How we build an organization that truly makes the world a better place

Where Paul and I, Georg , when we were penniless people in our early 20s who took on five-figure debts to implement this idea of ​​plastic-free drinking bottles, which many people neither understood nor approved of? Where we put our whole heart and soul into building soulbottles for the last three years, without vacation, and with a salary that barely paid the rent after a year - and then didn't move for almost two years?

Where with the 1€ per drinking bottle we donate about 8-9% of our turnover to drinking water projects, even if we make a loss?

Where we do everything in our power to live values ​​such as appreciation and support, honesty and empathy in everyday life? Not just write them down on some piece of paper, but really try to live them every day in the team and with partners and customers?

For the first few minutes I was torn between anger (“What kind of self-righteous idiot is that? She has no idea how expensive it is to produce everything in Europe instead of buying cheaply in China! She should take a look at my personal account balance, then it would be fixed VERY quickly!”) and guilt. “Are we really such mean business people? Is our margin perhaps still a bit too high? We can now pay ourselves salaries of around €1,000 net, which is a pretty decent way to live in Berlin, at least if you’re under 30. Maybe she’s right, and this new financial ease is a sign that we’re indulging too much?”

Because of the environment I grew up in, whenever I am criticized I immediately feel guilty, like a Pavlovian dog who, in freedom, has to slowly relearn that when a bell rings, it doesn't necessarily mean food will come.

The feelings of guilt and the associated chaos of thoughts had nothing to do with reality, and neither did the anger. They had to do with old patterns. I knew that I would only make progress if I applied what I had learned over the last five years, namely to accept these outbursts of judgment and not to condemn them again.

Instead of thinking "What a bad person I am for having so much anger and guilt," I wanted to feel my vulnerability behind it. Thanks to my training over the last 5 years, I can now do this pretty quickly and smoothly. In this case, it took about 10 minutes. A few years ago, it would have taken at least a few days.

What then emerged on a deeper level was sadness above all. Pain that what we do, all the passion we put into it, is not seen, in truly doing business in a new way and in building an organization that is already trying to live the green, fair and happy world that we all long for.

I was also sad that I and our team had not yet done much to make this inner attitude, which I have never seen in such radicalness in any other company, visible to the outside world.

I can really understand the mistrust of organic products. There are enough companies that paint themselves as green and then charge a lot of money for their products without actually producing them in a green and ethical way. Without really being serious about it. And how is someone who sees the bottle and the price for the first time supposed to know that we are really serious if we don't say anything about it?

This article is a step towards changing that. And it is intended to give you some initial help to set out on a similar path. If our path appeals to you. ;)

How we try to live the world of our dreams now.

1. The 4 Quadrants of an Organization

Before we get started, I will explain a small mental map that helps me a lot to analyse how far we are at soulbottles on different levels and where we can start most effectively to become an even more radical world-improving organisation: The 4 quadrants from the integral theory .

After the explanation, I'll show you exactly where we're already good at soulbottles and where we still have to do our homework. A bit of theory, then we'll let our pants down. So the theory is worth it. ;)

The 4-quadrant matrix is ​​about the combination of 4 parameters: individual and collective, subjective and objective.
This results in the 4 quadrants:

Short example: I experience a thought that comes to me phenomenologically (upper left quadrant). This thought has brain-physiological equivalents (upper right quadrant). The thought arises against the background of my cultural influences and development and is shaped by them (lower left quadrant). At the same time, this thought is also shaped and influenced by the social and societal conditions in which I live (lower right quadrant).

When applied to organizations, the following facets emerge.

The top left is dedicated to the individual interior view:

How is the individual doing in the organization? How do they feel? What is their main motivation for being there? Money? Fame? Security? Meaning? Community?
To what extent are certain needs met or not met? To what extent does she see meaning in what she does? To what extent is she intrinsically motivated, to what extent is she extrinsically motivated? To what extent does she feel connected to others and to herself? How much love does she have for herself and for others?
So it's about looking inward, the subjective observation of the individual person. How are they doing? Things that are difficult to quantify, but are primarily difficult to determine qualitatively, where you need to turn on your emotional sensors.

