Finding Your Place – Lessons from Sarah Rozenthuler on how teams really work

Most leaders talk about “having the right people in the right seats.” Sarah Rozenthuler’s session pushed us to go a step deeper. It asked us to look at how people actually find their place inside a system… and what happens when the place they occupy is not the one they intended.

Her work uses systemic mapping, a way of making the invisible architecture of an organisation visible. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. It showed how distance, direction and position tell a story long before anyone opens their mouth.

Sarah’s starting point was simple: organisations behave like living systems. They aren’t charts or structures or role descriptions. They’re ecosystems of people trying to orientate themselves around purpose, priorities and each other. And often the signals they send are the opposite of what they mean.

The exercise that revealed everything

One of Sarah’s most striking exercises involved pairing up. Person A chose a stakeholder, Person B represented them, and then Person A physically placed Person B in the space. Only then did they place themselves.

It sounds simple, yet it revealed so much. Distance. Direction. Angle of stance. All were clues. The moment someone stood too close or turned slightly away, the energy changed. People noticed things like:

• “I thought I was showing support, but I’m actually looming.”
• “I keep saying we’re aligned, yet here I am positioned behind them.”
• “No wonder they feel left out, I’ve placed them out on the edge.”

This wasn’t just theatre. It was a quiet, uncannily accurate mirror of how we show up.

Sarah calls these the ordering forces, and they shape how healthy or strained a system feels. 

Ordering Force 1 – Place

We all know the phrase “people should know their place.” Sarah flips that. Her argument is that everyone has to find their place, and when that place isn’t clear or recognised, tensions rise and problems surface when:

• Someone feels excluded or sidelined.
• Old stories of “injustice” linger in the system.
• Those in the least supported position run out of energy.
• People don’t join well and don’t leave well.

Her slides included a line from Bert Hellinger: “Everything has its place. When something is out of place, the whole system is out of order.” It’s an idea leaders claim to understand, yet rarely act on. 

For SMEs especially, “place” tends to be informal. It lives in habits and expectations rather than job descriptions, which is why things feel personal when they get disrupted.

Ordering Force 2 – Time

This was a really interesting and thought-provoking statement – “Seniority isn’t about hierarchy. It’s about sequence”.

Sarah’s “clockface” activity made this unmistakable. We arranged ourselves by how long we’d been part of Magma and reflected on how this felt when thinking of our own organisations.

It became clear that those who joined early in an organisation carried a different weight of responsibility, experience and emotional history. Problems appear when founders are forgotten, new leaders dismiss the past, or long-standing team members are treated as blockers rather than carriers of memory. 

For SMEs, this matters hugely. Younger businesses often “grow up” before their people do. A founder who was once at the centre can suddenly feel peripheral. A new senior hire can unintentionally act like they’re the first adult in the room. Both create friction.

Ordering Force 3 – Exchange

Sarah described organisations as running on a dynamic reciprocity of give and receive, and when that balance slips, trust erodes.

Her prompt questions:

• “Am I doing work that isn’t mine to do?”
• “Who am I hoping will notice how hard I’m working?”
• “Am I burning out to belong?” 

They are very revealing and often appear in many organisations, particularly in SMEs, where over-giving is rampant. Leaders justify it with phrases like “it’s quicker if I do it myself,” “I don’t want to burden the team,” or “I’ll pick up the slack for now.”
But the organisation reads it differently. It creates dependency. It hides underperformance and depletes the leader. Worst of all, it signals an imbalance to everyone watching.

Why systemic mapping matters for leaders

What surprised many people in the room was how quickly a systemic map exposes patterns we’d been tiptoeing around for months.

Sarah's broader framework shows how:

• Stakeholder relationships become visible rather than assumed.
• Patterns of tension, loyalty, avoidance or over-responsibility can be spotted.
• “Optimising moves” emerge by changing direction or distance, not rewriting organisational charts.
• Leaders shift perspective from being “in the weeds” to seeing the broader ecosystem.

The notes from the AI-generated deck capture this well: systemic mapping reveals hidden relationships, improves communication, and helps leaders identify where the system is carrying weight unevenly. It also strengthens adaptability, a crucial quality for SMEs dealing with rapid change. 

Why this matters for SMEs

Small businesses rely on cohesion, clarity and momentum. When someone feels out of place, under-recognised or over-stretched, the consequences ripple fast.

Sarah’s session gave our members and their teams practical ways to:

• Re-centre relationships that have drifted.
• Recognise when people are carrying more than their share.
• Make space for those who feel peripheral.
• Bring newer colleagues into the “story of the business” more consciously.
• Spot the assumptions that shape how we stand and how we lead.

It also challenged the comforting idea that people automatically “know their place.” They rarely do. They infer it from the behaviour, distance and stance of others. That means leaders shape place, whether they intend to or not.

What can leaders put into practice?

Sarah offered several approaches that translate well into everyday leadership:

• Pay attention to proximity.
  If someone feels distant from a decision or a leader, the system will show it long before the individual says it.
• Acknowledge the past in order to move forward.
  Teams carry history. Naming it frees energy.
• Keep the flow of give-and-receive balanced.
  If people over-give, they will eventually resent the imbalance. If some only take, the system will feel strained.
• Use mapping to see what is showing up, not what you hope is showing up.
  Working with reality, not aspirations, is the only way to strengthen a system.

Closing thoughts

Sarah’s work reminded the group that leadership is relational. It’s not just about direction or delivery but about the signals we give off – most of which we’re unaware of.

Finding your place isn’t about hierarchy. It’s about belonging, contribution and clarity. And when a team sees the system they’re part of, they can finally work with it rather than against it.

The goal of Magma is to help leaders and their teams turn thinking into real-world progress. This session delivered exactly that: clarity, perspective and a practical way of understanding the forces that shape how a business really works.

So, how many and who in your business are yet to find their place?