Appreciation (40) …Old man’s prayer

Appreciation (40) …Old man's prayer*
Torrey Orton
Nov. 28, 2011

In sight and out of mind at the FCC

Saturday was the monthly prayer vigil against abortion day at the clinic. On our side were a measly 8 or so holding a large banner and chanting moderate offenses at the 100+ followers of Helpers of God's Precious Infants massed across Wellington Parade. I was there to show support (until sunk by a persistent downpour which left me swimming in my shoes) and collect potential players for an enlarged weekday presence in the face of the Helpers.


I was involved in collecting the last name and email when an old guy approached from the back seeking my attention. I turned enough to say I'd come talk to him when I finished. And so I did 3 minutes later, noting that I was approaching a guy short of my height and even shorter of my weight, but longer in days. He was clothed in an almost twin of one of my sports jackets (Germanic hounds-toothy sort of thing to compliment tans and such), trilby hat and wire-rimmed glasses of faintly 80's and a hand hold on a string of rosary beads.


As I came up he started to ask if it was OK for him to pray here. I said fine with me but I couldn't authorise him; he'd have to ask the others…and he volunteered to pray for me, too, as well as the souls in the clinic. I thanked him for the offer. Probably it was my fairly lurid red waterproof, relative towering over the herd on our side and my fairly clear age advance on the rest, too, which drew him to me.


Anyway, he started up walking back and forth in the neutral zone between the roadside white line and the clinic gate soundlessly working through the beads. Of our side, holding the banner and chanting, no one noticed and no one interrupted him. And there we were, infiltrated in broad daylight. As far as I know, prayer doesn't gain or lose power as a function of distance from its objects.


The real story here is power: that there's this power vacuum just waiting for users to appear with enough daring to claim it for themselves, as Charles and I originally did. The proof of its opportunity walked up and down until I left 15 minutes later – in sight and out of mind. The unsqueaky wheel needs no foil.


* A 'prayer' in Fertility Control Clinic security-speak is a pro-life protestor who only prays, as distinguished from protestors who pray and harass patients in moments of prayerful lapses.

Learner therapist - a proposition

Learner therapist - a proposition
Torrey Orton
Feb.14, 2011


Dear PsychologyMelbournePartners colleagues and others,


I want to talk to other therapists more than I can now. There are some opportunities at a clinic I share with 10+ other interestingly different psychs. I also share with them very restricted times of exposure to each other (scheduling) and small windows of engagement (diary again).From the two kinds of structured sharing events we have monthly – staff meetings and a couples therapy group – I have never failed to get useful prompts to my own perspectives and access to tools of our trade.


And, more important for me, this group in various configurations shows a consistent development in openness. Members both offer unsolicited, critical self revelations and respond supportively to others' revelations, while keeping the task(s) of the moment in view. For me, this group capacity is essential to engaging challenging therapy issues and cases.


But, it's still not enough, partly because I'm finding myself home to a bunch of somewhat developed insights and tools which need assessment of their real potential in the view of fellow practitioners. The other problem is limited access, so find a way to expand the group!! Now there's a problem. By what means should I try to do this? I know what a blog cannot do without massive efforts. There are a lot of activities competing for therapists' attention, including many mandated ones fulfilling professional development requirements whose attractiveness is compelling if not always entrancing.


In earlier lives of mine I've set about somewhat similar objectives by network building – looking up people I knew who 'should' have an interest in what I was proposing: an experimental school, a commune, a protest about some public issue, an alternative to a moribund union. This was actually community building since it was based in a small city where most of the players knew each other, or of each other, or could get a personal connection in two degrees to each other. That was then. A TV, telephone, radio and newspaper community.


I'm imagining potential participants in this exploration will be therapists who want more engaged, challenging peer reflection, who want more challenging perspectives on the purposes, processes and contexts of therapy, and who are computer comfortable but prefer face-to-face work…
For me writing is part of learning. As I build a picture of what I'm trying to understand, the process itself contributes new understanding. As well, written learning makes understanding open to critique, a necessary step for getting outside of myself!


So, I'll start with a few trial articles: my general objective is to identify and break through the black and white, either/or, and digital thinking patterns which abound in our trade. These areas of practice tend to summon up exclusive responses to proposed therapeutic interventions. In some cases I will be commending new competences as mandatory for effective therapeutic practice - e.g. intercultural competence and knowledge. Possible topics include:

• Power in recovery from anxiety/depression – learning to convert anger into relevant power in appropriate relationships
• Cause and patient injuries – a blame free world is a cause-free world; post-modern dilemmas
• The world we are in as a background facilitator of injury – see eco-anxiety for instance.
• Culture difference and therapeutic competence – a minimum requirement for a multi-cultural country
• Commercialisation and bureaucratisation constraints and facilitation effects on practice - the Medicare 'service' conundrum
• Couple conflict and shared 'facts' – finding things to agree on in areas of dispute
• Competing therapeutic paradigms?? How do therapies relate to each other?
• What research is really worthy of report? How to tell evidence from research.
• The biopsychosocialcultural perspective in practice
• Where do you stand on the boundaries of life – IVF, abortion, euthanasia, suicide??

