Notes to Selfnews and ideas from
The Learning Space
Greetings!
At the beginning of each new year, The Learning Space team holds an all-day planning meeting....with a twist.
Kathy Wiseman led the team through a very thought-provoking process, developed out of her experiences of successfully assisting family businesses in planning, asset management, and decision making.
The first part of this 2-part process is that each person talks for 3 to 5 minutes to answer these three questions about self:
- What do you love doing?
- What do you excel at?
- What do you love to teach/preach?
What is required is that when listening, you actually listen. There is no interrupting, no reacting, no asking questions, no offering help, no commenting on another's answers, etc -- all the very common, automatic reactions that we all do every day. The task is to just listen to the other person define self.
This is done in two rounds; with the second round being a refining of one's first-round responses. The very act of listening to another can help one become more clear in their own thinking about self.
Part 2 asks the questions and goes through 2 rounds of thinking:
- What constrains you in doing these things? What are the limiting beliefs / emotional constraints you are up against?
- What are you willing to commit to go beyond your constraints?
- What do you need from the group to assist you in reaching your goal(s)?
The core concept in Bowen theory is differentiation of self - the ability to state 'this is what i think, this is what i feel, this is what i can do/can't do, am willing to do/not willing to do' without trying to convert other; and in the ability to sit in the presence of another who is defining self without reacting to what is heard.
Defining self is the principle that drives the process of our meetings - how members of the team each go about being an individual in a group.
How might this process work for your family or work group?
Over the next months, we will be reporting on how this process has impacted the functioning of each team member and the group as a whole.
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