14.8.2009 von kirsten.

Hard work is “out” – a life of doing what you want, which by definition is not work, is “in”. I’ve been quietly grumbling about this tendency ever since I read “The four hour workweek” by Timothy Ferris and have noticed similar trends ever since (which of course also happened because when you want to buy an orange scarf, you see orange scarves everywhere, but anyway this is my blog, so my perceptions count!).

I must admit that I work a lot (but then why is this something to “admit” at all – it used to be an admirable quality). I love what I do – it is how I want to spend my days and thereby my life (thanks to Mark McKergow for the wonderful quote: “How I spend my days is how I spend my life”). If I die having made the world of people in organisations a place that finds easier solutions and if I can help cut down on a lot of today’s muddled theory, I will be a happy woman. Of course, my “work” is not all I do. I also want my children to grow up to be happy people, and I want to stay healthy and have great friends to spend time with. As my own boss in my own company, I don’t understand the differentiation between “work” and “life” (at least anybody who would have seen me swearing at my computer when I was programming the new website would certainly have agreed that I was very much alive at work).

So how come that there suddenly seems to be an ethos of “not-working”? I mean, if “not-working” is what you want to do that’s completely fine – but why position it as the ideal for everyone? And even worse why pathologize people who like what they do in their work and do lots of it? I need more than toes and fingers to count the times my friends have warned me against diagnoses like “burn-out”, “chronic fatigue syndrome” or even cancer – how terrible for all the people who ARE tired or who HAVE cancer to be blamed in retrospect.

Seth Godin tells a wonderful story in “Tribes”:

“It’s four a.m. and I can’t sleep. So I’m sitting in the lobby of a hotel in Jamaica, checking my e-mail. A couple walks by, obviously on their way to bed, having pushed the idea of a vacation too hard. The woman looks over to me and, in a harsh whisper a little quieter than a yell, says to her friend: ‘Isn’t that sad? The guy comes here on vacation and he’s stuck checking his e-mail. He can’t even enjoy his two weeks off.’ I think the real question – the one they probably wouldn’t want to answer – was, ‘Isn’t it sad that we have a job where we spend two weeks avoiding the stuff we have to do fifty weeks a year’ (Seth Godin (2008). “Tribes”. Penguin: New York et al. p. 100)”.

Of course, this is a bit of a retort and exaggerates in the opposite direction: if people WANT to do a job that is not connected to what they want to do in this world and do what they do want to do in this world in their spare time, that’s also ok, isn’t it?

The “whatever you want to do, it shouldn’t be or feel like work” ethics punched me in the nose just today when I read Bill O’Hanlon’s newsletter. He gives advice on “freeing up your time” (of course for other things than work because that’s kind of a given, right, you don’t want to work!). His advice follows Ferris’ lead almost to the letter. O’Hanlon gives us three steps to working less and leisuring more:

1. Eliminate stuff (I agree),
2. Automate repetitive tasks (I agree) and:
3. “Develop ongoing sources of location-free and time-free income. I joke that my ambition is to create a workstyle that doesn’t require my presence. Again, using simple, inexpensive tools and methods, one can create a base level of income that doesn’t require so much time or action or that can be done from anywhere.” (I disagree).

I think I am objecting to two things: one is the presumption that it is only natural that people do not want to work and that work is in some way bad for you and the other is that everyone (or at least most people in the large audiences of O’Hanlon and Ferris) can actually develop a business that does not require their presence. If you just think of the consequences if everyone (or even just Ferris’ and O’Hanlon’s audiences) suddenly turns into an independent fortune seeker, the advice no longer seems to lead to an attractive picture of the world – at least in my eyes. Of course, with best-selling books and an ingenious business idea in their portfolio, O’Hanlon’s and Ferris’ perspective is only natural: They did it and want to share with us how, so that everyone can imitate their success. Maybe I am too pessimistic, but there is a lot of luck and also hard work involved in getting to where they are. Malcolm Gladwell’s last book, “Outliers”, also suggests that people with excellent skills not only have talent but are the people who persistently pursued what they wanted to learn, who spent long hours practicing their vocation. Telling everybody that success and the easy life is just a good business idea away to me sounds a tiny bit like: “Let them eat cake.”

