TRAINING  &  COACHING  for  MANAGERS & LEADERS

Case Histories

Chaos, Coaching & Therapy

Individual Excellence & Survival

Chaos, complexity and catastrophe theories can be called sciences of relationships. They provide models which can be used to improve relationship coaching, counseling and therapy. A systems approach to consciousness can apply these models to human identity, beliefs and behavior.

Systemic coaching helps people renew their experience of identity, simultaneously changing limiting beliefs and subsequent behavior. Instead of trying to change life according to some dogma or pre-systemic statistical model, systemic coaching helps people live with integrity.

Chaos in Coaching & Psychotherapy

In the 14th century, William of Occam criticized people who created complex explanations for simple phenomena, saying "Do not multiply entities needlessly". This phrase, called Occam's Razor, helped people "cut" through complex theories. In the 20th century, Albert Einstein updated this, saying, "Make everything as simple as possible - but not simpler".

For millennia, our ancestors pondered the creation of order. They created simple stories that described the emergence of systems from chaos. These early descriptions comprise primitive chaos theories and a basis for modern systems theory.

Chaos theory can be applied to human relationship systems. The emerging fields of systemic coaching and systemic psychotherapy provide massive insight into the behavior of individuals. Applications of chaos theory in the social sciences can unite physical, emotional, mental and spiritual realities.

Poincaré's perceptions are relevant to human systems. Civilizations rise and fall, but never in the same way twice. Minor events to individual people can change the world in unpredictable ways.

Lies, Damned Lies & Statistics

Before chaos theory, scientists could not find analytical solutions for complex systems, and could not predict complex behavior, even with detailed knowledge. To avoid complexity, scientists assumed that behavior in complex systems was linear, and applied statistical analysis to assess and predict the behavior of populations. In a pre-systemic world, individual contributions to a population are ignored. If individual excellence is smeared across populations, social sciences are sciences of mediocrity.

In linear human systems, babies would smoothly transform into adults; businesses could effortlessly change from making candles to making electric lights; and countries could gently shift from communist to capitalist. Periods of chaos are normal in living systems. During these times unexpected opportunities compete for survival in a changing environment. Order in Chaos: fractal by Martyn Carruthers 2003

Assumptions of linearity and an obsession with statistics provided scientists with "temporary patches" until the universal properties of non-linear, complex systems were discovered. These assumptions, these damned lies, are still used to blur individual expertise across populations. The sciences of human behavior, which could be our greatest human achievement, became dull, weak and manipulative.

The temporary patches of statistics, like temporary taxes, dominate social sciences. Yet the modeling and replication of human excellence is available ... see Expert Modeling ... part of systemic coaching.

The I of Identity

Your subjective experience of your objective reality - your semantic "map of the world" - your answer to the question "Who am I?" is reflected in your behavior. Your every action reflects your perception of reality - and your perceptions are bounded by your past actions - you live in a phase space.

Without the need to solve complex problems, there might be no human personality. There might be many bodies, and no reason to label individuals. A bee-hive society would lack a phase space in which individual differences are important. And it would lack the ability to create its own future.

Your behavior is predictable within the limits imposed by your perception of your environment. No matter how much you think, you are unlikely to leave the safety of your thoughts. You remain within the confines of your beliefs. Your beliefs act as attractors of your attention and your possible actions.

As complex systems are now modeled with computers, chaos theory is widely applied in technology. Yet it is largely ignored by social scientists, for whom complexity remains hidden under pre-systemic assumptions of linearity, an obsession with statistics and resistance to change.

Phase Transitions at the Edge of Chaos

You can adapt to your environment, and to changing conditions within limits. Yet, like all self-organizing systems, you walk on the "edge of chaos" - close to a phase transition in which either you or your environment changes in ways that you cannot control ... and perhaps cannot survive.

In a crisis, tiny details from your past can have enormous and unpredictable impact on your actions. You may surprise everybody, including yourself, with solutions that prolong your survival. Crisis provides motivation - not only for you to change - but for you to transform.

On the edge of chaos, when nothing makes sense and everything is possible, miracles can happen. But hoping for a miracle rarely ensures survival. Survival requires endurance, a benefactor, or transformation - a change in identity that helps you find and manifest previously unimaginable solutions. The domain of chaos coaching is the domain of miracles.

Chaos coaching can take you to the cutting edge of your reality... to the edge of chaos ... where you can build a new identity and find systemic solutions for your problems. We may also provide personality templates for people who want to re-engineer their personalities.

[ Chaos Coaching - Part 2 ]

[ Expert Modeling ] [ Knowledge Management ] [ Systems Theory ]