Career Reset Guide

Systemic Intelligence for Uncovering Your Authentic Career Path

• Michael Davio Simmonds

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What if career blocks aren’t logical, but systemic? Stephanie Hartung brings a fresh lens to career transitions through systemic intelligence and constellation work. With a diverse background in art, design, business, and therapy, she reveals how hidden patterns - often rooted in family loyalties - shape our professional paths.

The conversation explores organizations and individuals as living systems guided by complexity, balance, feedback, and self-organization. Stephanie shows how unconscious bonds can keep us tied to family expectations, making change feel like “cutting your own roots.” She also shares how childhood survival patterns can lead to burnout, as in her own tendency to “save” others until collapse.

Challenging traditional views of success, Stephanie suggests that money follows authenticity - not the other way around. She also describes how Constellations, a tool grounded in systemic intelligence, can be applied to explore different career transition scenarios. By revealing hidden dynamics, this method helps uncover unconscious sabotage and supports alignment with our most authentic professional path.

Connect with Stephanie Hartung:

Organisation: Feld Institut

Email:  www.feld-institut.de

Book: The Magic of Connection: Systemic Intelligence in Organisational Development. CIP, 2025. Available from Amazon or Tradition shop


Connect with Michael Davio Simmonds:

Personal website: https://simmondscoachingservices.biz

Email: simmondscoachingservices@gmail.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeldaviosimmonds/

Michael:

I'd like to welcome to this podcast today Stephanie Hartung. Stephanie, how are you?

Stephanie:

I'm fine. Thank you, michael, and thank you for inviting me.

Michael:

Yeah well, I'm genuinely pleased to have you join us today, because I'm really looking forward to exploring how your area of expertise could help support people through important career transitions.

Michael:

So I think this podcast will probably be a little bit different than other podcasts I've recorded by focusing in more on the method itself.

Michael:

Just to give the listeners a flavor for your background, you You have a very diverse and rich background. I think I'm right in saying that you come from an arts and a therapeutic background, and you've morphed yourself over the years into an expert in the field of systemic intelligence. So for the listeners, this is an area which helps to uncover hidden dynamics within any system of people, whether that's related to an organizational system or it could be a family system as . And and I think what will be interesting to explore today is how this intelligence could be used to support people through important career transitions towards something that's more authentic. Some of the roles that you've played over the years are systemic and organizational constellations trainer, the founder of , international, international brand and organizational development consultant, author and academic lecturer and gestalt . And and I'm sure that's not all of it either. So, anyway, how about we start with that? What would you like to add or change in my introduction.

Stephanie:

ou, thank you for that. I would actually change the beginning because I was a painter for 18 years. I studied painting in the Academy in Düsseldorf and then I moved over to the economical side. I didn't have a therapeutic background then and I came into the field of corporate design, actually, first as a designer, but the more I worked in the field, the more I asked myself what wants to appear in the corporate design. And that led me to very systemic questions, namely what is an organization? It's an entity of its own. So there must be something which is the expression of an entity that can stand for its own.

Stephanie:

So I dived into that field . I studied o economy economy. I introduced myself to all systemic theory in the field of what happens with organizations and so on. And the more I dived into it, the more I started developing my own ideas about brands and I wrote books about . And and the more then I was called into organizations organization to support people in branding and finding their innate nature of the organization,. I understood that the social construct of the organization was built in the same way as people. So I got more and more interested in this similarity. So I more and more turned towards the personal field and I became a Gestalt therapist to dive deeper into the aspects of the human . And and then I started combining the two fields. It felt like stumbling forward right. So I was never really knowing what I was doing. I didn't know why I did all these trainings, but every training opened a new door and added another piece in my trying to understand the world as I saw it. And now, when I look back, it seems to be a really thick red thread.

Michael:

A very eclectic background blending together a variety of different disciplines. You've mentioned a few terms like systemic. Maybe we should start by giving some definitions to these words. What does it actually mean? When I think of the word, I think of getting to the heart of things, but how would you word it?

Stephanie:

Well, more or less like you said it, you're getting to the core of the things. I would say not to the heart, but to the core, which means that you have to understand that in nature there's all these single organisms which for themselves cannot do anything. But the moment they come together, something emerges, right, a system emerges. It's like the moment of conception Two things come together and something emerges, in this case a human being. And then these organisms, these human beings or even ants, they come together and then they build something together, and this is how nature works.

Michael:

Is there an example you could give relative to an organization?

Stephanie:

Let's say you and me we would start an organization, right. And then let's presume we are successful and it's growing and everything that we put into the organization comes from us. So in a way, we transferred what was our dream, our vision, to the organization. Otherwise, we wouldn't have even started to do something if we didn't have a certain idea of how the world would be after we started our organization. And now we are getting old and now new people need to take over.

Stephanie:

And now we can understand that this organization has a brand core of its own. It has a vision, it needs a mission to be followed, it has certain values through the way we communicate, so it has its own culture. Yeah, and if we go and other people take over, they need to understand this organism. That was created and, as I said, it's an entity of its own. It has certain rules that need to be followed, it has certain structures that need to be followed and yet, at the same time, it needs to be developed and changed so that it can still survive, because if we are trying to keep it stable the way it is, it will die after a certain time. So we have to always change it. So we are confronted with the very first and the very fundamental polarity that inherits all systems, which is self-maintainment and self-development.

Michael:

How can this be applied to a career transition? What's the analogy there with somebody going through a career transition?

