Ep.1 ORSC in Asia

In this episode, Katie talks with Yuri Morikawa, a CRR Global faculty member based in Japan and Rebecca Hou, a CRR Global faculty member based in China, about ORSC in Asian culture. For International Coaching Week, the duo offered an impactful virtual workshop on empowering deep democracy in organizations with Asian Culture which included both Chinese and Japanese Participants. This episode continues their exploration and looks at some of their practices and experiences from working in organizations with Asian culture. This conversation covers a range of topics, including: 

• The differences that show up when using ORSC in Asian organizations
• Challenges around Deep Democracy in Asian culture
• The impact of Deep Democracy in their personal systems
• Systems Inspired Parenting
• Ways to empower ORSC in Asian culture.

Yuri Morikawa has been an active player in the professional coaching field since 2004. She has trained and coached more than 1000 of leaders and coaches globally from various backgrounds, such as corporate executives, NGO leaders, business owners, independent professionals, and dream seekers of their own.  Prior to her career in coaching, Yuri worked as a management consultant specializing in organizational and leadership development for 13 years. After being a trainer for Coaching Training Institute (CTI) for 8 years, she launched the Organizational and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC) Program in Japan and founded CRR Japan in 2009.  Currently, she is a global faculty member of CRR Global, developing professional organizational coaches around the world, such as in Japan, China, Singapore, South Africa, and Australia. She is passionate about bringing her professional experience to the bigger social context and works extensively with NGOs in Social Sectors such as the Kamonohashi Project supporting survivor leaders of human trafficking issues in India and Asia Rural Institute, educating organic farming, and developing servant leadership for rural leaders in Asia and Africa.

Rebecca Hou is an ICF Master Certified Coach, Executive/Leadership Coach and Training Consultant. She is also a faculty member and Front of the Room Leader at CTI and CRR Global. She leads professional coaching certification programs: including Co-Active Coaching, ORSC, Neuroscience Consciousness & Transformational Coaching. She is also a mentor coach, supervisor, and examiner for certification coach students. Her major focus areas are one-to-one leadership coaching, team coaching and the design and delivery of training workshops. Rebecca used to work for Siemens Management Institute for four years. During her service, she worked with internal clients of different business sectors from Industry, Energy, and Healthcare, as well as cross-business sectors. Prior to this, Rebecca worked for IWNC, a multi-national training company, for 11 years. During that period, she maintained contact with a portfolio of clients and worked with them on the design and delivery of programs.


For over 20 years, CRR Global has accompanied leaders, teams, and practitioners on their journey to build stronger relationships by focusing on the relationship itself, not only the individuals occupying it. This leads to a community of changemakers around the world. Supported by a global network of Faculty and Partners, we connect, inspire, and equip change agents to shift systems, one relationship at a time

We believe Relationship Matters, from humanity to nature, to the larger whole. 

Transcript

Key 

KC – Katie Churchman 

YM – Yuri Morikawa 

RH - Rebecca Ho

[Intro 00:00 – 00:06] 

KC – Hello and a very warm welcome back to season five of the Relationship Matters podcast. We believe relationship matters, from humanity, to nature, to the larger whole. I’m your host Katie Churchman and in this episode I’m talking with Yuri Morikawa, a CRR Global faculty member based in Japan and Rebecca Ho, a CRR Global faculty member based in China about ORSC in Asian culture. For International Coaching Week, Yuri and Rebecca offered an impactful virtual workshop on empowering deep democracy in organizations with Asian Culture which included both Chinese and Japanese Participants. This episode continues their exploration and looks at some of their practices and experiences from working in organizations with Asian culture. This conversation covers a range of topics including the differences that show up when using ORSC in Asian organizations; challenges around Deep Democracy in Asian culture; The impact of Deep Democracy in their personal systems; systems-inspired parenting; and ways to empower ORSC in Asian culture. Yuri Morikawa has been an active player in the professional coaching field since 2004. She has trained and coached more than 1000 leaders and coaches globally from various backgrounds, such as corporate executives, NGO leaders, business owners, independent professionals, and dream seekers of their own.  Prior to her coaching career, Yuri worked as a management consultant specializing in organizational and leadership development for 13 years. After being a trainer for CTI for 8 years she launched the Organizational and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC) Program in Japan and founded CRR Japan in 2009.  Currently, she is a global faculty member of CRR Global, developing professional organizational coaches around the world, such as in Japan, China, Singapore, South Africa, and Australia. She is passionate about bringing her professional experience to the bigger social context and works extensively with NGOs in Social Sectors such as the Kamonohashi Project supporting survivor leaders of human trafficking issues in India and Asia Rural Institute, educating organic farming, and developing servant leadership for rural leaders in Asia and Africa. Rebecca Hou is an ICF Master Certified Coach, Executive Leadership Coach and Training Consultant. She is also a faculty member and Front of the Room Leader at CTI and CRR Global. She leads professional coaching certification programs: including Co-Active, ORSC, Neuroscience Consciousness and Transformational Coaching. She is also a mentor coach, supervisor, and examiner for certification coach students. Her major focus areas are one-to-one leadership coaching, team coaching and the design and delivery of training workshops. Rebecca used to work for Siemens Management Institute for four years. During her service, she worked with internal clients of different business sectors from Industry, Energy, and Healthcare, as well as cross-business sectors. Prior to this, Rebecca worked for IWNC, a multi-national training company, for 11 years. During that period, she maintained contact with a portfolio of clients and worked with them on the design and delivery of programs. So, without further ado I bring you Yuri Morikawa and Rebecca Hou talking about ORSC in Asian culture. 

