Systems Coaching LLC nurtures resilience in individuals and organizations by helping leaders engage and expand their integrity, i.e. their capacity for self-definition and self-regulation, in the face of challenges. This site will regularly share information and reflections on using the perspective of Bowen Systems in order to increase personal and organizational resilience.
Oxford defines RESILIENCE as the capacity of a person to withstand or to recover quickly from difficult conditions. Resilience depends upon the activation of resources that are already present at a person’s creation, i.e. from conception, and impacted thereafter by one’s environment and experience. Developing resilience is a regeneration or self-creation process and a matter of engaging and supporting the natural resources of the person; it is supported by one’s responses to events and relationships.
Resilience is nature’s imaginative response to challenge. It is the ability to adapt in the presence of challenges to “self.” Its characteristics are …
- a natural, inherent capacity to recover, the capacity of a living organism to remove or repair damaged structures.
- a balance of togetherness and individuality in relationships.
- recognition that the experience of anxiety or trauma is not in an event, but rather in the response to an event.
- awareness that greater resilience results from a broader repertoire of responses.
- a dependence on self-definition and self-regulation, i.e. the capacity to be separate from an anxious context and the willingness to be vulnerable.
- vision, the ability to see beyond the moment and to hold reasonable goals for the future. Vision reflects the integrity of one’s being and is at the heart of one’s capacity for self-regulation. It determines how we gather and organize information, which in turn is directly related to how we gather and organize our life.
The same general principles govern the nurturing of resilience for organizations by virtue of an organization’s dependence on the resilience of its leaders.
Society, family and work systems generate powerful anxiety. In those contexts one’s response is a vital resource. What is required is self-defined leadership, i.e. the capacity to define oneself, regulate one’s reactivity, and increase one’s ability to endure pain while learning to benefit from the challenge of change.
This kind of leadership brings presence and vision to an organization and a family. It promotes health and a more expansive view of the future. It is critical in promoting and protecting the growth, survival and life both of the leader and of the systems he/she is a part of.
The work that Systems Coaching LLC does with individuals and organizations facilitates the learning and the application of Bowen Family Systems Theory to families and work systems. This theoretical framework provides a way to think about the complexity and anxiety of current life and relationships, and to cultivate a more thoughtful plan for one’s personal, family, and work life. The most important work is to define oneself more clearly in work and family systems while examining the connections between the two. It is work that will result in the deepest level of learning and change.
Resilience 