This post was written for ICAI’s online magazine Winds and Waves – now published at Medium.com (see explanatory note).
At this very time, the fate of Ukraine is at the point (period) of bifurcation. The need for a fundamental choice and real changes is becoming increasingly evident. The key topics within the political and public discourse are the fight against corruption and the value bases of everyday professional activity of various layers of Ukrainian society. Why and what for do people, especially leaders, act in one way or another, and how does this relate to the thoughts and attitudes of ordinary people? The depth and severity of the stratification of value orientations in Ukraine actualized in time and after the revolution of dignity of 2014, as well as in the process of opposing the subsequent annexation of Crimea and Russia’s aggression in the east of Ukraine. Measuring and understanding the value system of Ukrainian society at the personal, organizational and national levels is a necessity for both Ukrainian organizations and economic clusters. Our team expresses its gratitude to BVC for help, transfer of unique knowledge and assistance in their practical implementation.
We are especially grateful to Richard Barret, and to our most democratic trainer from Australia, Niran Jiang, and the entire staff of the BVC office for participating in the fate of our country. At present, we focused on the development of the women’s movement. 
Our goal is to develop a women’s partnership.
In our opinion, Ukrainian women are an invaluable resource for the development of the social economy of the government. At the same time, we first consider the already formed women’s organizations and the opportunity to strengthen their influence and social contribution through constructive partnership with each other.
We support and strengthen all women’s undertakings and help them meet each other to build new partnerships. This, in its turn, will create additional values in our community. Such interaction helps women to understand themselves and support their faith in their own strengths, to find ways and means of sustainable partnership between women-leaders and public / business organizations.
For that we help to develop reflection through the recognition of one’s own values and overcoming fears, and to predict the key evolutionary challenges on the path of both personal growth and the development of women’s organizations. In this we are helped both by author’s approaches of initiators, and by the methodology of BVC. We develop the practice of facilitation of social processes and individual activities based on ICA’s ToP facilitation methodology.
Thanks to the practical engagement into the BVC methodology for assessing the value system in preparation for the Women’s Partnership Forum in May 2017, which gathered more than 170 women from 18 regions of Ukraine, and group work at the forum with the results of evaluating their values helped women to see the most common fears and strong features, values, which can become the base for decision-making concerning the current / future challenges. In addition, multilevel evaluation of the value system helped to formulate more correctly the vision of the present and possible future of the women’s movement and was the basis for identifying trends in the development of women’s participation in the social and economic life of the country. The identified and unconscious gaps have become the basis for projects in the field of health and education and the development of adolescents (especially girls). This was as well due to the study of CTT, which revealed an “empty” 1 level of consciousness (Health) and a supersaturated 4 (Continuous Development and Improvement).
Working with values is an intimate, long process that requires a high degree of trust even one-on-one. The CTT tool from BVC helps to maximum correctly and quickly approach the deep levels of individual and common hopes, doubts and internal contradictions, which helps to maximize the effectiveness of any undertaking.
Analysis and realization/comprehension of values had helped:
- To realize the core values, to look boldly at the hidden fears, misconceptions and stereotypes in oneself and the organization/company/movement;
- To identify difficulties and potential for development;
to see common hopes and aspirations by participants of group work, as well as to realize social and social-economic challenges, the overcoming of which may require talents and forces not of isolated individuals and/or organizations, but their partnerships; - To create a base for constructive dialogue;
- To indicate a range of diversity that must be taken into account when designing the activities of social groups and organizations;
- To clarify the cognitive-valuable gaps between different positions of people in the modern development of society, namely between the vision of oneself as an individual and as a member of the territorial community/country/nation.
Factually. In the process of preparation for the Women’s Partnership Forum, the first step was to assess the value system in a group of 25 women-leaders (stars) from various sectors of the socio-economic life of Ukraine. The results we received became the value basis of the group, which named itself the “Women’s Partnership Circle” and the first step of the strategic plan design for the development of the new women’s association, which as a result of the weekly meetings gave birth to the key project of 2017 “Women’s Partnership Forum”. The Forum created 11 working groups, which, in its turn, created 12 projects. 5 working groups continue to work on the implementation of their projects.
Emotionally. Regardless of how socially successful the woman thinks she is, most often behind the gloss and confidence there are a lot of doubts, stereotypes, disbelief in oneself and distrust of women’s cooperation. There are many grounds and prerequisites for this, especially in post-patriarchal society. Nevertheless, an open discussion in the female environment, discussion of complexities and unconscious value supports is an eco-friendly and safe way.
Self-awareness (which provided by the BVC tool) opens up new sources of inspiration for the participants, helps to see the commonality of difficulties and challenges, which creates the ground for co-creation and cooperation. In a society where an appeal to a psychotherapist, a psychologist and a coach is still considered something, if not a shameful, then obvious manifestation of ill health, this approach opens up sources of strength and helps to meet oneself.
Even a short discussion of the results of the study of the values of active women in Ukraine caused an emotional upsurge, helped smoothly, and environmentally safely start a discussion of those who later formed the basis for real projects of women’s teams.
Of course, not without its difficulties. Thus, the “empty” Level 3 (Self-Assessment), revealed at the level of women initiators of the “Circle of Women’s Partnership”, manifested itself in the most difficult periods of preparation for the Forum. The hypothesis that we created about sensitive topics, such as our own Image and Influence, Individual Effectiveness and Productivity, to initiators that they can become a source of potential tension in the interaction was confirmed.
We are only at the very beginning of the journey and each of us, individually and in partnership, continues to learn about ourselves and learn to interact in the balance of our Ego and Common Good.