KC – Rebecca, Yuri, welcome to the Relationship Matters podcast. I’m so excited to have you both on the show today. 

YM – Thank you Katie for having us today, I’m so excited too. 

RH – Same here, thank you. A first experience for me! 

KC – I can’t wait to dive into this fascinating topic with you both around what ORSC looks like in Asian culture. And I wonder if we can start by talking about some of your experiences practising ORSC in organizations that have primarily Asian culture. 

RH – Yuri, would you like to… 

YM – Do you want to start Rebecca? 

RH – So this is very Asian, to start with, right? 

YM - Ok so, let me start. I started the ORSC practice about 15-years ago in Japan. From that place to now it has changed a lot already. It’s hard to generalize but I’d like to share some of the characteristics or some of the challenges that I have and also what I hear from my colleagues, practitioners, like when I work with global organization and very purely Japanese domestic organization, the field and the land is very, very different. 

KC – Oh wow. 

YM – Yeah. For today, because we like to focus on the Asian culture and its impact for ORSC impact, I’d like to share my stories of how I work with the Asian organizations and the Japanese organization. So, in Japanese organization, typically, people do not speak up their authentic voice. People usually start from the very outer role voices and it usually takes a very, very long time until they really feel the safety and the meaning of why it is important to speak up with honest voices and showing their vulnerability and their emotions. And many times people do not feel accustomed to asking questions. Originally the first person that speaks up is the person that has the big role, higher role, the higher rank in an organization, and when they look at that hierarchy sequence, then people start speaking up. So that dynamic, reading that dynamic’s in-between is the key of my practice or our practice in Japan when we work with the systems. 

KC – That’s fascinating Yuri, and Rebecca I was seeing you nod along there, I know you’re based in China but was some of that resonating, what Yuri was saying? 

RH – It’s very similar. A lot of things are very similar here. If we’re talking about ORSC in China, ORSC started here later, much later than in Japan. Even now China is in a stage that is fast developing in terms of economy and everything else, so it’s very competitive. For a lot of people, their drivers are fear, worry about being left behind. And at the same time people’s attention, I don’t say all, but a lot of people, their attention is task, work, breath out, in order to be competitive. In order not to be left behind. So, when the word relationships system come to hear it’s like what? Relationship? When? System? What about it? So, I took the first class here in China. Personally, this made a big impact to me to really pay attention to relationship. I remember clearly, first time attending CRR faculty meeting, someone said something simple – saying relationship matters, relationship needs attention. I’m like what? I know everything. I know every single word but I never really paid attention to, like consciously paid attention to the importance of relationships, especially those close relationships. So that’s a big impact to me. And the other thing is as an experienced coach doing a lot of 1-1 coaching, it helped me to have the system awareness even though when I’m coaching individuals. So, it made a significant impact to the client as well, especially the leaders. So, that’s about ORSC. So, ORSC in China is still in the early stage, so the faculty here is trying a lot to nurture the market, doing farming - a long way to go. The good thing is with the system awareness here in China they are pioneers. They may not be all coaches but they are pioneers who pay attention to spirit, slow, psychological development, all of that. So they are starting to pay attention to this. Of course, this is to do with our increasing improvement of living standard, so that’s the big background. In terms of culture I keep nodding when Yuri tell you those things. I think in China enterprises are quite different. So if we look at those multinational companies they have more awareness about deep democracy. They have more awareness about diversity, about being open, hearing the voices. If we look at traditional Chinese, state-owned companies, especially government, military of course, it’s always top down. You basically just disobey the command, obey the order, that’s it - you don’t think differently. So that’s what happened. I think China is growing as a society, nowadays companies are very agile, especially IT companies. They have more deep democracy in comparison with traditional companies so that’s the overall trend, but Chinese people are the same, generally they want to watch, to make sure it’s ok and then they speak out. We don’t get used to ask the question, so when the leader chairing the meeting says any questions, there’s always silence. Silence is the key. 

