Emily Tipton
I had lunch with a friend of mine the other day, who is struggling to get her nine- month-old son into a sleeping routine at night. As I was empathizing with her plight, I was reminded of my own struggles as a new mother with my eldest son, and how in retrospect I was able to use Reflexive Practice to help me to understand why it seemed I was caught in a loop and unable to make any progress.
I was educated as an engineer and had spent much of my career in various project management roles. So I must admit that I approached motherhood as a project and was quite confident that I would be able to strategize, organize and manage all aspects of this new role in my life. I was unprepared for the emotional side of motherhood, and my effectiveness was severely handicapped by lack of sleep. I’ve written in other blog postings about my birth experience, and the trouble that Ollie had afterwards (Trust), so I won’t revisit that here except to say that I believe the suffering he experienced in his early weeks impacted his ability to sleep through the night because he didn’t learn to settle himself as an infant. So, at nearly one year old he was still waking me several times a night and adamantly wanting to nurse, because that’s how he soothed himself.
At the time I felt like I was trying everything. But I found it challenging to be consistent – when he was teething, we were travelling, or I was just too tired to do anything else, I would succumb and nurse him, knowing that this was reinforcing the very behavior I wanted to stop because as his mother I wanted to soothe and nurture him. I found the situation difficult on so many levels – my rational and emotional selves were not aligned, I found it difficult to communicate the decisions I made in the wee hours of the morning effectively to my (very supportive, but frustrated and sleep-deprived) husband, and I was desperate for sleep. I believed that I was somehow failing to solve this problem, when it seemed like every other mother in the world had it beat.
It’s funny how, looking back, I don’t actually remember exactly how it all turned out. I weaned Ollie when he was 12 months old and I know that by the time my second son, William, was born, Ollie was 22 months old and sleeping all night long every night. But I remember clearly the intensity of the frustration as I descended into the depths of despair each time I realized I was cycling both Ollie and I through behaviours that were not serving either of us, or our relationship.
When I look at the situation retrospectively, with my Reflexive Practice lens, I can clearly see how we were in a strange loop. Each time I put increasing pressure on myself to “solve the problem” either by making rules for myself or finding some new tactic to try, I would react to setbacks in a very closed way – being unkind to myself and to Ollie by feeling like I had failed to implement solutions that should work, or that had worked for others. I would push expectations on my son that I couldn’t effectively communicate to him. When we failed, I would revert back to old habits and then stop trying, just feeling like I was never going to solve the problem. Then, I would see some kind of change in Ollie – he would sleep a little longer, or fall asleep on his own, without nursing, and all of a sudden I would be hopeful again. I would design more rules or research new methods, and enter the cycle all over again.
Strange loop pattern
What I didn’t understand at the time is that Ollie was not a problem to be solved. I had to start thinking about him, and his sleeping patterns, as a mystery to be explored. Relationships are complex and it was my role to try to understand and explore why he was behaving the way he was, not to compare him with other babies or push expectations onto him based on what I read in a book. Just that shift in perspective allows me now to see the situation completely differently. When I treat my children as opportunities to learn, instead of problems to be solved, my feelings about the situation or the “problem” shift. It was not wrong to design rules, or try different things I read in books, but it was wrong to place expectations on his response to these things, and feel like a failure when he didn’t live up to those expectations. I was telling a story about us both where we were failures. Instead, when I was able to openly observe and learn from how he responded, I could give us both grace, and stay out of the strange loop.
Henry Senko
Can strategic practice be used within a family to help improve relationships? I had recently received some feedback from one of the participants who had just taken the course on Learning and Corporate Culture. He mentioned how he used the Cultural System Matrix to find common ground to help improve the relationship with his teenage boys.
He went through the exercise to determine each of their ideologies, including his own. They discovered that the boys were coming from a different cultural stance than the father. The father was coming from Level 3, the cooperative stance, and the boys were coming from Level 2, the competitive stance. This helped the father and boys to understand why, at times, they were frustrated with each other.
Recall that the Cultural System Matrix shows three levels that drive the behaviour and thinking of people operating from that level:
- Level 1 (L1) is seen as con~forming, because people follow established ideas and practice: con~form; to form the same shape together. However, at Level 1, people are often conforming by doing what they are being told to do, rather than working together to form the same shape together.
- Level 2 (L2) is seen as com~peting, because people are trying to do better ¾ better than themselves at present, and also better than others. However, at Level 2, people are often competing for resources and against others, even though the Latin form of com~pete means to strive together, not against.
