We need social flourishing practices in our organisations and in our world

In a post-covid environment, organisations will need to expand their investment in restorative social processes that overcome burnout, broken trust, and alienation in teams. Generational, class and racial divides continue to challenge team coherence and performance, reducing innovation and eroding the trust and belonging required for co-creation and collaboration.

To overcome dissonance and disconnection in hybrid teams, small group engagement methods and social flourishing practices will need to go beyond the limitations of words and the traps of political correctness. The more difficult tensions in teams become, and the greater the complexities in the external environment, the more innovative, compassionate, and gentle ?the interventions will need to become. We are not living in easy times. Many systemic challenges further exacerbate our capacity to navigate life and help us thrive. We need holistic social flourishing practices which ?restore the mind, the heart, and the soul within individuals and at the same time build bridges in groups.

We will need to introduce processes which?build relational culture by strengthening connection, collective wisdom, and collective EQ.?Finding Us in Music ? (FUIM) is one highly effective solution perfect for these times.

HOW IT WORKS

???????Accredited Finding Us in Music Facilitators work with team leaders to identify a framing theme or question e.g. ?what leadership strengths, sources of resilience, gifts each person is bringing to the team? ?Theme topics are limitless and are selected to meet the particular needs of each team.

·????????Team members receive a two- page invitation and orientation document, which invites a re-shaping of the way they relate to their own inner world and to music.?They learn to listen to themselves and music differently and through a reflective process, ?choose a song which enables them to discover resonance and integration in their inner world. The choice of a song helps them to integrate and embody the essence of a personal quality they seek to name, ?claim and share.

·????????Each person is free to draw from the richness of his/her cultural heritage and life story.

·????????Each member makes meaning of ?a personal quality and is given a week to choose a song which embodies an inner quality. This pre-work is essential inner work which occurs prior to the group session. Each person prepares to contextualise the song before playing the song to a small group (on-line or face to face in groups of ?4 - 8 people).

·????????The facilitator creates the conditions for psychological safety and role models nuanced and compassionate listening as well as conscious, accurate and appreciative feedback. Group members learn to embody conscious listening and feedback.

Ideally, this methodology works best when team members know each other. It is not intended to be ?a “let’s get to know each other” ?icebreaker, but a unique immersive process which is profoundly restorative because it builds a strong felt sense of belonging and mutual recognition.

WHY FINDING US IN MUSIC FUIM) WORKS

This facilitated experience invites in a?different quality of listening and attention -?a softer more emotionally intelligent and empathic embodiment of attention. The presence of music itself changes the atmosphere and significantly transforms and extends the lenses through which people can discover connections and resonances. This happens both within ?individuals and ?within the group. Music softens and lengthens the heart strings and so internal coherence, whether dissonant or harmonious, can become more easily articulated and recognised.?Music surfaces “new truths” and builds new bonds in a way that words cannot. As the cellist Yo Yo Ma says: "Music is one of the ways we can achieve a kind of shorthand to understand each other. "

The FUIM process helps members?experience?wholeness, belonging, inspiration, caring because there is permission to be real. People are seen and heard, witnessed, appreciated and re-membered. Teams discover what emerges from?weaving together the ?paradoxes, the beauty, the complexity?and diversity of their inner worlds,?in a way that evolves a shared understanding of who they are as a collective. A new multi- dimensional dynamic social kaleidoscope becomes visible.

BENEFITS of FINDING US IN MUSIC?

·????????Heightens group engagement;?deepens connection and collaboration and strengthens the capacity for greater empathic listening.

·????????The democratic ethos of the methodology enriches creativity and imagination and reduces power dynamics.?All voices are allocated equal time, and everyone is seen and heard.

·????????Ground-breaking insights develop within the individuals and the team, so?teams learn and evolve.

·????????The permission to express emotion and spirituality scales up the intimacy within the session and creates the lived experience of?greater belonging.

·????????Inclusion is built in teams?through the experienced of other- centred and heart-centred listening and through appreciative inquiry, as opposed to judgement.

·????????Accelerates the building of trust in a group because of the profound levels of intimacy and sharing that emerges.?As a group bonds, radical insights arise, empathy and wisdom emerge, and invisible yet resilient bridges are built.

·????????Helps people move through unconscious biases and jump over internal barriers to transformation more easily.

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ORGANISATIONAL VALUE OF FUIM

Finding Us in Music??offers teams and organisations a structured, disciplined, yet restorative and regenerative group engagement methodology which results in deep connection and belonging. While all art forms open up hearts and minds, music combined with and meaning making and listening with conscious intention, combines to create a space for evolution in self and resilience in relationships. Because the invitation to deepen conscious awareness, a more authentic and holistic picture of each person’s inner world is revealed and becomes visible to others. This level of sharing when expanded to members of a mature group develops high levels of relatedness, empathy, and mutual respect, enhancing the team’s collective EQ. Ultimately the process ignites the social alchemy, enables greater social coherence creating strong foundations for co-creation and collaboration.

TESTIMONIALS

“Music evokes an unforced, natural vulnerability, like nothing else can in me. You cannot help but be vulnerable and true when evoked by music. In three hours, I learned so much about my team in Barbara’s session. I learned their souls’ truths to an extent deeper than I know my own friends.”?Dr Chitsadi Thulare,?former student leader, Tygerberg Medical School, Stellenbosch University, South Africa

“The use of music and the meaning it offers people in understanding their gifts, reveals more of that human being’s essence and contribution than words alone. Because it speaks to the profound life- giving driver in their lives. The music enables a deepening of the appreciation. What FUIM offers is a safe space for discovering and freeing up personal resources that are latent, often unseen or neglected in the person’s own organizational culture.”??Howard Goodman, Director Gate House, Cape Town, South Africa.

Barbara Nussbaum is based in Cape Town South Africa. She is an award-winning social change maker and innovator, Penguin Author and is the Founder and Director of Finding Us in Music ?.?https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/barbaranussbaum/?For more information contact:?[email protected]??Whats app +27 82 628 1886 to book a session, learn about training opportunities with Barbara or ask how you can be referred to an accredited Finding Us in Music Facilitator.?Website:?Finding Us in Music? – Barbara Nussbaum

Related reading:

Frederick Chavalit Tsao and Chris Laszlo: Quantum Leadership: New Consciousness in Business (Stanford Business Books 2019)

Chris Laszlo and Judy Sorum Brown: Flourishing: The New Spirit of Business Enterprise (Stanford University Press, 2014)

Thomas Huebl: Healing Collective Trauma: a process for investigating our intergenerational and cultural wounds , (Sounds True, 2020)

Judi Neal (editor) Handbook on Personal and Organisational Transformation (Springer, New York, 2018. The link below will take you to a chapter contributed by Barbara to this book – it outlines the theory and offers a case study of how Finding Us in Music has been applied.

https://www.findingusinmusic.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Barbara-Nussbaum-Chapter-Finding-Us-in-Music-Final-March-9.pdf

Barbara is an award winning social change maker, the Founder and Director of Finding Us in Music. She offers training sessions for those who wish to become an accredited facilitator, as well as sessions for teams and organisations. She also offers mentoring to inviduals, and is an innovator, a social impact leader, a Penguin author, a champion of conscious business and re-humanising the work place.? She cares about #wholebeing,?#buildingbelonging?#socialflourishingpractice??#social alchemy #consciousleadership?#relationalculture