Talking about SF?

“It’s rude not to introduce yourself”

SF is becoming increasingly known and appreciated in the world of coaching and change facilitation. The more it becomes known, the more will SF practitioners be asked to say something about what it is that they are doing, and, of course, they will always face the challenge of choosing an appropriate introduction for their clients and prospects. So how does an SF practitioner best introduce SF?

The meaning of an introduction is in its use

If we want to understand something about introductions, it makes sense to look at how we use an introduction and what it is that we want an introduction to do. In SF terms: “Once you have introduced yourself, what will be better?”. After an introduction, we know essential information about the person introducing him- or herself and are able to interact with this person in an easier way. If you don’t plan to interact, an introduction is not necessary. People on airports running to and fro don’t introduce themselves to each other because they do not plan to interact. People sitting in the same aisle on a plane may introduce themselves (and it is a sign of their willingness to interact if they do). People who will be working together serving the passengers certainly do introduce themselves. In our trainings and when we are working together as an SF team for one client, we are aware of this function of an introduction – we ask and tell each other what would be important for the other person to know, so that they can work together well. The specific goal of the introduction for the purpose of the ensuing activity is made clear and influences the form of the introduction.

Every introduction is different

As SF consultants, we are in many different situations which require some form of an introduction. Each of these situations has a different purpose and therefore also requires a different form of introduction. The goal of an introduction is making the ensuing interaction more likely to reach its goal. Therefore, we have to look at the goal of the interaction to be able to say anything about the quality of the introduction: every introduction is different.

There are many situations in which we introduce SF. Here are some that either are candidates for likely misunderstandings of what one attempts to do with the introduction or are situations that happen often in an SF consultant’s life. This are not an all encompassing list – there are probably many more. Doing SF, teaching SF, talking to someone from a different tradition about coaching or change management, working with someone from a different tradition in coaching or change management are all conversations with different purposes and therefore different introductions.

Doing SF

When you are doing SF, you want to make it easy for the clients to move in their desired direction. You want to join the clients in their endeavors, support them irrespective of their theoretical framework or the things that they believe about the world and themselves. Explaining everything about SF beforehand is neither necessary, nor usually especially useful (except when the clients want to know – but that is a different conversation).

Jenny Clarke has a wonderful analogy for this: If you buy a train ticket, you want to be sure that you will reach your destination comfortably, but you really don’t need anyone to explain the exact configuration and technology of the diesel engine. Actually, if you do spend too much time on the technology, the prospective passengers might become a bit skeptical about the safety of the trip: why explain something that you take for granted. Information like: 2 million passengers transported with an average of 0.5 minutes delay are much more pertinent.

So if we as SF consultants speak with prospective or new clients, we are well advised not to spend too much time on the details of our technology. It is much better to tell stories about how we were able to help similar clients and what was useful in these situations. We want to instill confidence that this is going to work, create positive expectations because that will help the clients to move more quickly to where they want to go. So actually, when we are doing SF, we don’t have to mention or introduce SF as a method at all.

Teaching SF

When we are dealing with people who come to us to learn something about SF or learn how to “do” SF. In these cases, the goal of the interaction is different. We know that we have been successful in this interaction when we see our trainees work in an SF way. In order to practice SF, it is necessary to have a basic understanding of the underlying principles : e.g. someone who uses SF tools to move someone from where they are to where they do not want to go, cannot really be said to practice SF. The goal of our introduction of SF here is to enable people to understand something about SF and to practice it successfully.

If you want to learn how to dance the tango, your tango teacher will tell you about the basic posture, explain and demonstrate the signals of leading and following. Without some explanation of the background (for example that the female dancer is supposed to follow and that most tangueros will not like being pushed around the dance floor and most tangueras will expect the man to lead and won’t appreciate being left without signals), the student is left to find out by trial and error. It is much easier if the teacher explains the basic assumptions of the interaction beforehand.

If you use the strategy of introduction which is useful for doing SF, namely not mentioning the assumptions and characteristics of SF work but practice SF without explanation, when what you actually want to do is teach SF you are not doing your student a favor. What could easily be resolved by a question or explanation needs much more time if each and every student has to find out him- or herself. It is much better to follow the example of a good tango teacher: some explanation of the basic assumptions and theories, some practice, lots of feedback – depending on how each student learns best.

Talking about coaching or change facilitation

Sometimes SF consultants talk to other consultants about their work. The goal is gaining insights into what the other person does, learning from one another, or broadening one’s professional horizon. We know that the conversation has been successful if we have an overview of what the other person does, know what we can take on board for ourselves and where are the differences and what we do not want to take on board.