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26.7.2009 von kirsten.

I just realized that “Le voyage de Hector ou la recherche du bonheur” by Francois Lelord is not yet available in English. I found it a very good read (although sometimes his constant use of oversimplistic language in “Petit Prince” or “E.E. Schmitt” style got on my nerves. I don’t exactly know why it bothers me with Lelord and doesn’t bother me with Schmitt, but that’s for literary critics to decide). Anyway. There will be an English translation soon.

Hector, a young psychiatrist, is bothered by the fact that many of his patients seem to have a lot of good things in life but still come to him unhappy, desperate. He goes on a world tour to find out how people become happy and meets many interesting people on the way (buddhist monk, investment banker, African family, terminally ill lady etc.) and ends up writing down a list of 19 lessons about happiness.

In one of the chapters he meets neuroscientists who explain about different areas of the brain showing different levels of activity when someone is happy. Here is my rather unprofessional translation:

“Rosalyn explained that with this kind of machine you can verify a lot of things about how the brain functions with healthy people but also how it functions when people are very sick and which place in the brain medication really affects. She even showed Hector the effect of psychotherapy with someone who was very afraid of going outside. After the therapy — which consisted in helping him to get used to going outside more and more — the images of his brain had turned normal.

Hector said that he found this interesting. He was satisfied to know which small zone of his brain was about to activate when he was happy.

– “Basically, your images, they are like seeing the smile of the brain.”

Rosalyn and the professor looked at one another.

– “The smile of the brain!” said the professor. “What a good idea.”

And he explained that actually the images were very useful for finding out how the brain functions but that they do not explain happiness any more than your smile explains why you are content.”

This little episode illustrates wonderfully how the “mereological fallacy”, taking the attributes of a part to be the attributes of the whole, can lead us into all sorts of traps when we think about the relationship of neuroscience and therapy (or coaching). The PERSON is happy (person grammar) and the brain has certain chemical states which can be shown and researched neuroscientifically (molecule grammar). We don’t know if the relationship is causal — and it is good practice to distinguish the two.

For more on this interesting distinction have a look at Mark McKergow’s and my article “the grammar of neuroscience” in the first edition of “interAction” — the journal of SF in organisations.

For all French speakers, here is the original (and again, apologies for the quality of my translation):

“Rosalyn expliqua qu’avec ce genre de machine, on pouvait vérifier plein de choses sur la manière dont fonctionnait le cerveau des gens en bonne santé, mais aussi comment il fonctionnait quand les gens étaient malades, et sur quel endroit agissaient les médicaments. Elle monta meme à Hector l’effect d’une psychothérapie sur quelqu’un qui avait très peur de sortir de chez lui. Après la thérapie — qui consistait à le réhabituer progressivement à sortir — son cerveau était redevenu normal sur les images!

Hector dit qu’il trouvait ca intéressant. Il était content de savoir quelle petite zone de son cerveau était en train de s’activer quand il était heureux.

– Au fond, vos images, c’est comme voir le sourire du cerveau.

Rosalyn et le professeur se regardèrent.

– Le sourire du cerveau! dit le professeur. Quelle bonne idée.

Et il expliqua à Hector qu’en effect, ces images étaient très utiles pour savoir comment fonctionnait le cerveau, mais que ca n’expliquait pas plus le bonheur que votre sourire explique pourquoi vous etes content.”

(Francois Lelord (2002) Le voyage d’Hector ou la recherche du bonheur. Paris: Odile Jacob, p. 229f)

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12.7.2009 von kirsten.

