What is Syntropic Facilitation?
The Context
We are facing the collision of –
A meta crisis: the end of fossil fuels, autocratic takeover, technological power in the hands of immature adults, biotech, AI, climate collapse, species extinction, wars, famine, ethnic cleansing, late-stage capitalism, the erosion of the middle class in favour of the obscene billionaire class.
A world changing faster than we have the ability to adapt.
An absence of leaders who understand whole systems thinking and complexity science.
Syntropic Facilitation is the unique ability to hold the tension between multiple competing polarities and navigate a pathway through.
Syntropic Facilitation is ideal for the following scenarios.
- Fracture and fragmentation within a leadership or executive team or board over strategy, particularly in response to the clashing global events.
- Start-up design, where the team needs to hone a strategy that is resilient.
- Finding common ground in uncommon places. Community development and collaboration when the polarities are extreme.
- Creating highly adaptive, resilient, diverse teams that endure.
- Unlocking real innovation within a team or project that is trapped by old structures and systems.
- Create coherent order in chaos.
The following is a list of some of the skills of a Syntropic Master Facilitator.
Manage Complexity
To manage complexity, you need to know it. You need to understand the difference between a complicated system and a complex one. Complicated problems are solvable; they tend towards linearity, and there is an underlying structure and predictability.
Complexity is non-linear, emergent, and unpredictable. There is an order in the chaos, but it is a strange attractor and counterintuitive to most human thinking.
Managing diversity of opinions and worldviews
More than managing, it is important to create a clearing for difference so as to build respect. It is often the voices that we seek to erase that offer the leverage point that tips a system. Particularly the voices of those who have been at the effect of the change we are addressing in the facilitation.
Create appropriate tension and polarity.
Syntropic Facilitation requires tension and polarity to create the conditions of genius and creativity. Too much sameness and we tend toward collapse. Too much difference, and we tend towards explosion.
Setting the stage for tension and polarity is key to innovation.
Skilfully manipulate the context and shape of the facilitation so that rogue elements will reveal themselves spontaneously.
The purpose of this skilful manipulation is for the increased well-being of all participants. A Syntropic Facilitator will create the conditions where someone who is unaware of the damage they are doing to others and the project can see themselves reflected and name their behaviour.
Surface brilliance that usually remains hidden
Those who linger in the background or who fear speaking up, the introverts and quiet people who have unacknowledged value to bring, need to be heard and seen.
Get the group to generate action spontaneously.
When the action is generated from within rather than told to, people take more ownership. A skilled Syntropic facilitator will create the space where the people generate the needed actions.
Synthesise multiple threads to weave a sense-making strategy and practical next steps
If you are too close to the action, it is hard to see the thread that binds it all together. A Syntropic Facilitator can see the threads, weave them together and then allow the group to generate actions.
Manage multi-direction energy
People want different outcomes, to employ different strategies, to go in different directions. How do we bring all of these energies into a coherent and aligned whole?
Create Safety
Even with the requisite tension, there needs to be a strong sense of safety. Do people trust that if they speak up, they will be listened to respectfully, without repercussions, ridicule and judgment? Is there a place for emotional, spiritual and physical safety?
Adapt, direct and enable flow
And to do this as an emergent property, for Syntropic Facilitation does not live on a linear schedule.
Flesh out confusion, unformed thinking and ideas and bring them to coherence
Asking great questions, seeking to understand, weaving, synthesising, creating clarity and coherence for all participants.
Lead a path towards the desired resolution
If there is a big difference of opinion, conflict, charged emotions, or outright emotional war, find common ground and move all divided parties towards resolution.
See the endpoint far in advance
Not attached to the form of the endpoint, but holding the tension between the now and the emergent future, a Syntropic Facilitator will, through their very intention, create a pathway for all to arrive at the desired endpoint.
Address the power differentials
There are usually power differentials, true and perceived. Naming them and managing them allows a field to be created where a different power takes place. The power of the aligned collective and the individual agents able to act for a common good.
Challenge assumptions and unnamed expectations
Assumptions and expectations are generally rife. Naming them, removing them, and giving people the skills to do the same is critical to any healthy human relationships.
Name gaslighting, belittling, blind spots
And do so in a way that supports healthy change towards respectful, dignified relationships.
Be supremely comfortable with emergence
The ability to trust the next step will be present, as well as the wisdom of the people and the power of the intentional field.
Allow natural leaders to step up
Give people the chance to lead, shine and take responsibility.
Create clear, clean strong boundaries
Under any great Syntropic Facilitation, a relational structure and design are deeply considered and held by the facilitator well in advance of the facilitation. This is the magic that people feel but usually cannot see, as it is not usually a physical structure.
PS. If your enterprise could benefit from Syntropic Facilitation, or if you know a team or enterprise who could, please reply to this email and we can make time to discuss.
