Designing in, and sustaining a culturally sympathetic (matching) response in an organisation set up to help people in deep distress is very challenging.
A necessary starting point is to build a sense of belonging, i.e. a sense of community, almost a sense of family, in the organisation. This means that acceptance and inclusiveness are paramount.
Belief in people, and an understanding of the process by which people grow and develop is also necessary. Awareness of the root foundations, and excitement are important. Creativity and openness, combined with the willingness to be non-judgmental will enhance the process.
Patience is necessary, as is an ability to live with uncertainty, and/or being able to spot the invisible order that runs underneath the chaos. A willingness to see, and learn from, the positives rather than allow the negatives (of which there will be many) influence practice, is vital. Having a trusting environment is also necessary.
In terms of healing/therapy/growth, the dominant modality here is Person Centred, described in the Chapter on Modalities in Section Three. And, as mentioned in a previous post, affording high esteem to what might be called traditionally female traits that abound in families such as intuition, gut instinct, perception and plain old common-sense will enhance our journey towards acceptance and inclusiveness.
Accommodating a tolerable amount of chaos and uncertainty in an organisation (as I recommended in a previous Chapter) sounds great in theory, but sustaining it in a practical way day by day will never be easy.
I would propose that the best way to sustain it is to genuinely accept, model, and mirror the reality of growth at every level of the organisation. This may require significant change which would need to be introduced and sustained with skillful and sound leadership over a considerable length of time.
Bureaucracy gets in the way of cultural matching, as does power imbalance. Conservatism (i.e. wanting things to stay the same) is probably the biggest inhibitor to the accommodation of chaos, as conservatism is driven more by fear of the unknown and/or the establishment having an interest in things staying the same, than anything else.
I would say that at the emotional level the biggest obstacle is fear and the many subtle ways it manifests itself in organisations.
In my experience all the above traits are relatively easy to maintain until an organisation is under pressure, then they tend to be forgotten about and quickly replaced by logic, reason, and rationality.
Perhaps that is because logic and reason always have higher esteem in a court of law, and when we are under pressure we all have one eye on the law because we want to avoid getting ourselves or our organisations into trouble!