YM – We really need to learn to work with silence! 

RH – Multinational companies are much better. We’re trained to ask questions. 

KC – That is fascinating because that is so different from what it’s like over here in the UK and from my experience living in the US. I’m curious about the impact then of, say of people not being able to speak up, it must be very hard to lean into the principle of deep democracy in your work. And you must have to, I guess, use different methods to bring this out in the systems you work with. 

YM – That’s a very important point Katie because it took time. I’m curious about Rebecca’s case but for me it really took time. First to learn that there is deep democracy even when people don’t speak up. 

KC – Oh wow. 

YM – Yeah. At the beginning so many things happen to me like I’d criticize them, oh, people don’t speak up, people don’t have ideas or are not willing to share, criticizing my clients first, and then I realized that hey, this is not working. This is not the space that I want to create, this is far behind the change that we align at the beginning of what we want as an outcome of the systems coaching and then I got criticized many, many times. One time one of the clients… I nearly got fired because they got furious. They were furious because they felt they were forced to speak up. 

KC – Oh, ok. 

YM – And they gave me the resistance by silence, asking question but silent. There are so many failure stories. 

KC – That must have been so challenging Yuri and I guess you were coming in with this toolkit and you’ve seen it working, I know you’ve worked all over the world, you’ve seen it work elsewhere – you must have been so frustrated. 

YM – I was! There was one time that I furiously told, I think it was Marita, I furiously told Marita ‘why did you create this tool?’ Really. This is not working in my land and I even got criticized and I feel like they hit me by bazooka, so I feel like I’m full of holes, shot by my clients and it’s painful. And there was one time Marita was really, silently, patiently listening to me and she said ‘wow Yuri, that must be hard, you must feel lighter now’. Yes, I felt lighter. Because now all that was shot was my ego and trying to force and force to change the system, force to change the culture that they were proud of or they created using so many years and they have a good memory in this tradition and culture. So, I had to change and I had to learn how to listen to them while they’re speaking from outer voice what sounds like not true but actually there is an authentic voice inside of those superficial voices. 

KC – Rebecca, how does it land in your land? 

RH – Deep democracy is something that I think we need to educate the client and we need to keep educating the client and we do it step by step. So, I really loved the edge work, so we meet the clients in their primary. We notice the edge behavior and we smartly dance with that and take them to the secondary, that’s what I’m learning. Because I myself was a trainer as well, I sort of know the culture and the people, especially if you’re in the system, you have a lot of extroverted - it’s even harder to stick out. Sometimes what I do is I create some activities or design some process in order to help them, in order to create that deep democracy according to this system, according to where they are. And gradually, once they can do a little, they strengthen a little bit more, so, for me I have to bring in the metaskill of trust and patience as well. A lot of time, playfulness!  

KC – Yeah playfulness is such an ally isn’t it in this work? 

YM – Absolutely. 

KC – What I was noticing from what you were both saying there is that there’s an awareness, not just of the system that you’re working with but also those wider systems. 

RH – Absolutely. So really that is time spirit and ghost. Making them as an ally is, I think it’s one of the keys when we work with Asian culture or organizations that have a strong cultural background. 

KC – So how do you go about working then with some of these challenges? Rebecca, you’re pointed towards some of those techniques you use but I think this will be so useful for our listeners who perhaps work with organizations who have primarily Asian culture or also multicultural teams because I think we can be very biased to one style of communication or that more extroverted way of being and it would be great to hear what’s worked for you both. 

