{"id":361,"date":"2009-06-07T21:18:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-07T21:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.wpdude.com\/test\/?p=361"},"modified":"2009-06-07T21:18:00","modified_gmt":"2009-06-07T21:18:00","slug":"integral-training-and-embodied-business-article","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/2009\/06\/integral-training-and-embodied-business-article\/","title":{"rendered":"Integral Training and Embodied Business Article"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Integral Leadership Review have published an article I wrote on Integral Training and Embodied Business.<\/a><\/div>\n

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“I like integral because it gets the job done and allows you to be a human being doing it. I am not an integral philosopher but a \u201cnuts and bolts\u201d kinda guy who works with practical problems.
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Quadrants at Work
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Let\u2019s start with stress management training\u2014this is often the opening piece of training we do with businesses and other organisations (e.g. the British National Health Service, Institute of Development Studies, NGOs, etc). People normally understand that stress is \u201cholistic\u201d\u2014it involves thoughts, emotions, bodily responses (flight or flight), environmental factors (e.g., office design) social support, coping mechanisms and social structures, including hierarchies. It is therefore fairly easy to work in an integral fashion with stress and it opens up all sorts of interesting conversations and wider dialogues. I rarely present the integral model as Ken Wilber might. Rather, I talk about a \u201ctapas\u201d approach with \u201cdifferent [interrelated] dishes working for different people.\u201d Under the banner of stress it is possible to introduce everything from mindfulness practice (I have meditated with senior finance managers who would never come to a meditation class) and centering practices from aikido to systems theory.
Ultimately stress is just an acceptable word for suffering, so I love helping people with what is a huge and growing problem in the current economic climate.<\/em><\/div>\n

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Marketing to Different Levels of Development
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It is easy to see the return on investment for businesses\u2014reduced sick days and staff churn rate, for example\u2014in regard to stress. I align what they consider \u201cnice\u201d with what is wise financially and help unite the split that exist in many organisations between good people wanting to do the right thing and the financial imperative. This marketing to orange meme business (the norm)\u2014in terms of what works, evidence, and productivity is a good fit. I actually regard orange businesses emphasis on rigour and efficacy as a gift to all of us. The well-meaning fluffy green meme marketing I see daily in my hometown of Brighton simply does not speak to the concerns of this group who control much of the resources and well being of the Western World. I have learnt another language to sell my work to orange and would encourage anyone of a spiritual orientation that wishes to make a difference to do likewise.
Blue meme traditionalist businesses (banking and law are often examples) require another kind of marketing about what is \u201cproper and right\u201d and I tend to stress other aspects of my work with these clients. At other times I choose not to work with blue orientated businesses, as frankly it\u2019s too much like hard work. Note also that the recession has caused some organisations to drop down a level of operating as they contract under pressure\u2014I predict these are the ones who will go broke in the next couple of years.
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The Emergence of Green and Integral Business
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Green has been the leading edge of business, for there diversity and sensitivity training is being enforced (and enforced is the word) across many organisations. Most organisations I come across are not green through and through but have a green leading edge (maybe senior management or HR department) that may then \u201cgreen-wash\u201d in an orange or blue fashion.
I love training truly green organisations as I can go deeper quicker than with orange. The challenging work here is normally about getting things done, rather than just talking about the circling wolves and how we feel about them eating us. Marketing to green is all about the people and looking after them, appreciating everyone\u2019s unique contribution and working in a non-directive coaching style (as opposed to just telling blue what to do or reasoning with orange). I don\u2019t mention growth hierarchies working with green.<\/em><\/div>\n

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Encouragingly, I see more and more green in mainstream organisations (see for example the growth in popularity of Servant Leadership and \u201cconscious\u201d businesses like The Body Shop) and even the occasional peak of yellow. I see the recession as speeding this up and a very positive thing….<\/em>MORE<\/em><\/a>“<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Integral Leadership Review have published an article I wrote on Integral Training and Embodied Business. “I like integral because it gets the job done and allows you to be a human being doing it. I am not an integral philosopher but a \u201cnuts and bolts\u201d kinda guy who works with practical problems. Quadrants at Work Let\u2019s start with stress management training\u2014this is often the opening piece of training we do with businesses and other organisations (e.g. the British National Health Service, Institute of Development Studies, NGOs, etc). People normally understand that stress is \u201cholistic\u201d\u2014it involves thoughts, emotions, bodily responses (flight <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9xvDN-5P","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}