving through three phases:
- The Ending. We let go of the way things were.
- The Neutral Zone. The old is gone, and the new isn’t yet ready.
- The New Beginning. New identity, energy and purpose begin to emerge.
It’s not a neat, step-by-step path. We move back and forth, and sometimes we’re in more than one phase at once. But this map helps us make sense of the psychological shifts we must make to find ourselves in our next new beginning.
The work of transition spans the whole journey. But the deepest work happens in the bridge between the old and the new: that middle place, the neutral zone. Something I and others prefer to call the liminal space.
This idea is far older than Bridges. Tibetan Buddhism has a word for it: bardo, meaning “the in-between”. It most often describes the space between an old version of us dying and a new version being reborn. The way I’ve come to understand it, the bardo is a place where there is nothing but the recollection of what was. It’s a time to draw out the essence of the joy and the wisdom from what has been, to carry that essence forward, and to prepare for who we are becoming.
I find that deeply consoling. It suggests that the in-between, the liminal space, isn’t empty. It is where we gather what matters from what’s ended, so we can bring it with us into the new that’s just beginning.
We expect endings, and we hope for new beginnings. What no one prepares us for is the in-between – liminal space. Yet, it’s where we quietly grow.
If you recognise yourself in any of this, you don’t need the words for it yet. Simply acknowledging maybe I’m in transition can be the first step in turning towards it.
So what does this in-between space actually feel like, day to day, from the inside? That’s where I’ll take you next.
www.evolvingleaders.com.au
Photo: Purnalulu National Park, WA, June 2026
Building grief-literate workplaces.
Grief doesn’t wait for permission, and it doesn’t stay at home. Every year, hundreds of thousands of working-age Australians experience significant loss , and at any given time, around one in four people across an organisation may be carrying grief of some kind. They’re sitting in your meetings, answering your emails, serving your customers.
Yet most of us, leaders included, were never taught how to respond. We worry about saying the wrong thing, so we say nothing. We offer a card and a casserole, then expect business as usual. The grieving person learns to hide it, and the hidden cost shows up in wellbeing, connection, judgement, performance and turnover.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Grief literacy- knowing how to be with loss, in ourselves and others is a business issue. And workplaces that build it create cultures where people feel genuinely seen and supported through the hardest moments of their lives.
Registrations are now open for a one day Grief First Aid Training on 31 August 2026 (Public Program) where we practise exactly this: how to witness grief, and how to accompany it.
We’ll be on zoom so you can join us from anywhere!
We hope you can join us.
Grief First Aid for the Workplace Public Programs
www.evolvingleaders.com.au
The third story from the mountains – about grief, presence, and what becomes possible when someone can hold silence without rushing to fill it.
Sometimes the most powerful thing you can offer someone who is grieving isn’t more words- it’s fewer.
In my first story from the mountains, I shared how Rita, a stranger on a bus, met me in my grief with one gentle question: What was your husband’s name? Rita’s open questions and her kind, generous nature were a teacher for us all. But that wasn’t the only way. This is David’s story.
David was our guide on the Tour du Mont Blanc- an Englishman married to a French woman, living in France for over twenty years. Guiding was more than a job for him; what he loved most was the connection that unfolds on a trail. He was around my age, and as a father and husband himself, he understood loss from that vantage point too. But it was more than shared circumstance. David had a quality of presence about him, a capacity to sit comfortably with long stretches of silence as we walked, step by step. And somehow, held in that, I found myself dropping further into the layers of grief within me, one layer softly giving way to the next.
What Rita and David shared was presence, and a willingness to hold space. What differed was what they did within that space: Rita with more words, though never a rush of them, David with fewer, and a seemingly natural ease with the tension that silence often brings.
I felt met and being met was what made it feel safe to keep going. On a trail you don’t walk side by side; you walk one ahead of the other. No eye contact, nothing to read on the other’s face, just the rhythm of our footsteps helping to hold the container, and the mountains themselves holding it too, the wildflowers emerging from winter in splendid colour all around us.
My learning was this: someone who is grieving never needs a barrage of questions. Often one is enough to open the door and then it’s about holding the silence that follows, fully present, not rushing to fill it. That discomfort you feel? It’s usually the very sign that you’re giving the person something they need.
