
A few days ago I read a super good article, at least in my eyes, about medicine.
The researcher they interviewed is a scientist, biologist, with a specialty in biomedicine. When asked how to identify a “trusted doctor” from his perspective, he made a list of things that “if your doctor does … then” find another”.
And for my article of the week I would like to occupy a similar format, only this time referring to a systemic facilitator.
How do you know who is a good facilitator? How do you know if you work with a systemic approach? How do you know if when you offer constellations, your perspective is systemic?
So some ideas, from my perspective.
1. If your facilitator says he do not make judgments … run away, or stay and know that he does and he do not even know. We all build realities all the time. It is the basis of our communication process. Of our process of social construction. Judgment is nothing more than a construction of reality. The important thing is not that we make judgments, but what we do with our judgments.
2. If when you ask your facilitator what a “systemic approach” is, his answer is “the universe is systemic”, he probably knows little or nothing about “systemic approach”. The universe is not systemic, the universe is the universe. We conceptualize it as a system to try to understand and simplify the complexity of it.
3. If your facilitator knows about elements and interactions and he does not talk about contributions and construction, he may know about general systems theory and probably not about social systems. General systems theory is the first formal systems theory and is the basis of many developments: cybernetics, systemic family therapy, and the basis for research on living systems. It was not conceptualized for social systems and although it is a base, it has limitations in its application to the social world. And the relationships between human beings belong to the framework of the social.
4. If your facilitator makes constellations according to Bert Hellinger or his disciples and says that his work is systemic, it is unlikely to be. Hellinger’s work is a spiritual proposal, not a systemic one. And by offering a spiritual framework for his work, he places it within the framework of value and ethics rather than functional structure.
5. If your facilitator uses predetermined phrases it is very likely to guide your process from its own construction of reality. A systemic accompaniment process provides a framework allowing the client to explore its content on its own. The only one who can know from the biological structure and social construction what he wants to do and what he feels able to achieve is the client.
6. If the facilitator tells you what are you doing or do not, his job is far from systemic and, from my perspective, he is “stepping on your tomatoes”, as Michael would say. Phrases such as “you are not taking your mother”, “your work has no strength” or expressions such as “I can not work with you because you are not ready”, please, even if it sounds like he/she is not talking about you, he/she is talking about theirself and their own constructions of reality.
In my eyes a systemic work is one in which we built with the client, we do not guide him. It offers a structure for the customer to explore their own constructions of reality and choose their own alternatives to the future scenarios that want to co-create.
And what do you want? A systemic work? A spiritual approach? A different possibility? Do you know what for? Do you know what is the best alternative for whatever you want?
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