INTRODUCTION
According to Stanley Keleman, human beings should live by some basic guiding principles, such as the following ones:

1. to fully embody each shape of their formative process, thereby preventing premature death;
2. to regularly go over the following questions:
- how do I use myself?
- how do I organize my presence in the world?
- how do I nourish/lead to maturity my personal and social bodies?

Would it work to establish an analogy between such individual formative investigation and questions of precedence in the business world? I would say yes!

1. The primary objective of any organization is its own survival;
2. In order to ensure that, the board and its members have to deal with the following issues:
- how are our resources being allotted/assigned?
- (in terms of actual results) how is our presence expressed in the world?
- are the management’s inner and outer focal points fairly balanced?

On the basis of the above premises, it is my intention to demonstrate that the formative principle permeates those organizations whose system of ideas (hegemonic beliefs and values) are primarily geared to participative and inclusive management, autonomous initiative and social responsibility. For internal purposes, they operate as learning organizations and, in their relations with the external reality -- i.e. at the interface with the environment and the clients --, they act as citizen-enterprises.

DEVELOPMENT
According to Keleman, Formative Psychology’s aim is to help individuals become intimate with themselves. Such focus on self-awareness and self-management involves two mechanisms:

1. the establishment of an intraorganismic, somatic-subjective, inner dialogue capable of both strengthening our personal body and preventing premature death. This increasing skill on the part of the system to relate evermore intensely and profoundly to itself while, at the same time, operating more efficiently, characterizes adulthood/maturity.

2. based on this familiarity with our somatic-emotional patterns of organization, we establish a network of interpersonal exchanges capable of expanding our social body; in other words, as we allow our inherited expressions to take on distinctive shapes, we broaden, enrich and add sophistication to our storage of interactive responses.

As regards to organizations with characteristically formative patterns, it is possible to distinguish some equivalent traits. In such business concerns we might notice that:

1. the organizational culture’s autopoietic perspective is given preference, inasmuch as cognition is considered to be the creative act responsible for constructing reality ;

2. continued learning is promoted so as to ensure both a permanent self-renovation process and the expansion, at all levels, of organizational complexity;

3. distinct opinions are legitimated, while autonomy, creativity and the emergence of new processes and self-organizing patterns of action, are encouraged. Such patterns and processes are those which give precedence both to redundancy/repetition and to variety/diversity, thus allowing for greater possibilities of response to unexpected stimuli from the environment and from energies capable of catalyzing creativity;

4. steadily stronger and more differentiated interpersonal alliances and informal exchange networks are brought into focus. Just as the whole universe of neural interconnections -- synapses between axons and dendrites – increases our capability of emitting more sophisticated responses, within the organizations an intense branching out of interpersonal networks raises the efficiency and capability needed to deal with change. This expands the organization’s ability to learn and renew itself, to provide creative responses, while exploring its myriad internal distinctions and, finally, this intense process leads to an increase in its chances of survival.

In sum, it is within the formative organization’s scope of action to seek the blending of institutional goals with personal objectives and interests. Based on this perspective the organization nourishes its collective body, thereby remaining alive and healthy in the wider context of the market. At the same time, rather than restricting itself to the inert and impersonal simplification of formal organizations, a formative business concern opens a vast array of opportunities, whereby the complex personal potential of its members – that is, of its personal body – finds the adequate space to unfold.

SHARING SKILLS AT INT : AN EXAMPLE OF A FORMATIVE ORGANIZATIONAL PROJECT

"My dream is for men and women in the whole world to each day -- if only for a single hour --, be allowed an opportunity to learn, to recycle and to grow. My dream is to see millions of persons everywhere meeting, talking and being part of initiatives."

Federico Mayor (UNESCO’s chief director)

SHARING SKILLS took shape gradually. It grew out of the new managerial policies implemented within the Institute in the nineties, and resulted from a wide and strategic reflection process involving managers and public servants interested in developing their learning of skills while, at the same time, expanding opportunities for social gathering within their work place.

The project unfolded as part of the QUALITY OF LIFE AT WORK Program. Implementing it meant introducing qualitative changes in the organization’s socio-cultural framework, mostly in terms of promoting the ethics of collaboration and creativity while, at the same time, encouraging mutual support and teamwork, all of occurring as part of the effort of building a new architecture of supra-hierarchical exchanges.

THE PROJECT IN PRACTICE

SHARING SKILLS has been operating since the beginning of 1997 under the following conditions:

- the activities take place on INT grounds from 8 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. and after 6 p.m.

