Dharma Bum

Therapeutic Conversations X - Day #1

Hello from beautiful Vancouver. I just wrapped up the daylong workshop with Bill Madsen titled Collaborative Helping: A Simple Map to Transform Relational Positioning. I first became a fan of Bill Madsen's work when I was introduced to his outstanding book Collaborative Therapy With Multi-Stressed Families in grad school. It was one of the few books from grad school that I re-visit again and again.

In today's workshop Madsen attempted to introduce us all to what he called disciplined improvisation through the use of a collaborative helping map he developed in an effort to operationalize family-centered values and principles to the often messy work of family therapy. His MAP or line of inquiry consisted of four parts (simplified considerably for this blog post):

            Organizing Vision: Where do you want to be headed in your life?

Obstacles: What gets in the way?  Supports: What supports you?

Plan: What needs to happen?

Madsen believes that through this MAP our relational stance, or how we are with people, will be transformed to a more collaborative approach. Our conceptual maps, or how we think of people and problems will shift, and our helping practices or what we do with people will be more ethical.

Anybody familiar with appreciative inquiry would find much to appreciate in Madsen's approach. Borrowing from the four D's of AI Madsen in his MAP rearranges the AI Dream phase to Vision and the AI Design phase to Plan. However, unlike appreciative inquiry's strength based focus, Madsen holds on to his poststructuralist cred by shifting the language of strengths and needs to one of supports and obstacles. All in an effort to move from the internal view of strengths as characteristics, to a more intentional view of strengths as skills of living, intentions, purposes, values, and hopes and dreams. It is in this shift that Madsen believes more interesting conversations can happen.

I was quite happy that I had the opportunity to spend the day learning from Bill Madsen. His presentation gave me much to think about. It was interesting to see how someone is integrating the principles of appreciative inquiry into narrative practice and how that may look. The conference is off to a great start for me, and I'm really looking forward to the rest of the week. More later, but until then enjoy this Vancouver sunset I caught last night.

The Postmodern Executive

There's a new post up titled The Learning Decade over at The OC Metro. Please take a look.

Fast Company is calling the next decade the Learning Decade. The author of the recent article, Sam Herring, co-founder and executive VP of Intrepid Learning Solutions and the chair of ASTD's board of directors says the main drivers of this move to learning investment by organizations include: top line innovations, disruptive technology, competitive pressures, increasing speed, virtuous circle, emerging markets, industry change, industry consolidation, brain drain, failing grade, return to growth, future jobs, knowledge workers, leadership vacuum, culture change, and unanticipated conditions...Read More Here

Launch

 

I'm doing this a bit early but I can't help my excitement..

The Narrative Project of Orange County has a website!!

Please take a look and feel free to send me some feedback. The blog section will be up and running soon and Anne's bio is coming or she just might go sans bio because who she is speaks so loudly, text is not necessary.

And as always, any referrals for either counseling or consulting is deeply appreciated.

The Postmodern Executive

My new article, Intervention to Innovation is up over at the OC Metro.

Last week I attended a webinar put on by David Cooperrider who is the co-creator of Appreciative Inquiry and faculty at Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management. One of the pieces that really caught my attention was his particular take on the 80/20 data set. He pointed out that most organizations will put 80% of their focus on weaknesses. This wide view on what is wrong with organizations, inevitably leads to a problem solving culture that can begin a cycle of: Read More