Changing on the Job by Jennifer Garvey Berger
“Asking questions to understand someone’s sense-making has helped me become a better listener, a more thoughtful questioner, and a more compassionate person.”
3 Main messages:
We need to ask different questions in order to take multiple perspectives and see the whole system
Learning is different to growing
It is the coach’s role to find the growth edge and ask questions which expand thinking
Many of us are familiar with the concept of travelling away from somewhere, to a different location or time, and then having a different perspective on the situation from that distance. I have always found travel to be a wonderful tool for making mountainous problems become tiny hills from a distance.
Less common is the sensation I have infrequently experienced when walking into a space which is very familiar to me and seeing it in a completely different way, though the geography, positioning and location of everything is the same. It’s like seeing the room through a stranger’s eyes and I find I am able to switch between these two filters when looking at the same physical space.
I first experienced this as a young teenager at the local swimming baths and ever since have understood that, while we are all seeing the same thing, we are looking at it from different perspectives. Another example would be map makers who create worm-eye maps rather than maps with a bird’s-eye view, where everything is in the same place and yet seen differently.
The notion that we can have different perspectives on the same situation, depending on our form of mind, is what Jennifer Garvey Berger explores in Changing on the Job. She explains that there are four stages in Constructive-Developmental Theory and that these determine how we view the world. She names these as Self-Sovereign, Socialised, Self-Authored and Self-Transforming and gives detailed explanations of each with examples of how these mindsets may respond in any given situation.
Garvey Berger explains that our state of mind is our capacity for making sense of a complex world: “Your own form of mind shapes your world and influences everything you see or think about.” When we are working within our own particular form of mind, we struggle to understand how anyone can see the world differently.
This begins with people perceiving the world as black and white, in that everything has an opposite. Given our current global tendency towards polarised politics, this would seem to be common amongst many people, though usually we outgrow the self-sovereign mindset in our teenage years and begin to see the interconnectivity of thoughts and see the world through various connected shades of grey. This means that the majority of adults have a Socialised mindest, where they are able to empathise with others and are able to form connections.
As leaders who are supporting others in professional and self development, Garvey Berger tells us: “In order to be a good help on someone’s journey towards transformation, you need to understand the world as he sees the world, not as you see it.” This will determine a person’s response in a situation and explain what could otherwise be perceived as selfish or ignorant actions or reactions.
Garvey Berger is quick to point out that one form of mind is not better than another as it depends entirely on our circumstance and the context of your life. She explains that each gain in perspective also carries with it some loss and that in some cases “Having a bigger perspective might slow you down, might over complicate your life and might disturb precious relationships.”
That said, there is the underlying message in the book that, as leaders, it is part of our role to help others to understand themselves better. In order to do this, we are advised to ask questions which are on the edge of understanding: “You need questions that probe for meaning and a mindset to listen to the meaning you’re hearing” in order to help people think in new ways about an old problem.
This is bread and butter for professional coaches, who are looking for assumptions and pre-conceived perspectives in their clients. The book advises us to move our questions to the edge of understanding and be really curious, without judgement and to “search inside the story for key markers of development: issues of responsibility, conflict and perspective taking.”
There are plenty of real life examples in the book to give clarity and support understanding of how leaders can fulfil their three basic functions of:
providing vision,
supporting their people
accomplishing tasks
I found the book to be enlightening and incredibly thought-provoking. It has caused me to question my own sense-making of the world and supported me in becoming a better coach for my clients. At least, that is my perspective - perhaps theirs would be different
