One, Two, Three, Grow

I was in the “City of Power Politics” with vested interests and terrified people intent on maintaining the status quo. Though I could do a cost-benefit analysis and was pretty good at organization, I had absolutely no idea what was really going on, why, or how to change it. This was crazy, and I didn’t have the foggiest idea of how to deal with crazy. For sheer survival, if no other reason, I concluded I needed to understand crazy (Ed Morler, Preface, Finally Growing Up: Living an Authentic Empowered Life).

My day brightened considerably when I read those words. In a world of thieving investment bankers, human trafficking, and strategically planned warfare, I applaud Morler’s conclusion that the ultimate causal factor in human behavior is integrity, or the lack of it.  

Growing Up, which integrates the Enneagram with his Six Levels of Emotional Maturity, is about “consciously choosing to be responsible, and in that process, doing our best to discover and live our noble potential.” Morler recognizes increasing self-awareness as the path to greater emotional maturity:Integration is the result of a willingness to face and go through our fear, an exponential expansion of our willingness to be responsible and behave proactively, which broadens and deepens our sense of empowerment. It often tends to manifest as a dramatic, positive shift in our awareness of our being, doing and having. It is thus a major letting go of the compulsive, limiting aspects of personality (p. 216).

Morler proposes six levels of perceiving and responding to life’s situations, each level with characteristic emotions and set of filters, with 26 categories in each such as "Chronic Patterns" and "Willingness to Confront. Along the path of emotional maturity, he suggests, our questions change from “Am I getting enough?” to “Am I good enough?” to “Am I learning, growing, being enough?” to the secure realization, “I am enough.”

In this article I’ll illustrate the growing up of “Jake,” an Enneagram style Six, as an example of how Morler’s categories are grounded in real life. I do this in part because I learn best by trying things out, which – by the way – places me in Morler’s category of Learning Capacity somewhere between Level 6 (“...quick study”) and Level 5 (“Open to concepts supported by experience...”). So for today, I feel emotionally mature. [Sometimes, when confronted with highly theoretical abstractions, I dip to “rejecting new concepts as threatening” (Level 3) or even “It’s impossible, why bother?” (Level 1).]

Because Jake’s self-realization in this particular aspect of his life centered on his willingness to confront, the following outline will provide a frame of reference for his progress. Here are Morler’s six levels of emotional maturity in the category of Chronic Patterns, as well as descriptions of each level in Willingness to Confront, and Enneagram-specific descriptions for style Six:

Level 6 – LEADER Chronic Patterns: “High integrity. Comfortable presence. Clear focus. Big picture. Considerate of real needs. Positive action and results. Appreciates and enjoys life. Life is an adventure. Humor.” Willingness to confront: “Will confront whatever needs to be dealt with. Observational abilities finely tuned. Willingness to explore other beliefs and reassess one’s own. Great presence.”

Enneagram Six at Level 6: “Creator of security in and for others. Dynamic interdependence. Open. Perspective. Committed. Engaging. Playful. Integrates primarily to positive 9 and also to positive 3.

Level 5 – DOER Chronic Patterns: “Conscientious. Positive, provided claims are substantiated. Pleasant. Proactive devil’s advocate.” Willingness to confront:“Selectively confronts. Fair to good observational abilities. Cautious progress.”

Enneagram Six at Level 5: “Highly practical. Organizationally effective. Analyses. Tenacious. Troubleshooter. Constructive critic. Devil’s advocate.”

Level 4 – COPER Chronic Patterns: “More an observer than a participant. Casual, mellow. Takes the path of least resistance. Careless.” Willingness to confront:“Minimally confronts. Observational skills minimal. Difficult situations are avoided or ignored.”

Enneagram Six at Level 4: “Dutiful. Cautious. Security oriented. Skeptic. Ambivalent. Indecisive. Evasive.”

Level 3 – OPPOSER Chronic Patterns: “Sees world as hostile, threatening. Narrow emotional range. Best defense is an offense. Angry person. The debater.” Willingness to confront: “Attacks others to avoid confronting own irresponsibility. Tends to back down quickly when threats do not work.”

Enneagram Six at Level 3:“Phobic – Anxious. Pessimistic. Defensive. Looks toauthority figure. OR Counter-Phobic – Daredevil. Cynic. Blamer. Rebel. Antagonistic.”

