The Paradoxical Approach to Problem Solving

In a recent blog post "Alter the Interaction, Not the Other Person," I describe a couple caught up in a self-fulfilling negative cycle, and how to interrupt that particular dynamic with paradoxical problem solving. 

Below are key components of this approach, drawn from work at Stanford's Mental Research Institute (The Tactics of Change, Fisch, Weakland, and Segal).

The Importance of Reframing

• Sometimes "more of the same" increases resistance to change; e.g., a colleague who resents you telling her what she should do will not be easily influenced by your telling her she should not resent your comments. Your attempted solution is part of the problem, creating more of the same dynamic.
• Far more effective is to lift yourself out of the situation and examine all behaviors, including the usual attempted solution, as problems to be solved.
• Reality is only what a sufficient number of people agree is real. Paradoxical problem-solving redefines or "reframes" reality in a way that's compatible with the worldview of each person involved.
• Paradoxical problem solving depends on the element of the unexpected. In the example above, asking your colleague what she thinks should be done is far more likely to be a source of influence than telling her what she should do.
• Reframing a situation actually changes your perception of it. You're finding ways to influence the other person more effectively; at the same time you're being influenced as you come to see the world from the other's perspective.

Underlying Assumptions

• It isn't necessary to find fault.
• Nobody has to win; nobody has to lose. (People who come from win/lose positions are polarized ("Either I do what I want, or I'll have to do what you want"), which blocks the possibility of an unanticipated, creative option.
• If what you're doing isn't working, do something else.

Some Paradoxical Change Strategies

• Less of the Same: When a pattern maintains the status quo instead of bringing about change, systematically discontinue it, interrupt it, do something different.
• Making the Covert Overt: Covert behavior has enormous power to maintain and reinforce an adversary relationship, and people are reluctant to talk about conflict openly, even when the problem is apparent. Often this is because we're not aware of how our own behavior contributes to the situation. Use this tactic only if you're willing to hear about and examine your own behavior.  :-) 
• The Tai Chi Method (also called Prescribing the Symptom): Instead of fighting a particular behavior, consciously engage in it.

Whistling in the Dark

A coach I mentored described a client I’ll name Mike whose behavior threatened to compromise his law partnership. He’d cancel lucrative cases to work on high-risk, low-pay cases.  

When his partners tried to talk him out of these risky cases, he'd insist he could win. Instead of seeing their concern for the partnership's viability, he thought they were trying to get rid of him. 

His coach thought Mike was probably Enneagram style Six and I agreed. His insisting he could win cases no one else would risk seemed to me a combination of fighting for the underdog and whistling in the dark. ("I can win this case! I can do it!")

With style Six patterns it's often helpful to be very specific, leaving no room for interpretation. I suggested this coach be crystal clear if Mike started defending his focus on low-pay, high risk cases: "Well, you can't do that and stay here." She also decided to elicit his understanding of the problem and get him to be specific: "What are your options? What are you going to do about it?" 

You can sometimes use a pattern to break a pattern; in this case, using worry to break through the tendency to worry by asking "What's the worst thing that can happen?" Mike’s coach rehearsed what she might say in response to his belief the partners were trying to get rid of him: "You’re probably right. I suspect they will find a way to get rid of you unless you change." 

Once faced with stark reality, such clients may talk themselves into changing ("Now that I know the worst, I can do something about it") or they may decide they’ll be better off somewhere else. It’s important to leave the choice up to them. Keep their focus on finding their inner power (but don't tell them that; they'll hear it as advice and unconsciously rebel against it). Get them to oppose themselves, not others they perceive to be in authority, including you.

Early in my career I coached a similar client, who worked in Labor Relations and whose boss had told him repeatedly he had to change his outdated, aggressive negotiating stance with the unions. I tried everything I could think of to help my client hear the feedback and figure out why he was rebelling against the change. Yes, he disagreed with the new, more collaborative approach, but logically he understood it was now a requirement of his job, and he knew how to do it, so his resistance was not due to lack of skill. He simply didn't want to do it. 

I met with the two of them to see if some dynamic in their interaction was the problem. The boss was clear but my client was being so defensive he couldn't hear what was being said. I did get him to repeat back exactly what was being asked of him, but he was too busy explaining himself to integrate the message that this was not negotiable.

A few weeks later I gave up and told him, "I can't think of any way to help. You know exactly what’s expected and you choose not to do it. If you don't respond to your boss’s requests, you're going to be fired in 30 days. It's up to you. You can change or not change. Nobody else can do it for you. I wish I could help, but I'm out of ideas."

He changed immediately, kept his job, and credits me with saving his career! What did I do? Nothing. And in doing nothing I gave his power back to him. He had no advice to rebel against, no expectations to counter. He had to rely on himself.