- Level 3 (L3) is seen as co~operating, because there are multiple, diverse stakeholders who cooperate, understand each other’s points of view, and strive to help each other achieve various aspirations: co~operate; to operate, to do things together. However, at Level 3, people are often cooperating by forcing consensus, rather than co~operating by understanding each other’s points of view, and striving to help each other achieve various aspirations.
The boys, coming from Level 2, were competing with each other for the father’s attention, and the father, coming from Level 3, was trying to build consensus amongst all three of them. The boys were not interested in “doing things together”, whereas the father was.
The father and teenage boys went one step further. They did a Cultural Patterns Analysis to determine if there were any cultural patterns that all three of them shared.
Recall that each of the three cultural stances has associated patterns of learning:
- Three patterns of learning found within the con~forming stance (L1): adhering (1), adapting (2), and relating (3)
- Two patterns of learning found within the com~peting stance (L2): experiencing (4) and experimenting (5)
- Two patterns of learning found within the co~operating stance (L3): connecting (6) and dedicating (7)
The father and boys discovered that all three shared experiencing (4) and experimenting (5). Knowing this, they planned activities that allowed them to experience what they liked to do together, such as going to the fair, and to experiment, such as working on an engine. This created a conversation about doing these experiences together. The father reported that this exercise of using strategic practice to understand family dynamics transformed his relationship with his boys. He would have never considered trying this before taking the course.
Jean Symborski
I have an inability to accept when things are over. I imagine that if I work hard enough, things would last forever – namely friendships. Facebook encourages this false sense of permanence in friendships. Even when a conversation with an old friend can’t move past small talk, you are still free to know intimate details about their life by simply clicking on their Facebook profile. Nowadays, “friend” has almost no meaning.
I don’t know how many friends I have in real life, but I certainly don’t have several hundred, like on my Facebook list.
In fact in 1992, a British anthropologist, Robin Dunbar, theorized that the human brain is only capable of maintaining 150 stable relationships. Since then, his idea has been referred to as Dunbar’s number. Now with Facebook, scientists have reviewed Dunbar’s number and they hypothesized that despite our large friends’ lists, Dunbar was right, we are only capable of maintaining an inner -circle relationship with about 100 to 200 people.
Occasionally, I feel the need to purge my friends list. Several dozen are vague acquaintances that I met one time or had a class with one semester, who I added in some strange need to solidify the meeting. Like the LinkedIn connection without business cards. Few things are more satisfying than going through this list of people, whose relationships with me have come to a confused cry of “Who the heck is that?” when a post of theirs appears on my newsfeed. It feels good to get rid of those people because it reminds me that some other connections are worth keeping. If some people are easy to delete off a list, they hold no emotional weight and don’t deserve the title of “friend.”
There are also friendships that are harder to take off the list. Sure, before the Internet, I probably would have just stopped speaking to them, but social media is a bittersweet reminder of the friendship we once had, and wish we still had. Although the person I was once friends with is no longer calling or texting like they used to, there is still a profile out there that bears the same name. Facebook encourages you to hold on to these connections, and somehow making the move to get rid of someone whom you were once really close to is just too hard to do.
Taking the concrete step of defriending someone isn’t as simple as deleting the fluff friends of social media, those people who never had bearing on my life and never will. Deletion of someone who used to be important is truly burning a bridge. To stop talking to this person altogether, to admit that even seeing their online presence is an odd combination of uncomfortable and unpleasant, is the stuff of real break-ups. And so I’m tempted to keep them around because, an awkward non-friendship is better than cutting them out altogether. That would be a real death to the friendship, so I’d rather keep it on life support.
I often think about quitting Facebook and social media altogether, and I could technically shut the thing down – the Earth wouldn’t fall off its axis and collide with the sun if I did.
I lived without status updates five years ago, and although living without them now would probably not make much of difference for my daily life, except then I remember those family and friends that make both my Dunbar number and my Facebook friends’ list.
So next time you sign online, think of your Dunbar number. Are you really capable of maintaining 1,367 friendships?
Henry Senko
In the latest issue of the Action Learning Research and Practice journal, I read an article about action learning in which teams are self-managed and do not use a set advisor. The term used in the article was Self Managed Action Learning (SMAL). I immediately thought of the action learning process we had developed a number of years ago, and how our work now has a name. I remember the first time we attended an action learning seminar in England in 1996 and met Reg Revans. He had mentioned that the role of a facilitator was to “…hang coats and get coffee, getting out of the way of learning…”. Our search over the next few years was to try and understand and develop a process to help achieve what he meant by this statement. At the time, we were fortunate to have a number of people from various professions and walks of life who were willing to meet once a month with us to experiment with the process of action learning and develop a process that did not require a set advisor. After a number of years we were successful, and accompanied our clients, presented our findings at the Action Learning Conference in England, on the success of action learning and the use of this process.
