A Frame For Change

Reframing alters a personality trance. People can change to some degree through insights and coaching in new skills -- first-order change. But they can be transformed by reframing their basic assumptions, by seeing and operating within the world in a completely new way.

Out of the Box: Coaching with the Enneagram is now available in a Kindle edition for only $7.99, a revised, third edition with new coaching tools. We're celebrating with examples from the book of how reframing can bring about transformational change:

When providing feedback to a perfectionist, you can reframe the meaning of being right: "When you've insisted on being right you've also diminished others' ability to solve problems creatively. When you integrate their assumptions, concerns, and objectives, everyone gets to be right." 

For someone who wants to succeed at any cost, walking over others along the way, a reframe might be "You can only succeed in this company when you collaborate with your peers."

Some clients get lost in their emotions. Reframing their feelings as progress toward enlightenment could include C.G. Jung's dream where he was drowning in a vat of shit while his therapist stood above. "Help me out," he cried. But the therapist pushed his head down, saying "Through, not out."

When clients who are conflict-averse reframe conflict as normal and healthy -- ferreting out unspoken values, beliefs, and assumptions, they see how disagreement can actually bring people closer together.

These and many more examples in Out of the Box Coaching.

Take Time to Celebrate

I'll admit it, I was wrong!

I used to emphasize how quickly my coaching methods can bring about change, looking askance at coaches who had clients for a year or more.

And of course I still revel in the immediate insights, the excitement of new possibilities in two or three productive coaching sessions.

Last week, however, I celebrated with a client of more than six years, recognizing the time and effort involved in truly freeing ourselves, how we can breathe a little deeper each time we expand the confines of the "box" of personality.

This client has stayed with me through two jobs and an ever closer look at her career aspirations, the gifts and blind spots of her personality style, her communication with family and co-workers, her reactions to authority. She has recently resigned from a job that didn't offer the promotion she now knows she fully deserves:

As I look back over my years in this job, I've seen great improvement in my relationships, in my competency, in less rigidity about everything -- not having to be perfect. When I'm comfortable I'm relaxed, funny, and people have made comments about my positive energy.

Last week my staff and my boss took me out for lunch. We had fun, lots of laughter, and they gave me gifts.that acknowledged me as a person -- chocolates, which they know I love; a hat to wear in the sun because they know I walk every day; a photo of me and my staff with an inscription on the frame -- "There are no days; only moments" -- and a necklace with a heart pendant. 

The necklace is symbolic of my metaphor of "heart disease" to describe our organizational culture and my wish that we could all have "healthy hearts" -- be more open to each other, show more mutual respect.

When you and I first started working together, I told you, "I don't have friends at work." This time around I walked away from that job with a legacy -- they know I care about them as individuals and they know me. That's intimacy, even in a business setting.