It is a bit like an ecumenical conference of Christian ministers, priests or pastors. They all do the same kinds of things like baptize, marry, bury people, hold worship services and engage in pastoral counseling. They can help each other, for example, with innovative ideas of how to run a worship service that attracts young people or how to raise funds for the leaking church roof because these are problems that all of them face in one way or the other. However, there are also problems that only arise in one denomination and not in the other. It would not make sense for a Roman Catholic priest to discuss how to best protect the consecrated wafers with a Lutheran colleague for whom the problem does not exists because she can easily throw them away after the worship service. Knowing the limits of helpful conversations across denominations has proven very useful for ecumenical dialogue. Here, a curious investigation into what other people believe and how it makes sense to them is an enabler for the dialogue.

When an SF consultant engages in a dialogue with a consultant from a different background, an “ecumenical” way of interaction might make sense. Each introduces their system of thought while the other listens curiously and both then determine what are the areas where they can learn from each other by taking on a method or by re-interpreting something. If an SF consultant does SF in such a situation, leading the other person to believe they agree with them by not clarifying when there is a difference of opinion, the other consultant will neither gain insight into SF nor will he or she have the opportunity to choose consciously what fits and what does not fit and that would be a pity.

Collaborating with consultants from different approaches

When an SF consultant is working in a group of consultants from other approaches, the aim of the introducing conversation is different again: you want to find a way of introducing each other that enables the group to collaborate well and to focus on what is useful for the client. Good collaboration usually means that you appreciate each others efforts and that you observe what you are doing successfully and what you still have to improve etc. – you focus on what you do rather than why you do it.

There is a very funny scene in one of the first episodes of the 1970ies show “Catweazle”. The series is about a magician from the 10th century who is magically catapulted into 1970ies England. Catweazle, the magician, finds shelter in the barn of a local farmer and is discovered by the farmer’s teenage son, Harold(?). When Harold turns on the electric light, Catweazle is very impressed by the magic prowess of the boy: he must have captured the sun in a bottle! He asks to be taught to illuminate the “sun in a bottle” and Harold teaches him how to operate a light switch. Catweazle is very happy to be able to perform this magic trick “electrickery”. Harold and Catweazle do the same thing, but the interpretation is very different.

When SF consultants are working with consultants from other approaches, it is also the fact that the “light is burning”, that the customer has the desired result after the intervention that counts and not whether you interpret it as a magic trick. Whether initial interviews with a company are labeled “finding out what they want and what kind of language they use” or “systems diagnosis” does not matter: what matters is that afterward everybody knows how to move on and there is a good relationship between client and change facilitators.

Focusing too much on the differences in interpretation would probably make the collaboration between consultants tedious, and it would also take a long time. It is much better to spend the energy on what to do for the client. An introduction that focuses on the skills of the consultants or on what they would like to reach with the project is much more useful to enable collaboration than a discussion of theoretical differences. A little bit of knowledge about where everybody is coming from might be useful to interpret each others contributions but it is better to focus on the work and what can be done that everybody is happy with. Stressing the similarities and what can be done together than stressing the differences and what people disagree about.

Summary

Talking about SF is different from doing SF and it depends on the situation which kind of introduction is useful. If you are doing SF, i.e. you are helping a person or a group of people to move in a desired direction, it is not necessary to introduce SF at all, unless the clients want to know. If someone wants to learn SF, they mainly need to be taught by explanation, feedback and practice. It makes sense to tell them about some of the history, philosophical presuppositions, tools that SF uses. This way, the person will know what it is that they are setting out to learn and it will enable them to avoid some of the confusions on the way. If you are talking with someone from a different tradition about coaching or change facilitation, it makes most sense to clarify the main assumptions about SF, note the differences and similarities and find out where there are areas in which you can learn from one another. Narrowing these areas down to those where it makes sense to look, saves time, effort and frustration caused by misunderstanding something that is different for something that is similar. If you are working with someone from a different tradition, you want to collaborate optimally to help the client. To collaborate well, it makes sense to stress the practical similarities and appreciate each others efforts even if it is visible that the theoretical constructs behind the actions differ.

Doing SF, which includes accepting the client’s concepts of life as the concepts that make sense to the client and not challenging them, is useful in a limited set of situations – mainly in those situations in which you are trying to help someone or trying to collaborate with someone. SF methods are very useful tools in these situations. Using SF in situations that aim at something else (e.g. gaining an understanding of SF from an outside perspective) can lead to undesired results and SF consultants should think about the goal of the conversation before choosing which way to introduce SF.

Dieser Eintrag wurde am 6.7.2010 um 10:54 verfasst und befindet sich in Allgemein. Sie können alle Antworten zu diesem Eintrag über den Feed RSS 2.0 mitverfolgen. Hinterlassen Sie eine Antwort oder einen Trackback-Link zu Ihrer eigenen Homepage.

| Drucken