And here’s what surprised me. As I shared more of my own story with David, it created fertile ground for him, in the days that followed, to share deeply about his own experience of life and loss too , mirroring exactly what he had offered me. I was able to be there for him, the way he had been there for me. Real conversations. Deep care, moving both ways.
I want to name something important here. Sharing your own story is not the role of a Grief First Aider in the workplace when you’re offering grief first aid, the focus stays with the person who is grieving, and turning to your own experience can pull attention away just when they need it most. But David wasn’t there as a first aider. He was giving me something different, and equally precious: the companionship of a fellow traveller who had known loss himself.
From both Rita and David, I felt witnessed and accompanied, her questions and his silence were simply different doorways into the same care.
If someone you care about is grieving, remember that you don’t need to find the perfect words. There may not be any. A walk, a silence you don’t rush to fill, a hand on the back if you’ve asked and it’s welcome, your simple willingness to stay, these can say more than any words could. Of these, the silence is the hardest. It takes courage to stay in it rather than interject and most of us aren’t wired for it. We want to fix, to soothe, to fill the gap. But that urge to rush in is often more about our own discomfort than the other person’s need.
I am so grateful to all the humans who were able to meet me on that mountain in those early months, who didn’t shy away, and who each showed up in their own unique way. This is how we integrate loss, not in isolation but through connection with others.
Never underestimate the power of simply being there.
This story is part of why I now do the work I do. Through Evolving Leaders, I guide people through life’s hardest transitions with 1:1 coaching and registrations are now open for my first public Grief First Aid for the Workplace program on 31 August, where we practise exactly this: how to witness grief, and how to accompany it.
I would love for you to be there.
www.evolvingleaders.com.au
This post shares a personal story and suggests that every human being on the planet right now, in some shape or form, is facing into their own ‘growth edge’. It invites the reader to reflect on what they are noticing in themselves and others in terms of this personal learning and highlights that perhaps the luckiest people right now have leaders and organisations that are providing development and wellbeing support for their people.
Meet Elaine. She is my delightful 84-year-old mother-in law. Elaine left school at age 15 to help with home duties on the family farm and continued in that role all through motherhood and grandmother-hood.
In her lifetime, she has baked tonnes of lemon slice and the arguably the best chocolate cake ever. When she isn’t baking, she pours all her energy and focus into supporting her community and showering us – the family – with her love.
Throughout her lifetime, Elaine has felt no desire for, nor any reason to, use a computer or a smartphone. And so, in March 2020, as the world felt like it was closing in on all of us, we realised that that Elaine would soon be in total isolation. Without even the stilted connectedness the internet offers the rest of us, she would have very limited contact with her her family and friends, and we were concerned about the flow-on impact this would have on her overall wellbeing.
So, without further thought, we purchased her an iPad. In a curious way, one of the first questions she asked was, ‘Why is the keyboard not in alphabetical order?’ She had never used any sort of keyboard in her life, let alone an email address. How much we take for granted! This was completely uncharted territory for her.
The rest is history.
True to form, with her enthusiastic approach to a new challenge, she was up-and-running in no time. The pure delight we witnessed when Elaine had her whole family (across many geographical locations) in front of her on the first Facetime call is a precious moment that will stay in my heart forever.
If you had said to me six months ago that, in the year 2020, Elaine would be making Facetime calls, ordering her groceries and doing her banking online, I would have broken out in laughter!
But she was soon doing all of that. We are so proud of her.
Elaine’s story got me thinking about what the disruption of this year has meant to all of us in terms of the learning we have been somewhat forced to do or had to do in many ways. What became clear to me is that every human being on the planet right now has had to confront their own fear at some level and learn something new, or make some change that they would not have made without the pandemic.
No one is exempt. It has been, and continues to be, a true ‘growth edge’ experience for us all. (Read more about growth edge here)
Do you agree? Where have you noticed this happening?
What are you being asked to or forced to change at this time?
What is your personal growth edge right now?
Some examples from my own ‘growth edge backyard’ are:
- quickly getting up to speed and proficient at creating connection and engagement online so as to be able to effectively deliver team development via an online platform. Like many, I still really don’t like facilitating groups on Microsoft Teams, but at least I know how to do it.
- taming my voice in our family to allow each person an equal say in shaping the healthy boundaries needed for life in isolation in a household of five people (that is, learning to listen better and not assuming I always have the best answer)
- establishing a healthy and productive work rhythm by creating greater structure around my allocated working hours, which in my case means 90 minute cycles then taking a break (here is a great article on this topic).
