Social Ecology in Holistic Leadership, reviews by Christopher Schaefer, PhD

Erik Lemcke: Social Ecology in Holistic Leadership: Guide for Collaborative Organizational Development and Transformation; Emerald Publishing, Bingley, UK (2021)

Many years ago, as a young academic, I met the Dutch psychiatrist Bernard Lievegoed and the work of the Netherland Pedagogical Institute, NPI, and was deeply moved by their work in organization and community development. I decided to take a leave of absence from my teaching job at MIT and spend a year or more as an intern at their home office in Holland.

Upon arriving in Holland, I began learning Dutch and participated in staff meetings, research seminars, and training sessions. I also discovered a rich treasure chest of papers, talks, articles, and research notes on the concepts and methods which the members of the NPI had developed over the previous twenty years since the founding of the institute by Dr. Lievegoed in 1954. The documents were all in mimeographed stencils which gives you some idea of how long ago this was.

Erik Lemcke’s new book is a wonderfully updated version of this stencil library, containing many of the essential insights, methods, approaches, and underlying principles and philosophical assumptions of a Social Ecology worked with by the many consultants, advisers, and facilitators who are members of the Association of Social Development, ASD. Members of the Association and their affiliates work in most European countries, the UK, Canada, US, Australia, New Zealand, as well as in Russia and many countries in Latin America.

Erik wrote this book not only to share his personal experiences working with the concepts and methods of Social Ecology but because he felt that there was not a current summary of the rich legacy of insights accumulated by these consultants and their movement.

“I am motivated to write this book because I sense that many of Social Ecology’s methodologies and insights are more valuable than ever before, but nevertheless are in danger of being forgotten.”1

As practiced by the Association for Social Development, Social Ecology involves understanding and facilitating the process of development as experienced by individuals, groups, organizations, and society. As in the case of our own individual life journey, there is a natural development process in all social entities moving from a time of birth through childhood, youth, maturity, and aging to an ending or death. If we can bring consciousness and awareness, a learning orientation, to this process of maturation then authentic development can occur allowing us as individuals and our social creations—families, groups, companies, and other organizations—to achieve something of our true intentions, of our purpose and mission. Helping individuals and organizations to understand and work with these stages of development and their characteristic challenges and opportunities is a hallmark of this approach to institutional and social development.

A second foundational concept of this approach to personal, group, and organization development is that of threefolding: just as we have a body, soul, and spirit so do groups and organizations as expressed in their cultural and value system (spirit), their relational system (soul), and their economic and technological system (body). I have found it helpful in working with organizations to ask how is your dialogue with the spirit (values, mission, purpose), with people (customers, suppliers, co-workers), and with the earth (finances, resources, economy) as this gives a general picture of strengths and weaknesses and offers a foundation for further inquiry and work on transformation.

1 Lemcke, p. xxv

These foundational concepts are dealt with in the beginning of the book which then moves to describe three basic capacities which the advisor and facilitator needs to master in order to be helpful to their clients: the art of asking meaningful questions, the art of listening and observation, and the art of review, of looking back in order to learn.

Part 2 of the book explores collaborative processes to improve group functioning and team-work, including functions of group leadership and the challenges of healthy team development. A significant aspect of working groups in organizations is the challenge of forming judgements and making decisions together. Here Erik gives a detailed description of a process developed by Lex Bos, one of Lievegoed’s early colleagues, called Dynamic Judgement Building, which can be used to deepen and improve collaborative decisionmaking. The exploration of judgment-forming and decision-making constitutes Part 3 of the book and together with Part 2 will be of great interest to facilitators and coaches.

Part 4 constitutes the heart of the book as it deals with organizational change processes, leadership and conflict resolution. Of particular interest is the section called “seamarks”—better described as navigational aids in starting initiatives, also described in some detail by myself and Tyno Voors in Vision in Action: Working with Soul and Spirit in Small Organizations. 2

2 Steiner Books, Hudson, N.Y. 1996, pp. 59-101

The subsection on organizational change processes includes a very useful description of the phases of organization development, organizational change models and strategies, and a short section on the learning organization, followed by a description of a U-procedure used in change processes also worked with by Otto Scharmer in his work on Presencing and Theory U. 3

3 C. Otto Scharmer, Theory U: Leading from the Future as it Emerges, Society for Organizational Learning, Cambridge, MA, 2007. Also, The Essentials of Theory U: Core Principles and Applications; Berrett-Koehler, Oakland CA, 2017

The discussion of social ecological approaches to leadership and the concept of horizontal and sustainable leadership is then discussed.

Drawing on the work of the Austrian organization development consultant and author Fritz Glasl, one of the founding members of the ASD, the last section of Part 4 contains a very useful although condensed approach to conflict resolution work. Part 5 of the book, prior to the brief conclusion, focuses on personal leadership and inner development with a fine section on meditation which draws extensively on Arthur Zajonc’s insightful work, Meditation as Contemplative Inquiry, followed by a brief introduction to working with our individual biography. 4

4 Arthur Zajonc, Meditation as Contemplative Inquiry: When Knowing Becomes Love, Steiner Books, Great Barrington, Mass. 2009

The book consciously links the approach to Social Ecology practiced by the members of the ASD, to the spiritual legacy of Rudolf Steiner, the Austrian philosopher and spiritual teacher and the founder of anthroposophy and Waldorf education. The extensive appendix, which is almost as long as the text of the book itself, contains a brief description of Steiner’s work and provides many examples of the working methods and seminar designs used by Erik Lemcke and his Scandinavian colleagues.