We designed the action learning process to be completely self-managed by the action learning group. Over a number of years in testing the process, participants provided valuable feedback on the process, and what was required to make the self-management possible. The way in which our action learning process is structured:
- Provides the framework required for a group to conduct the process without any assistance from an external facilitator, consultant, or set advisor.
- Increases psychological safety because all of the instructions are written, and everyone can read and interpret them.
- Makes sure that thinking and acting are aligned with how people learn, rather than based on each person’s specific way of learning.
- Gives each member a chance to voice his or her perspective, while protecting the interests of the situation owner.
- Keeps members focused on the action learning process, and lowers the effect of distractions that may occur.
- Creates the conditions for the emergence of communal respect, trust, helpfulness, and effective communication.
When groups are first learning the action learning process, the structure provides ways in which members can feel psychologically safe while feeling incompetent at the same time. Even when no one in the group has ever participated in this form of action learning, the instructions put everyone on a level playing field. Everyone knows nothing about the process. The struggle of learning the process is minimized by the desire to solve a group member’s issue or problem. As a result, most group members willingly struggle through learning the process, and willingly self-manage the group.
Henry Senko
I am often asked how to apply the concepts and processes that people learn in the Leadership through Learning (LTL) program. Here’s a question from Donna Smith, an LTL practitioner from Edmonton, Alberta:
Donna’s Question:
Could you send me a summary of how your learning preference influences the triggers you might have around participating in meetings? For example, I get impatient when people start talking about details, details, details and just want to move on.
My Response:
I think that if all your participants know their learning style preference, the activity at the end of this blog might be the best way for them to individualize their reasoning for engagement and disengagement during a meeting. I believe the activity would take about 5-10 minutes. Depending on the size of the group, you would have to allow another 5 -10 minutes for a quick debrief.
Your impatience with details can be attributed to an action preference in learning style, but it is also a good example of how someone’s thinking style is having an impact on you, as seen in the thinking styles profile called the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI). A focus on details comes from Quadrant B, and irritates people who come from the other three quadrants, but especially Quadrant D, which is likely where your irritation is coming from.
Overview of Learning Styles Engagement:
- For people who have an action orientation (activist and pragmatist): The meeting must be time efficient (pragmatist), and must have something to do with planning (pragmatist) that leads to action (activist) or implementation (activist).
- For people who have a reflection orientation (reflector and theorist): The meeting must have an opportunity to gather new information (reflector), and must have a strong purpose (theorist).
Quick Overview of Disengagement:
- People who have an action orientation (activist and pragmatist) are irritated if the meeting is not time efficient (pragmatist), and has nothing to do with planning (pragmatist) that leads to any type of action (activist).
- People who have a reflection orientation (reflector and theorist) are irritated if there is no opportunity to gather ideas (reflector) and the meeting has no clear purpose (theorist).
Applying the Learning Cycle during a meeting:
- Start with telling the purpose for the meeting:
- Move to gathering data about the purpose (e.g., different perspectives, etc.)
- Draw conclusions from the information gathered
- Plan on how to move forward
- Assign actions and accountability (to whom and with timeframes)
- Note: If you have several purposes to cover in the meeting, do steps 1-5 for each purpose, starting with the most urgent and important purpose first.
Activities for Participants to Determine How Meetings and Learning Styles Connect
- During or at the end of the meeting, use the Capitalizing on Your Learning Style booklet found at the back of the Learning Styles Questionnaire (LSQ) Interpretation Guide or Revving Up Thinking and Learning: Course Design Guide.
- Ask participants to go to page 8 in the Capitalizing on Your Learning Style booklet. And find the page that refers to their strongest preferences.
- Ask participants to review the bullets under the statement If you … you will learn best from activities where, and highlight what phrases resonate for them. This forms the basis of their preferences. Ask participants to consider when they were engaged and why they might have been engaged based on what they highlighted.
- Ask participants to review the bullets under the statement As an _____ you will learn least from …, and highlight what phrases resonate for them. This forms a basis for what irritates them. Ask participants to consider when they were disengaged and why they might have been disengaged based on what they highlighted.
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