Level 2 – MANIPULATOR Chronic Patterns: “World is so threatening that must hide own fear, hostile intentions and behaviors. Highly self-absorbed. The con man. The gossip. The martyr. The two-face.“ Willingness to confront: “Covertly manipulates and misdirects to avoid confronting and owning any responsibility.”

Enneagram Six at Level 2: “High anxiety. Immediately discounting of anything positive.  Everything is a crisis. Self-disparagement. Denial.”

Level 1 – VICTIM Chronic Patterns: “Cry-baby. Complainer. Whiner or just numbed out. Poor me. Yes man. The victim.” Willingness to confront: “Avoids almost all issues. Too inwardly focused to observe much at all.”

Enneagram Six at Level 1: “Whiner. ‘Continual unsolvable problems.’ Masochistic.Persecuted persecutor. Projection. Disintegrates primarily to negative 3 and also to negative 9.”

When Jake first sought coaching, he was new to the Enneagram. As he identified with the Six’s driving force of fear, he reported times in earlier years when he’d accepted others’ negative attributions of him, endured several emotional crises, and suffered high anxiety, sometimes to the point of depression, all more characteristic of levels 2-4 of the Six’s emotional maturity. Subsequently, through his own tenacity and desire to outgrow his fears, Jake had developed many Level 5 qualities, celebrating outstanding successes as an expert in his field. In addition, he’s extremely bright and self-aware and his life experiences had created great readiness to learn more about himself and to develop his full potential.

Primarily a phobic Six, Jake explored his behavioral patterns in the context of the Enneagram, particularly some ambivalence about his career choices – which had opened up the possibility of much greater responsibility based on his past successes. As he learned how to be more present, he had many moments of facing and moving through his fears. On the strength of that foundation, Jake embraced the opportunity to take an executive position in a turn-around situation, and entered that job at a level of self-awareness that placed him solidly in the 5th level of emotional maturity, with some signs of level 6, particularly in his desire to be a manager of others instead of a lone troubleshooter. We’d supported this vision and anticipated his new level of responsibility by exploring, rehearsing, and reinforcing the attributes and responsibilities of leadership.

During the first six months of Jake’s new job, however, the organizational dynamics threatened to trap him in the City of Power Politics described by Morler. The following comments capture Jake’s description of his shift into empowerment during his first six months on the job, as he continues to deepen his self-awareness and broaden his perspective.

“I realized I was very scared around people at higher levels in the company,” Jake began (illustrating his self-observation that he’d been selectively confronting at Level 5). “There are several very, very angry, insistent senior VPs in the company, and some of them I’ve known for ten years or more. But now that they’re at the top, I found myself saying “Yes, sir!” Jake was not the only one reacting to the organization’s top-down culture: “I got to the root of why the company is messed up – when they see something dysfunctional they ask the person reporting to them to find out what’s wrong and how to fix it. That results in many hours to prepare a summary, then the VP casts off what they’ve brought and says “You have to do twice as much.” People reporting to VPs say “Yes sir,” and then go flog the troops.” 

Jake related this dynamic to “child abuse” and we talked about how he was beginning to think systemically (Level 6’s “finely tuned observational abilities”). We identified what Peter Senge  (The Fifth Discipline) would call the organization’s archetype as most likely a version of “Fixes that Fail.” In this archetype, managers aim their responses at the symptoms rather than spending time identifying the underlying, systemic problem; with the unintended consequence that the quick fix exacerbates the initial problem symptom (William Braun, The System Archetypes).

Having analyzed the organization’s dysfunctional pattern, Jake found the courage to confront the VP: “If we look back at the insecurities I had, they were coming from all those people asking me to do things my gut told me not to do. So this week I’d been silently sitting there, taking a beating, when I finally decided the worst thing he could do was fire me. And I stood up to the VP, with my boss in the room. I acknowledged the company’s needs and the urgency, then said, ‘Here’s the reality of the organization you have today. . .’ I told him what we can do, which is focus on things with the broadest appeal and realize it may not be perfect immediately. The room was silent. The VP then turned his attention to someone else and started yelling at him!” Note that the VP – at best – was operating from Level 3, OPPOSER, in Morler’s lexicon of emotional maturity (“Best defense is an offense. . . Tends to back down quickly when threats do not work”).