Top right is dedicated to the individual external view:

What skills does the individual have? How much does he or she contribute to the results of the organization? How often do he or she smile? How often do he or she hug people? How many emails do he or she answer per day? How much exercise do he or she get? How organized are he or she? How quickly do he or she learn new things?
How much money does she get for her work? What kind of standard of living does that allow her? Can she save enough for her old age?
So all the things that you can look at from the outside like a camera, and that all quantified-self nerds and NLP addicts Bringing tears of joy to the eyes. The external expression of the inner world of experience (top left).

Bottom left is dedicated to the collective inside view:

What is the “culture” of the organization? What is the mood like internally? How does communication work when conflicts arise? Are they swept under the carpet, left to fester for a long time and perhaps exploding at some point, or are they addressed quickly and completely resolved?
Is there a shared vision and if so, how much emotional traction does it have?
Is there a culture in which people are encouraged to show themselves 100% as human beings, with all their strengths, weaknesses and vulnerabilities? Or is there a culture in which it is all about saving face, not showing any weakness and protecting oneself internally? Is the leadership style based on inspiration and trusting cooperation? Or on pressure and fear of consequences?
All the “soft” factors that are fortunately receiving more and more attention in the current leadership discussion, but are far too often considered separately from all the other quadrants.

Right-bottom is dedicated to the collective outside view:

What are the organisation's figures? How much money is being turned over, how much goods are being used, how many soulbottles are being sold and shipped per month, per week, per hour? How much money is being spent on marketing, on staff, on other fixed costs? What is the result at the end of the financial year? How much assets and debt does the organisation have?
What is the business model? The legal form? How many employees does it have? What is their socioeconomic background and in what proportion? What is the age distribution, the gender distribution, the integration and representation of minorities? How is the decision-making power distributed within the organization? How do the processes work? What does the organizational chart look like? Who owns the organization?
What is the organization's real contribution to the world? What is the social impact? The carbon footprint? How does the organization relate to the public?
The 4-quadrant matrix can be applied to all kinds of groups of people, be it an organization, a family, a country or the entire world.

In many existing companies, the focus is only on the bottom right quadrant. Everything that can be measured in numbers "counts". Everything else is "nice to have". When push comes to shove, all initiatives that affect the culture or the individual are subordinated to numbers and external success.

Unfortunately, this view also applies to many traditional NGOs. The aim is to create a better world, but the ego quadrants and culture are secondary. This is where the many horror stories of NGOs come from, in which underpaid employees end up suffering burnout in droves or power struggles break out that no longer have anything to do with the issue.

In response to this one-sided view of things, many people seek refuge in environments where only the remaining quadrants count. They do yoga, attend non-violent communication or NLP seminars, and do a lot of group and personal experience. At some point, however, even this reaches its limits. People try to incorporate these other quadrants into a right-bottom-only organization - and usually fail.

Unfortunately, many people in self-discovery circles stop at this point. They give up, work in a right-bottom job that doesn't fulfill them because they have to finance their lives, and recharge themselves in seminars where only the remaining quadrants count. If things go well, they become self-employed as seminar leaders or yoga teachers in order to live only in the remaining quadrants. And often consciously or unconsciously demonize this "lifeless right-bottom world."

This either-or approach does not bring us any closer to a green, just and happy world.

Many NGOs and social businesses fail to take their impact in the world to the next level because they ignore all quadrants except the bottom right.
Many wise and educated people do nothing to change the systems that leave so many human needs unmet because they do not dare to go back to the bottom-right quadrant, where real, tangible change would happen.

We need all 4 quadrants equally.

We need the and.

The genius thing is that if we include all four quadrants equally, a powerful positive feedback loop is created.

If I, as an organization, open up spaces in which employees can meet each other 100% as people, without a mask, they are happier, more empathetic, more positive and more motivated to work hard for the company. This has a positive effect on the external image, on the relationship with customers and thus also on the financial results.

If employees can tell each other everything, it helps immensely to uncover mistakes and problems and to learn from them together. This much faster learning process continually takes the positive external impact of the organization to a new level.

