Assessing Maturity: A point in time?

How stage logics can guide us to where human potential is unfolding  As coaches, we are supporting the growth of our clients. Growth – as individuals, pairs, or teams – gives us greater capacity to come to terms with and deal with the complexity of our contexts. At Aephoria, we offer two lenses to support growth – through the Enneagram and through stage maturation –…

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Being human in a digital world

How do we come to terms with AI in the workplace? The challenge  AI is becoming pervasive in the workplace. In existential terms, it is “a fact of life”, and we need to come to terms with it. To “come to terms with” does not mean that we find solutions or even resolutions.   From a coaching perspective, it…

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Tending trust in work (and other) pairs

Tending trust in work (and other) pairs

We instinctively know that trust is important. Without trust, being in the world becomes unmanageable. It’s no pleasure when trust is absent or harmed. We must work much harder to make up for what trust naturally gives to us.  We sense trust long before we give words to it. We see it by its effects, and we work out if we…

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Getting a grip on Professional Pairs

Tending trust in work (and other) pairs

Having been at times thoughtful and inquisitive and at times quite unwarrantedly opinionated about something that is very new to me – the coaching of pairs – I eagerly attend the Aephoria Level 6 training for coaching professional pairs. The philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty gave us the concept of “optimal grip”. It refers to our embodied…

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Leader pairs: a frontier of organisation development

Leader pairs

Leader pairs: a frontier of organisation development Why are more organisations choosing to be headed by two leaders? One of the answers is certainly that two pairs of eyes are better than one, that two different sets of skills and expertise may complement each other perfectly, etc. Part of the answer is that complexity requires more distributed leadership, enabling…

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Making magic – the alchemy of facilitator duos

In the first article about workplace pairs, I touched on some of the general issues related to people working in pairs, and how we could use the Enneagram to both see more clearly and transform how we deal with such issues. In this article, I feel around in the field of facilitation, specifically facilitation pairs.…

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It takes two: Coaching the workplace dyad

This article is the first in a series of two exploring the workplace dyad in relation to the Aephoria Colleagues report. The first article is a more general exploration of themes and issues related to the collegial pair. In the second article, I’ll turn my attention to specific kinds of workplace pairs, in particular leadership…

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Love Maps

Love Maps

17 Reflections on Couples and the Enneagram  Christo van Staden, with Waheeda Ramjan   1. Beginner’s mind  As far as the coaching of couples goes, I’m a novice. I know something about the Enneagram, and I know something about adult maturation. I am in a couple, and I have been before. In writing these reflections,…

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Team Resets: When Work Feels Like a Battleground

over the horizon image

There are seasons in organisational life that feel like living in a permanent war room. Speed becomes the virtue and urgency the atmosphere. The poet David Whyte names the seduction clearly: “Speed gets noticed. Speed is praised by others. Speed is self‑important. Speed absolves us.” The trouble is that the physiology of speed demands repayment.…

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Culture and Maturation: A Developmental Lens for Organisational Life

Culture and Maturation Image

Introduction: Culture as the Container of Growth This article proposes that organisational culture should not be understood only in terms of its strategic “content”, the visible behaviours, values, and rituals, but in terms of its quality; its capacity to support the maturation of both individuals and the collective. Culture, in essence, expresses and enables our…

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