I am just reading an interesting book: “Spin Sales” by Neil Rackham. Apart from the selling techniques he talks about, I was impressed with how much energy he seems to have put into researching “what works in a sales conversation”. Is this something SF practitioners or coaches in general have overlooked? There must be a lot of research into the efficacy of sales conversations (because that is what will make money — so you spend money researching it).

The difference that I can see is that sales conversations might be seen to have a definite binary outcome: the prospect buys or does not buy whereas in coaching that might be different. So it might be easier to define whether a sales call was effective or not than a coaching session. On the other hand, even if you do not sell at this moment, you might have given a good impression, opened the door for a future sales call — that could be a parallel to the fact that sometimes in coaching the client will not perceive the usefulness of the coaching until weeks later.

In “Spin Sales” Rackham describes a very simple research set-up: Record or observe the sales calls of successful and not so successful sales people and compare (and of course, in sales, you have the numbers that will show you who is successful and who is not). Could one do something similar in coaching? Record coaching conversations, let the coachee scale how useful they thought this conversation was after the conversation and 3 weeks later and then look at what the more successful coaches did in comparison to what the not so successful coaches did (maybe by way of Microanalysis)? And then … who would fund this kind of research (maybe http://www.asfct.org when we have enough members)?

I am very interested in your views!

Kirsten

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13.6.2009 von kirsten.

The movie “The life of Brian” ends with a very cynical scene which is often quoted by SF practitioners: Brian (a Jesus spoof) and other people have been nailed to crosses to die a painful death over 3 days. Instead of doing something to save them, they and their followers start singing a happy song with the refrain: “Always look at the bright side of life”. As funny as this scene may be, it is quite ironic that this statement (and the song) are much en vogue in the SF community. However “always look at the bright side of life” is taken literally meaning that “Yes, whatever the situation, we should look at the bright side of life – SF is about identifying the good things, isn’t it?” and not “don’t gloss over what is an unacceptable situation – change something!”

SF is often criticized as an approach which does not take “the problem” seriously. We are seen as naively appreciating any effort and only looking at what works, ignoring serious quality issues and other undesired behavior. In the first session, managers in my SF coaching courses sometimes ask how they can possibly manage when it seems forbidden to notice what is going wrong or mention what can be improved (and I quickly dissuade them of that notion).

For me, SF is a method of helping people become unstuck, a method to move forward when you have a problem or when you want to improve something: it is not a way of life. When someone asked Steve in a workshop whether he uses SF with his family or friends, he always said “no” and advised against it. In fact, Steve seemed to many quite a grumpy old man. SF is a very special language game with a special setting: Someone wants to move forward and gives someone else the mandate to help him or her figure it out. In this setting it makes sense to mainly notice what gives you confidence that the client can reach his or her goals (note: not wildly complimenting anything that can possibly be complimented about the client).

Outside of this setting, there is “normal life” with “normal life” language games. If somebody does something you don’t like, it is a quite customary language game to tell them and ask them to do something else instead. This is very important in business life: If someone performs less than a manager expects, they can expect be alerted to the fact. If someone is an unhappy customer they can point out the problems of the product or the service. In none of these situations does it make sense to only look at the positive side of things and keep silent about what is not working. If you only say the things that you appreciate like in the old advice for Southern Belles: “If you can’t say something nice, say nothing at all” and think the rest – people in more direct cultures (like most business cultures) might interpret it as dishonesty or at least patronizing behavior.

We know from our experience with SF coaching that it is easier for people to change when they feel appreciated and taken seriously, so we might use this strategy in our communication in situations where we feel we need to point out a problem. Instead of leaving the hotel or restaurant when we are not getting the service we expect, we might opt to talk to the hotel manager in a friendly way, assume that he or she is trying to do a good job and ask what it is that they can do to help us be a happy customer. If we don’t mention it, the hotel manager has no chance to improve his service. In my view, it is not useful to ignore problems or make them look less bad than they are.

