Last week I led a large international group of about fifty people, speaking different languages, all belonging to the same organisation but at different hierarchical levels, in a profound reflection on collective identity. The objective, which started from a need to regenerate meaning and belonging, was to experience a moment of reconnection together in order to regenerate connections between themselves and to the purpose.

The workshop

The 4-day workshop, organised together with a preparatory group, began with a first day of reconnecting with the reason why each person chose to belong to this organisation (the past, the roots), followed by a second day in which the group used the narrative tool “tree of life”, first individually and then, by hanging the individual trees, they built the “forest of life” an overview of the organisation’s members, ending with the activity, dedicated to reflection on organisational resilience “storms in the forest” (for more details on the methodology you can consult the numerous sites that are dedicated to the topic in different languages).

The third day was dedicated to sharing the perspective of ‘others’: each member had prepared a contribution, interviewing organisational stakeholders to add elements and facets to the identity that were then the subject of dialogue and sharing in plenary. On this day there were also external guests who discussed the present and future of the organisation, with the participants.

Facing the reality…

At the end of the day, together with the group with whom we had carried out the debriefing of the dynamics of the large group every evening, we perceived a certain amount of frustration in participants. The external contributions had introduced an element, that of the organisational context, which until then had remained secondary, but also conveyed an image of the organisation that was difficult to accept… difficulty in the target audience recognising all the services provided, problems of attractiveness, language that was sometimes not suitable for talking to the younger sections of the population… a sense of powerlessness circulated among the people in the workshop.

… and navigating through mourning

During the restless night that followed the evening debriefing, the origin of the desolation at the end of the third day became clear to me: the individual and then collective activity ‘tree of life’, ‘forest of life’ had produced a sense of possibility, of fullness of resources, of strength… the encounter with reality, although full of encouragement, had instead generated an awareness of the limits and of what could no longer continue. The desolation came from a mourning that the group was going through.

The ‘tree of life’ is a beautiful activity, which I appreciate very much, that generate reconnection to the inner self and resources, but even in its ‘forest’ version it remains an individual activity and lacks contextual elements, as a lot of self-development activities. The fourth day was to be dedicated to exploring the future and action plans.

But how could we shift our organisational focus to the future, starting from the sense of loss, sadness and impotence that had been generated? How could we think about regeneration when the group was still in a phase of mourning and pain for what had to end? I thought about the metaphor of the tree, its organic nature, the repetition of renewal with the passing of the seasons… In the afternoon I had received a photograph from my family in Fontainebleau of the great sequoia that reigns in the arboretum, surrounded by different types of trees, and I thought about the reproduction of its seeds, which require a part of the forest to burn in order to be fertile.

Unlocking regeneration

So I had the idea of suggesting to the group that we build a ‘tree of life’, but this time a truly collective one, not the sum of the individual trees hanging on the wall, but a large tree, drawn in the centre of the room on a huge sheet of paper: the entire organisation and its context.

The morning’s activity became an ‘open market’ in which the participants organised themselves around a series of themes developed together with the pilot group: our shared history (the roots), who we are today and the state of our relationships (the trunk), our future projects and dreams (the branches), the embryos of what is beginning (small fruits), with whom we want to realise our purpose (the leaves), our needs (the soil), what must end (the compost).

The morning, which began with a time of silence and reflection, continued with a growing sense of joy, of re-established bonds, of new ideas emerging from each of the work groups. The group rediscovered its fertility, reconnected with its values and common roots, and ended the workshop not with the ritual ‘action plan’ but with new ideas well anchored in the context and reality, a new energy, a regenerated sense of responsibility, and the desire to continue to act innovatively and renewing