How organizational systemic constellations foster organizational trauma healing

BACKGROUND: Systemic Constellations Work (SCW) is a non-conventional method of dealing with organizational development and change that has been gaining popularity since the 1990s. OBJECTIVE: The goal of this study was to understand how kinesthetic and spatial sensations gained through SCW translate into knowledge with a particular focus on the longer-term organizational effects. METHODS: We performed semi-structured interviews and used triangulation of sources (constellator and clients) and methods (inductive, deductive coding and ethnographic approach). RESULTS: The study identified a phase model of SCW process revolving around organizational trauma enmeshed in the context of personal, organizational and social systemic fields. CONCLUSIONS: The results imply that SCW is a valid method of trauma healing and prevention.

From Trauma to Healing

Organizational trauma, which results from a singular event or the sum of multiple experiences that occur over time, has an impact on the individuals and the collective that constitute the organization. For an organization to overcome its challenges and function in a new normal, leadership must play an integral role in engaging its individuals in a way that is explicit and intentional. The efforts of the leadership must first effectively describe the culture, as well as define leadership and its role. Undiagnosed and/or unresolved trauma (both crisis and systemic organizational trauma) within an institution may have exponential implications for both the person and the organization as a whole. To restore the organization to a state of wholeness, there must be an acknowledgement of organizational trauma as well as a committed approach to organizational healing. These efforts shift the organization from one that is experiencing organizational trauma to one that is considered to be a restorative community.

Managing the Hell Out of Organizational Trauma

A vicarious 15-hike executive leadership resilience incubator in Mann Gulch, Montana, permits readers to upgrade their resilience leadership skills. Monday's hikes focus on sense-receiving, skills such as the leveraging of received national cosmologies, received community cosmologies, and received organizational cosmologies. Tuesday's hikes focus on sense-losing skills, moving from initial retentive sense-losing through a vicious cycle of selective sense-losing to the brutally honest audits of enactive sense-losing. Wednesday's hikes focus on sense-improvising skills by differentiating among temporality sense-improvising, identity sense-improvising, and social sense-improvising. Thursday's hikes focus on sense-remaking skills, moving from the enactive sense-remaking period through the virtuous cycle of selective sense-remaking to the retentive sense-remaking hinge between the catastrophe and the post-catastrophe. Friday's hikes focus on sense-transmitting skills, leveraging transmitted organizational cosmologies, transmitted community cosmologies, and transmitted national cosmologies. This chapter explores these five resilience leadership skills.

A Culture of Healing

The authors of this chapter contextualize terms such as individual trauma, collective trauma, and toxic stress; discuss how trauma impacts school environments; and propose steps to triage traumatic effects among faculty, staff, and students. Based on existing research and studies conducted by the authors of this chapter, strategies are introduced to help school leaders and teachers to overcome the effects of trauma and create a safe culture of healing during and after a traumatic event. While the context surrounding immediate trauma responses may default to macro-level discussions like violence, school shooting incidents, and school closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is noteworthy to underscore less-publicized traumatic events such as adverse childhood experiences, adult workplace trauma, and collective organizational trauma. The authors provide case studies to help practitioners process organizational trauma scenarios.

21st Century Leadership in Times of Global Change and Organizational Trauma

This chapter explores 21st century leadership practices found in the theories of complexity and adaptive leadership as a path to addressing uncertainty, volatility, and complexity in an increasingly interconnected global world. In this exploratory chapter, the authors discuss the notion of leaders versus leadership and argue that leadership is a process that people do and not a role. The authors also assert that complexity and adaptability are key in addressing trauma that results from change that occurs inside and outside the organization.

Proposition MRM

This qualitative chapter, which used a case study design, sought to examine whether the leadership theory of proposition modelling, respect, and motivation, MRM, could be used as a framework to guide a primary school through and out of the trauma it was experiencing. Organizational traumas are natural occurrences that affect large and small organizations. They can be triggered by several factors such as mergers, acquisitions, staff retrenchment, interpersonal dysfunctionalities, and drastic change. The research found that by focusing on building trust, pursuing community engagements, managing conflicts, and building capacity, the principal was able to help the school community overcome its trauma. The chapter concludes that an essential ingredient in effective management of organizational trauma is building and maintaining trust, and this strategy is aided by engagement of stakeholders, respecting the collective wisdom, and meaningful power-sharing.