Stephanie:

It's exactly the same. Let me stay with the organization and then I try the transfer to a person. You are in a field of constant changes, right? So, as an organization, you have the big task to understand what defines me in my core part, what makes me the organization I am. What am I about? So what must not be changed in order to have the stability to be able to change? Right, and this is the same question that you have to ask yourself when you want to go into a transition. Let's say they leave the job and they want to become self-employed. What they have to understand is what is their personal brand? Who are they, what is their vision, what is their overall movement, which is the mission and what can be their stable leg and what is the flexible leg for development and change?

Michael:

When I hear you using some of the words like personal brand, what is your vision, what is your mission, etc., those terms will be familiar to a lot of the listeners. But it's not about the terms, but it's about the context around which those terms are used. So how is this systemic intelligence approach different than, for example, traditional coaching or counseling?

Stephanie:

First of all, I would say it's a very radical intelligence, meaning it goes back to the roots. It goes back to the roots and tries to understand the basics of it all. It's not so much interested in how do you do things, but how are they meant, right? So there's a certain set of knowledge that is true for every system, an animal or a tree or a single organism like you and me, whatever. So the first basic is the basic function which I said, which is self-maintainment and self-development. That is what everything is about that is alive. And the second thing are the four principles on which self-maintainment and self-development work, which is, in the first place, complexity. Everything is interlinked and has an influence on one another, and it's not always direct, but also many indirect influences. And you can't manage complexity with a logical mind, to handle a complex system as if it was complicated, which it is not. But it is complex, which means everything is at the same time. It doesn't come after one another. That's the first principle.

Stephanie:

The second is balance. So systems are in a constant, fluent balance. They are constantly moving. There's no stability in balance and we don't have a balance that says, if 50-50 is given, the system will be balanced. The third principle is feedback, because all these systems are so-called open systems, so they depend on the interchange with the outside. So we need to breathe in, breathe out, we need to talk to one another, we need to share touches, we share knowledge, we share products and money, which is resources. So all these interchanges must be made possible, otherwise the system will be weak or even die. And the last one is self-organization of the elements. So understand people in an organization as the elements of the system and make sure that they can organize themselves by understanding the organization and serve it.

Michael:

Right. So conceptually then, I think it's relatively straightforward for me and for the listeners to see how, for a company, you could fit the systems approach into an organization. The organization is a system. If we were to apply it to a career transition, how do we define the system for an individual? Am I not just an individual or is there a system around me?

Stephanie:

So an organism is a system. Right, it has complex aspects of body, emotion, mind, spirit, and it has also also, as we meanwhile know, a lot of transgenerational aspects. It has aspects of the innate nature, what we call the self, or there are so many different words, right. It has the culture you grew up with. Then it has all the different connections, like friends and so on. Maybe it's in a football club or opera, so it's the whole, let's say, social culture it grew up with. So it's a highly complex thing, and if you want to understand that, you have to come back to the core and start from there, because we all identified with our idea of I. You know I could say, yeah, stephanie is so and so, but this is only what my mind can understand about myself, but Stephanie is definitely so much more.

Stephanie:

So we have to connect to the inner system, so to say. Often we come from a system where it's all about knowing how it works, and this is how we understand our expertise, our competencies and so on. But when we are in a transition, we know nothing. We don't know how we should move, because maybe we have always worked for others, now we want to work for ourselves or be self-employed and we don't know whom we're working for here. Who is the I I'm working for, who is the self that employs me so to say? So we have to start and meet ourselves and understand ourselves. So the first connective step is the most important, which is connect with yourself.

Michael:

Well, as you've mentioned, this is a highly complex system made up of a number of different elements, then, so elements which we could say reside within me, so my spirit, my intelligence, my feelings, etc. But there are also elements outside of myself, if I can put it that way, like, for example, the family history that I come from and the relationship I have with my ancestors that have made me what I've become.

Stephanie:

Yeah, exactly, that's the transgenerational aspect, and meanwhile we know that it passes through the genes. I just read an article that at the very beginning of an embryo there is genes active that come from transgenerational roots. So from the very beginning we are tied in a family system. So that's definitely a big thing on a physical level. Because it comes through the genes, the reaction to say something traumatic or dramatic or very important is given to the next generation. So the hormone aspect of what happens in your body when you are in danger, for example, can be the reaction of your grandfather given to you through the genes. You didn't have the experience he had, but you have the reaction now, right. That's an interesting thing we should know about complexity. And then of course, we have our own experiences in our childhood, and mainly these experiences are about, apart from what was given to us, it was the situations that were too much for us. So we have certain survival patterns, in a way that this is how I can manage my life well. This is what I call a survival pattern. And mainly we are normally identified with these patterns that we developed to get through it easily. But that makes our path quite narrow. So when we connect with ourselves and the dimensions of ourselves, we can kind of open up the space and become so much bigger and see the possibilities we have.

Michael:

e again, I'm just trying to bring some of this information together to help the listeners see how this is different and, I think very powerful, versus some of the traditional methods. So if we look at the traditional way of looking at ourself, sure, I'm aware, for example as a career transitioner, that I was perhaps abused as a child. I've done some years of therapy and tried to work through that. I'm aware that I need to create a vision for the organization I'd like to set up and have a brand around it, etc. etc. So the traditional approach would be to take these different elements that define my system and treat them very individually. But I think the power of the systemic work, or at least the constellations part of it, is to blend all of these together and treat them as a combined entity and looking at some of the dynamics between the different elements.

Stephanie:

Yeah, yeah. Let me give you an example. If you have a seed of a tree, right, the whole tree is already in the seed. This is what I call the innate life. It's meant to be this tree and if you transfer that to Michael, there is a core part of the innate life of Michael. You are meant to be this Mainly. It's a very beautiful quality which is not to be valued. It can be sharpness, it can be easiness, it can be light, it can be joy, whatever.