If I, as an organization, support my employees in their further development, on a professional and personal level, they are happier because they experience more efficiency and effectiveness in their own work, and because they are better aware of their feelings and needs and work through old wounds and beliefs that still prevent them from living life to the full.

This also means that they come into closer (heart) contact with their team colleagues, which improves the mood in the team and encourages others in the team to show themselves even more. The increased individual efficiency and the further improved flow of communication in the team in turn has a positive effect on the concrete effectiveness and financial results of the organization.

If I structure an organization in such a way that its activities solve a real social problem and it is self-sustaining through a functioning business model, this gives me the resources to support my employees in their personal and professional development and strengthens the sense of community, because there is nothing better than creating something together with people you feel connected to - especially when this something makes the world greener, fairer and happier.

This dynamic is what we are all about at soulbottles & soulwater.

2. Where do we stand at soulbottles?

bottom left

1) Meeting culture

New employees and interns will realise that we are “somehow different” at our “Personal Relations Meeting” at the latest. Every two weeks we meet for two hours in the afternoon at one of our homes for a moderated meeting that is all about relationships within the team. (Many thanks to our In-house NVC trainers Kolja and Jonas , who inspired us to do this.)

Resolve conflicts, express appreciation, tell each other how you are feeling and where you could use support. 5 rounds with predetermined, moderated questions**. This meeting has the following advantages:

There is a fixed space to address and resolve "simmering" conflicts, where the cause is sometimes difficult to pinpoint, early on. This way, nothing builds up and we can make full use of the learning potential that lies in every conflict early on.
Because the team repeatedly experiences that conflicts can be resolved, it happens more and more that conflicts are addressed and resolved as soon as they arise - because the fear of addressing them has gradually disappeared.
The quality of the moderation is such that conflicts are really resolved and nothing gets left behind. In our case, it is an advantage that before I founded soulbottles, I completed intensive mediation and communication training and worked as a coach and trainer for Nonviolent Communication (NVC) was self-employed (see my old personal blog ).

I would therefore definitely recommend that founders or team leaders take a basic training in non-violent communication. In my experience, this is the fastest and most thorough path to developing the necessary skills and, more importantly, the inner attitude. 

We also bring the personal level into our weekly all-hands meetings, but only for a short check-in round - "How am I feeling right now? How am I here?" - with the intention of then being able to let go of that and concentrate 100% on the meeting. Because the emotions have their own dedicated space, there is less chance that they will interfere with the factual level and thus reduce the effectiveness of the meeting. The likelihood of ego trips decreases. Making progress together takes center stage.

2) Leadership culture

You can design your company culture on the drawing board as much as you like, but in reality you will get the company culture that you live as a founder. If you have a problem with money, your organization will most likely have a problem with money. If you are afraid of conflict, your organization will most likely be afraid of conflict and will therefore struggle with escalating conflicts instead of resolving them early on. If you are afraid of personal growth, you will stand still and your organization will most likely stand still because you are holding it back instead of growing with it.

“Either you grow with your organization, or your organization grows over your head,” says Stefan Merath, by far the best entrepreneur coach I know. His books are amazing, by the way, despite the questionable titles – and no, we don't earn anything if you buy one of his books. ;)

That doesn't mean that I believe that I can "own" an organization. It's an absurd concept, really. But it is definitely the case that when you start an organization, whether for-profit or non-profit, you set the framework and the culture. And not through your theories, but through your real behavior in everyday life.

For me and us, it is therefore a particularly important task to always show ourselves 100% authentically. Vulnerable, weak, insecure and sad, as well as strong, enthusiastic, confident and happy. Depending on what is really alive in me, in us at the time. This signals to everyone else "this is a place where I can show myself 100%". That doesn't mean that everyone does that straight away. But the longer and more consistently I do that, the higher the probability that others in the company will relax and dare to show themselves fully.

