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The IFIS colloquium "Exploring coherence" was held online in June 2025 and participants were invited to experiment, explore, reflect and exchange around the topic of coherence. Here is a summary of participants' experiences, with some of the original quotes, prompted by the 2 kick-off question
Where do you notice coherence or incoherence in your communities?
Why does one room or community feel more or less coherent
Three core aspects emerge from the participants’ reflections during the colloqium:
1. Conditions for coherence — psychological safety, vulnerability, and relational trust. Participants highlighted that coherence strongly by a sense of safety, which could be both internal in the Self, als well as informed by the way people in group tend to relate to each other, while emphasising that relation is the base of coherence. As one participant worded it: "If relation is the base for coherence — relation to myself, to the group, to the field — then vulnerability is essential. It means opening up, showing up and also being prepared to be feeling discomfort.
2. Shifts in perception and practice — from incoherence to coherence through awe, curiosity, and love. Other personal testimonies also underline he importance of "inner" community design such as letting go of control, cultivating curiosity, and deliberately taking the perspective of awe and gratitude. " I love this idea of looking out into the world from a sense of interest, curiosity, gratefulness and awe. When I do that successfully, it becomes an experience of love." or It was almost overwhelming, exploding even — maybe it needs a disclaimer!" These subtle but profound inner shifts change significantly how coherence is experienced and highlight how a deliberate action in the Self-system really makes a difference on how I perceive the world and vice versa...a great example of agency and the "power of being"
3. Power and leadership — holding authority lightly and generatively. Again many participants looked a their community experiences and concluded that a coherent community is marked by leaders and members who share power rather than hoard it, seeing empowerment as mutual rather than competitive. Stories of indigenous models and collaborative decision-making illustrate how shared strength leads to resilience and coherence.
From this exploration it seems that coherence in communities can appear, when inner orientation (curiosity, openness), relational ground (safety, vulnerability), and structural expression (shared power, collective dialogue) are woven together. From an integral perspective we could describe coherence building in communities both as an inner state of consciousness (awe, love, letting go) and at the same time a collective dynamic (safety, power-sharing, dialogue), a multi-layered and highly dynamic phenomenon arising at the intersection of the personal, interpersonal, and systemic.id
For those of you that are interested in diving deeper into the possibility of creating and exploring "communities of coherence", please take a look at the Cohere+ Guide on "Communities of Coherence" with an enormous wealth of approaches, materials, tools, exercises that point towards the unfolding of "Communities of Coherence". We love to hear from you!.
Below in the PDF you also find all "results" of the Cohere+ Project from the last 3 years, that the co-creation between 5 European partners yielded, in sometimes very unexpected ways. It was a delight to work like this, including the moments of incoherence along the way ;-))
"The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein."