CBODN: About - Interview

Interview with the CBODN Program Presenter:

Three Gifts—Discernment, Heart, and Presence; Effective Use of Self for Transformers

Program Description

Many professionals recognize that transformation, a fundamental difference, not change, is required for individual clients and client organizations to achieve their highest potentials. Three gifts, discernment, heart and presence, are available to all people, assisting in accuracy of perception, choices for action and direction of one’s substance, qualities and abilities. Darya Funches has researched the nature of these gifts, their effects, and approaches to developing three gifts as OD professionals and in everyday life. In this program we will examine the components of the three gifts, apply the gifts to specific consulting situations and learn techniques/approaches to develop the three gifts. This program is most relevant to leaders and OD professionals who recognize the need for transformation in one or more client organizations.

Biography

Darya Funches, Ed.D. has more than thirty years experience as a consultant, leader, speaker, coach, author and educator. She has expertise in corporate and personal transformation, visionary leadership, effective use of self as a transformer, accelerated processes of learning and change, the science of perceiving and creating realities, and connections between spirit and science in human systems. She is a member of the OD Network, Gestalt Institute of Cleveland’s OSD faculty, and is former Chair of the Board of NTL Institute. Darya is CEO and Founder of REAP Unlimited Corporation and is a partner in Innovative Global Resources.

Q1. Who should come to your workshop and how will they benefit?

Dr. Darya: Practitioners who are aware of the need for transformation in one or more of their client organizations should attend the workshop. Several participants will have the opportunity to use their own client situations in the exercises as well and all participants can benefit from examples I share from my experience. Practitioners who are purely interested in effective use of self in consulting should also attend.

Three Gifts are aspects of the use of self. In any OD intervention, and in any culture, the OD practitioner uses the self. Three gifts help the practitioner connect accurately to the actual and potential realities of a client system and creatively to what is needed to help the system move to its highest potential at the moment. This connection is different than the practice of focusing on collecting techniques to enhance our bag of tricks, although learning techniques can enhance our usefulness to clients as long as we have the ability to use self effectively to support the work.

To give some focus for our brief time together, I will concentrate on Three Gifts for “transformers” because transformation, healing and creating new realities have been the focus of my research and my work since I had the insight about the Three Gifts in 1985.

Although I initially wrote about Three Gifts for the OD practitioner, the gifts are relevant for all people. For example, unless we develop our gifts of discernment, we are overly dependent on the integrity of those in authority in any given situation to give us truth; we have no truth barometer within.

People who are interested in spirituality [not religion] as it relates to use of self may also be interested in this workshop.

Q2. Will your workshop be interactive?

Dr. Darya: Three Gifts is a concept about inherent qualities in the self. As we cultivate and use these gifts we improve our abilities to create and manifest our own visions—and we become better able to assist others to create and manifest their visions, whether individuals, groups, or organizations.

This workshop will explore the Three Gifts and use of self and through a combination of presentation and exercises that will allow participants to consider how to develop and use these gifts, and the potential benefits for self and their clients. We’ll end with a brief question and answer session.

Q3. How did you come to recognize the Three Gifts?

Dr. Darya: Most of the concepts I have developed over the past 30 years come from insights borne in one or more of the following contexts: observations of phenomena in society, groups, or organizations; observations from experiences in my own life; information from a personal vision; information from a personal dream; and/or a significant emotional experience. Three Gifts was a concept initially born from a significant emotional experience. I had the insight about the existence and relevance of these gifts while in NTL Institute’s Holding On and Letting Go workshop, run by Bob Tannenbaum and Bob Hanna at the time. The insight came after a recognition I had about my own life journey and professional experience and approach. I realized that we are always focused on acquisition of knowledge and techniques when one of the most essential things we all can do to improve as practitioners is effective use of self. The three gifts of discernment, heart and presence actually came to me as an epiphany at the moment in the midst of the workshop, as I reflected internally on my own behavior, behaviors of the workshop leaders, and coming trends in the OD field.

Soon after the 1985 workshop, I took a weekend and wrote the first Three Gifts article. I then spoke about the concept at different events and later included Three Gifts as part of the research I did for my dissertation. In the meantime, there is a version of the first Three Gifts article in a book jointly published by University Associates and NTL Institute—The Emerging Theory and Practice of OD in 1989.

Since then, I studied more about the sources of the Three Gifts, and how to cultivate and expand one’s ways of seeing and knowing, including and going beyond the ordinary data based domain of what is said and done into what is beneath what is said and done and truths that lie in what is not said or done.

