Within seconds, I perceive the transformation: a cool, impeccably styled social media manager/team lead/beacon turns into an 8-year-old who is just terribly embarrassed about something. He’s fiddling with his sweater, grinning artificially, probably wishing this would all end… quickly.

The exercise the young man is experiencing is actually supposed to have the opposite effect and is part of a communication workshop I am facilitating together with my colleagues from ThisMemento Amsterdam. Sebastian Niemeyer, Managing Director at Nike, has hired us to teach his core team of about 80 people the basics of consumer insights research and sincere communication. It’s 2018 and the digitalization of the working world is advancing, the number of meetings and calls increasing… people look each other in the eye less and less…

The insecure-looking young man has just received compliments from two of his colleagues. No business blah-blah or “nice shoes”-chat… their task was to find three qualities they truly appreciated about him and communicate them sincerely and honestly. In a world that is all about competition, performance and finding deficits, this empathy training for more vulnerability and positive togetherness got uncomfortable at first. Later in the ideation process, the team shared how new and liberating the exercise felt and that they wanted to do this more often from now on… 

At the time of the workshop, I was living as a single mother in rapidly changing Berlin. I was creating campaigns and texts that moved and exhilarated people, while, exhausted from childcare and therapy sessions, I somehow kept my head above water. In my perception, the city was slipping more and more into anonymity, faster, more elbow behaviour, people somewhere between functioning and numbness… At least once a week I escaped to Radical Honesty meetings, singing circles or Contact Improvisation dance sessions. In my Spiri-Bubble I felt my innermost in human encounters and authenticity… I could take off the armour I needed in the Berlin-Mitte offices. I learned to allow myself more slowness and authenticity, to say no, to cultivate self-love. And slowly, these themes also found their way into my professional work.

Today the formerly contrasting worlds are connected for me and I am convinced that the polarity of “here the evil corporate world” and “there the do-gooder healers” does not exist at all. We are all in comprehensive transformation processes that more or less urgently ask us to become honest with ourselves, our relationships and our work.

Sustainability, equality, mindfulness and awareness are hip buzzwords in many companies these days… as well as in healing circles. In my work I experience that only, when they are lived in depth and also the shadow sides are looked at and dissolved, added value, joy and flow really arise. This is how we create environments in which our nervous systems can relax, out of Fight&Flight&Fake and towards more togetherness and real vision. Along the way, innovations emerge that really work and feel enriching – as inside, so outside.