Most clients that I am currently working with are struggling with many aspects of work and life – juggling home schooling, too many hours on Zoom and experiencing other financial and social pressures. It’s the norm rather than the exception right now.
What is being demanded of people by this pandemic in terms of growing and changing for many feels heavy and hard. I am also noticing, however, that the luckiest people during this time work in organisations and with leaders that recognise the need for, and are investing in, the wellbeing and development of their people. It is from this support base, that people can begin to make sense of themselves and their own experiences and begin to see some reward and celebration of their efforts on the other side.
The benefits flow on, as when this growth edge can be applied within a broader team context, it is even more powerful. As individuals grow and change and are able to be more vulnerable and courageous with themselves – as 84-year-old Elaine has demonstrated so well, and when they can do this with their teams as well, then team culture can grow in ways that are good for all.
Could you or your team do with support right now? Please get in touch to book your team development – delivered remotely of course.
This blog post introduces readers to a unique individual and team development experience – The Flow Game. The Flow Game gets to the heart of what needs to change in the way the team is operating and in doing so creates clarity, grows connection and grounds action. It is a powerful process for leadership and team evolution as it provides a much-needed space for reflection, expression and connection.
Where did the Flow Game originate?
The Flow Game (www.flowgame.net) has its origins in Denmark back in the 1990’s and is now being played across the globe for individuals and teams as a way of finding clarity together. There are eight stewards of the game across the globe, including three of the original founders (Vanguards) – Toke Paludan Møller, Monica Nissen and Jan Hein Nielsen.
I have been extremely fortunate to be a student of the Flow Game for several years now, and have reaped the rewards both personally and professionally that come with this practice. In 2019, I was formally accredited as a Flow Game host and this coincided with the release of the Team Deck of cards. Since then, the Flow Game has become an integral part of my leadership & team development toolkit.
Why you might ask?
Because quite simply put – The Flow Game surfaces what really needs to change (based on the collective question of the group), creates alignment and before people have even left the room many of the internal barriers to change are no longer there. A new lease of energy, connection and grounded action is available for the team. This is cultural change and leadership in action.
What is the Flow Game?
The Flow Game isn’t a conversational game as you might expect– it is more about reflecting and sharing and listening without the need to interrupt or judge or fix or justify or explain. The process helps us to slow down and fall into our true nature and helps us to learn a very different way of being together and interacting in a conscious way. From that place new awareness and insight is surfaced and the action that we need to take becomes clear. The flow game in its essence helps individuals, teams and groups to:
- Create clarity
- Grow connection (self, others & to vision, values purpose), and
- Define and agree action
- Create (desired) change
The Seven different perspectives in the flow game
1.Blue River of the EAST – Vision
The creative and visionary side of leadership and seeing the big picture
2.Yellow River of the SOUTH – Community
The ability to empathize, connect, inspire, engage, align and attune
3.Green River of the WEST – Action
The ability to bring vision into meaningful action and ‘get things done’
4.Red River of the NORTH (Red) – Courage
Having the courage to walk new paths, break new ground, lead the way
In addition to the four rivers – dimensions or directions of our personal leadership there are two more aspects to consider:
5. Above (Heaven) – heaven speaks to our highest aspirations and powers that are greater than we are.
6.Below (Earth) – earth below is our ground, the foundation we stand on. It gives us a sense of reality and demands our presence here and now.
7.My/Our Question/Intention –The focus or intention is formulated as a question, which sits in the centre of the game. Together we then explore and illuminate the intention/s from the other six perspectives of the game.
Source: www.flowgame.net
Three Versions
There are three different card decks that are used for different purposes:
- Personal,
- Team &
- Family/community
Within that context, there are multiple possibilities for the way the game can be played as it can be designed around an individual or group intention (question) or a combination of both.
As a flow host community, we are constantly evolving and exploring new ways to design and host the game for varying contexts and needs.
A Burning Question
The flow game is a process – and it’s a powerful one but it is important to note that it’s not the panacea for every presenting issue or challenge. The important thing is that the individual/s or team has a burning question that they are seeking clarity on and that the invitation to, and the design of the game is set up in a way that honors the people, the process and the situation/question.
