Learning to act right (44)… consulting conception or deception – 2 or 3 bombs going off

Torrey Orton

Oct 27, 2014

 

In his mind the performance target is 2 or 3 bombs going off on the way to the solution.

In the assignment where “I am making it up as I’m going” I find myself sort of promising something I can’t really promise. That is, my interventions claim to do something with the agreed problem(s) I’ve been hired to engage, but the unfolding nature of the circumstances, their complexity and fluidity, often compromise the conditions and assumptions of intervention design which were operating at the moments of my last promise.

When I undertook the assignment or near the beginning when I had a first grasp of it, I suggested that often such situations can only be moved by a few bombs going off. Failing the bombs, the participants can sustain their existing muddling through strategies, motivated by a mutually sustained conviction that anything else than the muddle will be an unrecoverable disaster. The bombs would be wholly typical on reflection, yet unpredictable. They would just be exaggerated versions of the existing disturbances which frame much of everyday interactions in the place.

The first bomb happened near the end of the first month of engagements and was loud and clear enough to be heard down the hall of the head office space. Neither participants nor others stakeholders (non-family employees) could doubt that something tumultuous had occurred. No one died from that and some air clearing had occurred. That bomb was engineered by one participant “dragging” another, reluctant, participant out of his office and into the meeting with the explicit rationale that everyone else needed him involved for progress to be made. She drew on her powers of motherhood for her successful intervention.

And so it was a few weeks ago (4 months later) that another client threw a hissy around the type of issue they all could have predicted, but for failure to pay attention they did not notice they were invoking his rage again, and so they were thrown into blame attribution mode conducted over some days in the murky waters of indirect dealing with the rage in question. And all of which sustained the entire dynamic with increased energy. Non family stakeholders - trusted advisors and executives – flushed my phone lines with wondrous queries and hopes someone had the situation under control…and hoping that my work with the hissy one had not prompted the perceived outrage. The situation is still not under control. Like all previous bombs before and since my time on the job it remains a vivid memory, perhaps this time to be turned into leverage for a change of habit(s)?

The concept of “bombs” is self-explanatory, except in the clinical interventions practice where expectations are high that previously long colluded undiscussables implicitly in play will be engaged without imagined terrors overwhelming everyone. A “bomb” in this sense is a high energy event which typifies the secrets and can no longer be avoided. Sometimes 2 or 3 are necessary. We have evidence in public life where “bombs” in this sense can be contained within the collusive secrets process (GFC, WMD in Iraq…) which is also evidence that the containment is an instrument of the denial, of the making undiscussable of such matters.

That bombs were in my clients’ expectation sets makes it somewhat more easy to bear them when they arrive because they can be seen as necessary markers of change. No bombs; no change. Just a bit unpredictable for a consulting assignment.

Learner Therapist (49) … How much is a performance failure worth?

Torrey Orton

October 19, 2014

“A misunderstanding can be a good place to start….”

…I wrote to a prospective client 19 years ago in concluding my response to her justifiable irritation with my proposing to charge her for something she had not imagined was chargeable. I went on…

“I am sorry that we have a misunderstanding about fees, though on reflection I am not surprised. Please accept my apologies for my contribution to that misunderstanding.”

 

It has been a principle of mine to acknowledge mistakes, even perceived failures, in my professional life (and personal, too, often enough). In therapy, it seems to me essential to do so since relationship failures are the stuff of mental health matters and those failures often thrive on unacknowledged misdeeds by the more powerful over the less. Learning to acknowledge and ask for acknowledgment of perceived mistakes / failures is an essential capability outcome of useable therapeutic development. It cannot be learned when the pressure is on not to fail and not to acknowledge.

 

I concluded that

“The only charge for a service that has not been perceived to be rendered can be nothing at all.”

I have occasionally run into colleagues who explicitly counsel non-acknowledgment of perceived errors or missteps in therapy, and I gather my professional organisation counsels that as well (perhaps an infection of negligence suit paranoia in both cases?). It seems to me that counsel is a recipe for a paranoid process which is the enemy of professional development. The latter depends on conducting real practice undertaken for real purposes and discovering that my judgment failed the patient’s need(s) at a certain time. And the repair of failed efforts is usually a matter of slight adjustments of tone and timing, which can only be practiced in real time.

So I added that

 

“Therefore I am returning your cheque.”

One of my colleagues, my professional supervisor, has with reason proposed that I do not make mistakes. That I do what I thought best at the time and so they cannot be mistaken. An interesting line of approach since it recognised that I do do what I think best at the time, and not lightly so. Perhaps a call for more acknowledgement of successes?

And I closed with

“I look forward to working with you at any time you may find useful in the future.”

 

This may seem a strange offer, but I still feel it stands up to my understanding of best practice. This aspect has to do with not assuming that an error is a death notice to a relationship. I have insisted on making similar offers at times since then, even where the patient who bore my mistake(s) was more mistaken than I.

My founding assumption is that it is always my responsibility to ensure that all the relationship Ps and Qs are dotted and crossed. It is my capacity for relationship design and execution that is what patients are buying, and in that sense any mistake is mine first, even if it was theirs. When their mistake is unexpected or, the reverse, it is perfectly expected as a result of a design and /or implementation malfunction, it’s my mistake.

By the way, the cost was only $80 lost income. A small price.