Effortless Thursdays #29: Provoking Positively
Challenging someone’s beliefs and knowledge without conflict or conformity
I've been thinking about myself recently.
Not in a self-indulgent way like a cat or dog might do when licking themselves in places that we humans could only achieve if we were Olympic gymnasts.
No, sitting outside in my outdoor office, I was pausing to think about what I try to bring to the world.
Challenging for new reflection
I've started reading Positive Provocation, a book with 25 questions that challenge the assumptions we have. It dropped through my letterbox yesterday.
Dr Robert Biswas-Diener is a pioneer in the application of positive psychology research to coaching (answering questions like “What level of income creates happiness?”). If you’re interested in what makes Robert a fantastic person to learn from, take a look at what I wrote about the real-life Indiana Jones.
Although the book, Positive Provocation, is written for coaches - like me - to serve our clients better, how we challenge each other - in a positively provoking way - is a question not only for coaches to think about, but for all of us.
As I started reading the preface, I re-explored a perspective that Robert shared in one of his training programmes I participated in, the Advanced Practice of Positive Psychology Coaching Course.
The 90-degree view
The 90-degree view is a metaphor for how we challenge each other, and behind it underlies a powerful question:
How do we engage with each other in a way that encourages and invites new reflection, rather than more conflict or conformity?
At one end of the viewpoint spectrum, it is easy to challenge someone and invalidate them. The 180-degree view - the flat line in geometry representing opposing line segments - can often result in a collision of ideas and beliefs that push opposing sides to close their ears to each other.
I've been listening to The Witch Trials of JK Rowling, a short podcast documentary series following the popularity of the Harry Potter books and their author. It charts the evolution of communities on Tumblr and Twitter before JK Rowling’s tweet in December 2019 that started a battle of beliefs and knowledge between witchery and religion, and between CIS-women and (largely) trans women.
[By the way, I'm fairly sure I've cocked up the use of these terms. If I've done so it's because of a lack of my knowledge, rather than a desire to insult. If so, I'd welcome some education from anyone willing to positively provoke me!]
While the 180-degree view can feel like the world is on fire, the 0-degree view, which represents beliefs and knowledge that are consistent with your own, doesn't have much going for it either: it is no challenge at all. Indeed, if you hear someone's point of view, and pander to it, it can even leave them arrogant in their knowledge with a reaffirmed sense of confidence and superiority.
Challenging but accepting someone's current beliefs and knowledge to invite new reflection - positively provoking - has been my guiding principle when I'm coaching clients. Or when I'm having conversations. Or even when I'm learning.
It's a space that unlike a troll challenging a Twitter celebrity, or a junior employee conforming to a boss's point of view, invites curiosity, contemplation and growth, not only for me, but hopefully for my conversation partners, too.
And that includes my Effortless Thursdays readers, like you!
Real-life challenges
Last week, I wrote about the importance of space for fostering and nourishing connection. Space was one of three ingredients for creating deep connection: community and ritual being the other two.
Over the next two editions of Effortless Thursdays I’m sharing with you two real-life examples of what happens in real-life when a space that is imbued with presence, permission and safety has a challenging idea or perspective injected into it.
What change can it evoke?
How could a positively provocative approach benefit you?
How do you challenge someone without encouraging conflict or conformity?
This week, I’ll share how a “positively provocative” approach has helped one of my clients that I’m coaching.
Next week, I’ll share how I’ve been impacted by a friend challenging me in this way.
Challenging my clients
I’ve been coaching a high-flying lawyer. Let’s call her Joan.
She came to me having suffered burnout and a nervous breakdown due to work. She had taken time off work to recover, and she was returning to work in a couple of months when we first met.
She loved everything about practising law, but not the many downsides of working as a lawyer in a global, top-tier law firm: meeting the high, often unchallenged, expectations from clients and colleagues coupled with a strong desire to succeed.
Joan wanted to find a way to do the work she loved but was worried that the very environment she was going back to would lead her straight back to burnout or worse.
I started coaching her on what I call Effortless Leadership – helping leaders achieve success that feels worth it.
A 180-degree viewpoint might have been to try to convince Joan that even though she loved her work, her health was more important, and there were plenty of other ways she could apply her talents.
Perhaps you’ve tried this in the past to convince a friend or family member to choose an alternative course of action?
But this approach, which supplants their expectations and desires with yours, doesn’t accept the validity of their existing beliefs and knowledge. Or, in Joan’s case, that there is a part of her that is still desirous of pursuing the career she had chosen.
Sharing a 0-degree viewpoint would have been easy for me: offering a series of nods and “u-huhs” that simply confirmed the predicament Joan was in. Easy but unsatisfying, and no doubt as frustrating for Joan as it would have been for me.
No challenge of the status quo.
No recognition of the pain and suffering she wanted to steer away from in the future.
Joan is now back in her previous role, happy, working, growing and - importantly - thriving.
She’s got a suite of ideas and practices at her disposal for waking up with energy, thinking clearly, switching gears before stress becomes overwhelming, and pursuing her own path of success in the same firm without compromising on her career, the quality of her health or her relationships.
What seemed an impossible circle to square has come about through challenging Joan’s (then) current beliefs and knowledge in order to evoke new reflection. In other words, helping Joan see her world, and herself, in a different way.
So what does the 90-degree view look like?
Bringing to a client a greater awareness of what’s going on
Helping focus on what’s right, not what’s wrong.
Focusing on what a client wants, not what they don’t. ie emphasising solutions, rather than the problems
Listening for what’s not being said, not just what is.
Noticing the shifts in energy as a client works through her challenges.
There’s more than this, of course, but for Joan, it feels like a normal conversation!
Over to you!
So how can you take a 90-degree view, and engage with someone in a way that encourages and invites new reflection, rather than more conflict or conformity?
How might you do that without reading Positive Provocation, or training as a coach?
I want to offer you an overarching guiding phrase. It’s a mindset I first heard as I learned Motivational Interviewing on my coach training programme. And it’s the way that my coaching takes on a positively provocative approach.
It’s this: “compassionate curiosity”.
Faced with a colleague or someone at home who is provoking you with a 180-degree view, or simply agreeing with you, invite yourself to be compassionately curious.
In that moment, ask yourself how can you be compassionate and curious at the same time?
You might share what you notice.
You might ask a question.
You might even avoid the temptation to fix and simply remain present, but silent.
I’d love to hear from you about what ideas you come up with to incorporate positive provocation and compassionate curiosity into your life.
That’s it for this week!
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To your health and success!
Just want to reflect how well you demonstrate "compassionate curiosity" in your work Eric. My session with you was so helpful and drenched with it. I'm grateful.
I love this concept of a 90-degree view. In my world, I am dealing with people who are either homophobic or fully accepting of LGBTQ+, and very rarely in between. I realized the people in between are usually curious but too scared they're asking the wrong questions. I try to meet them as best as possible, and taking the 90-degree approach seems to be the way to go. Thanks Eric!