The Online Constellation Board in coachingspace: True to Its Inventors
As we set out in an earlier post, in our view four conditions must be met to offer successful, professional online counseling. Alongside data protection and a comfortable atmosphere, these include digital coaching tools such as our online constellation board, which lets you work in your own consulting room on coachingspace.
What do the two inventors say about our online constellation board?
We spoke with the two inventors of the family board, Ulrich Wilken and Kurt Ludewig, about the chances and risks of online counseling and showed them our digital version of the constellation board. With their kind permission, we may publish some excerpts from our conversation:
coachingspace: What chances, but also what challenges, do you see in working with the virtual variant?
Kurt Ludewig: First of all, with coachingspace you have created an appealing digital version which, especially in this year 2020 of prevented real encounters, but also beyond it, offers a way of using this method that stays as close as possible to the physical original. I used this digital version with a test subject and found that with this medium too, one can work intensively and realistically on human relationships.
Ulrich Wilken: In my eyes, the virtual variant also brings the possibility of working with client systems in other places, or even other countries.
coachingspace: From your point of view, which big misunderstandings keep appearing in the use of the family board?
Ulrich Wilken: A big misunderstanding for some users lies in thinking that the constellation depicts a form of reality, and that the constellation carries a meaning within itself that must be recognized.
coachingspace: What actually moved you to develop the family board / constellation board? What was the idea behind the idea?
Kurt Ludewig: The family board came into being in 1978 with the goal of diagnostically depicting complex family dynamics with wooden figures on a board*. But it quickly turned out that its real purpose lay much more in enabling comprehensible, useful communication about relationships, not only with families but with social systems in general.
coachingspace: Which typical questions, if there are such, do you like to ask clients? Do you have a particular procedure or sequence?
Ulrich Wilken: My opening question is always: "To get a better picture, I would like to ask you to place a figure on the board for each member of the family or team, in the way you think they stand in relation to each other." And afterwards: "Suppose the problem went on 'vacation' for a while: what influence would that have on the family, the team, and so on?"
coachingspace: What meaning do the shape and size of the figures have for you?
Ulrich Wilken: I have learned that, after we modeled the shape and size on the genogram symbols, shape and size carry no meaning in themselves and must always be asked about. The same goes for line of sight and distance. There was one constellation in which the family placed themselves and their two children in the outermost corners. After an initial shock, I was only 27 at the time, they explained to me that they are a family that holds together strongly and gives each other the greatest possible freedom! That is how it can go…
(The interview with Ulrich Wilken will follow as a video in the coming weeks.)
The conversations with both pioneers of systemic consulting gave us great joy, and we were already able to incorporate many of their suggestions. They were also the occasion to integrate an original version of the initial family board into coachingspace, much to the delight of the two inventors.
Working with the online constellation board takes practice and training
On one thing we all agreed, however: our postulated fourth condition for successful professional online counseling should by no means be forgotten. Coaches and consultants should be trained in how to use the added value of the online setting adequately and deal with its particularities (such as the two-dimensionality and the resulting reduction of information). Or as Ulrich Wilken put it: "You don't just put the 'analog' constellation board under someone's Christmas tree with the motto: now off you go!"
Quite the contrary, we consider the constellation board a very powerful method per se, one that should only be used by trained consultants. Through the possibility in our digital variant of switching into the perspective of any figure, the method gains, in the truest sense of the word, another entirely new dimension. That is why we do not want to hand it to our users "just like that".
Cooperation with Qualifire.Online and the workshop "Working with the Online Constellation Board"
To create offers for interested coaches, consultants and supervisors, we have decided to offer trainings and workshops on using coachingspace and its tools together with qualifire.online, the platform for online professionalism.
For the first workshop of this kind, we won none other than Ulrich Wilken himself as guest lecturer. It takes place on 12 February from 4 to 7 pm in cooperation with myndwerk, the network for systemic consulting. Further information and registration on the Qualifire page and in the following flyer.
We wish you much fun with it and look forward to your feedback and further suggestions for our digital constellation board variant.
See you soon, and have a good start into the next year
Your coachingspace team
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*cf. Ludewig, K. & U. Wilken (eds.): Das Familienbrett. Ein Verfahren für die Forschung und Praxis mit Familien und anderen sozialen Systemen. Göttingen (Hogrefe) 2000.
