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Holism: How To Dance In Complexity

The key principle of the holistic perspective is for us as Conscious Consultants to learn to comprehend and engage (work with) with complete integrative systems – seeing interactive living relationships rather than a series of discrete units or entities.  

There a five foundational abilities required to becoming a holistic thinker:  These abilities to which we can all aspire in order to practice the holistic approach can be considered as a five-sided ‘Pentagon’:

  1. Presence – open to the dynamic, flowing, ‘now’.
  2. Agility – the capacity to dance with ‘what is’ – then novelty, the unexpected, becomes less of a disruptor.
  3. Engagement – where more intimate relationships enable a more creative dance – with mutual adaptation to a rhythm – the heartbeat of the shared outcome.
  4. Resilience – the capacity to recover quickly from a setback or disappointment, such as a disruption. With the ability to make timely adjustment that accompanies presence and agility, the negative effects of disruption are diminished.
  5. Creativity – this is about willing responsiveness to the unexpected, or to challenges, by the readiness and confidence to experiment – to try something new.

 

The most significant of the abilities remains the cultivation of ‘presence’.

This is because our personal or shared organisational knowledge is typically based on past experience and hence becomes integrated into the prevailing belief systems that support our behaviours and practices, or our organisational culture.  Becoming more ‘present’ is not only a greater state of awareness, it’s also a practice.

Holism and Conscious Consulting – as holistic consultants or senior advisers we can thus:

  • Provide additional eyes and ears to those who have the opportunity to experience our presence – we serve as catalysts to help unlock their own deeper wisdom.
  • We learn to dance in consciousness between the personal (our own unique gifts) and the universal (the creative greater opportunity) – becoming more creative agents in life’s evolutionary flow.

 

This means that leadership can consequently now be fundamentally redefined in the holistic perspective:

  • Rather than being about position, rank, or status, and the capacity to exercise authority, holistic leadership can be seen as the innate capacity to influence self and others. This includes family, community, business or organisation, and the influence is always towards a deeper, more satisfying experience of life-enhancing value.
  • With holistic presence ‘Self’ expands from the particular to the universal, seeing the issue being attended to in its greater context. With holistic presence the universal wisdom can be better brought to bear on the particular in a creative dance – the essence of Conscious Consulting.

Learn more about Holism on the Conscious Consulting Podcast

Rewatch our Conscious Conversation about Holism

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