The need and intent and the membership of the group first must be clear and we then design the game around that.
Different Applications
Three of the ways that The Flow game is currently being used in a business and community context are:
1. Team Development
When working with an intact team, a great place to start is with a shared/collective question or intention. This is where the Team Cards are used. This may progress to a round using the Personal Cards however in this context – a generic question would be applied for each member of the team. For example, “given what we now know about the team, what does that mean me? “would be applied generally. The design will of course depend on the need, intent and membership of the group.
2. Leadership Development
Depending on the need, intent and membership of the group (for example it is often easier to be vulnerable with people we don’t know than with people we do know) ,the flow game can be integrated into an existing Leadership Development Program at the start of the shared learning journey, midway during the experience or as a way of integrating and coming to closure and grounded action at the end of a Leadership Development Program. Team, Personal and Family/Community Cards can all be applied in this context.
In today’s hectic world at a time when it is so easy to fall into the trap of being overwhelmed by feelings of “busy and important”, the Flow Game offers the essential time required to reflect and do the important deep-thinking essential for conscious choice and action – Participant
3. Cultural Evolution
The flow game is a powerful way to create clarity and alignment at an individual and collective level and this is where it fits to support and enable cultural evolution. In one specific application, it is being used in the implementation of the cultural change journey. Stage 1 was one was about defining purpose, vision, values and strategy and stage 2 is about bringing that to life. The Flow game is being leveraged as part of the team and leadership development journey with the collective question: Given our overall direction, “What is our responsibility to bring this to life?. It is also being used with the leaders of this change to create clarity and alignment around leading this change.
How many people can play?
The flow game is typically played with 2-8 players – however that too can be flexible. For example, it can be utilized in an executive coaching session with one person all the way through to a conference with many people. It is possible to have multiple games being played concurrently and has been done with great success in many settings.
While there are many different applications of The Flow Game, the essence of what it delivers at both an individual and team level remains the same:
- Clarity
- Connection
- Action
- Change
It is from this place that we can live, lead and be together consciously and create healthy high-performing teams.
Evolving Leaders was established in 2014 with the purpose of evolving the consciousness of leaders to make the world a better place. The Flow Game is a powerful partner in this work. We are greatly indebted to the founders of the game and the international flow host community that continues to evolve this practice.
Interested in a Team Flow experience? Please get in touch.
This post includes our vision for the ‘human’ teams and organisations of the future that we need to be designing and creating right now to respond and flourish in a rapidly changing world. We call these ‘human organisations’. The post includes the characteristics of a human organisation to help you do a ‘mini-audit’ on the health of your own team/organisation.
“A culture in which everyone could overcome their own internal barriers to change and use errors and vulnerabilities as prime opportunities for personal and company growth.”
– Robert Kegan in Everyone Culture: Becoming a deliberately developmental organisation
Almost anyone who has worked in an organisation has experienced at least some of the aspects of disconnection that have become commonplace in workplaces everywhere. Too often businesses seem to lose sight of the fact that they are, at their core, the sum of the humans of which they are composed. There is ample evidence that this needs to change if businesses are serious about flourishing in the complexity of today’s world.
What is a human organisation?
Human organisations are ‘well’ organisations that are on a deliberate and focussed developmental and cultural evolutionary pathway towards full spectrum consciousness.
There are two central threads that are the woven foundations of a human organisation:
Connection – Connection to self, connection to each other, connection to purpose and vision and connection to the people they serve; and
Accountability – Accepting and embracing accountability to self, each other, the reality (role, team, goal, project, organisation) and holding self and others to account.
Human organisations exude a healthy vibrant culture in which people are inspired to bring out the best possible versions of themselves. In human organisations, people perform at their best without being coaxed or bribed to do so. Instead of reverting to immature behaviours of blame and justification when they come to work, they see themselves as well-rounded adults whose task is to make a meaningful contribution and to help others do likewise.
The result is far more significant contributions from many more people, and a lot less wasted time and emotional energy. The result is greater success in traditional business measures (e.g. profitability and customer satisfaction) as well as improved wellbeing, increased engagement and sustainable human potential.
What are the characteristics of a human organisation?
Some of the characteristics you’re likely to see in a human organisation include:
- Customers feel listened to and their needs are meet at a level beyond their expectations because employees deeply care and feel cared for and supported by the organisation.