Stephanie:

In the conventional understanding, living our lives and trying to understand ourselves is about how to manage things and how to repair. We said, maybe I was hurt when I was a child and then I go to some therapist and then hopefully, afterwards that is done. This is an idea of 'this must go away', right. I have to be repaired. It has an idea of what a healthy human being is and what not, and so on. And I say, yes, it was a burdening experience, but you survived it, so it gave you strength and it made you very rich. So the first step into a systemic life is to connect that to your consciousness, meaning to integrate that in your system instead of trying to cut it out. Second thing is that we always have an idea of what we should be able to do. It's more difficult for men, obviously, because they are expected more to reach than women. Mainly it comes from our family, what your fathers think, but maybe it has got nothing to do with you . So the second question is what is it really that my vision is? And understand vision in the radical sense of the word. It comes from the Latin word vedere, which means to see. So what is my view of the world? How do I see the world I live in? What is my perspective? And you can be sure that there's so many perspectives of the world as there are people in the world because they all have a different point where they're standing. There need to be different perspectives. Right

Stephanie:

From experience, I can only say there's no single human being without a vision of the world. It's more or less by biology built in. So we would not be able to do something if we were not driven by our inner vision. So if you are in a transition and want to change something, the first thing you have to find is your vision, is your idea of the world, how it is after you stepped into action. Otherwise it's kind of a blind flight, as we call it in German. And finding this vision there's a lot of different methods, also coming from a systemic systemic perspective. So once you understand your vision of the world, then you can have a slight idea of the dimension of the overall movement that you should take.

Stephanie:

For example, when you described the way I went, you said you connected so many different fields. Yes, because my vision was a completely connective world. And when I look back, I was constantly busy connecting different scientific fields and see what happens when I open the box and connect it to the next box and connect it to the next box. And this is what I do in constellation work. This is what I did in my books. I tried to offer different approaches to what I saw was happening, and so I was constantly busy connecting. So my overall mission is connect, connecting, so my overall mission is connect. So when I do things, I always ask myself am I still in the mode of connecting or am I disconnecting here? Does it make sense to connect it this way? What will happen if I add something? What happens if I stop here, and so on.

Michael:

You've mentioned this term, constellation. Can you help define what that actually means?

Stephanie:

Yeah, One thing that was an insight in the systemic fields came from - I forgot his name, sorry.

Michael:

Rupert Sheldrake.

Stephanie:

Exactly, thank you - that there is an informational pattern within systems, the morphogenetic fields, and no matter how far you pull the elements apart, they are still connected because they came from the same system. This was one of the basic ideas. So what developed through centuries and it started in the very early culture was if you set up a system with representatives - let's say we set up the system, of your parents, right, and we say person A stands for your mother and person B stands for your father, and you say, and this is the field they are standing in - then the same informational system is set up as the original. It is a copy of the original. It is a quantum physical effect that we are using to then be able to look at the system and to get insights that we don't get when we look to the original, because maybe we are too busy with the stories going on and with the cognitive level of how they have their relationship. If we copy and paste this system with representatives who are not blackmailed, let's say, by the biography of the original parents, they have access to the underlying dynamics of this relational system. So we're using constellations to set up a system with representatives.

Stephanie:

That's the first rule. So it's what we call a presential work. We can also use figures and look at the figures and perceive what might be there, but still we're setting up a field. And the advantage of this method is you as a client, you come to me and you say I want to set up the system of my parents because I have some difficulties with them, and then we set up with representative your parents, and then we place a representative for you in the field. This gives you the possibility to be a second grade observer, which is a term of system theory, and that means you can now look at yourself, how you looked at your parents. So the second great observer sees himself how he looks at the world, and this enables you to see something that you could never see because you can't watch yourself. You have a blind spot there and now you can watch yourself.

Michael:

So this is literally about taking physical objects which could be people or it could be just any physical objects lying in a room and associating each object with an important element of the system.

Stephanie:

Yeah, and it feels like voodoo to our logical mind. Because, yeah, it feels a bit weird. All of a sudden someone starts to talk like your father who's never met him and can't know anything. But this is what happens.

Michael:

These objects, then, are assigned as an element in your system. There is a field created amongst these objects which we can tap into as individuals by feeling, so we actually feel the presence of this field.

Stephanie:

Yeah, in Germany we have two different words for feeling. The one is the feeling that, you know, goes with sadness and ha, ha, ha ha. So there's always a story coming with it. And then the other one is more we sense it because we are not connected to the stories. We don't take it personal when we stand as representatives.

Michael:

Right, the story isn't overlaid. So if we're not sensing an overlaid story, what are we sensing then?

Stephanie:

We are sensing certain physical aspects, like it's getting cold, I am feeling sick, I am getting weak, I'm angry because someone looks at me, I don't like them. I have no idea why,

Michael:

The first thing that comes to your mind.

Stephanie:

Yeah, exactly, you stand there and you have these perceptions. They are coming up. You are like a communicating pipe. It runs through your system. It's not Stephanie's idea. It feels definitely different than if I'm angry on someone. So I have certain perceptions towards the system that is ched up. I already have perceptions about missing elements in the system. So it may be possible that I say someone is missing here. I get a feeling of someone is missing here, or I'm constantly looking to the floor feeling someone is lying there, a dead person or a child that was aborted or whatever. So my perceptions are completely within the completeness of the system and the balance of the system and if the system is in dis balance, I can feel it as a representative.

