Posts tagged as:

Satir

Integrating Your Personal Board of Directors

by Steven M. Smith

Workshop
Each person has their own personal board of directors. The board members are the parts of ourselves that are constantly interacting inside our head. If your board members constantly bicker and fight, these inner conflicts manifest themselves as dysfunctional behavior.
Pioneering family therapist Virginia Satir used a process, a Parts Party, to aid people in accepting, [...]

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Change: Knowing When, Knowing How

by Steven M. Smith

Workshop
Kurt Lewin said, “There is nothing so practical as a good theory.” A gift from pioneering family therapist Virginia Satir is a good theory about how people process change.
The Satir Change Model describes the: five major stages of a change; transition between stages; effects each stage has on feelings, thinking, performance, and physiology; and interventions [...]

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Temperature Reading

by Steven M. Smith

Virginia Satir developed this method for discovering a group’s temperature — what we in technology often call the system’s state.
A facilitator leads the discovery. He or she keeps the group focused on each agenda item; works with the group members to help them communicate information congruently; and publicly displays each contribution so the group can [...]

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The Art of the Discovery Interview

by Steven M. Smith

“What?” raced through Janet’s head as she read the email. “Now that’s a surprise.”
The message was from Jack Johnson, vice president of development. It said she would receive a meeting request from Rajan Alak, an outside consultant, to interview her about the problems with the new system. The message went on to say the company [...]

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Communication Is Like Breathing

by Steven M. Smith

“Communication is to personal health, satisfactory interpersonal relationships, and productivity as breathing is to life. Effective communication can be both taught and learned. We were not born with the way we communicate. We learned it, mostly through modeling, in ways no one even knew or intended.”
–Virginia Satir (family therapy pioneer)
For a tip on breathing better [...]

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Short-Circuit Chaos?

by Steven M. Smith

Managers who like to be in control have a predictable reaction to their organization grappling with a change which creates chaos — they want it to stop. When? Now, right now.
What happens if management decides to short-circuit chaos with a magical solution? What happens if management accepts chaos as a necessary but uncomfortable period of [...]

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Go Dark Loudly

by Steven M. Smith

The answer is “X has gone dark”. The question is “What frustrates me?” I don’t like feeling frustrated.
As a member a geographic team, I communicate with my teammates by either email or phone. Sometimes teammates go dark—they completely stop communicating. Paul went dark recently.
Attempts to contact him by email received no reply, calls to his [...]

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The Satir Change Model

by Steven M. Smith

Every organization must deal with change. Virginia Satir, a pioneering family therapist, created a change model to help families process change. Her model fits organizations equally well. This article explains Satir’s model and offers insights into how to more effectively manage the change process.

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