Language - how important are words?

Had a most interesting discussion with some of my colleagues this morning. We all work with the Genuine Contact program, which is a holistic approach for development of organizations. It contains different tools, some of them meeting methods. You know, if you facilitate for example a board meeting around large tables, it tells the participants one thing and if you facilitate it in a circle of chairs with no table, it says something else. What process you choose has a big impact on the results. What we offer are processes that creates a life nurturing climate in the organization or meeting and by that creates far better results than you ever expected. Short explanation of something that is better experienced than talked about.
This morning we discussed the name of the program and the name of one of the meeting methods, Whole Person Process and what it means to use English words in Sweden. We talked about how you can translate names, if it is even possible. Do we need to have the names in our own language and why? Some people said it was almost impossible to market or discuss the program because of the difficult English name. Is that really so or is there something else that stops us from talking about these great tools we use? Do we think that we can not speak from our hearts in a business environment but have to conform to what we believe this environment wants? Or is it something else that prevents us from naming the tools we work with?
Is it the same with other tools you have in your toolbox? Or is it maybe because the GC program works also on the spiritual and energetic level, and I assume many tools facilitators use are working on these levels.
Thinking about working at a spiritual and energetic level - I think it is essential to discuss the foundation and values of a program or tool, because every tool or process you use, also when you are leading a regular board meeting, has its underpinning values. Those meetings I call regular board meetings, around a big table, with a chairmen and a list of speakers, are based on how men speak. In this kind of meeting, the decisions are actually made somewhere else, in a small group of people or by one person and then presented for the board to make the formal decision. Very rarely are the participants protesting against what is presented to them. Very interesting that we seldom think about that this kind of meeting was designed in the industrial era when men were in charge of the business and political environment.
So why do we need to adjust our conversation and words to that kind of environment? I believe we need more heart and spirit in business.

If you have not yet learnt about the program you can read more on www.genuinecontact.net or in Swedish on my website www.gatewayc.com

"En droppe droppad i livets älv
har ingen kraft till att flyta själv
Det ställs ett krav på varenda droppe:
Hjälp till att hålla de andra oppe!”

("A drop in the river of life, does not have strength on its own to float

So there is a demand on each of the others: Support everyone to stay on top". My try to translate the content of  a qoute from Tage Danielsson, who was a wonderful deep thinking Swedish poet. )

Resonant energy fields

Today I read the posting of Birgitt Williams, Dalar International Consultancy, on her blog Genuine Contact Way. She writes about whether the energy fields of facilitators are affecting the meetings they are facilitating. Her discussion is specifically about facilitators of Open Space Technology meetings. I think the discussion could be about any facilitator and/or leader and how their energy field affects their environment and the results in a meeting and workplace.

I imagine that many of you have experienced a time when you entered a room and immediately got a sense of the climate in that room. I remember very well when I was elected to the church board and thought it would be a very nice experience. When I entered the room to participate in my first meeting, it was like walking into a solid wall of antagonism. I later found out that some people in that room disliked each other so much that they could hardly bear to be together in the meeting. Of course this energy field affected the whole meeting and the results of it. There were constant misunderstandings and problems to come to agreements.

We are all energy field generators. When we are in a position as a leader/facilitator we might have more space where the energy field could extend. If the leader/facilitator wants to achieve positive results, the energy field needs to be resonant. A resonant energy field is vibrating at a frequency that is harmonious, which means that it is a natural vibration that takes little effort to sustain. Our energy field is made up of emotions and thoughts among other things. To be able to generate resonant energy fields, we could do our homework with self towards a state of positive loving thoughts and allowing the emotions to guide us without dominating us.

The energy fields of the leaders are often influencing the workplace more than that of the co-workers. So when the leaders want to change the culture of their organization, they also have to attend to their own energy field and then generate the energy they want to have in their organization. Easy said, not so easy done. In every workshop with Birgitt Williams, where I have participated, and they are quite a few, she usually tell the participants that this is homework for tomorrow but the rest is homework for a lifetime.

Do you like the resonant energy field generator below? Beautiful, isn´t it?