Michael:

And just to add in a comment, this method goes beyond the rational mind. So I think most people, including myself, try to take a rational approach to something like a career transition. We may look at the past that we're coming from and then try to extrapolate ourselves out into the future. We may put some plans in place with incremental steps, with subsequent steps following a logical path based on the step that preceded it. So it's a very typically logical, rational approach. And yet what this rational approach misses is the hidden dynamics which the rational mind can't grasp, doesn't see, doesn't perceive, and it's by tapping into this field that we're able to see those hidden dynamics. Is that more or less correct?

Stephanie:

Yeah, you know, I'm very rational, I'm very rational and I know exactly how a rational mind works. My life experience showed me that it's a beautiful tool and you can reach so many things. You can write books with it, you can have communication like us, you can learn with it and so on. But it has its limitations where complexity sets in because we cannot think complex. So we can use our rational mind to allow ourselves to admit that there are certain dimensions that we can only sense with our whole system. Usually, when we want to manage something, we cut off the body of the head and try to take the head and now start. And when I work with constellation work, it's not that I turn off my rational mind, but I make it wider. I allow the dimensions to grow. And there's simple but very powerful methods that were created by the systemic thinking people to support you in that.

Michael:

Yeah, and just to give a flavor of this work, I always remember participating in a constellations workshop a few years ago. I was paired up with a woman who I chose to represent my mother, and she knew absolutely nothing whatsoever about my mother. And as soon as she started to represent my mother, she started to scratch her face and play with her jaw. And I found that amazing, because my mother had a form of the condition that I have called dystonia, which was exactly located in her jaw and she used to grind her jaw from side to side. So, I think that's an excellent example of the power of tapping into this field in situations where the individuals know absolutely nothing about the background that you're coming from.

Stephanie:

Yeah, this is exactly what I said. The woman you chose, she doesn't have the story or the burden that your mother and you must have with this condition. So she has the ability, as a representative, to step into this system and then she has these very pure perceptions of what happens to her because she doesn't know that. Like a journalist, she can say, 'well, this is interesting. What a feeling in my jaws or my body'. I remember I stood in the position of someone and I had to move all the time like a spastiker. It was very exhausting and it gave me an idea of how it must feel in a body like this. And afterwards I stepped out and then I was normal again. So, apart from what I said before, that it can show you the path to very complex systems, like you are one yourself, when you go to constellations as a representative it makes your life very rich because you can stand the most amazing representations.

Michael:

I think this is something to be experienced, because if we just listen to the way that the method works rationally, I think even for myself, it sounds exactly as you were saying, a little bit like voodoo, yeah. But once you've actually experienced that, you clearly recognize that there's something beyond the rational mind which is taking place.

Stephanie:

Yeah, yeah, we have a much bigger - how would you call it - perceptional existence than we think we have.

Michael:

How would we use this method then to reveal something of importance to career transition?

Stephanie:

The first task you have when you are in transition is to allow to not know, right, and constellation work is the method that goes with not knowing, because you enter a field that gives you information about something that you couldn't know in your cognitive mind. So you allow to see something or to sense something that was of a very important meaning to you, but it was maybe in your subconscious or it was out of your sight or you didn't have the whole complex system inside. If you come to talking about the beginning of a transition, constellation work is definitely a good support in finding answers to the question, 'but who am I? Who is the self I want to be employed by now, if I want to be self-employed?'. But later on I use Constellations, for example, to say I want now to start this company. So I put up the company I want to start and myself, I set up the product, I set the clients I have it for, I set up a price I think of and I look at the quality of the relationship between them, I want to take a partner in my company, I want to do a congress or whatever. So, everything that is an element of a system, it may be a resource, like money or price, or an object, like a product or a product design. Would this product design support my product line or would my clients not understand that anymore? Every system can be set up and the great thing is you can not only have a connection to the past, but you can also do scenario constellation. constellation. What if I change this? What would be the reaction?

Michael:

So you can set up so-called future systems and see the quality of them. So a very powerful technique for people to be able to explore different scenarios related to their future.

Michael:

Again coming to career transition, what kind of dynamics could you imagine, based on the underlying principles governing these systems, would affect people going through the transition? What might hold people back?

Stephanie:

A very normal dynamic is the relationship to the parents, which means the loyalty to the system you come from. Are you allowed to change is the question. Would they allow you to change or do you now go against the, maybe not expressed, but the hidden rules of a family? That's one big issue that very often comes up.

Michael:

Couldn't I say well, I'm 40 years old, or I'm 50 years old now, or I'm 60 years old. All of the stuff that happened to me as a child. I've worked through that with different therapists and I feel free now to create my own future. Or is there something more than that?

Stephanie:

Yeah, the genetic bond that is set through being the son of your parents comes with a deep loyalty. It feels like cutting your own roots when you are not loyal to the cultural aspects of the family you come from. And to understand that the genetic bond can never be broken, but the loyalty can, is a big step because it's a huge bridge of fear you have to pass. It's not that you work through, let's say, the ticks you have because something happened in your childhood. It's not that. But it's the deep love to your parents which comes from the genetic bond. I'm not talking about social love here. I'm talking about the genetic bond and the loyalty that comes with it that says, 'I will never leave the cultural system I come from'.

Michael:

So even in a case where, for example, I say I have no loyalty to my parents anymore, I create a life based on my own values, I think what you're saying is that there's still something beyond that which connects us back to our parents, which you're referring to as a loyalty.

Stephanie:

Yeah, yeah, which is much deeper than what you're trying to manage with your cognitive mind. And the second level, which is not so deep but also very powerful, Imagine you always heard as a child that you're an idiot. Your loyalty as a child, even when you're grown up you're staying there child, is to trying to prove your parents right Because you would never go against them on a deeper level. So you're trying to prove that you are an idiot. So you have a very deep, believing sentence that says I'm an idiot and I do it because I love my parents, because they told me I am.