- there is no financial or other reward or specific benefit granted to the instructors, nor are there rates or fees of any kind charged from or owed by the participants;

- public servants, grantees or employees from outsourcing services are allowed, every week, to participate in up to three hours of activities (five hours in the case of Elementary Grade students);

- these hours of activities are computed as part of their working hours;

- Project managers are responsible for previous evaluation and subsequent follow-up of each activity offered.

The activities take place at the following locations:

- a "tele-classroom" equipped for the Elementary Education program;

- a covered open space on the ground floor measuring 220 m2;

- a large (closed) room measuring approximately 60 m2;

- two auxiliary rooms equipped with TV and video.

During these almost three years of operation, the following activities have been offered: crochet, tapestry, theater, sculpture/collage, Feng Shui,, Tai Chi, Ikebana, English, origami, shiatsu, meditation, ballroom dance, dance from Bahia, capoeira (a martial art of African origin), guitar and a basic course in electrical installations.

As of the second half of 1998 the project expanded its activities to include the elementary grades. It now under operates the same rules applying to the basic education system. Thus, the instructors are members of the INT work force and do not receive any additional payment for their work. Classes take place during the regular work schedule and are computed as part of the weekly working hours.

At present (November/99), the project benefits 110 participants, a number corresponding to 35% of the total number of the Institute’s work force.

It has undergone two evaluations which pointed out as its assets the following: integration, motivation, improvement of the organizational climate and acquisition of new learning. It is gratifying to be able to share that practically all participants have stated that their expectations have been totally fulfilled.

SHARING SKILLS AND THE FORMATIVE PRINCIPLE

"I’d rather be this ambulant metamorphosis than keep holding on to that old rigid mentality about everything, everything, everything..."

Raul Seixas (excerpt from a well-known song composed by this Brazilian singer and composer)

By making an institutional space available for directors, managers, public servants at all levels, grantees and persons from outsourcing services, so as to allow them to share skills among themselves INT is, in fact, making possible a rich and unusual sharing among persons who otherwise would exchange only a few formal words.

It is important to stress that the informal relationships established as a result of the Sharing Skills program are very different from the typical informal groups inside organizations. The latter are gatherings usually occurring as a result of the practice of a common discourse tied to hierarchic, professional, corporative, religious or other affinities.

In Sharing Skills, nonetheless, something else happens. When the security guard interacts with managers and post-graduates in the role of their instructor, when INT’s director takes part in theatrical rehearsals on an equal standing with persons from the ground level of the organization, and under the general direction of a secretary, what is being practiced is not just the capoeira steps or the rehearsal of a play. What is, in effect, occurring is that these persons are, more than anything else, learning new patterns of interaction and, thereby, widening the scope of their world and increasing their tolerance towards difference. To state it briefly, individuals expand their formative process by adding to it a vast repertory of multilayered personal responses.

Formal organization is directly affected by such transactions. In fact, as it destabilizes the formal structure by pointing a finger at the symbolic references therein contained – references shaping the actions of the structure’s members according to a specific model -- SHARING SKILLS provokes the kind of noise (positive feedback, in this case) which brings with it the opportunity for reorganization at higher levels of complexity and diversity.

We can, thus, conclude that the Project accomplishes the following formative objectives:

1. as opposed to the competitive-individualist behavior model, the project encourages the ethics of solidarity and collaboration in the cultural mosaic of the institution, thus multiplying opportunities for the practice of voluntary and solidary work;

2. the project encourages the blending of individual interests with institutional objectives;

3. it promotes diversity as to interpersonal integration through gatherings that differ from the usual, redundant hierarchic, functional or socio-intellectual meetings;

4. it allows for a branching out in the informal interaction networks as it facilitates learning, encourages creativity and promotes change;

5. as it gears efforts towards helping third parties, it increases efficiency in interpersonal relations and improves conditions for synergistic action;

6. it contributes towards improving the quality of life within the work space – and probably beyond, as a result --, when it alleviates stress and offers support to institutional projects for Combatting Chemical Dependency, and when it systematically directs efforts at making better the organizational climate;

7. it contributes to INT’s effort to be also known as a Learning Organization. It does so by contributing to the development of the intellectual, emotional, physical, creative and recreational aspects of its work force members, while also adding to the enhancement of their self-awareness, health and well-being;

8. it allows people to embody their multiple shapes;

9. it supports INT’s effort to become a model of organization, worthy of the designation of citizenship.