Dear Dan Bishop,
There is some very interesting material about working from the heart in "A
Guide for the Perplexed" by E F Schumacher. He is more well known for
"Small is Beautiful" but "Perplexed" is one of the three or four books I
have read many times and would take to a desert island if I were cast
away.
In my work as an organisation development consultant, I help people make
heart connections to each other and the future by building a shared vision
of how they would like their lives or work to be. I do this by having the
group list what would be happening if everyhing were going well, in say
two years time. I then ask them to develop a slogan together to describe
that. The results are astonishing, people have always agreed in what they
want. One group of production workers came up with "Everything running
smoothly". This was just what their manager really wanted to happen.
You can use a similar method to help people make connections to their own
hearts. Ask people to list times when things were going really well in
their lives. It is possible to work with the person to develop a phrase
that captures what she or he was doing all the time when things were going
well. You have to listen intently and be very patient. When the person
comes up with a phrase that resonates for them they get very excited. Many
feel the excitement in their heart. They make sense of their life.
Typical personal slogans are "Detonating mixtures", "Growing life" or
"Creating Awareness". We used this process on a short course on life
planning in a company I worked in many years ago. We followed up people
several months afterwards. They reported they had had less "Ups and downs"
since the course. I f they felt stuck they used their phrase to find a way
out, it has worked well before! An unexpected side effect was that 20% of
them left the company within six months. They decided thay could more of
what they wanted outside.
I learned the techniques from Chris Bull who was then with Sheppard Moscow
Associates.
Best wishes,
Nick Heap
--"Nick Heap" <nickheap@tesco.net>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>