Meet Marian Goodman
Marian has been with the Presencing Institute since 2009, working as a facilitator and coach, as well as directing programs and capacity building within the institute. “I am really, really deeply keen that people feel empowered and able to deliver what’s needed in the world and do it well,” Marian says when she reflects on her work as a capacity builder.
Based in Cape Town, South Africa, Marian designs and consults with organizations globally on cross-sectoral innovation initiatives. The various avenues of her work are founded in Theory U both as a method and as a “deeper philosophical approach to life and to being human on this planet and with others in society.”
Arriving at the Presencing Institute
Marian’s story in relation to the Presencing Institute began in 2003 when Beth Jandernoa introduced Marian to the Executive Champions Workshop in Vermont, where she first met Otto Scharmer. On encountering Otto and Theory U, Marian’s experience was an instant sense of connectedness to the work she had been developing to that point, as co-founder of a nature-based leadership development organisation in South Africa.
She reflects that “there was something beautifully resonant between the Theory that I was encountering and the Practice that I had been developing along with my colleagues.” Her work in leadership has always been about unlocking and activating transformative potential in individuals and collectives.
The wilderness: stripping away our outer layers and encountering potential
Educo Africa, the organization which Marian co-founded in 1994 in South Africa, incorporates the outdoors both as a leveller and as a means to access untapped potential. The legacy of Apartheid has resulted in vast discrepancies of access to education. The wilderness as a classroom gives opportunity for a more equal learning field, regardless of academic background.
For Marian, Educo’s outdoor-based experiential programs fulfilled a desire “to help people see and recognize what we called ‘the gold’ within themselves: those ranges of inherent potential that perhaps they were blind to, often because the messaging they had received in their lives didn’t acknowledge it.” And so the programs allowed participants to access, unlock, and begin to manifest this ‘gold’, this potential that was present, though hidden, within the individual.
Additionally, using the methodology of Vision Quest, which involves spending time alone in the wilderness, an intentional space was created to help close the separation of self from self, and self from nature. “Doing programs in wild nature strips away a lot of the outer clothing, sometimes quite literally,” Marian reflects, laughing. “The outer clothing of how we move about in the world and the kind of dialogue we have with life and with society… especially now in this age of social media tsunami… There is something that happens when all of that is stripped away and it’s just you and the elements.
Marian explains how this act of stripping away the outer layers, in order to connect with your more authentic self, can be “a little disconcerting and maybe even frightening, because you come face to face with things that have been able to be successfully avoided up to that time.” A multitude of fears may arise at such moments, for example fear of the dark or fear of being alone. Or “fear of actually encountering yourself… fear of even being able to love yourself for who you are.”
Marian describes this process of stripping away like an act of “clearing the space for a new relationship to start to form, and in that new relationship come new possibilities, new glimpses, new encouragements, and very definitely a greater sense of power and potential.”
Points of transformation: intersectional spaces
At a more collective and societal level, Marian has “always been troubled by elements of oppression and of cutting people out to the margins of society.” This concern was fuelled by her direct experience of growing up in Apartheid South Africa, and as daughter to a wartime refugee of Nazi Germany. Marian’s sensitivity to equity and diversity is reflected in the work she has been drawn to do in the world, which includes working with all the intersectional spaces of society.
One recent example is a program in Brazil which Marian has been supporting, called The MAPA Project. This project looks to develop a new narrative around gender values for the 21st century. Its first encounter, in the form of a 5-day intensive with about 30 people, took place in São Paulo in August 2019. Marian reflected that in her many years of working in Brazil, “this was probably the most diverse grouping I’ve ever worked with.” It was “diverse in every aspect: gender, sexual orientation, age, race, level of society… It was an extraordinary five days.” It also incorporated a profound experience of connecting with local indigenous wisdom and with the earth itself, as well as all the elements of race politics, gender politics, and socio-economic disparities.
A mini-documentary is evolving out of MAPA, a project that Marian is “particularly excited by, both for what it’s currently creating as well as for what will come and where this project will go.”
Blowing away the myths of a fixed mindset
The diversity of intersectional spaces, where Marian sees valuable points of transformation occurring, seem to have one thing in common: the fostering of collaboration through the recognition of multiplicity and difference. Marian says: “The process and method of the U is an extraordinary way to help people recognize that their frame of currently held beliefs and mindsets may be limited.” She reflects on how people often think that “my view is the view, my truth is the truth, and on we go.” However, once we realize that others hold legitimately different perspectives, our own ‘truth’ wavers. Marian continues with a smile:
“for me what’s always been extraordinarily exciting is to blow the myths of fixed mindsets. I’ve always been a rebel. And I’ve always questioned why any particular belief is taken as uncontradictable.”
A safe setting is key for people to venture outside of whatever the held belief or mindset may be. Here, “you can start to see through other eyes, or other ways of looking.” This possibility to shift a mindset, even if you have held it your entire life, provides the ground for new potential, new narratives, and transformative change.
Marian reflects on this by saying: “For me, the more diverse things get, the more exciting it becomes, and the more challenging it becomes. So how do you engage people to meet the conflict? To hold the conflict? To really listen through and into the conflict, without wishing or pretending it away?”
In order to face these challenges and these conflicts, a certain sense of support and community is necessary.
The wisdom of the collective: who will help me see more clearly?
Marian has worked extensively with young people considered to be ‘at risk’. Many of the young people with whom she has worked had been repeatedly told that they were worthless. At Educo Africa and in her current role as Mentor to younger people, one thing done very consciously is to “hold the mirror up so that people can see themselves in all their incredibleness.”
While there is a certain amount of work we can do on our own, to illuminate our own blind spots, Marian says, “I do think it takes others to shine the light for us, in the sense of either showing us ourselves, reflected in the mirror, or challenging us.” So, in a way, we can’t do it all on our own. There is a wisdom in the collective, be it just one person or a whole community. “There’s wisdom that can help us to create for ourselves a firm foundation of our own identity and our own sense of purpose and mission in the world.”
Diversity and the emerging future
Marian notes that the dialogue of the intersectional spaces is getting “louder and louder.” As the impact of the conservative movement grows stronger, and marginalized populations are being even more excluded, Marian is attentive to the strength of “collective voices that are emerging across these spaces of great diversity.” She reflects, “When you listen, and when you pay attention, and when you really look and see, there is this brewing underneath, of collective learning and then collective action that’s very supportive and potentially incredibly transformative.”
Though the future is unpredictable, “I’m certainly not going to stop keeping my attention on these spaces where new growth is showing in a way that I don’t believe it ever has before.”
