Systemic Coaching and Constellations Quotes

“The Walk of Life’: An integration constellation Coach/facilitator: Hazel Chapman, Executive Coach”
― John Whittington, Systemic Coaching and Constellations: The Principles, Practices and Application for Individuals, Teams and Groups

“organizing principles that influence systems. I didn’t know that this approach works as well with abstract issues as it does with interpersonal relationships, and I didn’t know about entanglements, hidden loyalties or the broader ideas and many expressions and”
― John Whittington, Systemic Coaching and Constellations: The Principles, Practices and Application for Individuals, Teams and Groups

“In summary, tuning in to your own secret sentences can be an effective way of realizing just how powerful this kind of hidden language”
― John Whittington, Systemic Coaching and Constellations: The Principles, Practices and Application for Individuals, Teams and Groups

“With individuals ‘Secretly I think I’d do a better job than you.’ ‘Secretly I judge you for not sharing my values.’ ‘Secretly I don’t think you learn and develop fast enough.”
― John Whittington, Systemic Coaching and Constellations: The Principles, Practices and Application for Individuals, Teams and Groups

“Here are some ‘resonant sentences’ to give a sense of what you may find yourself offering as your understanding and scope develop. These are roughly divided into categories; however, it’s hard to be completely clear about this aspect, as they will often overlap or be combined.”
― John Whittington, Systemic Coaching and Constellations: The Principles, Practices and Application for Individuals, Teams and Groups

“We’ve agreed to limit this first look, but I can see you’d like to move on a little further with this. So, choose one of the objects in this map you’ve created and see if you can move it to a place that feels like it is at least a first step towards a better place, a first step to resolution…”
― John Whittington, Systemic Coaching and Constellations: The Principles, Practices and Application for Individuals, Teams and Groups

“This makes it a useful thing to do early on in the coaching process and relationship.”
― John Whittington, Systemic Coaching and Constellations: The Principles, Practices and Application for Individuals, Teams and Groups

“Moving into the first stage”
― John Whittington, Systemic Coaching and Constellations: The Principles, Practices and Application for Individuals, Teams and Groups

“The following summary is designed to provide an introductory overview of the contexts in which the principles and practices can be usefully applied:”
― John Whittington, Systemic Coaching and Constellations: The Principles, Practices and Application for Individuals, Teams and Groups

“A system is not the sum of the parts but a product of their interactions. Russ Ackoff”
― John Whittington, Systemic Coaching and Constellations: The Principles, Practices and Application for Individuals, Teams and Groups

“An exercise for yourself”
― John Whittington, Systemic Coaching and Constellations: The Principles, Practices and Application for Individuals, Teams and Groups

“Imagine it like a magnet. You can see the effect it has on the iron filings, but you can’t see the magnetic field that’s at work.”
― John Whittington, Systemic Coaching and Constellations: The Principles, Practices and Application for Individuals, Teams and Groups

“Whatever you try to exclude will always hold a powerful energy that will distract until it is re-included.”
― John Whittington, Systemic Coaching and Constellations: The Principles, Practices and Application for Individuals, Teams and Groups

“A business or ‘organizational system’ can be looked at as a continuously changing mass of relationships, hierarchies, loyalties and motivations. Like a cloud it hangs in delicate balance, with each part connected to and influencing each other part. When all of the elements have their place, are free to move and play their part, systemic coherence can be achieved.”
― John Whittington, Systemic Coaching and Constellations: The Principles, Practices and Application for Individuals, Teams and Groups

“The world has not to be put in order: the world is order incarnate. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order, to know what is the world order in contradistinction to the”
― John Whittington, Systemic Coaching and Constellations: The Principles, Practices and Application for Individuals, Teams and Groups

“This experience leads to an understanding of these ‘natural orders’, ‘organizing principles’ or ‘forces’ that sustain systems. That’s why this approach is referred to as phenomenological,”
― John Whittington, Systemic Coaching and Constellations: The Principles, Practices and Application for Individuals, Teams and Groups

