Download - Ispso 2012 workshop final
Reflexive Intervision: Discovering What a Client Really Wants
Carole Eigen PhD & Philip Boxer PhD
Bridgewater Professional Associates
June 4th 2012
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INTRODUCTION
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Bridging two systems of meaning: psychoanalytic and strategic frameworks
• The psychoanalytic – Psychoanalytic training
– Family Systems training
– Director PhD program/ clinical
supervision
– Director Group Relations conference
– Leadership Learning Systems
• The strategic
– Engineering
– MBA
– Strategy Research
– Lacanian training
– Consulting practice
• Quest for practical tools and methods that combine psychodynamic and systems theory to effect organizational change processes.
• Reflexive Intervision – reading between the lines
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Reflexive Process: what does it require of the consultant?
• The willingness:
– To tell what I am struggling with instead of what I figured out
– To recognize that there is something problematic about the way I am engaging with the problem
– To question the very frameworks of meaning that determine what I assumed to be true
– To be committed to tolerate and explore this disquieting impasse while working with the client system
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Outline of the day
Timing Session Comment
09.30-10.00 Introduction
10.00-11.00 Reflexive intervision case A case study used to introduce the main concepts
Break
11.15-11.45 Describing wigo Situating reflexive intervision within the client context
11.45-12.00 Application to case situations Trying out the concepts in your case situation
12.00-13.15 Lunch
13.15-13.45 Reviewing case wigo’s Discussing case wigo’s in 2’s/3’s and plenary
13.45-14.00 Governing metaphors and ‘gaps’ The ideas behind reflexive intervision
14.00-15.00 Reflexive Intervision in practice I Successive rounds of the process
15.00-15.30 Break
15.30-16.00 Reflexive Intervision in practice II Successive rounds of the process
16.00-16.30 Review of Intervision in Plenary Discussing the issues and questions raised by ‘gaps’
16.30-17.15 Planning next steps Making it matter, build, be practical and be valued
17.15-17.30 Review of the day
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REFLEXIVE INTERVISION - A CASE EXAMPLE
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THE META-THINKING ABOUT HOW THIS ALL WORKS
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We will be working with four questions using some particular concepts
1. How does the consultant work reflexively with their intervention?
– Speaking-and-listening, understanding what-is-going-on, reading governing metaphors
2. How is the consultant’s intervention positioned in relation to the client system?
– Five layers to describing the consulting relationship, parallel leadership systems
3. Will the client system allow learning to emerge in the consulting process? Single loop, double loop, and triple loop learning
4. How is the client system currently understood to be engaging with its world in terms of its behavior?
– Its primary task, primary risk, implied domain of relevance and ‘ceiling’
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WORKING REFLEXIVELY
How does the consultant work reflexively with their intervention?
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The Action Learning Project
What is actually driving their processes in the Agencies?
what-is-Really-going-on
Stakeholders implicitly determine what is allowed to happen
Government’s Disability System: sponsoring system-of-meaning
what-is-going-on (wigo) for participants
Quality Advisor as Mary’s sponsor
Workshop participant’s sense of their experience: speaking truths
Mary’s way to observe and intervene:
listening to the speaking
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Thinking beyond what is said
(emergent) Governing metaphor
Mary’s what-is-going-on
Mary speaking truths about her case
Carole listening to Mary’s speaking
wigo with its implicit organizing principles (the ‘theory-in-use’)
what-is-Really-going-on
… to get at wiRgo with its unconscious drivers
speaking/listening (the ‘espoused theory’)
Observing/listening is always ‘outside’ the
system itself
+1
Approximating to the ‘whole’ dynamic…
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The Parallel Process and the Governing Metaphor
• Parallel process emerges both in the wiRgo relation and in the governing metaphor
(emergent) Governing metaphor
wiRgo/ the unconscious
Carole listening to
Mary’s speaking
Mary’s speaking about her case
+1
Sponsoring/ Stakeholder system
Workshop participant’s sense of their experience: speaking truths
Mary’s way to observe and intervene:
listening to the speaking
Participants’ wigo
wiRgo/ the unconscious
Mary’s wigo
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THE RELATION TO THE CLIENT SYSTEM
How is the consultant’s intervention positioned in relation to the client system?
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Four parallel leadership systems
agencies
Persons with disabilities
15 workshop participants
Mary’s leadership
Carole ‘behind-
the-mirror’
5
Agencies intervening
4
Participants intervening
3
Mary intervening
2
1
Reflexive Intervision
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How was the consultant’s intervention positioned in relation to the client system?