Michael:

How do we work with that depth of loyalty to our family system, then? If traditional therapy doesn't get to that, what can get to that?

Stephanie:

Well, again, all methods of the let's say, the systemic fan, they're all around presential work, confront the client with the bigger dimension of sensing and feeling the deeper dynamic. And then you need processes to kind of give the sentence of 'you are an idiot' back, I give it back to you, daddy. So you really put it on the stage and allow it to happen what didn't happen yet. And if there is a good consultant or a good coach or a good therapist, who ever does it, they hold the field for the fear that comes up when you stay connected but give back certain things that do not belong to you but were important for your parents to make them stable, for example.

Michael:

In practice, then, this is about acknowledging what hasn't yet been acknowledged in the individual, and part of the way that we acknowledge is by speaking certain sentences that have a resonance with the client.

Stephanie:

Yeah, I think it was Carl Rogers who said nearly all our problems are there because we are unconscious about certain things. So what we do in this work, we're using hypnosystemic methods of dialogue. So we talk in a different way with the clients. We have certain questions that allow the subconscious to come up and to show the knowledge that is within the client without him knowing or without her knowing. So we lift the unconscious to the conscious level. So once you understand that it is your unconscious sentence, 'I'm an idiot for you, daddy' or, 'I'm an idiot for you mommy', you can start working with it. And it's very powerful when people realize that it is their sentence, that it was not the stupid father who told them, but they kind of accepted it to keep the strong bond with the parents.

Michael:

If somebody then is holding that belief that, 'I'm an idiot for you, father', in some way that's affecting their ability to move forward in a career transition.

Stephanie:

Exactly. Whatever they do, they will end up as an idiot, right. They will not overcome this if not coming up to the surface and into their conscious mind.

Michael:

I can imagine so many dynamics between a child and the parents that could lead to false beliefs about ourself, and it sounds like those false beliefs are playing themselves out in our adult life.

Stephanie:

Yeah, look, our whole industry works with this idea of not being perfect, right, with this constant trying to sell us whatever they want. And they always have the control over us because we are driven by these deeply hidden ideas.

Michael:

Right. So if people have the feeling, then, that they know where they want to get to, maybe they've even worked out what their brand is, what their vision is for themselves, maybe they've even worked out who their client base is, but for some reason they're still not able to move forward, there's a reasonable chance that there's some kind of a hidden loyalty that's holding them back.

Stephanie:

Yeah, sometimes it's a very hidden personal loyalty, like in the example I gave you with idiot and father. It might also be a loyalty to the family. Let's have a family that was always poor. There will be a barrier for you to make money because your loyalty goes to the poor system. For example, your grandfather has lost a lot of money with a company. There may be now two aspects. One, is he lost money because, let's say, he did something criminal. Then, systemically, it may be that you will have to pay the price as his grandson and get the system in a balance again. Or you will all of a sudden feel yourself forced to give a lot of money to some social projects because you think you owe them something. Or the other example could be your grandfather lost money. Let's say there was a war and the industry broke down and he lost everything he had. You will not put him down by now being successful where he wasn't, yeah. And if you don't understand these hidden family dynamics, you're kind of swimming in a pool with no clear water.

Michael:

I think that's a great example that we've been discussing around is these hidden family loyalties. What else could you imagine that the listeners need to take into account that might hold them back?

Stephanie:

You should know about your survival patterns. I'm talking about myself now when I say that. What was the pattern you took up to have a safe place in your system. And I had, as you know, a mentally ill mother and my place in the system was, 'I will save you', because if I wouldn't have saved my mother, I wouldn't have had a mother anymore, and that was no option for me as a child. So I was in a constant mode of saving and my survival pattern for a long time was the mode of saving. And guess what? I only met men who were either alcoholics or drug addicted or jobless or whatever. So I could repeat my pattern until I collapsed. I completely collapsed.

Stephanie:

And then I realized, if I don't stop trying to save others' lives, which had the consequence that I always stepped over the branches of others, I never took them serious as adults, saying they can take care of their own, and my energy I should have had for myself was bleeding out for others With all the things I did, if I wouldn't have had this crisis in understanding that my survival pattern would kill me one day, right, I couldn't have gone forward anymore, and this is the core part of so many burnouts - they're following their survival pattern until they collapse. And then, when you are prepared to meet your survival pattern, which is really painful because it's connected to the emotions that you had when you were a child and created it, very clever in a certain way, because it worked, because you survived, then you have to understand, as it is a survival pattern, in solving it, you will be confronted with fear of death. You think, 'okay, if I don't have this pattern, I will die'. And, in my case, turning to myself and not allowing me anymore to do something for others in terms of, 'I can save you, I can do it for you'.

Stephanie:

That was really hard stuff because I thought who am I, if not the big savior? Yeah, and of course, I learned a lot. I gained a lot of competencies by saving others which I wouldn't have. So how could I use now these competencies for myself?

Michael:

If I apply what you've just described to myself, I think it was subordinating my own needs to the needs of my mother. So the point is that my father died when I was six years old, very unexpectedly, very suddenly, and I think a part of my mother died along with my father, and to see my mother suffering was not an easy experience for me as a child.

Stephanie:

Definitely not.

Michael:

And, of course, unconsciously, I think, I didn't want to add to her concerns, so I simply learned not to speak up for what was important to me. So if I had a certain need, then it's better to subordinate my need rather than to increase the suffering of my mother. So then wind that forward several decades and then you end up being somebody who is, I think, suppressing part of their true nature, which then potentially leads to conditions like dystonia, which is the condition that I have in my neck. And, perhaps not coincidentally, the neck is obviously associated with the throat region, which is where we express ourself from. So I actually believe that it's not a coincidence that I developed an urge to start a podcast, because I feel that this podcast is actually part of my own healing process, because it gives me an opportunity to express from myself. So that actually is probably a next step, because in addition to interviewing other people like yourself is also to talk about my own experience as well and share some of my own thoughts.

