Personal Trainer
Wie können wir lernen, uns selber besser zu verstehen und gut mit anderen zu interagieren? Dazu müssen wir eingefahrene Verhaltensmuster überwinden und uns unseren Schwächen stellen. John Kent hat eine eigene Methode entwickelt, von der er im Gespräch mit
Ken Taylor on developing your personal SWOT
Ken Taylor: For any business person, good interpersonal skills are essential. We have to work with people from different social and cultural backgrounds. And sometimes, we have to work with people we don’t like or have problems relating to. John Kent: Which is why I’ve developed my programme “personal SWOT — creating sustainable working relations”.
Taylor: “SWOT” stands for “strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats”. I can begin to see how they might fit into interpersonal skills training.
Kent: I base the programme on my Voice Dialogue background.
Taylor: Voice Dialogue? Can you explain what that is?
Kent: Do you ever talk to yourself? Have you ever heard yourself say something like, “A part of me really feels uncomfortable when I’m around certain people”? And then, “Another part of me doesn’t want to say anything in case I upset them. And yet another part of me thinks I’m stupid for letting them get to me at all!”
Taylor: I think most people have had that experience.
Kent: In each of these words and phrases, there is an implicit understanding that we are all made up of many different parts, or “selves”. In the 1970s, therapists Drs Hal and Sidra Stone developed a highly transformational approach to personal development called Voice Dialogue. This safe and simple process enables you to tune in to your different selves and allow those voices to be heard more clearly and distinctly.
Taylor: Are you saying that we all suffer from multiple personality disorder? Kent: No, not at all. Multiple personality disorder is a clinical problem, when people are unaware of the different voices inside them. What Voice Dialogue suggests is that all of us are made up of different parts — “voices”, if you like — which we have the potential to develop to help us understand ourselves and how we interact with others.
Taylor: In order to do that, surely, we need to become aware of what those different voices are and what effect they have on our behaviour and our relationships. Kent: Exactly. We are all born vulnerable. We develop a personality that will get our essential needs met from the adults around us. And to handle our vulnerability and get these basic needs met, we begin to develop a personality made up of a group of protecting selves. These dominant, or “primary”, selves figure out the rules of our specific family, environment and culture, and make us behave in ways that are most likely to get the adults around us to satisfy our needs. Our primary selves — which can shift and change as our life circumstances change
— are unique to each of us.
Taylor: Can you give me an example of a typical primary self?
Kent: The Pleaser: “You must always be nice to others.”
Taylor: I can certainly recognize that characteristic in myself.
Kent: Or the Pusher: “You must work hard to succeed.”
Taylor: And that voice, too.
Kent: Or the Inner Critic: “You must always follow the rules.”
Taylor: And definitely that one! These are presumably the strengths in your personal SWOT, because these voices help you survive and function in life.
Kent: That’s right. And the weaknesses in the personal SWOT are the opposites of your primary selves, which are hidden away or “disowned”.
Taylor: From my experience of working with interpersonal skills training, this is where relationships might break down. It’s easy to become judgemental about people who show the behaviours of our disowned selves.
Kent: That’s right. If you have a Pusher primary self, you might judge someone who has an easygoing primary self as “lazy”. In fact, our disowned selves contain positive attributes that we should be aware of and tap into.
Taylor: Becoming aware of both your disowned and your primary selves and developing a more balanced approach is, presumably, the opportunity in your personal SWOT.
Kent: It’s a process of learning to stand between those opposites so that you can make decisions about appropriate actions in a way that is more aware.
Taylor: So, what are the threats in your personal SWOT? Kent: That you act on autopilot and make judgements about yourself and others based on a fundamental lack of awareness and understanding of your primary and disowned selves.
Taylor: At your seminars, how do you get people to become aware of some of their primary and disowned selves?
Kent: I use a simple worksheet that participants fill in before I meet them. It’s called “Who do you think you are?”. There are three questions to answer. The first question assumes you have to reapply for your own job. You list six attributes that make you good at what you do.
Taylor: OK. So, this is a way of beginning to identify your primary selves.
Kent: In the second question, you list six traits of people who really infuriate you.
Taylor: So, now you can start to become aware of your disowned selves.
Kent: And in the third question, you write down six qualities you admire in your business role models.
Taylor: These must also be qualities that you more or less disown.
Kent: The whole purpose of the seminar is to help you identify your driving forces, constraints and assets, and your strengths and weaknesses. And then to be able to make conscious choices in your life, both professionally and personally.
Taylor: Well, a part of me would like to continue this discussion, but the Pusher in me is saying that we’ve unfortunately run out of time!
“All of us are made up of different voices”