Practitioner Angst OD in uncertain times Presented by Lucille Greeff

August 2013

Turn sideways into the light as they say the old ones did and disappear

into the originality of it all.

Be impatient with easy explanations and teach that part of the mind that wants to know everything

not to begin questions it cannot answer

David Whyte – from Tobar Phadraic

Flow of the session

• Field

• Connect

• Learning

Angst describes a profound and deep-seated condition in human beings.

Where animals are guided solely by instinct, said Kierkegaard, human beings enjoy a freedom of choice

that we find both appealing and terrifying.

Angst is defined as a feeling of deep anxiety or dread, typically an unfocused one about the human condition

or the state of the world in general

• Social Angst

• Angst of OD profession

• Organisational Angst

• Cultural manifestations of angst

• Spiral Dynamics

• Generations

• What do I do with angst?

• What do I do because of angst?

• What don’t I do?

• Motivations, fears, subconscious , meaning

• Existential

• Beingness

• Enneagram Individual Interior

Self & Consciousness

Individual Exterior

Brain & Behaviour

Collective Exterior

Social System & Environment

Collective Interior

Culture & Worldview

Kierkegaard

People understand me so little that they do not even understand when I complain of being

misunderstood

Kierkegaard wanted his tombstone to read: "Søren Kierkegaard (1813-...), That Individual."

Heidegger Not by means of conceptual analysis, but through the emotional experience of angst that we can learn what we basically are as human beings “All things, and we with them, sink into indifference. But not in the sense that everything simply disappears. Rather, in the very drawing away from us as such, things turn toward us. This drawing away of everything in its totality, which in angst is happening all around us, haunts us. There is nothing to hold on to. The only thing that remains and comes over us--in this drawing away of everything--is this "nothingness”.” – Heidegger (1931) Heidegger connects angst with feeling uncanny. The German word for uncanny is "unheimlich," the literal meaning of which is "not-at-home."

The Enneagram

Have to do the right / good thing

Have to help those in need

Have to outshine the rest

Have to be unique Have to understand

Have to belong & be safe

Have to experience it all, be free from constraint

Have to be in control

Have to keep the balance, be settled

Type Boundary Pattern

1 Fluid No matter what I do, I will never get it right / will never be good.

2 Fluid No matter how much I give, I will never be deserving of love.

3 Closed No matter what I achieve/do, I am still empty.

4 Open There is nothing special about me, no matter how authentic I am, I am a fraud. Life has no meaning.

5 Open Understanding and knowledge means nothing. The world is unknowable and does not make sense.

6 Fluid The world is unsafe. I cannot trust anything or anyone.

7 Closed No matter how much I experience, life is painful. I am trapped. Freedom is an illusion

8 Closed I cannot control the world. Things are out of my grasp. Exposure.

9 Open No matter how much I compromise, the world is unsettling. There is no harmony to be found

Reflective space

1. How are you experiencing this feeling of “not at home” or “nothingness”: – In your life

– In relation to your OD work

2. What are you doing with your angst?

3. What is happening as a result of your angst?

• Social Angst

• Angst of OD profession

• Organisational Angst

• Cultural manifestations of angst

• Spiral Dynamics

• Generations

• What do I do with angst?

• What do I do because of angst?

• What don’t I do?

• Motivations, fears, subconscious , meaning

• Existential

• Beingness

• Enneagram Individual Interior

Self & Consciousness

Individual Exterior

Brain & Behaviour

Collective Exterior

Social System & Environment

Collective Interior

Culture & Worldview

Spiral Dynamics

• Where is OD on the spiral?

• Where is South Africa?

• Where am I?

• What generational influence?

Practising OD in South Africa

• How does the spiral help me make sense of angst that I may be experiencing as a result of the psycho-cultural archaeology of our times?

Angst in the world • Social Angst in first world

– Depressive success – Deficit of meaning – Historically, the convergence of a technological boom with exponential

economic growth and integration tends to lead to a flattening and reordering of social hierarchies

• Social Angst post 2008 – The socio-political and economic systems of the world are failing us – Organisations are failing us

• Angst of our profession – OD in crisis? – Where do we fit in the organisation? – Executives & the business don’t take us as seriously as...

Angst in our client organisations

• What is the angst of the CEO?

• What is the angst permeating the business about?

• What is the impact of this angst in the system on our work as OD practitioners?

Angst is a bad thing?

• The encounter with nothingness, according to Heidegger, puts me into a position where I can choose an authentic existence, or where otherwise I can allow myself to fall back into a sort of life where most things are decided by others, or by circumstances of a more or less impersonal nature. Angst, in other words, reveals to me my fundamental freedom.

• Angst is thus not necessarily a negative experience; it can be understood and seized as a precondition for waking up, for a personal liberation. Angst relieves us, as it were, from our herd instinct and enables us to make our own personal decisions.

• Angst can be the means to become our own selves. By prompting us to become genuine individuals, it can make our lives authentic.

• Angst freedom to conceive and re-conceive the world in many ways, and to change one's relation to it accordingly

Work Session

Identify a current project / OD engagement where you are experiencing angst.

– What is my angst about?

– What angst may my key stakeholders be experiencing?

– What angst is floating in the system?

– How do I work with this consciously, using myself as instrument?

When your eyes are tired the world is tired also. When your vision has gone no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark where the night has eyes to recognise its own.

There you can be sure you are not beyond love. The dark will be your womb tonight.

The night will give you a horizon further than you can see.

You must learn one thing: the world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness

to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you.

- David Whyte, Sweet Darkness