Carole ‘behind-the-mirror’ 1 Reflexive intervision
Mary’s leadership 2 Mary intervening
Participants’ interventions 3 Participants intervening
The Agencies as their client systems
The Agencies’ customers – people with disabilities
4
5
Agencies intervening
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EMERGENT LEARNING
Will the client system allow learning to emerge in the consulting process?
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To what extent will parallel process reverberate through the four systems?
The wiRgo fault line – the relation to what is being unconsciously ignored
Participants’ wigo
Agencies’ wigo
wigo in the lives of
persons with disabilities
Mary’s wigo
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The scope of the learning system
wigo in the lives of persons with disabilities
This is what happens in practice…
The client system does what it does
This is how the client system’s business model is applied
It worries about how it does it
… leading to a difference to expectations
Single loop
This is the model
shaping the way the client system does
‘business’ It worries about who it is being in a market
Double loop
These are the issues raised by
questioning this model in its practice It worries about
how it is serving a customer’s interests
Triple loop
Agencies’ wigo
Participants’ wigo
Mary’s wigo
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UNDERSTANDING THE CLIENT SYSTEM ‘WIGO’
How is the client system currently understood to be engaging with its world in terms of its behavior?
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Primary Risk…
supply-side (client system)
demand-side (the client system’s customers in their contexts-of-use)
The risk that the alignment between the client system’s
behaviour and what the customer wants is not right
primary risk
People with disabilities Agencies
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Primary Task…
identity: what is shaping the way things can work
viability: the way things
work in practice
primary task
The definition implicit in the client system’s behaviour
Actual behaviors ‘on the ground’
The rules, systems & procedures etc constraining what happens
‘on the ground’
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domain of relevance
The definition of relevance implicit in the client system’s
behaviour hierarchy
edge
Domain of relevance…
The things the Agencies concern themselves with
What gets ignored
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… to distinguish what is getting ignored
The ‘HOW’
The ‘WHAT’ The ‘WHO-for-WHOM’
The ‘WHY’
domain of relevance hierarchy
edge
identity: what is shaping the way things can work
viability: the way things
work in practice
primary task
supply-side demand-side
primary risk
Carers’ behaviors
Response to situations involving
people with disabilities
Agency Management
shaping behaviours
Community/ Family/ life history contexts shaping demands
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What is not being addressed explicitly in the behaviour of the client system – where is their ‘ceiling’?
II single loop
III double
loop
IV triple loop
The ‘HOW’
The ‘WHAT’
The ‘WHO-for-WHOM’
The ‘WHY’
Carers’ behaviors
Situations involving people with disabilities
Agency Management
Community/ Family/ Life history contexts
I
Above their ‘ceiling’
Can be addressed explicitly
Demand for increasingly differentiated behaviours
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DESCRIBING YOUR OWN CASE SITUATION
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1: behind-the-mirror
2: consultant leadership
3: intervention on client system
4: client system
5: client system customers
The ‘HOW’
The ‘WHAT’ The ‘WHO-for-WHOM’
The ‘WHY’
domain of relevance hierarchy
edge
primary task
primary risk
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UNCOVERING GOVERNING METAPHORS AND ‘GAPS’
The ideas behind reflexive intervision
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‘Gaps’ create risks
• Is the listener placing too much dependence upon one account of what is going on? – Is one person’s version of the story being bought into, as though he or she knew and
could give a total description of the problem situation?
• Is the listener assuming that there will be a right way to interpret the presented problem? – Is a particular frame of reference being accorded unquestioned authority?
• How is the listener ‘drawing the line’ around what is or is not relevant to the problem? – Who is part of whose problem, and is the listener able to formulate what is relevant to
the problem in a way which includes himself or herself?
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‘Gaps’ create risks
Errors of perception: Too much dependence on one account of the
detail?
Errors of interpretation: Putting the details together into a picture that is in some way inconsistent
with all the details
Errors of intent: Attributing intent in a way that ignores the influence of his or her own interest, or the
interests of others (emergent) Governing metaphor
Mary’s what-is-going-on
Mary’s speaking about her case
Carole listening to Mary’s speaking
what-is-Really-going-on
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REFLEXIVE INTERVISION
The plus-one exercise - attending critically to the ‘speaking-listening’ dynamic
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Presenting a Problem Situation
• Speaker role Task: presents a problem situation in his/her case which s/he currently experiences as
problematic ( 5 minutes without interruption)
• Listener role(s) Task: asks clarifying questions to which the speaker replies, in order to make sense of
what is problematic about the situation (5 minutes of dialogue)
• Plus-one role (listening to the listening) Task: creates a metaphor to describe the assumptions being made (a) about how the
situation has been understood, and (b) about what this implies might have been/is being ignored or left out.