“The good is the enemy of the better” – this old saying seems to go against the SF tenet of “if something ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. In my understanding, “don’t fix what ain’t broken” mainly warns us against creating more problems for our clients than they came with: In therapy, the therapist has no business whatsoever to discuss with a client what could be better than “good enough”. It is the client who defines what is broken and what he or she wants fixed. In business coaching there are very different definitions of “broken”. High performers do not aim for “good enough” but for “top of class” and this means that they challenge things that are already working in some way but can be improved. Our clients’ goal is to be “top of class”, and they want us to help them get there. Of course, we still don’t create more problems for them than they came with – our business clients define what is “broken” and not we. Where in therapy we are in danger of finding more things in our clients’ lives that are broken than the clients themselves, we run the risk of appeasing a client to accept as “whole” what in fact is “broken” when coaching high performers in business. In my view, SF is about helping to create positive change in the desired direction of my clients whether it is a perceived “deficit” or a perceived “opportunity for even better performance”.

“Always looking at the bright side of life” is not an SF technique. But even in “normal life” ignoring what is broken has strange consequences for your language use. Let’s say you go to a workshop which is not well designed, the facilitator is boring, the participants are not engaged, you don’t think the argumentation of the speaker is very sound. If you are a believer in positive thinking, you will go out saying “what a nice workshop, there was good coffee!” – just like our Southern Belle who does not say anything if she cannot say anything nice. People who don’t know you might think you liked the workshop. If they do know you and how you communicate, they will realize what you are not saying: you are not commenting on the great content, the superb presentation etc. – the message lies in what you are not saying. Now imagine that a whole group of people agrees to “see and comment on the positive only” – what you get is a closed circle of people who communicate by what is not said. In intercultural terminology this would be called “high-context culture” which is very confusing to outsiders. Only commenting on the positive makes you somewhat incompatible to people who don’t know that this is what you are doing, especially to the world of business where open criticism and helpful feedback are widely spread.

Suppose you take your business client to the above mentioned horrible workshop. You consciously strive to “always look at the bright side” and see and mention only the positive. You have also often complimented your client on a lot of things: you mentioned how wonderfully they present, how smart they are etc. Now after this workshop which to your client was clearly sub-standard, you start conversations on how wonderful this was, how great and that you very much appreciated it. Imagine the cold shower for your client. Since the meaning of our words is in their use, the client suddenly realizes what you use the word “wonderful” for: a terrible performance.

Personally, I find creating an “inside” and an “outside” language dangerous – I’ve had my share of experience with Christian fundamentalists, and I saw similar distinctions of “insiders” and “outsiders” by way of inaudible and non-transparent subtexts to their communication. Those who are farther up in the “unspoken hierarchy” (because we are all children of Christ, aren’t we, there are no differences) use “love-bombing” (a term coined by Mr. Moon, the founder of the Unification Church) to attract and retain new members. Newcomers are not contradicted even if they say things that are not in line with the church’s teachings, everything they do and say is complimented indiscriminately. Soon the newcomer is integrated into the church, uses their language and becomes funny to the rest of his friends, who stop contact. The effect of this is that it becomes psychologically more and more difficult for the newcomer to dissent: if they disagree with the church’s teachings, they don’t simply disagree in one point and keep their friends – they lose their entire social network and have little hope of making new friends quickly since their “grammar” is quite incompatible with anyone else’s out there.

SF therapy and coaching as I understand it is much closer to the business culture than to the lovebombing, positive thinking culture. When SF coaches give “compliments” at the end of a session, they are not complimenting anything that comes to mind. They don’t generally appreciate clients in an overdone way – they comment on what they think will increase their clients confidence that they will reach their goals. It is not even about what the coach believes: it is about stating what the client said about him- or herself in his or her own words. When SF coaches are engaging in resource gossip, they are noticing the skills and resources that point to the fact that the client can reach his or her target. Lavishing clients with general appreciation on anything and everything is not effective: The coach looses credibility and his or her compliments loose their power.