As Jake’s story continues, you can see him gaining firmer ground in Level 6 (“Will confront whatever needs to be dealt with...”): “I stood up to the VP,” he said, “because it was the right thing to do. And it worked! So I started doing it with everybody. My boss asked me for some calculations, which had left no time to do my job. So I told him ‘I’ll be glad to keep you posted, but from now on, I’m going to spend my time doing what you hired me to do.’”

I asked Jake how he came to respond with such integrity. “There were a whole bunch of things I did,” he acknowledged, “but one sea change – I said what I believed to be true instead of holding back out of fear.”

Jake then planned a five-day team building agenda. He would bring his whole team in from around the world to be face-to-face, some of them for the first time. We agreed he would facilitate the session instead of bringing me in, to support his role as coach, not boss. He would embody empowerment and model a change from the historically hierarchical culture to one of collaborative interdependence. 

After exploring several concepts of team building, he adopted the Drexler Sibbet team performance model, addressing the first five stages during their week together: (1) Orientation (WHY am I here?), (2) Trust Building (WHO are you?), (3) Goal clarification (WHAT are we doing?), (4) Commitment (HOW will we do it?), (5) Implementation (WHO does WHAT, WHEN, WHERE?), (6) High Performance (WOW!), (7) Renewal (WHY continue?).

After the team’s week together, Jake’s e-mail to schedule a meeting with me was short and sweet: “The week went tremendously! Very interesting culture.” From the moment I picked up the phone it was evident he was enjoying Level 6 qualities (“High integrity. Comfortable presence. Clear focus. Big picture. Considerate of real needs. Positive action and results. Appreciates and enjoys life. Life is an adventure. Humor”). 

He started our conversation by joking, “I think they were afraid I was going to come in with Velcro suits and foam bats, so it was a little scary on Monday morning, but I used a simple, get-acquainted exercise where they interviewed each other in twos, then reported out about the person they’ve been talking to.” During Monday afternoon and all day and evening Tuesday, Jake brought in the company Vice Presidents to “to say directly why my team’s mission matters.” (He had been smart enough to give each of the VPs 30 minutes and talking points in advance; the rest of their time was to be for discussion.) “That turned things around,” he said, “to see that I had the VPs’ trust and the VPs took time to talk and answer any questions from team members.”

“I told my team the goal was for each person to have ownership in the results, and by the end of the week to have an entire plan with everyone knowing what they own and how they’re going to do it. Then they all sat at attention waiting for me to tell them what to do! I acknowledged that empowerment had not been the culture here, and said we had to completely let go of the way we’d been doing business: 'You’ve been told we have to do these things by these dates. I’m turning the meeting over to you now to solve these problems and decide how you want to be set up as an organization in order to do it.’ And it worked! I didn’t realize until the middle of the week how important it was to them to be treated like professionals. I kept in mind to model empowerment and, when they saw me not taking over, it would reinforce what I said. So I intentionally stepped out of the meeting more and more as the week wore on.” 

You can see evidence in the following comments of Jake’s moving back and forth between Level 5 (DOER) and Level 6 (LEADER): “I did find I had to keep monitoring myself. I kept wanting to solve problems that were on the table, but I think I did OK on that. At the beginning of the week I found myself diving in too much. Then as a gauge, I knew when I was feeling frustrated it was time to step back.” Describing the week’s outcomes, Jakes summarized: “We had two difficult things we needed to get done: to determine how long it would take to meet our goals, and how much it would cost. In the beginning, everyone on the team said we could not accomplish what we were expected to do in the given time frame, but by the end of the week they’d figured out how to do it! We’re still on a scary precipice, but as long as the family is tight and they know where they stand on things, we’ll be able to accomplish what we need to do.”

Jake also coached his team on how to do what he had done to interrupt the old pattern of top-down blaming and time lost preparing reams of reports. “I believe I’ve taught them how to respond when upper management starts getting on our backs again: ‘If you’re not proactive, they’ll keep doing it more.’”

In follow-up conversations there was every indication the collaborative change Jake encouraged and modeled was holding. “When I came back to work the following week,” he reported, “everyone was working and invigorated. I’d been wondering how to present to upper management what we’d done, and when I walked into my office found a presentation on my desk from one of my team members!” 

“My biggest challenge,” he concluded, “is to change this culture, and to do it by example, as if I’ve walked into a black and white company and I’m able to pour color all over it.” 