Stephanie:

Yeah, and I think there's even more dimensions to it. Let's say you are in a transition with your story, right? So you are someone who doesn't express their own needs, but we all know, although you don't express them, you have them. So you either are confronted with the underlying rage of not being able to express what is important for you and because you have this kind of a stop not attacking others, you will have a passive aggressiveness around you which then turns the aggression against you in a way with others so that they can be aggressive for you. So you are confronted with aggressive people, which makes it even worse for you, right?

Stephanie:

So if someone like you now wants to step in a self-employed life or in a transition, you're better off being conscious and being able to feel when you do it, and you will then deliberately start to express certain things. But the loyalty with your mother is quite powerful and if you are not aware of that, the loyalty which says, 'I will be your man now, mommy, I will do it for you', and kind of wipe myself out. 'I'm only there for you. So if I'm not, you won't be there for me'. That's the logic of the child, right?

Michael:

yeah, then who do you end up marrying, your mother?

Stephanie:

yeah, your mama. And then you're attacking the other with your passive aggressiveness Because, as I said, the systemic principle is balance. You need a balance and even if you can't talk about what is important for you, you have to find a way to get what is important for you.

Michael:

Well, this passive aggressiveness that you refer to has been a huge insight for me very recently. As a coach for six, seven years, I thought I'd identified my main patterns. And yet I found myself in this relationship making one or two comments to this woman which, after having made the comments, I stood back and I thought why did I make that comment with this slight negative lilt to it? At worst it should have been a neutral comment, but actually there was a subtle negative connotation and I suddenly had a light bulb moment that the reason for that was because actually I had a need, but I wasn't expressing that need. So if I'd have recognized that before making the comment, it would have given me the opportunity to express the need and not allow this frustration to start to develop in the first place.

Stephanie:

Yeah.

Michael:

So now, having seen that the dynamic in this relationship it's starting to change, hopefully in a more positive way.

Stephanie:

Yeah, and I mean, let's be clear. The patterns, it's like the mother tongue. It's more or less the first fundament of the brain and you will always talk in the vibration of your mother tongue. You will always hear that I'm trying to speak English like a John. So your survival pattern is the fundament. See it as the fundament. Some call it the motorway.

Stephanie:

It's not about getting rid of that. It's to be more at ease with it and be able to feel it when it comes up.

Stephanie:

Let's say you feel this kind of anger coming up and then you say, 'ah, there it is again, maybe I should express something here'. And the more you give it space that you say, okay, my way of making sure that I can survive is becoming aggressive when I cannot express something, that you then can feel when aggression comes, 'oh, maybe there it is again, maybe it's time to express something'. So you start to disidentify with the good boy that always does everything for mommy to make her happy. And if we come back to the listeners and transfer that to the situation of being in a transition, all these subjects will come up if you take it serious. If you don't take it serious, what the real dimension of a real transition out of a crisis can be, you will end up at the same point where you ended before, only some years older. Do you know what I mean?

Michael:

The painful reality of not having changed.

Stephanie:

And it takes a lot of courage to meet yourself and to experience yourself and to look at yourself and to be honest to yourself. It's nothing for cowards, as we say. Constellation work also is nothing for cowards because we say yes to how it is. The most power lies in accepting what is, because that opens a space to more realize how it is and to better move within these fields, instead of trying to put it in a pot and close the lid and let it boil until the pot explodes.

Michael:

Yeah well, this is a rich area which I could continue to discuss with you probably for a few hours. I'm just starting to become a little bit mindful of the time, but there are a couple of other questions that I would like to address before we draw this to a close.

Michael:

So I think a lot of what we've been discussing in the last minutes is what holds us back. There's the other side of the same coin, which is what are we moving towards and what prevents us from moving towards more authenticity? So how do you see the role of systemic approaches in shaping more authentic careers, in shaping more authentic transitions?

Stephanie:

I can say what it did to me, and that is it was very powerful when I started with my recent company, constellators International. Let's call it the LinkedIn of the Constellation community, and also it is a quality management tool. We are awarding international recognition for the work and so on and so on. I started the company and I thought, 'I have no clue how this will work, because I've never had a company like this'. And I started the company like I start a constellation work. So I did a step and I looked at it and asked myself so what do I see now? What has happened now? What can I learn from this or what does it want to tell me? I realized that it had a lot of attraction to people and that it also made people attacking me a lot. That was a hard time because I was changing the field of communities for constellators. With what I started, they became very personal. They attacked me in the social media. They attacked me everywhere. I was thrown out of the associations - I was on the board, by the way but I was thrown out. So a lot happened. And there was something in me and I couldn't name it and I would have never done that as a younger woman, because I was always approaching my projects with a very economical mind. I did a business plan and so on and so on, but this time there was something inside me that said this is the path to your vision. So, move and don't look at people who attack you. Concentrate on your path. So constellation work helped me in taking the same attitude as I take as a constellator. I entered the field blindly and not knowing and very humble, because I didn't know what I was expecting. And, of course, I had my ideas of where it would go. And I did it with my husband as you know. We founded the company together. So we had a plan, we had structures and everything and we put everything aside. We said we know where we want to be, but we are not planning the way. We start the first step. And it's the first company I'm really successful with. I always reached some points in my companies, but I was never really successful. It's the first time I'm successful and it's not only economically, because we just had the break even, so to say, after six years - so we financed that with our private money. But we have now over 500 people. We are starting our second congress next year in Malta with a large group of internationally very renowned colleagues. We have more than 70 international recognitions awarded. So everything that we planned is now blooming.