Bite the Bullet

I’ll have to bite the bullet,” said Sandy, an entrepreneur who hated day-to-day paperwork. He transformed that negative, energy-draining metaphor to one he, who loves Jeeps, could use to greater advantage: "I'll jump in the Jeep!" How did he do that? By going on a creative excursion, a symbolic side trip into an arena seemingly unrelated to his stated problem. 

There are three key steps in this technique: 

First, identify the elements of a problem you haven’t been able to solve. Sandy was impassioned about a new project but bored with the mundane details of his business plan. “I guess I’ll have to bite the bullet,” he repeatedly groused. He knew the phrase refers to how soldiers took their minds off surgical pain before anesthetics were available. In parallel, he found it agonizingly painful to take those necessary steps to achieve his goal and had to “bite down” to help himself bear it. He wanted to break through his pattern of avoiding those details.

Second, go on a mental excursion for several minutes, letting your imagination explore a seemingly unrelated arena. If you need to stimulate ideas, you can brainstorm a list of anything imaginable – such as archaeology, biology, cooking, espionage, oceanography, parenting, space travel, transportation – then pick one arena that feels intuitively interesting. Sandy picked "transportation," and settled on cars. As he played with aspects of driving a car – velocity, heading toward a destination, traveling in an enjoyable way – he exclaimed, “I love Jeeps!”

Third, do a force fit; bring the novel ideas gained in the symbolic excursion to apply to the original problem. Sandy explored the similarities and differences of a bullet and a Jeep. Drawing on the image of enjoying a Jeep ride across bumpy ground, he created the metaphor "jump in the Jeep" to replace "bite the bullet." Same benefit – a reminder to get busy exploring some difficult terrain – but with an image that attracted him. This seemingly small shift released new energy in Sandy to approach the nitty-gritty details with more pleasurable anticipation.

Now look for the above three steps in this additional example:

New coach Alicia had completed her coach certification, was clear about her business vision, had defined her target market, and was working on her web site. “I’m on overload,” she sighed. “I see a lot of coaches farther along than I am in marketing to my target audience – they have their web sites, their newsletters; they’ve been there for so long. What does little start-up me have to offer that hasn’t already been said?” Alicia identified her key issue as "exhaustion with the process." She took a symbolic side trip into areas of experience where exhaustion occurs in pursuit of a goal.

A picture came to her mind of a mountain and a peak. "I think I was brought here," she said, "because I enjoy hiking and backpacking. There's always this mind game of 'Oh, it's so far' but once I get up there, the feeling I'm going to have!" Alicia let this picture work in her mind. "There's no short-cut," she concluded. "You can take a helicopter or drive your car up, but when you make the climb on your own, you're so much more proud of yourself."

A Lick and a Promise

From Marge Piercy’s poem, “For Strong Women,” I’d guessed she might be Enneagram style Eight. But her autobiography Sleeping with Cats suggests she's more likely to be style Two. 

Piercy describes herself as having taken care of people surrounding her much of her life – including earning a living for herself and the rest of the people in a ménage à quatre in her second marriage. This level of responsibility could also be true of style Eight, but the group marriage arrangement might be a better fit for style Two’s murky sexual boundaries (as would her attraction to the writer Colette). 

Also, Piercy bemoans – in a way that conveys a sense of betrayal – the fact that people have abandoned her when she needed them, which is less likely to be style Eights' complaint. Here's a fascinating passage about adopting two cats after her Siamese died:

“Woody [her third husband, Ira Wood] and I pursued an ad in the Boston Globe. There we found heaps of Burmese... in piles of rich dark brown fur cuddling one another, except for two exiles: two big sable cats she said were three months old, but I could tell they were six or eight at least... A male at stud had escaped from his cage and impregnated his daughter... Woody had fallen in love with them at once... Woody named the male Jim Beam, and I named the female Colette. I have always loved Colette’s writing. Jim Beam was immediately interested and friendly, but Colette hid under a chair... I captured her, held her and licked her like a mother cat. She was astonished and began to purr. From then on, except when she was angry with me, she was my cat. She fell in love that night. It was hardly sanitary, but it conveyed affection and trust in a language she understood.”

Licking a kitten, the way a mother cat would, captures much we need to know about style Two, and is the kind of metaphorical behavior that helps identify core Enneagram patterns. 

But I don't know Marge Piercy, and don't intend this to be a definition of her personality, only to provide examples of how we begin to make good guesses about someone's Enneagram motivations.

The Fine Art of Inference

Prior to my scheduled phone call with Tammy, who was going to be a panelist in one of my workshops, I sent her a handout summarizing all nine Enneagram styles and asked her to come to the call with her best guess about her own. She said, “I think I’m a Seven because I’m definitely the cheerleader for this organization.”

Even though the instructions I sent with the handout emphasized the importance of looking for core motivations instead of external characteristics, Tammy did what many people do – she looked at the descriptions of each Enneagram style’s observable behaviors instead of isolating the central tendency that distinguishes one from another.