RH – One example I can think of is that we did a two-day team coaching for an extended leadership team. The background is merging and acquisition, so, it’s their myth change. One desires, of course, to hear all the voices. So we have the choice to use the classic deep democracy which we didn’t because we were not sure if they could have that courage to go to a chaos process in order to hear all the voices. So instead, what we did was we had them identify those key stake holders relating to their change and then divide them into groups that embody those stakeholders. Having a discussion so to embody their voice. How do they see the change? What would be the impact of this change? And then they take turns to share in the big group. Classic deep democracy is very unique. All the voices come out at the same time. So, some people really don’t get used to this and they don’t get a group. They’re missing a piece of clarity so they can’t work properly. So, because of that structure and because of the smaller group pre-discussion it gave them a space to get organized and speak out in the way that they can. So, it worked out fine, it really made sense and they did hear all the voices which actually stretched their awareness and their insight. So that’s a technique I used a couple of times. 

KC – That’s brilliant. And it feels like you’re leaning more then into the collective wisdom as opposed to say the individual having to decide what this voice might say, they’re in small groups working out together and kinda holding the deep democracy principle in those groups and then coming up with ideas around what those voices might say. 

RH – And also some of those leaders, Chinese leaders, they don’t have the mindset of deep democracy yet. Yet. And because they want to drag the rig out it happens that during the workshop, during the team coaching, they want to take over. That could be a barrier of deep democracy, So, another technique I’ve learned as we train our ORSCers, we really have to prepare the senior leaders, the top leaders, we have to sometimes manage him or her in order to embrace the deep democracy in the room. 

KC – I didn’t even think about that! Just to say, I think many leaders and many of us are still working at deep democracy and it shows up in different ways, those challenges, for sure. 

YM – I was taking notes as I listened to Rebecca, thinking what a great idea, I can use that! So, in Japan when I work with a Japanese organization, I do something very similar too. So, if we use our concept of ORSC MR and RA, then the first M, meet, I find it super important. Yeah, so really meeting with the first, with the leaders who have higher rank and authority and have been the sponsor for the team, really that team will hear to understand why this style or listen to the deep democracy is important. listening to the deep democracy may sound like a criticism to you but don’t take it personally, it’s a voice of the system, so those kind of very polarly heading up and sometimes education to leaders, one of the key, and because of that we can create the safety in the system at the beginning. So, the psychological safety at the beginning is another key for the team members to feel, relax and to feel the trust for the space and then whatever happens I think ORSC skills really can help us. One of the keys is reading the emotional field. Whatever they say, don’t trust just the words but listen to the energy of the words and grab the words with pure energy, pure emotions, and then highlight that and ask questions and then it will help us to deepen that field, emotional field and level of the reality to the deeper level. 

KC – You must have become a master, both of you, masters at listening at that deeper level if you’re always listening to what’s not being said, between the words. 

RH – I’m learning and it doesn’t feel like I’m getting close to mastering, it’s a humbling process really. Feels like a lot of things are dripping down from the fingers. 

KC – It’s fascinating though because we are very, we’re very focused on the words that we used and I think we’re very biased towards that channel of information and I think because of that sometimes as coaches we focus primarily on what the client says and then we miss all these other things so it’s sort of amazing that you’ve had this training ground in Asian culture that actually has forced you to really lean into the emotional field and kind of bypass the words sometimes. 

RH – Yeah, absolutely. 

YM – Wasn’t it interesting, Rebecca, when we worked together with the Asian leaders? Like when we used the non-verbal way, the drawing or finding the picture that resonated with their feelings, that was one of the most vibrant moments that we noticed. 

RH – I remember that clearly and Katie, that’s the other way of creating deep democracy, that’s another technique we use. So, I totally echo what Yuri said; as an ORSCer, keep constantly paying attention to what we call our RI: Relationship Intelligence, RSI, social intelligence and RSI relationship intelligence – it’s very important. The more we treat ourselves the more neuro pathways we have so it becomes part of us. That’s really helpful when we’re working with relationship systems. Also, I remember just last week I worked with a big pharmaceutical company and the majority of them were introverted. The first day was quite hard because they never had such a thing in the past five years, so at first they was very slow. So, I was looking for some way to help them to have more deep democracy. So on day two I used an experiential activity, a very simple one. So all of a sudden they start to talk and you just cannot stop them, so that’s where I see deep democracy. Also, there are always some voices stonewalling themselves. I also find when we’re working with relationship system, sometimes we do have to pay attention to some of the individuals separately. Like being curious, showing care, that’s what I did in the last week. Once I did that all of a sudden this guy changed a lot, he started to pay attention rather than walking away, he started putting down his mobile phone and he start to talk. So I guess for a ORSCer we really have to be patient, and to totally echo Yuri, paying attention to what’s happening, what can unfold at any time. And championing the system. 

