Cultivating change
By Kim Deans
How often do our well-intentioned efforts to change things for the better to fall into a familiar pattern of trying to solve problems with the same thinking that created them? It is easy to change by exchanging one input for another to find a “nicer” way to do the same thing. It feels like we are rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic at ever increasing speed with every passing day.
We readily focus our attention on aspects of the system we can most easily see and tend to ignore the unseen aspects. Yet the most powerful aspects of complex systems are the least visible. When you think that there are billions of micro-organisms in just one teaspoon of healthy soil and we are only just beginning to learn about their invisible, crucial role in ecosystem and human health, what else are we not seeing?
We have all experienced situations when our attempts to change something for the better end up being temporary when we come up against resistance and we don’t create the results we know are possible. Coaching conversations are a powerful and effective way to bring the invisible aspects of the system that reside within our internal landscapes (the paddock between our ears!) into the light so we can become aware of unseen forces that are undermining our attempts to create permanent change.
The logical levels of change model below (developed by Robert Diltz) explains how changes align across a number of different levels when permanent, transformational changes occur.
1. Environment: The first level of change is focused on the environment around us, the where and when. Here we can continue to do the same things but we might change our location, use a different agronomist, use different inputs and look for nicer ways to kill things.
2. Behaviour: The second level in changing agriculture is changing what we say and do. Taking new actions and looking beyond input substitution to what we can do differently. We start improving our grazing management, increase diversity in crops and pastures, and take actions to feed and restore soil biology.
3. Skills and capabilities: At this level of change we focus on how we can do things better through embracing learning opportunities and opportunities to develop our skills. The more we learn the more we realise we don’t know.
4. Values & Beliefs: our success on this new path will be determined by what we believe. This level is all about the why. Our beliefs can either reinforce the change or undermine it. Our values inform our decisions. We generally live in alignment with our values unless we are blocked by a self-limiting belief.
5. Identity: who we believe we are plays a huge role in how we can transform for the better. Who we need to BE to bring about the changes we desire is foundational to transformative change.
6. Purpose: connecting to a purpose beyond ourselves that brings meaning to our life is the highest level in transformative change.
Change at levels 1, 2 and 3 is easier and often temporary. The higher the level of change the more profound and permanent the change will be as we align our environment, behaviour, capabilities, beliefs, identity and purpose so they are all congruent. These least visible aspects are the most powerful!
Its common along a regenerative agriculture path to get stuck in overwhelm somewhere in levels 1, 2 and 3. This looks like a never-ending treadmill of consuming information, looking for answers from all the experts and taking lots of actions that don’t create the outcomes we know are possible. Unless we resolve the resistance that surfaces at the levels of our values & beliefs and our identity, we continue to fall short on creating the outcomes we know are possible. This is why cramming more information into our overactive minds and loading more things to do on our never-ending job lists is not creating the changes we seek. Unless we address the beliefs behind why we do what we do along with who we need to BE to bring about the change, transformation will continue to illude us.
Coaching conversations embrace ALL these levels of change and facilitate break throughs in the higher levels of change around our beliefs and identity which are so ingrained within us it is difficult to see them clearly and objectively on our own. Coaching conversations shine a light and guide you to access a fresh perspective on what’s holding you back so you can BE the change you wish to see.
“Your paradigm is so intrinsic to your mental process that you are hardly aware of its existence, until you try to communicate with someone with a different paradigm.”
- Donella Meadows
Yes I am writing a lot about coaching lately! This year I embarked on an enlightening personal and professional learning journey of becoming an ICF accredited coach. I am incredibly inspired about the potential for coaching conversations to unlock the missing pieces of the puzzle and transform agriculture. Email me to find out more about how coaching can help you on your journey.