Stephanie:

In a certain way, I'm still not knowing how this works. And when people say, oh, it's so marvelous what you built I say I didn't do that. It kind of built itself. I prepared the field and I let it grow in a certain way. And if people came, I said, yes, you can cooperate, collaborate. And when people left because they didn't find what they wanted, I let them go. I didn't try to manipulate them, I didn't try to convince them, I'm just sharing my vision. I do that on Facebook. Today we hit the 6,000 members in Facebook site. We have more than 4,000 people following us with our newsletter and so on and so on. So it's very successful.

Michael:

If I understand, then part of the success is because you were able to use the underlying principles.

Stephanie:

Yeah.

Michael:

And also you have the constellations tool to explore different scenarios, possibilities which informed you and helped you to go through some early learnings?

Stephanie:

What I tried to make clear was the aspects of this cross polarity, self-maintainment development. So what do we need to start with and where could we develop to? And how do we have to keep the balance? Are we still in balance? Is this too strong? Is this not strong enough? I considered feedback. Are we having all feedback processes we need? Are we taking care of getting the knowledge of the people we want to do it for? Are we communicating? Are we getting enough information? We have more than 30 ambassadors worldwide. People came and said I want to be an ambassador, what do I have to do? And we said I have no idea. I have never been an ambassador of the CI. I can tell you what our vision is, and for that we need to be known worldwide, and whatever you do in your field to support us there, we will be very happy.

Stephanie:

So we followed systemic principles. I'd followed the insight of systemic intelligence to always check with my own ., I constantly explored scenarios with constellation work, and constellation work it's the overall description for so many different tools Like, for example, theory U is a process that can be done with constellations. mckinsey came up with the 7S model and you can constellate that and get information. So I put everything into a presential format to understand more about what we're at, also for the different products we came up with. So let's say the international recognition for constellators, trainers and training we offer. We started a publishing house. We offer constellators to publish their books with us. I published my own books in my own publishing house. Now we started the . So so we set that up and get more information.

Michael:

So if I try to apply this to a typical scenario of the people that I'm working with at the moment, typically people have ideas about their future. They're not sure which one they should pursue, though, and not always, but a good percentage of the time, those ideas are a logical extrapolation from the work that they have been doing. And so, therefore, there are other possibilities which often are not represented in their thought process coming into the coaching. For example, the person that's been doing a lot of data analysis for their company for the last years, but secretly they'd love to become a therapist because actually that's their true vocation, but they just don't allow themselves to entertain that because it stirs up too many negative emotions related to security.

Michael:

If we talk about authenticity, then, then which is a key topic for me and my coaching, if somebody wanted to find the most authentic career path, they could represent each of these paths in a constellation, so looking at one with being a coach, another with being a consultant, another with being a therapist, etc.

Stephanie:

Exactly.

Michael:

And then make observations of which of those paths, in some way, were most authentic to them.

Stephanie:

Yes, my experience is, the more you blossom, the more you become the tree you were meant to be, the more authentic you will be with yourself, and usually it's not what you thought you would be authentic with.

Stephanie:

When you blossom as the tree, that means people very often are authentic with, as we say, the hidden loyalties to their family. So they have an idea of being successful which is the idea of the family they come from, of the family they come from. And, as you say, they are data analysts and think they are much better in a communicative setting. Maybe this is definitely not a value that would have been supported in the family. So where's the resource they can get the power from to be able to step on that path, on their path. And this is a very powerful process they have to go through then to connect themselves to themselves. And when we're talking about success, the ideas are about money and I have a big company and they are very driven by economic ideas, fantasies. They are very rarely connected to what I call the vision, to what their inner force is. Some call it the purpose.

Michael:

I'm glad you mentioned the money part, because that was actually going to be a last question to you. So often we tend to orient, consciously or unconsciously, towards which opportunity is going to make us financially successful or at least viable. And I've had a number of clients over the last years, 'let me sacrifice my present and do something that's not authentic in order that I can, first of all, provide for my family and, secondly, so that I can accumulate wealth so that at some point in the future I can retire and I can do what I really want to do then'.

Stephanie:

Mm-hmm, yeah, that's the standard. Yeah,

Michael:

So what advice would you have for those people?

Stephanie:

Let me tell you something. I come from an aristocratic background and in aristocracy money is not an issue because we are the better people anyhow. And I know it sounds astonishing, but what it helps with is you do things because you want to do things and not because you think of money, because you are the better people anyhow. So you have a certain invulnerability. In a way, you're safe and you may fail several times, but you always get up because you are the better people. So this self-belief in this case which is not the idiot one, but the better people, helps and it makes you understand that money is an energy and a resource that follows authenticity. It follows the belief and not the other way around. You don't have to serve some pattern, some structure. And I know it's very, very difficult because our society and everything we do and economy is completely money driven.

Michael:

Absolutely.

Stephanie:

Yeah, we cannot imagine that money follows us, because we are always following money.

Michael:

Well, I think this also then gets into survival patterns, right?

Stephanie:

Exactly.

Michael:

More and more, I think, people are being squeezed and getting closer to limits which start to raise existential fears about their survival. So presumably this goes back to then identifying what those hidden loyalties are or those survival patterns were when we were growing up.

Stephanie:

Yeah, people wanted to know how criminality rises in societies that are completely economized, meaning that everything gets its value in relation to money, that these societies have the highest level of criminality. That has something to do with the fact that we don't evaluate anything that doesn't produce money. And if we are not aware of that, and not only, 'okay, I understood that now', but if we don't really feel what we're doing there, that everything we are looking at gets a value in relationship to the price it has and to the money it makes, then we will not be able to follow our own path.