As the book is really a guide and workbook, rather than an in-depth presentation of particular perspectives and methods, it will be of most use to practicing consultants, trainers, and facilitators who already have a wealth of experience from which to assess its value for their work. I highly recommend the book and have added a list of resources in English for readers who want to deepen their understanding of this unique spiritually based approach to Social Ecology and social healing pioneered by Bernard Lievegoed and his coworkers at the Netherlands Pedagogical Institute, (NPI).

Resource Materials in English

Adrian Bekman, The Horizontal Leadership Book, Alert Verlag, Berlin, 2010

Steve Briault, The Mystery of Meeting: Relationships as a Path of Discovery, Sophia Books, Forest Row, U.K. 2010

Fritz Glasl, Confronting Conflict: A First-Aid Kit for Handling Conflict, Hawthorn Press, Stroud, U.K. 1999

Alan Kaplan, Development Practitioners and Social Process: Artists of the Invisible, Pluto Press, London, 2002

Martin Large, Social Ecology: Exploring Post-Industrial Society, Hawthorne Press, Stroud, U.K. 1981

Martin Large and Steve Briault, Free, Equal and Mutual: Rebalancing Society for the Common Good, Hawthorn Press, Stroud, U.K. 2018

Bernard Lievegoed, The Developing Organization, Tavistock, London, 1967.

Bernard Lievegoed, Phases: The Spiritual Rhythms of Adult Life, Rudolf Steiner Press. London, 1998

Christopher Schaefer, Partnerships of Hope: Building Waldorf School Communities, AWSNA, Chatham, N.Y. 2012

Signe Eklund Schaefer, Why on Earth: Biography and the Practice of Human Becoming, Steiner Books, Great Barrington, Mass. 2013

Harrie Salman, The Social World as Mystery Center: The Social Vision of Anthroposophy, Threefold Publishing, Seattle, WA, 2020

In ancient times, mystery centers and schools of initiation were in isolated locations, removed from the many distractions of ordinary life. Harrie Salman, the Dutch philosopher and sociologist, in his book The Social World as a Mystery Center, maintains that Rudolf Steiner had a markedly different vision of where the mystery centers of modern life take place, namely in the everyday, where we play, live, and work with others. In describing his inner journey and growing acquaintance with Rudolf Steiner’s work he notes,

Now I began to perceive how new mysteries are enacted between people in everyday life. On this path I discovered the essence of Anthroposophy, namely the search for new social forms for a new spiritual culture and a new spirituality that can arise in meeting others. To me this is the nature of the new mysteries, inaugurated by Rudolf Steiner during the important Conference of 1923. We can work towards a new culture out of a renewed relationship to the spiritual world. But this new culture needs the support of a new social life and the protection of new communities. (p.11)

In direct short sentences Salman describes the mysteries taking place in social life based on Rudolf Steiner’s insights. These include the working of social and anti-social forces in the human soul in our time, the archetypal social phenomena of human meeting, conversation and the working of karma, the principles and laws at work in the social world such as the “Basic Sociological Law” and “Fundamental Social Law.” He then outlines the need Steiner saw for restructuring society according to the three spheres of culture, the state and the economy. (pp. 28-60)

Salman asks the poignant question of why the social mission of anthroposophy and the social path of human development were taken up by so few of Steiner’s students and why these paths of development were not more actively fostered by the Anthroposophical Society.

The reason for a barely developed consciousness of rights in the anthroposophical movement is a poor understanding of the social impulse. The threefolding impulse was a reality for Steiner. In his conscious impulses lived archetypal thoughts of social life while they lived more or less unconsciously in the instinctive life of his contemporaries. By activating the threefold impulse in society, Steiner wanted to give modern humanity the opportunity to think the thoughts of the other in spiritual life; to experience equality in relation to the other in the practice of political life, and to work out of the other’s needs in economic life. These are, as Dieter Bruell remarked, three aspects of the social impulse of anthroposophy immediately connected to the activity of the Christ within. (p.55)

This is the second, expanded edition in English of Harrie Salman’s book, having first appeared in Dutch in 1994, translated into English in 1999, with the present edition having been published in 2020. This short book is a wonderful heart-filled companion work to Dieter Bruell’s Der Anthroposophische Sozial Impuls, translated as The Mysteries of Social Encounters and published by ASWNA in 2002. If you are seeking a deeper understanding of the profound spirit-filled social insights of Rudolf Steiner, insights which seem as relevant today as they were during his lifetime, read these two books.

Let me end with a rather lengthy quote in which Salman articulates the central mystery of social life, namely that our higher self, our true I, only comes to consciousness in our relation with others.

On December 27th, 1918, Steiner said that our higher being (the higher I) is in all that we meet outside and least within ourselves. It meets us from outside, in karmic relationships. These meetings allow us to experience the awakening of our higher being in daily life as a social process. Through the renewing force of Christ the transformation of the old human being into the new human being (the inner, spiritual being) gradually takes place in our relationships. This process brings self- consciousness and an inkling of what lies within as possibilities and tasks. This brief awakening of the higher being in our soul may be called a moment of Whitsun. It is the festival of the free individuality as well as of community, the festival of the birth of a higher being in the individual soul and the birth of a new sociality. (p.74-5)

Taking an active interest in others is therefore the path to our own evolution and the essential act in acknowledging the world as the mystery center of our time. Conscious conversation between two or more people can also be a revolutionary deed.

Christopher Schaefer, PhD (christopherschaefer7@gmail.com) is most recently the author of Re-Imagining America: Finding Hope in Difficult Times (Hawthorn Press, 2019), reviewed in our last issue. He lives with his wife Signe in Great Barrington, MA, and is co-director of the Hawthorne Valley Center for Social Research.