Possible Selves: Growing Ideas

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Possible Selves Growing Ideas

• Sarah Fletcher
• http//www.TeacherResearch.net
• Convenor BERA Mentoring and Coaching SIG

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A picture paints 1000 words?

• Which emotions do you see?

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Bristol Coaching Exchange

• Workshop 17 March 2008
• What is authentic happiness?
• What is Appreciative Inquiry (AI)?
• How do positive Possible Selves (PS) fit in?
• What use might all this be in my coaching?
• What evidence is there that PS and AI work?

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What are potential benefits of PS AI?

• Realizing creative, imaginative potential
• Nurturing growth in taking responsibility
• Easing anxiety and depression
• Useful resources
• http//appreciativeinquiry.case.edu/
• http//www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/questi
  onnaires.aspx
• http//news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/happiness_fo
  rmula/4783836.stm

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What is happiness?

• What makes you really happy?
• What makes you happy when at work?
• How far do you work at being happier?
• What happy daydreams do you have?
• How far do you spread happiness?
• Does feeling positive increase happiness?

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What is Appreciative Inquiry (AI)?

• Appreciative Inquiry utilizes a 4-stage process
  focusing on
• DISCOVER The identification of organizational
  processes that work well.
• DREAM The envisioning of processes that would
  work well in the future.
• DESIGN Planning and prioritizing processes that
  would work well.
• DESTINY (or DELIVER) The implementation
  (execution) of the proposed design.
• The basic idea is to build organizations around
  what works, rather
• than trying to fix what doesn't. It is the
  opposite of problem solving

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What are Positive Selves (PS)?

• Positive selves can be consciously conjured up in
  pursuit of desired goals which can be positively
  construed.
• Positive selves motivate by giving a clear goal
  to strive for and by energising the individual to
  pursue actions necessary for attaining a possible
  positive self.

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Step One Introduction

• Who do I think I am right now?
• What are my professional values?
• What are my best professional skills?
• Where is my professional knowledge?
• What are my current work-based targets?
• Who do I want to be?
• What are my dreams?

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Step Two My PS My AI

• Try drawing a stick figure of you at work
• What does your face look like? Happy?
• Whats written in your thought bubble?
• What are you busy doing as you work?
• Where are your close friends? At work?
• How do you feel as you look at yourself?
• Are you the person you dream of being?

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Step Three Coaching for mapping

• How do you see yourself right now?
• How do we map your journey to your PS?
• What happens between now and then?
• How long will your journey take you?
• How will you feel along the way?
• Who might be alongside you?

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Step Four Coaching for dreaming!

• What dreams give you energy in life?
• How do you use that energy at work ?
• How are you living out dreams at work?
• Which aspects of work satisfy you most?
• Where might you extend that satisfaction?
• How will you bring dreaming into working?

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Step Five Self coachingWhat am I good at? (How
do I know?)

• (Use Authentic Happiness Questionnaires?)

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Step Six Self CoachingWhat might I improve?

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Step Seven Self CoachingWhat do I like most
about me?

• Who can help me develop the parts I like best?

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Step Nine Self Coaching What am I afraid of and
could avoid?

• How will I overcome my fears?
• Who will help me to overcome them?

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Whats my plan to reach my PS?

• By tomorrow
• By this Friday
• By December
• By 5 years hence
• How will I record what I achieve?
• How will I know I am living my dream?

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Action research formulaic and technicist?

• According to Cooperrider and SrivastvaAction
  research has largely failed as an instrument for
  advancing social knowledge of consequence and now
  risks being (mis) understood as little more than
  crude empiricism imprisoned in a deficiency mode
  of thought.

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Action research generative incapacity

• Action research tends to build into the client
  system an institutionalized pattern for
  continuously collecting data and examining the
  systems processes as well as for the continuous
  review of known problem areas. Problem solving
  becomes very much a way of organizational
  lifeMarguiles and Raia

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Appreciative Inquiry A sense of wonder returns

• Action researchs problem solving view of the
  world is a primary restraint on its imagination,
  passion and positive contribution appreciative
  inquiry represents a viable complement to
  conventional forms of action research, one
  uniquely suited to social innovation instead of
  problem solving
• Cooperrider and Srivasrtva

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Fletcher (2000) (a) Extract from my personal
diary dated 1987.

• The moment I knew I was healing myself was one
  of the funniest I shall ever remember. Encased
  in plaster from just below my armpits to my knee
  there was I seeing myself running, dancing and
  playing with friends on a beach! Momentary
  projection. Pain, searing pain machete-ing
  through my visualization dont panic! Hold,
  hold on to the certainty that you will not falter
  in experiencing health. Draw from your being
  this agony and gently, gently ease it into
  vision. Initially, so all pervasive, this pain
  becomes a ball. Initially so immobile, it begins
  to move it becomes a BALL! It bounces I can
  play and there I am a child with a ball a
  ball of pain. What do I do with this ball? Easy!
  I colour this ball, add stripes and fair-isle
  patterns like knitwear This ball of pain this
  pain ball no longer daunts me! I have a choice
  an ultimate choice to let it return to
  all-embracing agony or to retain the ball, I
  bounce this ridiculous sphere round the walls of
  my imagination it loses its horror and I am
  reborn as a new self a self that knows health
  is closer.