Three Gifts work with the power of what is invisible in the domain of what is visible.

When it comes to effective use of self, I think some of the professional development work I did at the Gestalt Institute’s OSD program in the late 1970’s started me on the path to paying more attention to the significance of this aspect of the work for the OD practitioner, long before the epiphany I had.

Q4. How does organizational culture influence one’s use of the Three Gifts?

Dr. Darya: A person is always acting within, outside of, or on the boundaries of a particular culture, some visible, some invisible. An organization’s culture makes a difference in how system members respond to the presence of the OD practitioner. It may also influence the selection of a practitioner based on the systems perceived need for change.

For example, the more the system is invested in staying within its cultural box, the more likely it is to select practitioners whose presence and use of presence fit within these parameters. Also, system members tend to perceive and interpret the practitioner’s behavior in light of their cultural filters, and respond to the person accordingly. This means the practitioner must become comfortable in recognizing the impact of his/her presence in the context of a particular organizational culture and comfortable in using this presence as part of the conscious work of the system. As an African American practitioner who has worked in predominantly European American corporate cultures as a consultant, I have many examples of this experience.

When a system seeks transformation, effective use of self requires courage on the practitioner’s part because he/she will feel called upon to function outside the boundaries of the culture in order to support the culture’s transformation.

Q5. You make a distinction between “transformation” and “change.” Can the Three Gifts help us to move toward transformation?

Dr. Darya: This question is the topic of an entire workshop. I’ll just give one example here.

Change is movement within the same reality, an extension from the past, through the present and future. Transformation is movement from one reality into a fundamentally different reality, like the difference between a caterpillar and butterfly. The butterfly is inherent in the caterpillar, but a transformation takes place for this new existence to come into being.

In a lot of organizational change, we focus on changing ways of doing things without necessarily having new ways of seeing and knowing, new paradigms, or new beliefs and assumptions. As a consequence, we find some behavioral changes “don’t stick,” so to speak and that the development we did in new behaviors and skills in the 1970’s and 1980’s didn’t take root in the culture of some organizations and perhaps not in the culture of society. The Three Gifts helps one to be in touch with the core and root of the situation and identify and create types of interventions that would help resolution and sustainability.

Q6. You’ve said that leadership is not a position or role. What then it is?

Dr. Darya: A practitioner named Lisa Marshall wrote a chapter on me in her book on leadership maturity. I probably made this comment in the interview she did with me. When I think back, I probably made that comment to expand our thinking about leadership. It is a phenomenon, which is beyond the notions of role and position. In this sense, we can engage in leadership when we create, innovate and act without knowing that we will be followed, and without knowing the impact of our creativity, innovation and actions over time. Still, the phenomenon of our thought and action contributes to movement in a particular direction.

In this sense, OD practitioners exercise acts of leadership along with all members of a client system. We have recognized mainstream thought leaders who influence our society, but we also have thought leaders from our streets who influence our language, arts, and imagery. Our society can be influenced from beyond normal boundaries and we often don’t even know where these ideas and symbols have come from once they become part of the mainstream.

Q7. What research methods do you find most useful in studying the role of the self in leading transformation?

Dr. Darya: To develop my own models, concepts and theories, I am partial to qualitative research, particularly heuristic research as described in Moustakas’ book. [See Heuristic Research: Design, Methodology, and Applications, Clark Moustakas, 1990, Sage Publications.]

I also find heuristic research useful in the context of organizational culture. The practitioner’s experience in the culture can be useful along with the experiences of system members to get at the root of a situation.

My dissertation was a heuristic study on use of self, titled The Inner Experience of Transformation. I studied different practitioners who were engaged in transformational work, by their own or others’ views. They were managers, external consultants, internal consultants, scientists, spiritual teachers, healing practitioners and educators. Over time, I’ve also interviewed other “transformers” beyond those in the dissertation.

A heuristic approach to research gives me the freedom to use a variety of creative methods in searching for and expressing the findings. I am a poet, for example, and poetry, visual art, music and short stories are powerful vehicles to capture the collective consciousness of a system, helping to inspire the system to see itself more clearly and evolve more into its highest potential. In heuristic research, the researcher and others interviewed are co-researchers.

Q8. How does your own cultural heritage inform your work?

Dr. Darya: I am a student of culture and spirituality. As a student, I am a participant, not merely an observer. My exposure is prompted by my own journey, by my own search in understanding self, which also leads me to greater and greater exposure to learning about others. As a small child, I experienced many visions and dreams that only became clearer to me when I participated in certain indigenous spiritual ceremonies as an adult. As an African American, I have a blood line that includes Native American ancestry, so this connection is natural biologically.