(5 minutes without interruption)
• All together Discuss the ‘gaps’ this implies
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LEARNING BY DOING
Actioning learning as a creative response to ‘gaps’
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Actioning learning to mitigate risks
• To be effective in addressing ‘gaps’, an actioning learning also has to satisfy four criteria:
– It should matter: there should be an identified client and sponsor for the project to whom it can relate and report.
– It should be practical: the project should be based on data and the result of the project should produce ground-level consequences, i.e. produce a tangible effect.
– It should 'connect': the project should build on or take account of existing structures and 'culture', i.e. it must take notice of what is possible.
– It should add value: the outcome of the project should be to give the organisation an ‘angle’ or leading edge over the way it creates value for its ‘customers’
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ENDS
For further reading, see reflexiveintervision.wikispaces.com
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Reflexive Intervision A Case Example
Mary Burgess & Carole Eigen PhD
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The lived experience of being victimised
• There is risk of re-enacting a disabled person’s role where this intersects with previous experiences in the system
• The consultant feels victimized in entering the system
• The consultant’s role is disabled • Systemic contagion: everyone gets to feel
disabled in a ‘disability system’ • By culling out the learning, trauma is converted
into new learning
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THE ORIGINAL CONTRACT
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The Starting Point
• The client was a government department that funds services for people with a disability
• The consultant had a task to assist 15 ‘at risk’ agencies to create a network to be well prepared for an external quality audit
• The department wanted an action learning project of 10 x 3 hour sessions over six months with one ‘practitioner’ from each of the 15 agencies
• The agencies provide services to people with a disability
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The emerging difficulties
• The department contact seemed overly controlling, trying to cut the contract fee, no money for catering or a venue – the consultant becomes angry, feels victimised
• The selected practitioners seemed polite but disengaged – like the way disabled people interact with services they don’t trust
• The consultant feels she’s lost her touch and has no energy for this project
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The decision to engage a Supervisor
• The concept of asymmetrical demand presented resonated strongly with her own experience of the disability system:
“Systems need to develop the agility to take up a role in the lives of people, not the other way around” (Eigen C & Boxer P)
• The consultant decided to seek supervision for this difficult project
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THE REFLEXIVE INTERVISION PROCESS
Using counter-transference to discover ‘what is going on’ across four leadership systems
The split screen journal
Espoused theory vs. theory in use
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What is required for reflexive intervision?
• A consultant-client contract that enables emergent learning
• A consultant-shadow consultant contract based on ‘accompaniment’
• A working model of the consultant-client system that considers : – The enterprise stakeholders. – the designated client system – the demands of the people the client system is set up to serve. – The position of the consultant .
• A reflexive model that enables systemic parallel process to emerge and be utilized
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The consultant’s client system State funded Disability Services: Quality Advisor
practitioner
agency
agency
agency
Persons with disabilities
agency
15 agencies:
Primary task: readiness of their Agencies for
quality audit
15 workshop participants
Mary
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The leadership dilemma: center vs edge
Demands from persons with disabilities
Government’s Disability System
Quality Advisor
practitioner
agency
agency
agencyagency
15 agencies:
15 workshop participants
Mary
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The challenge for leadership
The leadership in the client system must find a way to hold the tension between satisfying the government requirements for quality assurance AND keeping alive the actual needs of the person with a disability Then everyone can feel that they are collaborating to make a difference
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The Action Learning Project
Stakeholders implicitly determine what is allowed to happen
What is actually driving their processes in the Agencies?
