Reinventing yourself – Johanna Rothman

Here was a chance for us to look at our careers so far, detect positive and negative patterns, and plan the next move. The simple technique of plotting events against happiness was effective. With nine people’s careers to dissect we ran out of time, but I did get some extra advice and a bundle of great unpublished work from Johanna.

Congruence is the Foundation of All Effectiveness – Dwayne Phillips

Virginia Satir’s defined congruence as balance of self, other, and context. The AYE \ Weinberg premise is that congruent people, conversations, and statements are far more effective than those which have a blaming, placating, irrelevant, or super-reasonable stance. “I think that it’s your code that is screwing up the project” is a blaming statement: it diminishes the other. A response such as “how does that make you feel about me?”, attempts to reassert the balance to lead the conversation towards congruence.

Jerry Weinberg, Virginia Satir, and Meyers Briggs Indicators are at the core of AYE. It payed to learn and practice congruence in this session, although it’s all a bit like doing a 1/2 day introduction to skiing course then being let lose on the black slopes. A week on, and I feel in need of a refresher course. During the Deep Dynamics course Ben Fuchs suggested the idea of a negotiation dojo; I’d love a venue for regular congruence practice through role play.

Building Writing Skill and Confidence – Johanna Rothman and Naomi Karten

The hardest thing about writing is sitting down to write, and a major block to sitting down and writing is the internal critic that tells you that you’ve nothing interesting to note and you’ll do it badly anyway. Johanna and Naomi led us through exercises and discussions to help us getting over those blocks. An amazing aspect of the exercise was the number of people who wrote and read out some excellent pieces after a 15 minute exercise.

How am I supposed to Act – Michael Bolton – exercises in improvisational theatre

I chose this for two reasons: a fun ending for the conference; I keep noticing improv cropping up on the fringes of teamwork and negotiation discussions. It was fun and would make an excellent team building exercise especially for teams in complex domains (eg software development). To perform improv well you need to accept the other’s offers, relinquish your own ideas for the greater good, avoid interrupting the flow for your own glory, operate with multiple shifting goals.

Sunday, November 19, 2006 | Permalink | 0 Comments