All of us in the US live on Native American lands. That makes my childhood experiences not much of a surprise. Around in the globe, within many ancient traditions where people practiced living in harmony with the heavens, earth and all nations, we will find practices which help us develop healthy systems and effective use of self.

There are some connections between the transformation models I’ve developed since 1985, including the work on Three Gifts that are reflected in some of the world views of particular African and Native American teachings. I continually learn that the same is true of other cultures and belief systems. It was confirming for me to discover some of this along the ways of my spiritual development.

I find it interesting that the language we use in organization development is a mixture of language from the arts, military systems, physical sciences and ancient spiritual traditions. Let’s consider the term “vision,” which has become common in the past 25 years in organizational circles. This concept is strongly linked to ancient wisdom and spirituality and different religious traditions.

Q9. What good books/articles/authors/theorists have you read recently?

Dr. Darya: Because of my writing and theoretical interests, my reading is directed more in areas of philosophy, consciousness, different cultural traditions, brain research, sacred geometry, spirituality, physics, and biology than it is in the areas of organization development and behavior. I’ve been making my way through some of Howard Thurman’s collected works in the past year. He was one of Martin Luther King’s resources for development. Right now I’m in the middle of his book titled The Search for Common Ground. In the past few years, I’ve also been tutoring myself in several areas, including the history of business and the history of economic thought.

Q10. What are your current major activities or interests?

Dr. Darya: I’ve returned to a lifelong area of play and joy—writing poetry, stories and music. I’ve incorporated this play in my work as vehicles to engage myself and others in transformational work.

The diversity of my interests keeps me pretty busy, and I like it that way. In addition to traveling to work with clients, clients also come to work with me at my retreat location in Washington State. I call the place where I live Mossyrock Landing. It is remote, and has become a great resource, helping me with my own development and supporting the development of many others. I’ve learned a lot about working with “the power of place” by being here.

Organizational leaders, mostly from private and nonprofit sectors, come to work with me one-on-one for in depth work on self and the systems they are leading/assisting. Movement on their own transformation helps them with movement in the systems they lead or assist. These intensive sessions are most often from one to four days. Recently, someone came and stayed for seven days.

I am writing, working on a series of books, all related to transformation, healing, and creating new realities. So far, I’ve only completed one of the books—I Send My Blankets Over You, which focuses on the “medicine” of pure love. Also my consulting company is part of a collaboration called Innovative Global Resources (IGR). We focus on what we call an authentic approach to globalization, taking into account the local and indigenous cultures and practices where “global” businesses are being established. It is an integration of anthropology, physical sciences, and personal/corporate transformation.

This perspective also matters for US based businesses and organizations when we consider the interest now in developing sustainable and regenerative organizations. Indigenous practices in this country have something to teach organizations about this.

And last, but not least, I’m interested in application of the transformation work I’ve developed to address specific social issues where we need transformational interventions to make a positive difference. I am establishing a nonprofit organization and working with other nonprofit organizations toward this end. Right now the target social change areas I’m working on are increasing housing ownership for people of color, youth education and crime prevention (with a focus on suspended and expelled youth); empowering women, and freedom in consciousness for African Americans.

I’ve realized that writing is central to the possibility of contributing more, including and beyond the boundaries of consulting to organizations.

Q11. Where can we read more about your work?

Dr. Darya: I am working on my own website at the moment book, I Send My Blankets Over You, at www.isendmyblanketsoveryou.com and www.authorhouse.com. We are still working on an integration of the book site and the business site, which will be at www.reapunlimited.com when it is completed. Also, as I mentioned earlier, my consulting company is part of a collaboration called Innovative Global Resources. The web site is http://www.innovativeglobalresources.com.

You may find Lisa Marshall’s interview about my some of my views on leadership and the science of use of self published in the book Speak the Truth and Point to Hope.

ENDORSEMENT:

Ellen J. Solomon, MSOD, AU/NTL Class 9, member of NTL Institute and ODN/CBODN

Dr. Darya is one of the most impactful change agents I have had the privilege of knowing. She embodies and practices the three gifts of the OD practitioner and has a passion for helping others in the discovery of their highest potential. I have known her since 1988 - as a participant in her first "Use of Self" workshop, as a student in her "Theories of OD" course at AU/NTL, as a participant in her intensive learning community for two years, and as a client in a corporate environment. As a past Chair of the Board of NTL and a dedicated catalyst for change, Darya demonstrates a dedication to helping others learn, grow, and change; no one will be untouched in her presence.

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