Collaborative Consulting

What's the best way to work with clients who want their problems solved, when our goal is to help them learn how to solve their own problems? Social science research suggests they'll learn best if we collaborate with them instead of offering expert recommendations. The more the change process is self-defined, self-monitored, self-evaluated, and self-reinforced by those who have to make the changes, the greater the likelihood of enduring effects.

These same values predominate in other fields, as well. Collaboration has been embraced by many practitioners of medicine (mutual participation), leadership (motivational management), teaching (student-centered), and psychotherapy (client-centered). Why? Because taking the expert role in any of these situations can stifle self-initiated action. Medical patients, for example, are less likely to comply with a treatment regimen if they're told what to do without being involved in the process.

But there's a problem. If we value collaboration, we expect to work conjointly with people to diagnose, plan, and carry out actions that will solve their problems, resulting (we hope) in their greater commitment to the process of change and stronger ownership of results. We also assume the process of collaboration itself will generalize to other relationships. Historically, however, most organizations have been competitive in orientation and authoritarian in implicit expectations (some organizations still use such terms as chain of command).

Thus, if a client system is hierarchical and authoritarian, we might as well acknowledge that we're attempting a revolution.

As it turns out, that's not an issue very often, because we often fail to develop the kind of collaboration we believe in. And when we fail, we too often blame our clients; citing their resistance, for example. Instead, we need to look at the subtle ways we contribute to the problem by unwittingly taking an expert role.

The dictionary defines collaboration in two ways:

• Where people cooperate voluntarily it means working together or acting jointly.

• Where values are different, as when a conquering government takes over a country, to collaborate means to comply with.

It is in this second sense that collaboration in consulting situations can be compliance with the coach or consultant's wishes, because our clients often operate implicitly from more traditional, hierarchical modes of interaction.

How does that happen? Because we value collaboration so much we tend to insist on it, missing the point that this very behavior constitutes a bid for dominance. Telling someone "We're going to collaborate" is a paradoxical communication: clients are damned if they do and damned if they don't. If they "collaborate" by going along with us, we may be praising them for in fact doing as they're told (this is a do as I say, not as I do scenarios). If they choose not to collaborate, we give them a negative label (resistance) for taking self-initiated action, the very outcome we say we're seeking. No wonder our clients sometimes seem confused.

I believe it's important to create an integrated set of values, building on the initial beliefs and expectations of both. It's possible, then, to negotiate an approach where collaboration occurs in the process of uncovering and integrating differences.

Beyond Active Listening

We all want to coach our clients to be present enough to see how their habitual patterns operate, to respond out of free choice instead of reacting automatically. To do this well, we don't just instruct; we model by being fully present ourselves.

This goes way beyond active listening or even empathic listening. As described in Co-Active Coaching, "You listen at 360 degrees... as though you're surrounded by a force field that contains you, the client, and a space of knowing... and see what emerges."

Similarly, Otto Scharmer (Theory U: Leading from the Future as it Emerges) describes a deep level of listening ("Listening 4") that requires full presence, frees us from habitual thinking, and opens new possibilities.

• Listening 1 (from habits): Habits of judgment that lead to reconfirming old opinions and judgments.
• Listening 2 (from outside): Factual listening and noticing differences that lead to new data.
• Listening 3 (from within): Empathic listening that leads to seeing through another's eyes and emotional connection.
• Listening 4 (from Source): Generative listening that connects us with an emerging future and shifts our identity/self. As a coach I hold the intention to be present at the deepest level of listening and to help clients notice how Listening 1, 2, and 3 operate as they move into Listening 4.

For example, Jane is in love with Bob. Both with busy lives, they've carved out a two-hour walk together, when Bob's phone rings with a desperate call from his sister Maggie that her heat is off and she's freezing. Although Jane agrees to go to Maggie's with Bob, she also notices her Listening 1 ("There's never enough time for me!"). Instead of reacting from that level, she probes for facts (Listening 2): Bob is the older brother of several sisters who relied on him before Jane came into the picture and she and Bob have talked about how to gradually balance that with his commitment to her. He's told Jane he wants to check in quickly and then continue their walk.

