Archetypes at Work™: The Method
How to find the 10 Archetypes in an organization
Archetypes at Work™ is a new cutting-edge method to assess and develop people and organizations to become fit for the future. This revolutionary tool is being introduced through our official partner Olivier Mythodrama in London.
Archetypes are the underlying patterns of human nature and experience. As such they are – often invisibly – ‘running the show’. Archetypes are foundationally embedded in our mindset and behavior, and deeply rooted in our values. In leaders, they profoundly inform the character we present to our people and networks, our clients and providers. In organisations they deeply infuse the products and services we offer. The better we understand these patterns and the more consciously we use them, the more effective we will be in our chosen work.
Archetypes at Work™ offers a comprehensive framework to recognize and understand how people act and “what is really going on” – in individuals teams and larger organisational systems. Combining psychological depth with a unique creative experiential approach to personal and professional development, this system is practical and accessible. It offers leaders and organisations the opportunity to assess their current archetypal patterns – both their “Gifts” and their “Shadows” – and then determine a more ‘future-fit’ pattern. Participants then create an archetypal development plan; imagining, rehearsing and ‘acting in’ the desired future.
Currently Olivier Mythodrama in London and Laurence Hillman’s private practice in the US are the exclusive licensees of this method. For information about how you can benefit from this method for your organization or for yourself, contact info@oma.uk.com
Would you like to discuss how this method can help your organization?
Contact our official partner, Olivier Mythodrama in London at +44 (0)20 7386 7972 or email info@oma.uk.com
Why we need to understand Archetypes in the workplace
It is becoming clear to many that the current left brain dominant, logical, analytical, and process-driven leadership approach is, by itself, incapable of successfully navigating the VUCA world rapidly moving towards us (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous). Truly effective 21st century leadership will develop an appropriate new balance between these established qualities and more right brain, creative, adaptable, intuitive, and emotionally intelligent methods – that will enable any system to achieve peak performance. Future-fit leaders will need to learn new language and behavior to maximize a whole–brain approach to meet the challenges ahead.
Times are changing at a pace never seen before. The complexity around us is increasing every day. Leaders and companies must adapt to this new reality and consulting, in order to respond to an ever-increasing need for right-brain capacities in leaders and their teams, needs to evolve to include a more archetypally feminineTM , intuitive and emotionally intelligent way of caring for a system. The consulting metaphor is changing from ‘fixing a machine’ to enabling a living system.
To successfully align an organization and its culture with these new, fast-changing business realities every company needs a tipping point of transformational leaders who have the capacity, courage and integrity necessary to challenge and reimagine the stories and operating assumptions that underpin the organization’s DNA. We can show you how an Archetypal diagnostics and a different way of thinking can aid you in understanding yourself and your company on a deep and meaningful level. This, we believe, will give you a perspective that is necessary during these times.
Our new offering is a unique and powerful synthesis of archetypal wisdom and analysis combined with transformational theatrical techniques that create a deeply effective and memorable intervention for organizations across all sectors. Laurence and Richard Olivier have been successfully developing individuals, leaders, and leadership cohorts to embrace these essential new qualities for over 20 years in their own practices. We are calling our work together Invisible Dynamics of Leadership.
Archetypes are the underlying patterns of human nature and experience. As such they are – often invisibly – ‘running the show’. In leaders, they deeply inform the character we present to our people and networks, our clients and providers. Archetypes are foundationally imbedded in our mindset and behavior, and rooted in our values and inner motivations – and in an organization they deeply infuse the products and services we offer. The better we understand these patterns and the more consciously we use them, the more effective we will be in our chosen work.
Key Question: What Archetypal Repatterning will best serve you, your team and your organization at this point in time?
We work with you to analyze and identify the Archetypal patterning of your organization in its current state. We then identify the new patterns that will be required to continue your success into the future and create a tailored intervention to initiate and develop your key leaders to be able to implement these changes effectively.
What is an Archetype and how does it affect the workplace dynamic?
ar-che-type [ahr-ke-tipe] Greek, noun
1. a collectively inherited idea, universally present in individuals and groups; 2. the original template on which all subsequent forms are based.
In organizations archetypes appear as patterns, underlying themes that go beyond the culture of the organization. Stress in organizations occurs when some archetypes dominate and others are lacking. After a careful assessment of your organization, leadership team, or department, we develop specific tools to bring organizations back into balance.
We operate with a few core assumptions that have proven to be accurate in our forty years of working with archetypes:
- There are universal patterns that exist in individuals as well as organizations.
- These are organizing principles (reflected in groups of any size) that can be made visible through what we call the organizational template.
- The founder(s) of the original organization set the original template by locating the organization in time and space.
- We are applying ideas from the established fields of archetypal psychology and organizational theory.
- We identify which archetypes are in the template and are present in the workplace.