KC – Patience. It sounds so simple but it’s not easy, is it? And I think that’s something that we all need in this work because so often I think we’re rushing to get a system over an edge and when you mentioned about individuals can stonewall themselves, I’m always curious in the toxins grid where it says the antidote for stonewalling, you are a voice for the system to speak up. And that’s another one where it’s sort of simple but not easy because that could take a lot of time and patience as a coach to help that happen. 

YM – And interesting Katie as I speak and listen to Rebecca speak, I feel like although we are speaking about Asian culture, actually we are talking about the very fundamentals in our practice of systems coaching. It’s so interesting. 

KC – And this conversation in itself is a deep democracy because I realize that you’re also voices of your respective lands and you’re speaking up on behalf of that. And I guess I’m curious because I’m wondering whether you were both sort of born with a sense of speaking up and deep democracy or whether it’s something that you’ve had to really work at? Given that your cultures don’t necessarily encourage that in quite the same way that the Western cultures might. 

RH – Definitely not by nature. Part of my secret self which still exists, that part of me is very shy, a lack of confidence. So, I worry that I say wrong things and I worry that I look stupid. And I’m a very introverted person so I tend to think thoroughly then I speak out. Deep democracy, when we say a metaskill of assertiveness, took me many years to learn that and personally I find once I grow my skills I grow my metaskills at the same time. So the more I’m competent and capable, the more I can be open, playful and then I have more deep democracy, I have more courage when I work with relationship systems. What about you Yuri? 

YM – Yeah, well, I can resonate with many parts of what you said. I am a very naturally extroverted person but at the same time deep democracy is something very different. Being extroverted and being able to hold that spirit of deep democracy, for me, is very, very different. One of the things is I have a strong outer role of responsible elder daughter, eldest daughter of the family. So somehow this role puts me in the very special position of listening to others first and finding the spot that is needed in the space and taking the role to fulfill and make everybody happy. Having that role and inner role or outer role, that leads me to find it very challenging to speak up in my authentic voice, especially when disappointing others and disappointing elders or families. This process of becoming a systems coach really trained me so much to become who I am now. 

KC – That’s such an interesting point there you made Yuri around being an extrovert doesn’t mean you’re any good at deep democracy and it made me think that I used to be very much a people pleaser and whilst I was extroverted that didn’t mean I was any good at deep democracy and I think in many ways being an extrovert might actually do the opposite of deep democracy, you might just say oh everything’s great, I’m having a wonderful day and that doesn’t actually lead to the truth. And so I guess there’s just different was of holding, if we’ve got a more introverted team, there’s different ways of holding the deep democracy in that system but it’s wonderful that we’ve separated it out because I think that distinction is probably happening for a lot of coaches right now, that if you’re a voice of the system that speaks up that’s gotta be someone who’s extroverted but actually maybe not. 

RH – Yeah. What we really want is the vulnerable, authentic voice. This process, this journey of being a systems coach and being a world worker, it’s really trained myself to have courage and trust to the system to speak up the authentic, vulnerable voice. 

YM – Even if it’s in the family system. 

RH – Katie, I’m quite similar to what you said, a people pleaser, because whilst my top value is harmony, I know I used to be very afraid of conflict so because of that I tend to not go too deep and when there are democracy voices in the system I notice I am less of a guide to an edge, being there and holding them. The more I work in this field the stronger I become, so I can still tell now, noticing my body sensation that I know I can handle this, so that’s where I feel gratitude for doing this work. I keep saying to these people in China who are still wondering if they should take the course or not, I said this is not about taking the certificate, it’s about leadership development, it’s about our own leadership development and not only as a professional but also as a person. 

KC – That’s huge. And so there’s been both deep democracy for you in terms of you mentioned Yuri your family systems, and Rebecca it sounds that deep democracy within self, that’s a system of me. What’s been the impact of that for you and your personal lives? I realize we’re moving from the professional into the personal, yeah, how has deep democracy played a part in where you are today? 

RH – Ok, do you want me to start first? 

YM – Sure. Go ahead. 