Quality Advisor as Mary’s sponsor
Government’s Disability System: sponsoring system
what-is-going-on (wigo) for participants
Workshop participant’s sense of their experience: speaking truths
Mary’s way to observe and intervene:
listening to the speaking
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The Parallel Process
• Using the parallel process to uncover what is being ignored
Sponsoring system-of-meaning
Workshop participants speaking ‘truths’
Mary listening
wigo for participants
The Action Learning Project
Governing metaphor
wiRgo/ unconscious process
Carole listening
Mary speaking ‘truths’
+1
Mary’s wigo
The Reflexive Process
wiRgo/ unconscious process
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MARY’S EXPERIENCE WITH THE CLIENT SYSTEM
Parallel systems
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The Project Consultant Experience
First transition: Into Reflexive Consultancy
Phase 1: Sense of relief and excitement
End Phase 1: Beginning of real engagement
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Finding the place to focus
Project Activities
• System-consultant’s work begins
• Consultant writes about her experience of the project
• Workshop 4 of 10 has yet to take place
WIGO
• Consultant feels supported by the supervision
• Practitioners aren’t engaging with the action learning method
• Consultant feels useless with the group
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The intervention (1)
• Your task is to help practitioners get the most out of the system for their clients (people with a disability), and their organisation, not compliance
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Beginning of Real Engagement
• The consultant shifts focus onto the practitioners and their task in Workshop 4
• They undertake two peer audits in Workshops 5 & 6 in their organisations talking directly with people with a disability
• A practitioner names the Quality Manual a ‘monster’
• The Quality Advisor is in the background not the foreground of the project
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The Project Consultant Experience
Second transition: Opening up Pandora’s box
Phase 2: Looking at data
End Phase 2: Wanting to turn a blind eye
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End of Phase 2 Getting Stuck
Activities
• The system-consultant explores the consultant being squeezed in the project
• Some practitioners have dropped out of the project
• The Quality Advisor comes to a session and talks at the practitioners
The Dynamic
• The consultant is back to lethargy & immobilisation and not writing
• The CEO of the service hosting the second peer audit stops coming to sessions – never returns
• The Quality Advisor wants a conference to ‘look good’ at the end of the project
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Struggling to face reality
• A sense of disintegration – the practitioners won’t
work in action learning mode, the consultant gives up on it in Workshop 8
• The Quality Advisor wants the consultant to report on the practitioners and their agencies
• The consultant wants to work with the individual practitioners who have dropped out
• Something can’t be faced - this is true in all parts of the system
System-consultant makes two important interventions
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The interventions (2)
• Is working individually with agencies part of your brief?
• Where do you want to be with the Quality Advisor at the end of the project?
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The Struggle: to avoid or face reality
Third transition: Struggle to avoid or face
reality
Phase 3: Discovering what is possible
End of Phase 3: Facing the real work of the
system and agencies -
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Giving up control
Sense of disintegration
• Practitioners own process more & consultant feels more useless with them
• Consultant not writing and cancels another skype session with system-consultant
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The intervention (3)
• The use of writing to discover what is not known about the system itself is particularly scary because ones 'self' becomes a medium that gives up control in order to gain systemic perspective. Just as the system struggles to maintain its identity and protect itself from trauma, we risk not confronting that parallel trauma in ourselves.
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Breaking through
Activities
• In the final two workshops the practitioners plan how to continue their work
• They refuse to present their learnings, instead present a proposal for growth of their network
Dynamic
• The consultant helps the practitioners get what they want
• The Quality Advisor also becomes helpful to the practitioners instead of wanting them to make her look good to the system
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The big picture – with hindsight!
3rd Transition: Struggling to avoid or face reality
PHASE 3: Discovering what is possible END: Facing the real work of the system and
the agencies
2nd Transition: Exploration – opening up Pandora’s box
PHASE 2: Looking at data END: Wanting to turn a blind eye
1st Transition: Relief – no longer alone
PHASE 1: Sense of relief & excitement END: Beginning real engagement
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WHY WORK REFLEXIVELY?
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Quality Advisor
practitioner
agency
agency
agencyagency
15 agencies:
15 workshop participants
Mary
Four parallel leadership systems
Mary intervening
Participants intervening
Agencies intervening
Mary’s leadership
Reflexive Intervision
Carole listening
+1
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Why work reflexively?
• Consultants who work in complex systems tend to be captured by the way the stakeholders constrain what it is possible to accomplish.
30
wigo in lives of persons with
disabilities
Agencies’ wigo
Participants’ wigo
Mary’s wigo
Reflexive process challenges the consultant to discover and to question
what is being ignored
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To what extent will parallel process reverberate through the four systems?
The wiRgo fault line – the relation to what is being unconsciously ignored
Participants’ wigo
Agencies’ wigo
wigo in the lives of
persons with disabilities
Mary’s wigo
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ENDS
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