“The Systemic Way has been much more than a learning journey for me. It has been a deeply personal one.

I came into the program with years of experience working with people, teams, leaders, and organizations. I was familiar with complexity, transformation, coaching, and systems thinking. But this work invited me somewhere different. It asked me not only to understand systems, but to feel them. To notice what is present beneath the surface. To listen for what has no voice. To become curious about what has been excluded, forgotten, carried, or silently shaping what is happening now.

And somewhere along the way, the work stopped being only about the systems I support professionally. It began to turn toward me. There were moments in this program when something that I had understood intellectually for years suddenly became visible in a completely different way. I began to see patterns in my own life with more compassion and less judgment. I could feel the invisible loyalties we carry, the places where we make ourselves smaller to belong, and the deep human longing to be seen and to have a place. Some of those moments were profoundly moving for me. They stayed in my body long after a session ended. They opened questions I had not known how to ask, and sometimes offered a kind of knowing that did not come through analysis, but through experience.

This is one of the things I value most about Michael’s way of teaching. He does not rush to explain, fix, or interpret. He trusts the intelligence of the system. He creates a space where something can reveal itself in its own time. There is a rare humility in the way he holds this work. A respect for what we can understand, and an equal respect for what remains mysterious. That has made it possible for me to enter this work without having to choose between rigor and depth, between intellect and intuition, or between professional practice and personal transformation.

The Systemic Way has changed the way I work. I listen differently now. I intervene differently. I am less interested in quickly solving what appears on the surface, and more willing to stay with what is trying to emerge. I have become more attentive to belonging, exclusion, order, loyalty, and the larger field in which individual behavior makes sense. But its impact on me is more personal than that.

This work has helped me see parts of myself that had been standing quietly outside the frame. It has helped me recognize how often transformation begins not by changing something, but by finally seeing it, acknowledging it, and allowing it to belong. It has also changed my relationship with parts of myself I once tried to understand mainly through effort, reflection, or self-improvement. I have learned that some things do not need to be pushed toward change. Sometimes they need to be seen, included, and given their rightful place.

For that, I feel a deep gratitude to Michael. Some teachers give us knowledge, and there are teachers who quietly change the way we see. Michael has been the second kind for me. The Systemic Way has not simply added another approach to my practice. It has become part of how I meet people, systems, and life itself.

And I know I will carry that with me for a very long time.”

—Shabnam