I'll be inviting feedback from PMP colleagues in the following areas:

• Interest of the topic itself?
• Accessibility / clarity of the writing?
• Suggestions re: topic/style improvements, extensions
• Others who might be interested in such matters??
• Venues for exploring / presenting such matters??

The invitation will be personal and declinable; if declined I will appreciate a few words of explanation since these may also help identify different approaches I might use to finding and connecting with therapists. If accepted, I expect the feedback process will take 10-20 mins. by phone; no writing required.

Rectifications (13) – Empower…*

Rectifications (13) – Empower…*
Torrey Orton – July 22, 2009

“… Since people of all political persuasions have a need for a word that makes their constituents feel that they are or are about to become more in control of their destinies, empower has been adopted by conservatives as well as social reformers....”
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/empower

Three itches

Of the gratuitous deceptions contemporary management PCness visit upon us, empowerment is among my most despised. The concept inhabits all manner of organisational communications – for profit and not, alike – often in company with that other favourite ‘make a difference’ and its fellows like ‘add value’. Three itches rise for a scratch from the claim to be empowering anyone else. First, personal power cannot be given, only taken. Role power can be given and taken away, usually not by the weaker role holder except by strenuous and secret exercise of personal power (i.e. going over the head of direct reports).

Second, pretending personal power can be achieved through empowering by others is sure to muddy the usually opaque waters of a work group’s responsibilities and performance. For example, as a work group member, where does my role power stop and my colleagues and our boss’s start again? If I am unclear about that, the limits to my personal power are hard to establish and difficult to defend from allegations I am over-powering the management’s role accountabilities (credit for achievements they see as theirs by role) or under-fulfilling their expectations (my responsibilities expressed in KPI’s, tasks and such).

And I may be doing so without intent either way. To say we are in a power partnership invites interactions of greater volatility than before the days of transparent empowerment. In those days we knew we often weren’t on shared ground. Who can reprimand who? Who can fire who? Who can hire who? These are role powers whose use by management are the first thing workers look to in assessing organisational fairness and management competence.

Third, as in many other public, social situations, to name the outcome you want as the objective has the effect of obscuring the pathway with assumptions that are unchallengeable. For example, ‘Maybe I don’t want to be empowered as you are suggesting. Can we negotiate this?’ Now we have an apparent conflict of espoused values, a much more difficult negotiation than who is responsible for handing on a piece of work from one step to another.

Power and learning

It is a simple matter to note that we can acquire personal power only by becoming good at something. Note also that the power of persons and their roles are often not the same. A common management failure is that of a low power person in a high position not using the position power they have. All workers know how to detect this weakness and some know how to exploit it. It spreads like the rings of an oil slick on a calm surface plinked by the first drop of a storm. Knowing how these things work in specific workplace contexts constitutes a major part of the ‘local knowledge’ which allows real organisations to function. This is in part due to the power dilemma which underlies all delegations….that we are all in each other’s hands, but those with position power are more able to fence out unwanted responsibilities and rope desired ones in (by selectively claiming the achievements as their own via delegation return).

This confusion clangs against the side of the accountability – delegation disorder which I will post on soon. For lack of two-way clarity about delegations of responsibility, the powers of the respective role-holders are confused. It is not for lack of trying that performance management – the process of ensuring that delegated responsibilities have been carried out - is among the more disappointing activities in organisational life. Notice that this is not merely a small scale occasional activity; it also can be seen failing at highest levels. Try executive remuneration and organisational performance in the GFC!

The idea of empowerment also tangles with well-understood mastery learning theory and research. Basically, you can only get to competence by passing various hurdles; the higher and more intense the competence, the greater the effort and recovery from stumbles along the way. The competence in organisational life must be more than knowing about the subject. An old engineering rule of thumb is that graduates are 25% of the way to practitioners on graduation. Most of what they need to know about doing engineering is learned at work.

What to do about 'empowerment'?

Combat the sliming of real developmental relationships – teaching, mentoring, coaching, etc. – by the oil of empowerment. Delete ‘empower’ wherever you see it and replace with help, enable, instruct, demonstrate (learning words) in sentences which specify the relevant outcome of the development as a skill, competence, capability, practice. If such verbs cannot be used you can suspect its only empowerment on offer and get your disappointment deflection armoury ready.

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