Still not reacting, simply being present, while at Maggie's house Jane engages Listening 3, putting herself in Bob's and Maggie's shoes ("Look how affectionate he is with his sister. That's the same fountain of compassion I love and respect in him"). She continues to stay present, now aware at Listening 4 ("What is there to know beyond my habitual understanding?"). In this place of full presence, she sees that her initial reaction came from a fundamental patterned belief, "There will never be enough for me." She shifts to a different sense of identify — "I am not my pattern" — and its hold on her is released. She is fully present.

Transcending Personality

In Masterful Coaching Robert Hargrove distinguishes between incremental learning (embodying new skills and capabilities), reframing (reshaping patterns of thinking), and transformational learning (shifting frame of reference):

While change at the incremental and reframing levels is quite common among my clients, I've found transformational change to be more of a challenge. Among the many reasons,

• it's difficult to see implicit patterns that underlie our human systems,
• seeing these patterns "unmasks" us, shows how what we've been doing isn't working, and
• we resist facing up to anything at odds with our self-image.

The Enneagram is a powerful tool to help us see and transcend those personality patterns. The following three levels of learning illustrate each stage of potential change (new skills, shift in attitudes/behavior, shift in point of view) as exemplified by a client with Enneagram style Six:

1. Incremental (Single-Loop) Learning refers to learning new skills and capabilities through incremental improvement, doing something better without examining or challenging underlying beliefs and assumptions. Let's say "Joe" is concerned because his boss sees him as negative, and he agrees to practice a creative problem solving technique. Instead of saying, "That won't work because it will take too long," Joe learns to incorporate his concerns into a solution statement ("I think that could solve our problem. Let's talk about how we can shorten the production time.") His boss compliments him on being more positive and Joe's happy to no longer be criticized. He may still tend to focus on the negative side of things, but he knows how to mask that behavior and keep himself off the hook in his job.
2. Reframing (Double-Loop Learning) occurs by fundamentally reshaping the underlying patterns of our thinking and behavior so we’re capable of doing different things. This level of learning often enfolds single-loop or incremental learning, but goes beyond it. This is the level of process analysis where people become observers of themselves, asking, What's going on here? What are the patterns? It's still largely an act/react cycle, but it can get the underlying psychological superstructure to start wobbling. This is where most individual and/or organizational change takes place. This is also where the Enneagram provides a powerful road map for what to observe.

Joe, for example, might become aware of his general tendency to focus on what could go wrong, to look for hidden agendas. So, in addition to learning how to approach problems with solutions, he begins to see how his pattern of thinking tends to leave out what could go right. Now he's able to step outside himself a bit and notice how he filters out the positive. He's no longer defending himself from his boss's criticism – he "gets it" that in this way, he is negative.

When he finds himself focusing only on the negative, Joe might take out a piece of paper, write down all the negative possibilities in the left-hand column and counter these with positive possibilities in the right-hand column (a single-loop skill applied in a double-loop context).

As Joe observes this pattern consistently over time, he may spontaneously notice both sides of the equation and show this change in his language and in problem-solving capabilities. If so, the experience of reshaping his thinking and behavior has automatically taken him to the transformational or triple-loop level. In this one respect he is no longer the same person he was. Joe now experiences himself and his environment differently.

3. Transformational (Triple-Loop) Learning is a shift in our context or point of view about ourselves. Something we thought and felt (and had manifested in our behavior) has come into question. We may feel exhilarated, stunned, shocked, humiliated, disoriented, and/or depressed at points during this process; the change may happen gradually or all of a sudden; but in this particular context, we will never be the same (there are other contexts by which we operate and which are still open areas for exploring assumptions, etc.).

Joe, for example, may have felt embarrassed to own up to his negative focus because he's always seen himself as optimistic. When he continues to observe this habitual pattern as it occurs, he'll find he begins to notice it without judgment, and eventually will see things differently, as indicated above. Or, he might worry about it for days, putting himself in a tailspin because his self-image is suffering. If Joe stays stuck in this place, he won't make the shift from reframing (double-loop) to transformational (triple-loop) learning. He might conceivably even deny the validity of the feedback he's been given and shift back to the level of single-loop learning, still able to use the new techniques he's learned, but accusing his boss of being unfair, or defending himself from the possibility that he isn't who he thought he was.