I prefer to stay in the “every day language game mode” for every day things. I have learned a lot by people telling me I was wrong. I learned a lot by debates and heated discussions with my colleagues about who is “right” (knowing, of course, that from their perspective, they are as “right” as I am from my perspective). I would have become a real asshole if it weren’t for my friends who confronted me with my mistakes, told me what they would like me to do instead or helped me think about what to do better next time. I am very grateful for their helpful honesty.

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14.1.2009 von kirsten.

Preparing a workshop on “Die Theorie des theoriefreien Ansatzes” — “The theory of the theory-free approach” I had to look up “inductive” and “deductive” reasoning *again* (I don’t know, usually I do well with Latin but this one? In both reasonings you “duct”, draw conclusions from something so why is one “in” and the other “de”? Anyway).

I have sometimes heard the solution focused approach described as “inductive” — meaning working from the specific to the general. In inductive reasoning, you look at specific examples and then come up with a general law. An example might be that you take a walnut, throw it down from the first floor, the second, the third, measuring the time it takes to hit the street. You then find some regularity, a correlation between the height and the time it takes to drop. You build a hypothesis and then test it by throwing the walnut from the fourth and fifth floor. The end result is a mini-theory on the general speed of walnut-dropping in Friedrichsdorf, Germany.

So is solution focus really an “inductive” method? Mark McKergow says “every case is different” (book: the solutions focus) and I fully agree. Insoo and Steve did not start with a theory to find out what works in therapy (which makes their approach non-deductive) but they neither did they set out to discover a general law or theory of what to do in which class of therapeutic cases.

Framing solution focus in terms of “inductive” and “deductive” reasoning in my mind is another case of the “physics envy” of the human sciences (and especially psychology). Researchers in psychology, medicine and other human sciences sometimes forget the difference between researching people and walnuts. Of course, if something works with one group of people, it might also work with another. Can I be sure of that? No. Does it excuse me from having to listen to THEM? Definitely not.

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13.1.2009 von kirsten.

My wonderful ex-husband gave me Edward Tufte “The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint — Pitching Out Corrupts within”, a very insightful booklet. How unfortunate it is to reduce our conversations to 5 bullets on a sequence of slides is especially apparent when you compare Lincoln’s Ghettysburg address to its rendition in Powerpoint

Speaking in bulletpoints naturally reduces the complexity of our thoughts, conjunctions and relations get lost (but aren’t they unnecessary complications, anyway?). Tufte quotes the Harvard Business Review, 76 p.44 (Shaw, Bron, Bromiley): “Bullets leave critical relationships unspecified. Lists can communicate only three logical relationships: sequence (…), priority (…), or simple membership in a set.” Necessary conditions, differentiation, causality cannot easily be expressed in a list (except, maybe, as members in a set).

One of my favorite Wittgenstein quotes is “I will teach you differences” (letter to Drury 1967, found in Danièle Moyal-Sharrock, Perspicuous Presentations). How can we present to one another in ways that recognize and take into account differences? How can we design and deliver information in ways that make us think rather than lulling us to cognitive slumber? Presentations with subtitles for the hard of thinking are certainly not the solution.

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5.12.2007 von kirsten.

Since the spring it has been sooo hectic and fun, things I have done include an interesting workshop on “The Grammar of Neuroscience” at the SolWorld conference in Bruges, a workshop on “Grammars of Change” in Heidelberg (Click here for the slides) and designing and delivering global leadership development programs for two global corporations.

I’ve also found an inspiring partnership with Elsässer Spreng, a German executive coaching company that I am now coaching for.

It’s taken me to a lot of places around the globe — in January it is off to the Ukraine!

I won’t even begin to talk about the books that I’ve read …

O — I am using a new toy, the facebook, connect with me if you are there!!

Kirsten

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3.4.2007 von kirsten.