- Leadership is less about position than it is about mindset and behaviour. Everyone in the organisation is capable of being recognised as a leader through the way they behave and the choices they make, through supporting others and taking personal responsibility rather than resorting to blame, justification and denial. No one is seen as a leader unless they demonstrate leadership in this way, regardless of their position or title.
- Purpose driven: there is a clear and central ‘why’ that is harvested and activated by the people for the people. It is a grounded source of energy and focus that clarifies, inspires and informs decisions, action and behaviour.
- People are motivated through feeling valued. There is an alignment between what matters to them, the work they do and the workplace culture.
- Connection – real, human connection – with courage and compassion are at the heart of everything that is done within the organisation and for those it serves. Get Connected
- People feel empowered to make choices. High levels of confidence, personal awareness, and accountability exist throughout the organisation.
- People are held to account – They know what is expected of them in their roles and how they ‘show up’ and there are efficient and effective practices and leadership capability to manage this effectively.
- People take responsibility for their own development in a culture of learning and growing.
- People feel a sense of belonging. It feels safe for people to fully show up as who they are and make a meaningful contribution with their unique skills, strengths and preferences. The workplace and its practices are diverse and inclusive and team members experience high levels of psychological safety which results in higher levels of team performance.
- People are highly engaged, feeling a greater sense of connection with their own sense of purpose, with their colleagues and as co-contributors to the organisation’s success in terms of profitability, wellbeing and benefit to the community.
- Internal divisions and turf wars are minimised. Shared values and purpose provide the framework for conversations, decision-making and behaviour. Strategy, culture, purpose and wellbeing are aligned.
- People listen to one another.
- Innovation and creativity are well understood, practised and regarded as ways the organisation can ‘separate itself from the crowd’.
- Reflective practices are woven into the fabric of the organisation. This may include specific mindful moments in meetings, the way performance conversations are had, allocated time and expectations for people to build reflective practice into their weekly rhythm.
- Time and space to think and learn are valued. The space is created to allow people to get to know each other and to reflect on the learning from projects and other experiences they encounter in their day to day. This becomes a part of the daily, weekly, monthly and annual rhythm.
You may like to pause and reflect for a moment here:
- What is the current state of health of your team or organisation?
- What are the strengths that you can build on?
- What areas do you need to bring greater focus to?
- What is one step you can take this week to get started?
Where it starts
Ignoring the need to make your organisation more human is to turn a blind eye to what we know requires a new level of response. It is no longer an option to stand still. The teams and organisations that will thrive and attract the best people are the ones that make the courageous and bold step to begin this developmental, leadership and cultural evolution journey.
However, it needs to be recognised that human organisations are not created overnight. They need to be imagined and designed ‘by the people, for the people’, then given the guidance, investment, nourishment and support they need to grow.
The shift towards a human organisation begins with bringing new awareness to the leadership team about the possibilities of becoming such an organisation. We help leaders to make the connection between the cycle of pain, dysfunction, cultural entropy and poor performance that they may be experiencing in their teams and organisations and bring focus to the antidote for this – which is intentionally growing and creating ‘human organisations’.
Initial steps often involve understanding the current stage of cultural maturity and the cultural evolution required for the team /organisation to evolve to a level of cultural maturity that will enable the business aspirations, measurement of the existing organisational culture, beginning the conversation around organisational purpose and vision and igniting the learning journey for leaders and their teams.
A key part of the learning here is about helping leaders to better understand the visible and invisible forces driving, engagement, wellbeing and performance in the organisational eco-system. A great basis for this conversation and to help build understanding of the organisation as a whole interconnected system is Ken Wilbur’s four quadrant model. It helps to bring a ‘whole of system’ focus and is a great basis for surfacing what is currently helping and what is hindering the organisation’s progress, ahead of then designing a roadmap for cultural and leadership evolution.
If all this sounds just too complex and difficult right now, may I offer one powerful snippet of wisdom:
Connection and Accountability are the golden threads that are woven throughout a human organisation.
In every moment – thought, action, word, decision – we have a choice. We can choose to move towards disconnection or we can choose to move toward connection. In that very action we are being accountable to ourselves, each other and our workplaces.
I choose to grow connection.
What do you choose?
In my next post, I will explore the personal leadership that is required to grow a human team/organisation.