ABSTRACT
Thoughts of wild and expansive dreams, or lavish compassion, are not the first things that come to mind when you think about organizations. Often, the feelings they provoke are more aligned to anxiety. Within the university context, this is amplified, as they are filled with the feelings of aspiration and fear held closely by the students and staff as they work towards change and growth. The focus of this chapter is the exploration of an initiative to introduce and increase the amount of compassion within a university system using a process of supported action learning. What came as a surprise during supportive supervision with the action learning facilitators was the presence of night dreams, which introduced an unexpected source of data within the process—an access to the unconscious. Employees in a complex and turbulent system can find themselves affected in a variety of ways as the wider system embraces or resists attempts to change. This chapter charts the journey.
