Meeting point

You may be surprised by the fact that others do not act according to your expectations and wonder what you could have done differently to convince them of the right path. You know the right path and you want them to follow it. So, if you have learned that tolerance is part of that path and you believe that the people around you need to be more tolerant, you go and shout at them: You need to be more tolerant!

From the point of view of someone who wants to change something in others, this seems to be the most direct way to do it, of course. But will you be able to generate more tolerance by using precisely the opposite quality? The answer is probably negative.

The truth is that the other, that other person before you, ultimately exists and is as much the owner of the reality that you share as you are, so your demands may violate the space of his or her individuality and your request may cause rejection, or even more intolerance.

One of the discoveries that the material developed by the ORSCTM Relational and Organizational Systems Coaching program has brought to my life is precisely this: The other exists in a relationship of equality with us, regardless of the role he occupies. Between him and me, there is no empty space or reality determined by hierarchy, there is the common place of our relationship. That relationship that we have begun to create from our first contact, from the first assumptions or certainties, is our true meeting point. In fact, there is no physical possibility of interacting with others outside that framework.

Whatever the type, the relationship will always be there. There will be generative, secure and edifying relationships and there will be turbulent or destructive ones depending, not so much on us or on others, but on the relationship we have built between all of us or even more, on the emotional charge, on the information with which we have fed it.

That is, if our desire is to increase tolerance in a team, family or social group and to do so we introduce more demands into the relationship, it will not be more tolerant, but probably more demanding. It does not matter if what we explicitly ask for is the opposite.

But the relationship or that relational or organizational “system” that we build together is not limited to storing information, the emotional charge emitted by the members that compose it, but it directly conditions us. We are not the same with our parents as with our friends, nor are we the same with our children as with our professional colleagues. We play and joke with one another, trying to have fun, and we introduce into that relationship disinhibition, spontaneity, provocation, play… We try to impress others and we introduce into that other relationship respectability, focus, efficiency… And as a result of that information with which we supply our relationships, we generate that “we,” that new entity or relational system, which understands and conditions us.

If the members of a relational system, whether it be a team, family, committee or community of owners, to name a few examples, ignore this reality, it is very easy for toxins such as contempt, criticism, isolation or defensive attitudes to be included in our habitual way of interacting. Sometimes even with the intention of improving it!

The methodology provided by the ORSCTM Relational and Organizational Systems Coaching program has the virtue of providing managers, future facilitators or coaches, with an operating system that allows them to interact with the members of a team in such a way that this common space, this relationship, is recognized and respected by each one of them. Don’t you think that if we were all more aware of the relationship, the world would be different?