I still remember a personal relations meeting a few months ago where, in response to the first question, I said the following:

"I feel pretty fragile and thin-skinned right now. I was just shopping in the organic store and saw how a mother treated her child. The little boy wanted to run away and the mother stopped him by holding him and threatening him with consequences. I saw the eerie coldness in her eyes. I heard the boy's screams and could understand so well that he wanted to run away from this ruthless and coercive world. But what really hit me was the helplessness and deep exhaustion that I could see behind the mother's coldness. I walked out of the organic store and started crying. I found it so sad, so tragic that mother and son both lost so much in that situation. Neither of them got what they needed. Neither understanding, nor lightness, nor connection."

And even as I was telling the story, tears came again. When I looked up, I saw nothing but compassionate, loving faces with shining eyes. Fuck, what power. Working with people who accept you 100% in moments like these that have nothing to do with the team or the work.

And now you might be thinking: Uuuuuuh, self-awareness blah blah, they sit in a circle all day, throwing cotton wool at each other and not getting anything done.

If you think that, you are caught in the either/or again. How much passion for the work we do together do you think is released when you share such powerful, emotionally connecting experiences? How many mistakes do you think we avoid as an organization if everyone feels safe to say when they have messed up or are overwhelmed and ask for support? How much more fun do you think it is to work with people you can tell things like that to? How much does the quality of life improve?

Knowing: “How much strength does it actually take to show yourself weak and vulnerable?”

And we can also be pretty “hard” to each other. We place a lot of value on expressing and accepting unpleasant feedback. Being affected by it and learning from it, instead of falling into the “Who does she think she is? I’m the boss here!” trap. Tolerating the emergence of conflicts and going all out to resolve them. Sticking with it. Not demanding, but persistent. Knowing that every conflict indicates unused creative potential. Such hardness is only possible if you also fully embrace the “soft” side.

3) Recruitment criteria

In order to strengthen this culture, it is important to hire people who a) are 100% keen on it and b) are able to support this culture. The further they are in their own personal development, the better. That is why we prefer people who have either been with us for 1-2 years therapy or have, for example, completed an intensive NVC training course (see above).

top left

1) Be the Change

For us, the integration of the top left quadrant means above all that inner work is an important component and an important prerequisite for really contributing effectively to the creation of a green, just and happy world. The now rather hackneyed quote by Gandhi, "Be the change you want to see in the world", is unfortunately still true.

Part of this is that Paul and I, as founders, place great value on our own personal development, and another part is that we are trying to practice, step by step, as a team, giving each other feedback in a more honest and clear way in order to support each other in our development. That is why we give this aspect a lot of space in the Personal Relations Meeting.

We also use company resources for the intensive NVC training mentioned above for all permanent employees. And we make sure that the people we hire are already as much as possible in the "cooperation, abundance, ease, compassion, trust" paradigm and have internally transformed as much as possible the classic "competition, fear, everyone against everyone, fight, retreat" patterns with which we grow up in our society.

Unfortunately, this doesn't always work out the way we would like it to, because for many people, for example, going to the therapy mentioned above still means that there is something wrong with them. In principle, we are all completely fine. However, through school and beliefs such as "Indians know no pain," our society imposes on us a mental operating system that is geared towards blind functioning, not towards living up to our full potential.

It's like installing MS DOS on a high-end iPad today. The computer runs, but only uses 1% of its performance capacity, everything is grey and tedious, and every now and then everything crashes. For a human being, this grey-tedious-everything-crashes-down situation is called depression or burnout.

And our full potential as compassionate beings, living in great relationships, being happy and wanting to contribute as much as we can to the good of the world, is stunted.

With something like GFK In my experience, you then install something like iOS7 on it. Everything is colorful, you can run completely different great programs and games, and it crashes much less often. Life is much deeper and more fun. (Sorry for the Apple metaphor, that doesn't mean that I like Apple's corporate policy and especially its production conditions - quite the opposite.)

“Being the Change” also includes the constant review of one’s own inner attitude. At least I myself constantly check: am I acting out of trust and awareness of abundance or out of fear and inner narrowness?

If I act out of fear and inner constriction, which I recognize, for example, when I develop a lot of inner stress and want to work more than 40 hours a week, or when I get angry at people in my team, I try to calm down with a good dose of self-empathy and self-acceptance.