“To begin to develop our systemic awareness we need to start distinguishing between what is natural and what is familiar. Oana Ta˘nase Systemic coaching and leadership begin with an awareness that organizations are unnatural living systems governed by the natural ordering forces that are attempting to create a coherent structure and order. Our brilliant rational minds and imagination fool themselves into thinking we can force through organizational”
― John Whittington, Systemic Coaching and Constellations: The Principles, Practices and Application for Individuals, Teams and Groups

“This is an approach underpinned by universal principles that maintain system coherence.”
― John Whittington, Systemic Coaching and Constellations: The Principles, Practices and Application for Individuals, Teams and Groups

“While we worry about designs and structures, tweak procedures and rules, insist on compliance and control, we never succeed in creating an organization by these activities. Human organizations emerge”
― John Whittington, Systemic Coaching and Constellations: The Principles, Practices and Application for Individuals, Teams and Groups

“Your personal and professional journey, which will require you to become guilty in relationship to some previous systems, will be enriched if you keep the importance and role of belonging in heart and in mind.”
― John Whittington, Systemic Coaching and Constellations: The Principles, Practices and Application for Individuals, Teams and Groups

“Who would smile on you if you stayed exactly where you are?”
― John Whittington, Systemic Coaching and Constellations: The Principles, Practices and Application for Individuals, Teams and Groups

“This might sound like a strange question, but to whom would you be disloyal, feel guilty, if you made a clear decision about this, the right decision for you?”
― John Whittington, Systemic Coaching and Constellations: The Principles, Practices and Application for Individuals, Teams and Groups

“To whom are you loyal when you do that?”
― John Whittington, Systemic Coaching and Constellations: The Principles, Practices and Application for Individuals, Teams and Groups

“Solutions are often experienced as dangerous because they make people lonely, whereas problems attract company. Problems often attach themselves to feelings of innocence and loyalty, whereas solutions are often associated with feelings of betrayal or guilt. Not that such feelings of guilt are reasonable, but they are experienced as feelings of betrayal and guilt all the same. That’s why the transition from the problem to the solution is so difficult.”
― John Whittington, Systemic Coaching and Constellations: The Principles, Practices and Application for Individuals, Teams and Groups

“It takes courage to make the transition from our original conscience group. When this movement into guilt is facilitated with respect and acknowledgment for what was given and what was received it can bring profound growth and strength. Alastair Kidd”
― John Whittington, Systemic Coaching and Constellations: The Principles, Practices and Application for Individuals, Teams and Groups

“People who learn how to become ‘guilty’ to their primary system in a respectful way – integrating what was useful and looking at what was not with a systemic lens and compassion for what was possible for those who came before them – will be able to tolerate and learn from a wider range of attitudes and behaviours without judgement over them.”
― John Whittington, Systemic Coaching and Constellations: The Principles, Practices and Application for Individuals, Teams and Groups

“An ongoing tension between our personal conscience and the organizational conscience is at the root of much chronic stress and exhaustion at work. Our sense of belonging and wellbeing in an organizational system comes in large part from our sense of what we have to agree with, or what we have to compromise, to belong.”
― John Whittington, Systemic Coaching and Constellations: The Principles, Practices and Application for Individuals, Teams and Groups

“What was the benefit and cost of being a member of each?”
― John Whittington, Systemic Coaching and Constellations: The Principles, Practices and Application for Individuals, Teams and Groups

“To whom are you being loyal when you behave like that/stay stuck like that/respond like that? Who would look at your ‘dysfunction’ and be quietly pleased? To which relationship system in which you have belonged is your behaviour/reaction/response an act of loyalty? To whom would you be disloyal if you chose to behave differently? Who would not be pleased?”
― John Whittington, Systemic Coaching and Constellations: The Principles, Practices and Application for Individuals, Teams and Groups

“All behaviour makes sense when you look at it in the context of the system to which it is an act of loyalty.”
― John Whittington, Systemic Coaching and Constellations: The Principles, Practices and Application for Individuals, Teams and Groups