Spirit and development

“Spirit” appears to be an “airy-fairy” and hard-to-grasp thing. It is, and it is also very real. You all notice what is special about an organisation, team, or person when their spirit, or yours, is centred, connected, energetic, and flowing. Then astonishingly wonderful and unpredictable things happen, and people achieve “the impossible.” I hope to offer some practical developmental ideas you can use to encourage this.

The problems and benefits of working with the spirit

In many organisations, people connect rather superficially. This level of connection may be enough to get the work done adequately. However, when you have a deep, open, honest and trusting connection, you can share what you are, hope for and believe. You release energy to achieve amazing things.

Connecting at a deep level can be frightening, leaving you feeling open and vulnerable. This quality of connection to others also strengthens our connection to ourselves. Some people have a deep fear of intimacy, even of intimacy with themselves.

These fears are just feelings. With caring leadership, practical tools, and good facilitation, you can go through them and come out to a place where you feel at home with yourself and others and know that you have a worthwhile task to do together.

Some solutions

Core Process

Chris Bull introduced me to the “Core Process” several years ago. The idea is that we are all uniquely good and have unique talents. At our core, a unique positive process operates continuously. We experience it most clearly when things are going very well or when we are emerging strongly from a difficult time. The core process appears to be unchanging. Finding it gives you a clear sense of who you are and what you are here on this planet to do.

You can help someone find their core process by listening to a story when they were fully alive and fulfilled. Then, help them discover the essence of what they were doing as a verb and a noun. These phrases are all memorable, and the person often feels that their phrase makes sense of their life experience and purpose. I have had the privilege of knowing “lighting fires”, “growing life”, “revealing magnificence”, “detonating mixtures” and many more.

From one spiritual perspective, I imagine that when we become incarnate, we have a job to do that fits us perfectly. Everything works wonderfully well when we do our job, our core process!

This work centres people and helps them build their energy and self-esteem. They decide to be the person they truly are and act with courage and determination.

Imagine the energy and mutual trust that flow in a team where everybody knows and values each other’s unique strengths and gifts.

The core process has become central to my work. I help people find theirs and also train people to deliver it.

Sharing our dreams

Another way of looking at the spirit is to consider it as something that guides our evolution toward something greater. It is hard to think that evolution has stopped with us. I believe that evolution is continuing, but it is now more obviously cultural rather than physical. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, in “The Phenomenon of Man,” predicted that the next stage of evolution would be a shared consciousness through our interconnected thoughts across the planet. He called this shared connection the “noosphere”. The Internet is a step on the way. It enables us to connect more efficiently than ever before.

I also believe that we have more in common than what separates us. We are one family; all of us are related to everyone else if you go far enough back. The same spirit runs through all of us. We also have common interests and shared aspirations: to be at peace, to learn, to enjoy and preserve our world, to serve, to have happy families, and to have enough to eat. Unfortunately, most of us have often heard that these hopes are “naive and idealistic”, and we find it hard to share them. However, in my experience, we discover we want the same things when we share our dreams because there is enough trust to do so. A shared vision is enormously liberating.

You can test this the next time you work with a group. Ask them to take turns saying how they would like things to be and see what happens. I have done this many times and have never found conflicts in what people want. After this, working with them to find their way forward is easy.

There are some simple ways to do this in Vision Building and the literature on Appreciative Inquiry.

Connecting deeply.

I have noticed that when I am functioning well, I can sometimes be so present with another person that I can pick up their unspoken feelings. Perhaps I feel sad, even want to cry, when there is no reason to be unhappy, and the other person is talking about something neutral. But when I say, “I am feeling sad and am wondering where that is coming from”, the other person owns up to being very sad and talks about it, or cries. I don’t understand how this happens, so maybe this, too, is in the realm of spirit. I know it happens more when I have had lots of good “listening to” myself,f so I am not preoccupied with my feelings and experiences.

If you want to build an intense connection with someone, look into each other’s eyes for a minute. It is a profound experience, as you can’t help caring as you see each other. In organisations as they are, this level of connection may not be necessary. You can build strong connections by paying attention and listening to each other. Mutual listening also builds the spirit of the organisation.

One very practical way to do this in a team is to ask people to share their personal stories while the rest of the group listens. You don’t want every detail, of course, but say three or four highs and lows can give you all a very clear idea of what makes each other tick and builds trust. There is a lifeline exercise on the website that does this, and you are welcome to use it.