Mary Parker Follett and the Early Discovery of Social Fields

Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933) dedicated her life and considerable talent to understanding and improving relationships among individuals, groups, organizations, and society as a whole. In the language we use today, she was cultivating field awareness—an ability to perceive, participate in, and shape the social fields that surround and include us.

Although Follett did not use the term, her life’s work reflects a deep sensitivity to the relational fields of energy and information that influence how we think, feel, and act together.

In the 1920s, Follett laid the groundwork for what would later be called “field theory,” most notably developed by social psychologist Kurt Lewin in the 1950s. Despite the originality of her thinking, her work was largely overlooked after her death in 1933, only to be rediscovered decades later. In 1996, Harvard Business School published Prophet of Management, bringing renewed attention to her contributions. As editor Pauline Graham observed, “Everyone assesses Follett in the same way: ahead of her time in the 1920s, still ahead of our time today.”

Throughout her life, Follett developed ideas that became foundational to social psychology, transformational leadership, and collaborative approaches to organizational and community change. Her work also resonates deeply with our exploration of field awareness in Space Is Not Empty: How Hidden Fields Are Shaping Your Life and Our World.

Follett captured the essence of what we now call social fields in the following observations:

1. Behavior is both internally and externally conditioned.

2. Behavior is a function of the interweaving between the activity of the organism and the activity of the environment.

3. Through this interlocking activity, both individual and situation are continually creating themselves anew.

4. In this process, they are continually relating anew.

5. Thus, the situation itself is always evolving.

Seen through a field awareness lens, these insights point to a simple but profound truth: we are not separate from the fields we inhabit—we are participants in their ongoing creation.

Field Awareness as a Participating-Observer

In her third book, Creative Experience (1924), Follett encouraged us to cultivate the capacity to be participant-observers—fully engaged in situations while simultaneously aware of them. This is a foundational practice of field awareness.

As participating-observers, we begin to notice not only what is being said and done, but also the field in which it is occurring—the tone of interaction, the emotional currents, the unspoken assumptions, and the patterns of energy and attention moving through the group.

Follett believed that by interweaving individual desires, we can foster genuine social progress—guided by deeper meanings and shared values that often remain unspoken but are nonetheless active in the field.

From a field awareness perspective, this capacity allows us to sense emerging possibilities and participate more consciously in shaping them.

Circular Response and the Social Field

Follett described circular response with remarkable clarity:

“Through circular responses, we are creating each other all the time…in the very process of meeting, by the very process of the meeting, we both become something different.”

This is field awareness in action.

Circular response points to the continuous flow of influence within a social field—how each person’s thoughts, emotions, and actions both shape and are shaped by the field. We are not simply interacting; we are co-creating a living system of energy and meaning.

Social fields include not only the quality of human interaction but also the wider context: the history of the land, the cultural patterns we carry, and the accumulated experiences that inform the present moment. Field awareness expands our attention to include this total situation.

Direct Experience as a Way of Knowing the Field

Follett emphasized the importance of learning through direct experience: “The lamp of experience is both to illumine our way and to guide us further into new paths.”

Field awareness deepens this insight by inviting us to treat our direct experience—sensations, emotions, intuitions, and thoughts—as valid sources of information about the field.

Alan Briskin highlights this when he writes in The Power of Collective Wisdom: “Follett was giving voice to a methodology of how our worldview can be shaped by disciplined reflection on what we see, feel, and observe…The contribution each individual makes to the collective emerges from this commitment—to pay attention to inner experience and outer engagement with the world.”

When we bring awareness to both our inner experience and the outer dynamics, we begin to perceive the field more fully—and participate in it more consciously and skillfully.

Power With: Shaping Life-Giving Fields

Follett’s distinction between “power over” and “power with” can also be understood as a distinction between different kinds of fields.

“Power over” arises from a worldview of separation. It generates social fields characterized by control, contraction, and division—often producing winners and losers, insiders and outsiders. These are typically life-constricting fields.

In contrast, “power with” reflects a field-aware understanding that power—the capacity to get things done—is relational and generative. When shared, it expands.

Power with creates life-giving social fields—fields in which participation increases vitality, creativity, and the capacity for collective action.

From a field awareness perspective, power is not a possession but a property of the field itself—something that emerges through relationship.

Toward Field Awareness and a Living Whole

It can feel complex—even disorienting—to sense the multiple forces at play in any given situation. Field awareness asks us to widen our attention to include the whole: our embodied experience, the relational dynamics, and the broader context.

As this awareness grows, we begin to experience not uniformity, but a deeper unity—a living coherence that can hold difference without erasing it.

Here lies the foundation of true collaboration and the possibility of creating life-giving social fields together.

As Follett wisely asked:

“The test of our progress is neither our likenesses nor our unlikenesses, but what are we going to do with our unlikenesses? Shall I fight whatever is different from me or find the higher synthesis? The progress of society is measured by its power to unite into a living, generating whole its self-yielding differences.”

Questions to Ponder (Through a Field Awareness Lens)

1. In your next meeting—at work or in your community—expand your field awareness to take in the whole situation. How would you describe the social field? Life-giving, life-constricting, or somewhere in between? How are you contributing to it?

2. What is your direct, embodied experience of the gathering? What are you sensing, feeling, and thinking? What might this reveal about the field?

3. How do you understand power? As “power over” or “power with”? How does your understanding shape the field you are helping to create?