That doesn't mean that I always manage to do it, or that I always notice it early enough. What's important is not to do it perfectly, but above all to be committed to trying again and again and to be willing to resolve any conflicts that have escalated as a result.

2) Check how the values ​​fit together

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't force it to drink from it. We only let people who want to drink into our team. That means that they have a strong urge to develop themselves, which is not only talked about, but also evident in their life path. And that means that we also check whether their core values ​​and rough vision of themselves in life (if they have one, which is an advantage) are compatible with soulbottles.

If your main goal in life is to get rich quickly and then spend the rest of your life drinking Mai Tais on the beach in Bali after 5 years, you have to really convince us that this is the right thing for you. Although, apart from the horrendous _CO2 footprint, we don't mind drinking Mai Tais in Bali every now and then. ;)

top right

However, all this inner work remains mental masturbation if it does not at some point express itself in the change of one's own abilities and actions.

The basic skills and activities we are concerned with are, in no particular order, the following:

1) Get all the tasks done on your own shoulders with an overview and without stress

Regularly analyse your own priorities with an overview and adapt them to external and internal changes. This allows you to notice early on when the tasks increase to the point where they become too much for you and act accordingly. This means that you either leave the tasks alone or organize additional employees. The Getting Things Done Method by David Allen. The Book This is our urgent recommendation to everyone who has too much stress and too little time. A proper implementation of the findings in this method will save your life. Really.

2) Show empathy and non-judgmental honesty towards other people.

Even if you feel attacked yourself. For example, if you are seen as a “shrewd businessman”.

3) Constantly challenge your own fears.

On the The "Fill Your Life With soul" soulbottle that I designed contains the sentence "If it scares you, it might be worth doing." While writing this article, I wanted to run away and hide away far more often than during all the other activities this week combined. It's not the most pleasant thing, but it shows me that this is also where one of the greatest growth potentials lies, at least for me personally. So I'm taking a deep breath and trying to keep writing.

Due to soulbottles' current growth rate, everyone in the team has more than enough opportunity to regularly take on new tasks that they are not yet 100% comfortable with, to face their fears and develop further. Sometimes a bit too much, if I'm honest. But how are you supposed to know where your limits are if you don't test them?

4) Prioritize your own well-being.

To build a new culture, you need enough space for reflection, to calm down and to find out whether we are still on the right path. Or whether we are unconsciously following conventional beliefs that prevent us from living life to the fullest. For this, enough breaks and enough time for relationships and relaxation are very important.

That doesn't mean that we only rest so that we can work more efficiently, even if that is one of the pleasant consequences of getting enough rest. Rest and relaxation are also valuable in themselves. We don't live to work. We work, and we like to work very efficiently, which is great as part of a great, meaningful life.

5) Make unpleasant tasks easy and fun.

Not all tasks are fun right away. Productivity is often the secret to making unpleasant tasks enjoyable. For example, a tedious task like grinding grain by hand.

And depending on the task at soulbottles, there are also the technical skills in which it makes sense to regularly block out time in order to expand your abilities.

Bottom right

If a new attitude towards coexistence is not expressed in new structures, this new coexistence is always in danger of being overrun by the direction of the existing structures. Many alternative projects and movements can tell you a thing or two about this. In the end, the practical constraints or the legal situation win out. At least if no effort has been made to integrate the practical constraints and thus transform them.

Since we have spent the last two years mainly trying to make soulbottles a self-sustaining, profit-making company, this is where we still have the most potential for development.

decision-making structures

What is already clear to us is that neither classic hierarchy nor grassroots democracy works for us. At the beginning of October we will therefore Holacracy an organizational system that combines the advantages of hierarchy and grassroots democracy without inheriting their disadvantages.

This means making quick decisions and really involving everyone where it is important, with good and clear allocation of tasks, and without power struggles or those with the most staying power winning decision-making processes. This will not get us to our goal, but it is an important step in joint research into how democracy, efficiency and reliability can mutually enrich each other. This joint research will probably accompany us for the next few years.