For style Sevens the driving force is gluttony, seeking pleasure to avoid pain, a tendency to focus only on the good news. As Tammy talked I listened for clues that reflect underlying motivation – level and quality of energy, symbolic language and behaviors, reactions under stress, communication style, and focus of attention – observing whether or not her behavior with me matched her self-description.

She did have a lively, aggressive energy that could be true to style Seven, but there’s a similar energy in styles Three and Eight. I didn’t hear the louder voice typical of style Eights, or any bluntness. I didn’t hear much evidence for style Seven’s charm, storytelling, or focus on the positive.

Tammy said, for example, she gets bored with details and likes to have people around her to do the follow-through, which she’d read about style Seven. But she had major decision-making responsibilities as head of a large agency, so it was to be expected she’d delegate as much as she could. Most important, she volunteered lots of details as we talked.

I observed clues that led me to think she might be style Three, whose driving force is vanity, with a tendency toward self-promotion. I'd asked her to tell me about her youth so I could listen for her patterns of speech and what she tended to highlight. Her speech was fast-paced, which could have been true of style Seven, but she focused on measures of success instead of on long-term perspective and possibilities.

She described her family’s stature in the community based on their achievements, which suggested the importance of image found in the 2-3-4 triad. Some of her comments that are characteristic of style Three: “You always have to work harder to be an honor student.” “I have a strong work ethic.” “When you’re a leader your life is on stage for everybody to see.” “People have told me I was a model for them.”

After Tammy had reviewed the reasons why she thought she might be style Seven, I said, “I’m surprised. From reading your biography, I thought you might be style Three because you’ve accomplished so much at a relatively young age and you’ve won a number of awards.”

Her response: “I was hoping you’d tell me what you think my type is.” This answer alone was another clue she was more likely to be style Three than Seven. Enneagram Sevens tend to be self-referential, whereas style Threes – sometimes unconsciously – tend to seek approval from others. In the course of thirty minutes, both Tammy and I became clear her Enneagram style was Three, not Seven.

The Nature of Change

The Sanskrit word Maya is often interpreted to mean "life is an illusion." More accurately Maya is the illusion that we and the world around us are stable and unchanging. In fact, everything is always changing. A good coach looks behind the illusion of immutability to discover the openings and opportunities for change.

 

Academics argue passionately about which comes first, a change in attitude or a change in behavior. Translated to coaching, do we help clients challenge their beliefs and thus bring about behavioral change; or do we encourage them to experiment with new behavior, hoping different results will reframe their thinking? The answer: both!!!  It's true that new behavior can create results that make old beliefs obsolete. And sometimes a "new view" leads clients to make behavioral changes consistent with that new perspective.

Moreover, change can occur even when clients don't believe it will work. They may be uncomfortable or even afraid to behave differently, but as long as they'll experiment with something and stay open to the possibility it will work, they're on the road to change. 

This is so because the act of doing something in a different way has already begun to act on their beliefs. In addition, responses from others will reinforce their new behavior. Over the years I've noticed about 40% of my clients have changed based only upon insights gained from clear and specific feedback. This surprisingly high percentage is based on three factors: 

1. Coaches are generally hired by reasonably self-aware people who are ready to change, who've experienced some degree of success in their lives, who are relatively optimistic, resourceful, and self-initiating.
2. Many clients haven't experienced truly effective feedback. It's hard to know what to change, for example, when a friend says "You're too bossy" or your boss says "We didn't promote you because we need someone with a broader perspective." The behavioral specificity of good coaching is usually a breath of fresh air
3. Presenting observations in the context of an Enneagram style often lowers peoples' defenses. The collective experience of Enneagram enthusiasts and teachers offers support for the "down-sides" and hopefulness about the potentialities of a particular style. And coaching specifically to an Enneagram style accelerates the process of change considerably.

Another 40% need to try out new behaviors and learn from them. For example, an Enneagram Eight was told she needed to be less positioned and more flexible in looking for collaborative resolutions to problems. She hadn't been aware of her toggle-switch (dualistic) way of thinking – only perceiving two alternatives: hers or "theirs." From that perspective there could only be one "winner" and she'd been determined to win. She also acknowledged how reluctant she'd been to show any vulnerability. It took time and practice for her to make this important shift.

The remaining 20% of coaching clients require a deeper level of intervention. No matter how motivated someone is to change, or how clear the feedback, or how well-rehearsed the skills, deeply embedded patterns affect the nature and degree of change for all Enneagram styles. My clients, like the rest of the population, come from a wide variety of family backgrounds. I've worked with people who were physically and/or emotionally abused as children, or who are recovering addicts and alcoholics, for example. But the negative impacts of previous experiences need not be so dramatic for people to have difficulty with change. Sometimes this means a longer course of coaching, with more support as well as more challenge, more experimentation, and much more patience.