Some clients have the tenacity and guts to hang in and incorporate these unfamiliar and often unwanted aspects of themselves. For those who might otherwise be stuck, it helps to reassure them that what they're feeling is natural because they're letting go, in part, of an idealized self-image that has helped them cope since childhood. This difficult part of the passage can be reframed in a positive light. You might say, for example, "This is great. This means you've really shaken up a part of yourself that served you well in the past, but has been keeping you from using your full potential. Your whole view of yourself is changing, and this is exactly where you should be. You’ll find your perception of the world and feelings about yourself shifting in a very positive way."

I always hold it as my goal to encourage transformational learning. Rather than marketing "the Enneagram," I consider it a tool to aid in the process, emphasizing its practicality, describing my own experience, and sharing anonymous examples of how others have benefited. 

Clients are eager to learn more about themselves and what makes other people tick, in the hope of reducing frustration and making their lives more fulfilling. So it's fairly easy to achieve double-loop learning. 

Transformational learning may take a while. For one example, read "Take Time to Celebrate," where I applaud a client of more than six years, recognizing the time and effort involved in truly freeing herself, how she can breathe a little deeper each time she expands the confines of her personality's box. For other examples, read the eighteen stories in Somebody? Nobody? that show how observing and releasing habitual patterns is a complex and continuing journey.

(More about the three levels of learning in Chapter Two of Out of the Box Coaching with the Enneagram) 

Laying Down the Armor

Each Enneagram worldview has some consistent patterns when in the box. For example, unexamined style Eights tend to view the world as a war zone and seek power to avoid feeling vulnerable. There's typically some toggle-switch thinking (“Whose side are you on?”), a fair amount of confrontation (it’s actually a search for truth), and a tendency to believe they’re seeking justice when in fact they want revenge.

All Enneagram styles operate from polarities that maintain their worldviews. Here, it's "Either I'm strong or I'm weak." One coach described a female with these patterns who didn't know why everyone thought she was so tough and asked, "Do I have to bleed all over everyone to be vulnerable?" This sounds like a challenge, but it also reveals the weakness/strength polarity. Notice how she went to an extreme. If she isn’t strong, she’ll “bleed all over everyone.” Clients with this style respond well to humor: “Maybe just a cup of blood!”

One of my clients tried to engage her style Eight husband in a conversation about being less aggressive with friends and business associates. He replied, “What do you want me to do, jump off a cliff?” A natural tendency, in the face of such a response, is to presume the person is ridiculing the issue, or simply being ridiculous. Not so. Underneath their tough exterior, these are the most vulnerable of all the nine Enneagram styles. Hence the need to bluster. They’re reluctant to show vulnerability because they think it really might require jumping off a cliff. 

They like it when you're direct. You could reflect back their either/or assumption and suggest, “Let’s talk about how showing vulnerability can be a strength.”
 
Another client I’ll call Mike said, “I’m working with a therapist who believes I have MUCH anger suppressed in me. As I was mulling this over, I remembered reading we're an anger-based type. I don’t really feel angry. Nor do my close friends see anger in me or from me. How do I access and/or release my anger?” 

Style Eights who lack awareness of their inner workings don’t understand how anger motivates their behavior. For example, they might criticize someone harshly without being aware of any inner rancor, yet the recipient experiences them as fierce and hostile. They may be surprised and apologize if people who feel attacked reveal their pain, because usually they don’t intend to hurt.  

Mike said his friends didn’t see him as angry. A key pattern of this style is to be protective, even compassionate with a few trusted others, so he probably shows his vulnerability and not his anger to his closest friends. I recommended he seek specific feedback from people who aren’t close to him and who therefore may not typically experience his softer side: “You can pay close attention to others’ nonverbal reactions to you and probe for specifics; e.g., ‘I can tell by the look on your face, you’re struggling with what I just said. Is it the content that’s troubling, or how I said it, or something else?’"
 
Asking for descriptive feedback is a good idea for all of us. We can’t know for sure how we come across until we can see ourselves through others’ eyes. This is especially important for style Eight. These clients typically feel innocent inside, as Mike did, yet their intimidating demeanor may keep others from giving them the feedback they need.

I affirmed this with Mike, and suggested he could help people be honest with him by saying something like, "I have somewhat of a weakness in understanding what makes people tick, and I need your help." I also told him: "LISTEN to their feedback without a rebuttal. Ask for specific examples and don’t argue with them." 

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.