Michael:

So the systemic approach to this would be to flip it around, then, and to follow what's authentic to you and have the money automatically follow your authenticity.

Stephanie:

Yes, exactly. And then systemically, from the very hidden dynamics, we can say that success is bound to the mother wound and money is bound to the father wound.

Michael:

So looking at the mother and the father elements is important when addressing the money issues. One of those will probably be more important than the other, I guess.

Stephanie:

Yeah.

Michael:

To share a story from my own life, about 18 months ago, I decided quite suddenly to give up 50% of my business because I just could not continue to do that type of work anymore. It just felt so inauthentic and I think I reached a moment where I woke up one day and I just thought why do I continue to do this to myself? It made sense at some point so it's to acknowledge that that's been part of my success. But as I evolved as a person, it was clear that it wasn't part of my future. So energetically, I just felt as if I couldn't continue. And so I literally let it go over the period of a few weeks, and of course, this raised a lot of anxiety in me because of the financial implications. What was so amazing is that in the 12 months that followed that, the other part of my business which I kept started to skyrocket in a way that it's never done before. I just couldn't make this up. And I actually ended up making more money last year than I've made before.

Stephanie:

Yeah, and that was a typical situation of not knowing what you were doing, but you could feel it so absolutely. You followed it like a representative for Michael, yeah. Because if you would have used Michael's head he would have said, 'are you an idiot?'. Of course, there was the fear, but there was something stronger. So in a way you subconsciously followed something that is bigger than you, but it's not an outside bigger, it's not something voodoo, it's inside you. You know it and you follow it.

Stephanie:

And to be able to follow these kind of inner calls, you should be exercised in doing this presential work, because it becomes more and more easy to follow your inside knowledge. I know something and I can feel the difference between I think that with my mind or it's a deeper knowledge in me. I know I will do that. I have no idea where it will go, and then you can see that something before was in disbalance and as soon as you bring it in balance it can start to flow again. And of course then people think, ok, if I drop 50% of my business, the other 50%... you know how it works. Even you don't know what the deeper reason is. You can only see what you did and say, 'oh, this is what happens, and I go with that'. You can't always analyze it in a logical way. Maybe there's so many connections to this decision.

Michael:

Well, I think it's about acting on the inner impulse, yeah.

Stephanie:

Yeah, and you follow something, although you don't know or you don't understand or you can't analyze it, but something in you says this is it.

Michael:

So I think at this point I'm going to propose that we start to draw this to a close. But a very rich discussion. This is an area I really love, so really thank you very much for sharing your expertise here, for giving us some additional insights on what to look out for during career transition, and I wish you much success with the transition that you've just been through yourself with moving geographic locations.

Stephanie:

Yeah, although I came home in a way. I left Germany to live in Belgium, and although the country was beautiful and everything was beautiful, I didn't feel home there. I was always a stranger, and to be a German in Belgium or the Netherlands from history, transgenerational, is not a good idea. So, you could feel all the dimensions that the first and the second world war created, still until today. And now I went back home, but I chose a different place. Namely, I live now in the countryside and it's just paradise. It's the best I could do in my life. I've never lived so beautifully and I've only fields and trees around me and it's just amazing. And it's only half an hour drive to Cologne.

Michael:

So you have the beer on the doorstep then.

Stephanie:

Yeah, yeah. Let me add a hint to a book I just recently released which is called The Magic of Connection, Systemic Intelligence in Organizational Development, because in this book I wrote down everything that might be important or interesting for working with systemic intelligence and organization, and it has a huge practical part. So the third part of the book gives you all the different methods you can use and try yourself. So it's a rich source maybe for people who are interested to learn more about this, and the book is there in German and in English.

Michael:

Where can people find that? Is it on Amazon?

Stephanie:

It's on Amazon. You can also buy it in the Tradition shop Tradition. It's a book on demand, but Amazon is great.

Michael:

And we'll be providing the contact details on the website.

Stephanie:

Thank you.

Michael:

I'm just wondering if there's any, either last advice that you might have for the career transitioners listening in, or maybe an exercise that you could propose them so they can start exploring themselves in this way?

Stephanie:

Oh, there's a nice exercise to get a first idea about how you're driven by patterns and how it could be with you as a grown-up. You put a line on the floor and on the left side is the place of you as a child and on the right side is you as a grown-up. And you step on the left side and you say, 'this is how I was when I was a child. This is how it felt'. And you very deliberately take a big step on the right side and say, 'now, I'm grown up and I have all options open for me', and you just watch what will happen.

Michael:

Okay. The invitation, stephanie, is to observe any subtle shifts which take place, either in thought processes or feelings on both sides of the line?

Stephanie:

Yeah. It's not about doing something, it's just about perceiving. And you can't do anything right or wrong. You just feel or sense how it is there. And maybe you have some insights or memory coming up or sudden sadness, whatever it is. Maybe nothing happens. Everything's fine. It's a nice little exercise to get more in contact with yourself.

Michael:

Okay, wonderful. And if people would like to reach out to you directly, where can they find you?

Stephanie:

They can go via my website. The company is called Feld Institut, which is German for Field Institute. And the website is www dot feld, which is F-E-L-D minus institute, and the German writing, which is I-N-S-T-I-T-U-T dot D-E.

Michael:

Super, and I will transfer that information up onto the podcast website.

Stephanie:

Yeah. Yeah, thank you so much for having me, michael. It was a very rich and dense conversation to even more understand some aspects that are important to me. So, thank you very much for that.

Michael:

The feeling is mutual.

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