I will ask you to remember what I say, or maybe you would like to forget to remember, or to remember to remember or to remember to forget …

 … if you are now in a deep trance, see a hypnotist to wake you up — however the gorgeous blonde sitting at the computer typing this is real …

So what is this all about? On Thursday, I went on a workshop of Betty Alice Erickson in Amsterdam which was organized by Louis Cauffman from Korzybski Institute and the Saxion Hogeschool. What did I learn?

Stories and stories about Milton Erickson, his canoe trip when he was still almost paralysed, the involvement of his family in therapy, his respect for the individual client and the uselessness of concentrating on theory when the person you are trying to help is sitting right in front of you.

“Observe, observe, observe!” in conversations with your clients (which is different from interpret, analyse, systematize), and the fact that this is easiest done, when the coach or therapist is in a trance him- or herself.

I was made well aware of how much solution focus comes from the work of Milton Erickson, and how much of this is anecdotal and therefore individual.

Any theory of solution focus, of helping, of change will have to take that into account in my view.

How can we help people and organizations identify the change they want and implement this change when we assume that each process is unique?

If you have an answer … there are comments to be made ….

Kirsten

To read more:

“Milton H. Erickson, M.D. An American Healer” Betty Alice Erickson and Bradford Keeney eds.

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2.3.2007 von kirsten.

On Wednesday, I attended a fascinating event organised by the Frankfurt Chamber of Commerce, the journal “Handelsblatt” and INSEAD, the renowned business school in Fontainebleau and Singapore, called “More Women into Top-Management Positions”. 

Herminia Ibarra, the The INSEAD Chaired Professor of Organisational Behaviour, gave a keynote to about 200 or so German professional women from many different industries. She was REALLY inspiring: interesting, intelligent, witty, lively …

Here are some of the interesting things that she said (ok, ok, I had to made my peace with the teenage girl vividly quoting Immanuel Kant to not so amused teenage boys that is somewhere stashed away in my memories of myself, and I actually managed to take notes. Let’s say, I did it for you guys):

In becoming a leader, men and women consistently struggle with three things:

1) Thinking strategically

2) Identifying stakeholders and

– learning to sell (not just produce) good ideas

– working through networks and coalitions

3) broadening one’s “natural” leadership style to fit more constituencies

I think this is very interesting from a solution focused point of view — Solution focus MUST be able to help with all of these. Strategic thinking: “If a miracle happened …”, Identifying Stakeholders: Circular questions / Perspective Change “How would your boss notice …” Broadening Leadership Style: “If something does not work, do something different”.

We only seem to have difficulties with the “selling good ideas” part.

Which brings me to the next very interesting discovery:

Chip and Dan Heath “Made to Stick: Why some Ideas Survive and Others Die” — a very good book for those of us who are not only in the business of making ourselves rich and famous but also in the business of making this a better (and alive) place for everyone.

On that note,

*seriously*

Kirsten

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22.2.2007 von kirsten.

After a bit on the road in Nürnberg and Weißenburg (South of Germany — picturesque, rural, blue skies, green meadows, an interesting job, and a visit to a friend http://www.axelcaspary.de/), I’m back home in the office … home on the range, home in the office (I challenge you to ponder that one).

Speaking about pondering things — here are two books that are absolutely brilliant, silly, ingenious, dumb, deep (*gg*), fun:

Astonish Yourself — 101 Experiments in the Philosophy of Everyday Life by Roger-Pol Droit

Very interesting experiments like “crying in the cinema” (I recommend “Titanic”), or “believing in the presence of a scent” (I recommend “the smell of your grandparents’ hallway”). I have no idea what this could be good for, but it’s interesting

http://www.amazon.com/Astonish-Yourself-Experiments-Philosophy-Everyday/dp/0142003131

And

This Book will Change your Life by Benrik

It makes you draw, jump, do lots of silly things (note the implication of agency here *gg*) — the perfect gift for someone who needs a little bit of devine pranksterhood in his or her life.

http://www.amazon.com/This-Book-Will-Change-Your/dp/0452284899/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_b/104-2175374-1621558

On that note … cu ’round (and square)

*silly today*

 Kirsten

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