Profit orientation as a means

But wait, you say, if you want to make the world a better place, why are you profit-oriented?

There are two answers to this:

The bottom-right answer: Although we are legally a profit-oriented GmbH as soulbottles, we are impact-oriented in our orientation. Making a profit is a very helpful way of increasing your own positive impact on the world, especially if the way you make the profit already has a positive impact on the world. Since soulbottles reduce plastic production and CO2 emissions, give more people access to clean drinking water and make people healthier by not using plasticizers and by reminding them to drink enough, that is the case with us. A functioning business model also gives us the resources to finance intensive further development for all of our employees. This in turn will improve our figures in the long term - although improving finances is not the main goal.
In concrete terms, this means that as soon as it is feasible in Europe, we will also be able to use the newly created legal form of B Corp which, according to initial assessment, corresponds much more to this orientation.

The top left answer: Money is not bad per se, money is just a means. And it is not the decisive factor for entrepreneurial success. Money is only what you project onto it. That sounds esoteric and strange, but it is true and would fill a whole article of its own, so for now here is just a reference to the best book on the subject, with the silliest title: 30 blatant lies about money. I met the author personally at a seminar and can only say: The guy and what he teaches are great and will give you incredible freedom in your dealings with money.

ownership structures & profit distributions

Currently, Paul and I are still the main owners of soulproducts GmbH, and we could agree to distribute the entire profit each year between us and the other shareholders. We will not do that, but we could. For me as a founder, I find profit distributions and the idea that I “own” an organization an absurd concept. Of course, I want to earn enough money to be able to meet all my needs. But do I really need more than the €60,000 net per year , beyond which increases in earnings no longer mean increases in satisfaction? Especially if I make it more difficult for others in the organization to reach their €60,000 net per year? I don't think so.

Of course, I feel a great responsibility to ensure that the organization I started works well and makes the world a better place. But that comes from my attitude to the world (top left) and not from the fact that there is a piece of paper that gives me so and so many percent of the company (top right). And if I don't earn quite the maximum, but we have more financial resources to start new companies that make the world even greener, fairer and happier, that makes me much happier than a new car would.

How do we implement this structurally?

The current plan is that we will set up an umbrella company in 2015 that will belong to Paul and me, but in which the partnership agreement will state that profit distributions can only take place if all employees who have worked for one of the subsidiaries for more than 6 months give their consent. The umbrella company will then have shares in all sub-companies, be it soulbottles or anything else we can think of.
External investors can also invest in the subsidiaries so that we don't fundamentally block the possibility of contributing to the increase in the effectiveness of a subsidiary through growth or more development. But since we won't give any investor a majority share in a company (we can also put this in writing), any profit distributions from the subsidiaries will largely go to the parent company, which can use these funds to build up more cool subsidiaries. So that at some point we will hopefully no longer need external investors.

In the long term, we can also imagine transferring our shares in the umbrella company to a foundation or a cooperative that belongs to the employees. It is particularly important to us that the shares in the umbrella company cannot be corrupted and that the pursuit of profit does not sneak back in through the back door as the main goal. So the prospect of acting as "guardians of the vision and core values" for the next few years sounds pretty good to us. Especially since we do not benefit directly from it economically. But we are also very open to suggestions on how to make this even more meaningful. For example, in the comments below or by emailing me.

The economic system

This topic would also warrant its own article, so here it is very briefly: We want to contribute as much as we can to ensuring that profit in our economic system once again becomes merely a means and the purpose of companies is to contribute to the common good. Therefore, as a first step, as soon as we have the resources, we will also become official supporters of the common good economy and draw up a common good balance sheet.

The common good economy will not solve all the world's problems at once. But it is an important step in the right direction.

Employees

But here too, the following applies: no matter how much the structure is geared towards cooperation, if it is filled with people who still think in terms of competition and are driven by fear and a superficial desire for security, the structure will move towards hierarchy or autocracy in the long term and the culture will perish in power and distribution struggles. This means that the inner work is an important part of the structure so that it can really be filled with life.

What do I have against striving for security, you ask?