RH – I think the biggest impact, a successful impact, is between me and my daughter. By the way she almost accepts the overall ghost meets which in London, but finally she decided to go to Chicago. So what I’ve learnt is, because the Chinese way of parenting is quite hands on and some parenting styles could be really like a servant parent, I do everything for you and otherwise I’m not a good mother. So, the overall thing is I sort of feel like that and so what I’m learning as a coach is to really trust my daughter, let her make decisions for her own life, so in deep democracy, let her speak out. And sometimes she doesn’t, and I have to smartly paying attention, like listening, use my coach listening skills to read the emotional field and see where she is. So, I really, really learnt people and so as relationship systems are naturally creative and resourceful, she basically makes her own decisions and some of them are big decisions like keep learning in traditional Chinese education system or transfer to a bilingual school meaning that she can study aboard. She decided to drop her IP learning even though she was competent, she wanted to have more time to do the arts thing, so we are great and finally she receives several offers from top, top universities, so I really learnt how deep democracy has the meaning of giving the obligation and authority to that person, to the relationship system, trusting that they will learn by themselves. They will make the best decision that they could. It’s not easy for me to do it that way because it’s very different from traditional parenting styles and I got criticized by a bigger system, I mean the family system here, for not doing what I should in their perspective. So, for that part I don’t think I did a good job in deep democracy. Sometimes I headed to a stonewalling myself in order to not be so impacted by that voice, in order to draw a boundary. So, I kept asking myself in that part of the family system if I’m courageous enough I can, like in signal wisdom, have the deep democracy conversation with them, be more courageous and tell them this is where I am. So that’s the area that I’m still working on. 

KC – That is a wonderful example of what Marita would call systems inspired parenting. It’s quite inspirational for me right now, I mentioned to you both offline that I’m pregnant with twins and twin girls as well so girls similar to you both. I think there’s a lot that comes up around I’m sure there’s things that you feel you know and you want to tell them and actually how to lean into that coach approach, I’m sure it’s much harder when you care that much! 

RH – Yeah, exactly! So, I do a lot of self-management. Like I shout to myself, come back to my room, close the door in order to manage myself. And Katie, I can’t hold to tell you she will be taking her last module of co-active coaching. She did all the intermediate and next week she’s taking synergy and being the age of 17, I’m sure she’s the youngest in China. 

KC – That’s amazing. She might be the youngest in the world! That’s amazing! 

RH – I was her client a couple of times, and she did a fantastic coaching, you know, this gives me another realization – deep democracy in parenting can really unleash the potential of the child. 

KC – That’s amazing and what a toolkit for a 17-year-old to have to go out into the world with, I wish I had this at 17, wow. 

YM – And I just want to highlight that your daughter, Rebecca, your daughter is so lucky to have you as a mother. 

KC – Yes. 

YM – You know, having this woman with a lion heart, with huge courage and with the warrior and the protector of her potential from all these time spirit and that’s how she blooms. Yeah. I just want to highlight that. 

RH – Thank you, it’s not easy but it’s really worthwhile. 

KC – And Yuri, you mentioned about your family before and I’m curious how deep democracy has shaped the way you show up in those personal systems? 

YM – Yeah. I wish I can bring more of my learning as a professional, bringing that to the family system because I have so much of the failure story, especially with the relationship with my husband. At the beginning of our relationship, by the way we have had our 25th anniversary of our marriage this year – 

KC – Aw, congratulations. 

RH – Wow! 25 years. 

YM – Yeah, amazing right? And we don’t know what’s going to happen in the future but at least when we look back at how we came along together I cannot ignore the impact of ORSC. So, at the beginning of our relationship, now I look back I have full of assumptions and clouded glasses to look at him with time spirit, like the man is, Japanese men are, he said this because of blah blah, and all that is nothing to do with who he was but I made it up to protect myself. So, I was willingly highjacked by the time spirit and spoke from that place and criticized him. And in Japan, it’s still a male dominating society, especially in the business field, but actually in the family system roles are actually internal, our inner systems are different, but it’s very, very easy to take the victims role. Sitting in the victimized place of being a woman and criticizing my partner because of his gender which is nothing to do with who he is. As I speak I get emotional because I have a lot of guilt feeling around that, I feel sorry for him that I was not listening to what he really meant, what he really felt, and I didn’t acknowledge enough of his introverted-ness and the deep democracy within that introverted voice. So, our relationship really grew me to be a better listener, listening to the energy of purity within the worlds, emotional field and the pure voice, authentic voice, even underneath the outer roles. One of the great things about my husband, can I laugh a little bit about my husband? 

