Читать книгу CONFESSIONS OF A CORPORATE SHAMAN - Harrison Snow - Страница 12

When we talk about something that is not seen but holds the space for something essential, words like soul, spirit, or field are often used. When we use those words in relationship to an individual or a group, it often has something to do with that person’s or that group’s essence. The stronger that essence, the more influence it has on the world around it.

Individuals who identify with each other create their own collective field of influence. This group soul or field, in turn, influences the conscious and unconscious behaviors of the individual members.

Much of that influence is shaped by events and people in the past as well as the present. Joining the Boy Scouts or becoming a member of an outlaw motorcycle gang could, over time, dramatically affect your character and actions in drastically different directions.

In 1894 the French sociologist Emile Durkheim introduced the concept of collective consciousness to explain aspects of group behavior. This concept also tells us something about organizational behavior. According to Durkheim, “The totality of beliefs and sentiments common to the average members of a society forms a determinate system with a life of its own.”² This force operates stealth-like under the radar of awareness. Bringing it to awareness enables more choice over how its influence will affect you.

Developing mission statements and their supporting values and norms is one of the standard outcomes of a corporate retreat. Their purpose is to foster positive behaviors. Yet, they seldom change how people interact with each other. The unwritten culture, how people actually behave, is determined by the collective consciousness the members cocreated over time. The different parts of our own personal self all come together in a collective yet unseen whole we call the soul. An organization is similar in that the different parts form a collective gestalt that we could call its soul field. Symptoms of dysfunction emerge when the connections within this field are disrupted.

Oscar Miro-Quesada, a Peruvian shaman and psychologist, captures the essence of the corporate shaman approach in his description of working with “. . . seen and unseen worlds with the intention to heal and restore harmony among people, social institutions and nature.”³ Restoring harmony is the work of the corporate shaman when those institutions are corporations or agencies made of groups that reside in their own self-made world. Many of the components affecting this harmony are hidden below the level of awareness. The shaman accesses those hidden components and helps restore the broken connections that hinder the flow of information between them.