First of all, nothing. I just want to offer you the following perspective:

There are two main ways to meet your need for security. One is to create as stable structures as possible on the outside. A secure job, your own house, a partner who will definitely stay with you even if they are not that exciting. The other is to develop your inner capacity and skills to deal with uncertainty.

I call the first way superficial because:

In a world where the pace of change is accelerating, the second strategy makes a lot more sense in my opinion. There are no longer any secure jobs for life. Those who can deal well with uncertainty are much better able to cope with major changes. And even the oh-so-stable living conditions can collapse from one day to the next. Just look at all the people who lost their jobs in the banking sector during the last financial crisis. An area that was considered an incredibly safe gold mine. Those who don't immediately feel the emotional rug pulled out from under them in such a situation, but see it as an opportunity for development, have a better chance of leading a happy life.

Bonus Quadrant: The paper on which the 4 quadrants are written

The basis of all our development in the 4 quadrants is our long-term vision. It is:

When we have achieved the transformation to a green, fair and happy world in 50 years, they will write in the history books:
“Without the soul organisations we might not have made it.”

To do this, we want to gradually expand the principle of “making the most sustainable alternative in a consumer sector cool, sexy and comfortable”, which works so well at soulbottles, to other consumer and service sectors. How else can sustainable behavior become mainstream?

Yes, that sounds huge and crazy. But it also releases so much energy, personally, emotionally, financially, that we might actually be able to do it.

epilogue

That was a lot of words. Hopefully they were inspiring words.

It's actually quite simple: If you make sure that all 4 quadrants are making equal progress, you will progress exponentially faster than if you only concentrate on one quadrant. You will have more money, more fun and more impact. You will be better off, the world will be much better off. And that's actually pretty cool, right? :)

I look forward to hearing what you think – and feel – about this in the comments. ;)

footnotes

*The comment was on the Facebook page of a soulbottles retailer - the additional price of €2.50 compared to our online shop price is because it is in Austria and we do not set fixed prices for our retailers. Autonomy for our partners is important to us. Our only requirement is that they do not go below the price of €24.90 so that the value of the product is not called into question.

** Here are the 5 questions that we go through in rounds at the Personal Relations Meeting:

What is there in general (especially on a personal level) to celebrate and regret from the last 2 weeks – including what I did or did not do towards others in the team?
Where have I been frustrated by something others in this room have done? Where have I had a conflict with someone?
Conflicts raised here will be resolved immediately with the help of the moderator. Depending on the depth of the conflict, this can take between 5 minutes and an hour.
Where has something that others in this room done made me happy/fulfilled my needs?
What are my current challenges in personal growth? Where would I like to go? What kind of support could I use to achieve this?
Feedback round/final round – how was it for me? What would I change about the meeting?
However, to start with, i.e. if your team does not yet have the mediation skills to manage this, the following questions can help. It is best to have each participant of the meeting printed out and handed in their hand:

To the person addressing a conflict (Person A): What do you want to express about how you feel about the situation and who do you want to hear?
To recipient (person B): What did you hear? What arrived?
To Person A: Is this what you wanted to be heard about by Person B? If not, what do you really want to be heard about?
By asking questions 2-3, you pass the ball back and forth until the answer to question 3 is "yes" and you relax. This can sometimes go back and forth very often, in rare cases even up to 40 or 50 times. Don't let this upset you and trust the process.

If a “yes” comes without anything being resolved in the conflict, you either ask “Person A, is there anything else you would like to be heard on?”

Or you can leave it at that for now, realizing that sometimes it takes time to gain the trust that you can talk about unpleasant things. This trust grows fastest and most sustainably when you fully accept those who are afraid to talk about unpleasant things and don't "push" them. Beware of the new extreme of "All conflicts MUST be resolved IMMEDIATELY" as well as the classic extreme of "There are no conflicts at all, so there's no point in giving them any space." Because, news flash: As soon as 3 people are in a room for more than 5 minutes, there is a conflict, however subtle it may be. Even with "enlightened" people. You don't have a choice as to whether there are conflicts, only how you deal with them.