KC – Of course. 

YM – He was a really courageous man to stand in between myself and his own parents and his own deeper family system which can be a big hinderance for many, many professional women. It’s so easy to give up your career or your old way of living or your old authenticity because of complying to the family request or expectation, so one of the things that I am very, very grateful to him for is he’s on my side, empowering me to live who I am and also creating our family, our authentic family which was the super courageous thing that he did and now I can be grateful and appreciate that. And it took me a long, long time to realize what it means. 

KC – Beautiful, Yuri, thank you for sharing that. I think what your example points too is how deep democracy can sharpen in subtle and small ways and as someone like yourself who’s a bit more extroverted, I think sometimes I don’t honor those smaller, simpler ways. My husband is also more introverted and quieter, and actually how that can be courageous and a strength in its own way, but it can take sometimes to honor that secondary because it’s not so familiar. 

RH – Yeah, Yuri, this is the second time I’m listening to this story, I still feel very attached, and I feel happy for you, for your third entity, for the system of your third entity, I admire your courage as well. 

YM – Thank you Rebecca. 

KC – It’s a beautiful thing how deep democracy can show up in all of these different ways, and I think sometimes we do have a sense of well my way is the right way, this is what deep democracy looks like to me or in my cultural system, and actually real deep democracy honors that it shows up in so many different ways. It could be silence, or it could be walking away, that could be a form of deep democracy, and I think to honor that and acknowledge that is so important both as systems coaches but also as people in the world. I wonder if we can finish by talking about why you feel it is important to continue to empower deep democracy in Asian culture. 

RH – The first thing that comes to me is I think, in China especially, we’re in a stage, people call ‘UVCA, BANI’. I say this is a vulnerable time for humans. So, deep democracy to me has such acceptance, curiosity and compassion as well, out of the heart. So, this is a great thing to support humans to go through this vulnerable time and is a collective awareness development. Globally people need to hold hands going through this time. That’s what I think of. 

YM – Yes, that’s a powerful way of putting it. I feel like I’m echoing what Rebecca has just said. Deep democracy feels like the best way from my own knowledge for empowering the human evolution wherever, whatever the cultural background is, and deep democracy really requires vulnerability and deep listening. Once it’s there it helps us to have higher dream for relationship and higher dream for what is possible, so I found that’s exactly what we need, we all need, it’s the pathway to happiness and human evolution. 

KC – That’s wonderful and it leaves me feeling very hopeful that we can use this at all of the levels – in our own system, in our system with our friends, our partners, our colleagues and then in those wider cultural systems too and how that can be the pathway for our evolution. Thank you both so much for this beautiful conversation but also for embracing the principle of deep democracy today, I feel this has been very much a process of practicing what we preach so thank you. 

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RH – Thank you so much Katie for hosting this amazing conversation. 

YM – Yeah, thank you. 

KC – A big thanks to Yuri and Rebecca for that really insightful discussion. Here are my key takeaways. Deep democracy can be present even when people don’t speak up. If this shows up it can be useful to hold the silence as a voice of the system. How can we make silence an ally as opposed to marginalizing it when it shows up? When we sense that something isn’t being said we can practice deep listening in order to listen beyond the words and tune into the authenticity that lives behind the superficial voices. Pay attention to relationships for the spaces in between people – what is going on at the level of the relationship in the team or partnership that you’re working with? Deep democracy can show up in many ways and it can look very different in a different culture. What works with one culture or one system might not work with another, so as with any tool it’s essential that we meet the system where it’s at. Reading the emotional field is an essential skillset for leading the deep democracy process. It’s important that we don’t just trust the words being said but that we really listen for the energy from which they’re being said, highlighting this to the group can help to deepen the emotional field and the sense of themselves as a system. For over 20 years, CRR Global has accompanied leaders, teams, and practitioners on their journey to stronger relationships by focusing on the relationship itself, not only the individuals occupying it. This leads to a community of changemakers around the world. Supported by a global network of Faculty and Partners, we connect, inspire, and equip change agents to shift systems, one relationship at a time. CRR Global’s unshaken belief is that relationship matters, from humanity, to nature, to the larger whole. For more information please visit CRRGlobal.com. 

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