Latest / Eight Arms: Developing the craft of working with groups / #1 Deep Dive: How to stay steady when something throws you

Transcript

#1 Deep Dive: How to stay steady when something throws you · Eight Arms: Developing the craft of working with groups

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: You've run this session so many times, you know it inside out.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then someone asks you a question and your mind just goes completely blank.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: All the energy in the room just drops.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone was with you five minutes ago and now nothing.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: And you can't work out why.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Or somebody pushes back in a way you've never been challenged before.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Or it's just one of those days when you're feeling a bit more fragile than usual
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: and something small knocks you sideways.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we sometimes call a wobble moment.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: But please feel free to rename it in whatever phrase or wording or label works for you.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: And this episode is about what's actually going on when one happens
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: and what you can do about it.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Tom Cleary and this is Eight Arms.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Practical episodes on developing the craft of working with groups.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: If you work with groups and care about doing it well and staying well,
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: you are in the right place.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: This is one of our longer deep dive episodes.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: I want to dig a bit into the psychology of wobbles,
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: but I promise it will come back to things that you can actually use.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: And there'll be a short toolbox episode after this one here,
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: which you can either use as a quick recap or if you'd rather go straight into
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: the practical bit.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: For years now,
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: I've been talking to lots of people who work with groups,
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: trainers,
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: coaches and therapists moving from one to one into group work,
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: team leaders,
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: people who would never call themselves trainers at all,
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: but run group sessions as part of their, often big part of their job.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: I asked them what they found hardest and one of the same things
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: that kept coming up was not the planning or the content,
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: it was those moments that throw you.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody in one of the first sessions called them moments that wobble us and that name stuck.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: And we all have them.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: I had one recently where an exercise that I've used multiple times did not go to plan at all.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: I had to think on the spot how to adapt in that moment and make sure
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: that it was actually going to land with a group
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: who were interpreting it very differently from the last 30 or so who had done it.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: What struck me was that wobbles are not just a beginner's problem.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Newer people tend to have more of them,
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: which makes sense, but very experienced people have them too.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: They just tend to look calmer from the outside.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: There's a researcher called Donald Schön who wrote about this back in the 1980s
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: and his ideas still feel really relevant.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: He described something he called knowing in action.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Over time, as we get more experienced, a lot of what we do becomes almost automatic.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: We just know when to pause for questions, when to move on, when someone needs a bit of support.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: We're not consciously working out, we've built up patterns from experience.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a thing that happens with this.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: I was working with a very experienced trainer earlier this year
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: whose team kept asking, why do you do this like that?
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: It clearly works.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: And they said, honestly, I'm not sure.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: I just do it.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's knowing in action.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's brilliant until it isn't.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes something happens that doesn't fit the patterns and suddenly
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: the autopilot switches off.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Schön
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: called this moving from the high ground,
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: where problems are manageable and we know what to do,
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: into the swampy lowlands,c
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: where things are messy, unclear and don't fit neatly into anything we've learnt.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: That drop from the high ground into a swamp, that's a wobble.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: So why does a wobble feel so physical?
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: Why does your mind go blank on something you know really well?
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: When we sense a threat,
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: and to our brains a room full of people watching us struggle definitely can count,
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: our body threat response kicks in.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Heart rate's up,
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: attention narrowing,
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: ready for fight, flight or freeze, or many other parts that go along with it.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's useful if you're facing a predator.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's less useful when trying to answer a tricky question from a group.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because under stress,
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: the parts of the brain that we rely on for flexible thinking,
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: creativity,
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: remembering things, weighing up options, they get a bit less of a look in.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: The more automatic, older parts of the brain take over.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: So when your mind goes blank,
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: it's not because you don't know your stuff,
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: it's your brain doing exactly what it's designed to do,
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: just at a really unhelpful moment.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: And knowing that matters because a lot of us add a second layer on top of the wobble.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: E.g.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: I should be able to handle this.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: I should be doing better.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone can see I'm struggling.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that second layer often makes things worse than the original wobble.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: So in a wobble, most of us want to get out of it as fast as possible.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: Feel the silence, move on to the next slide, make a joke, pretend it didn't happen.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: Completely understandable.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Here are four things that help and the psychology behind each.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: One, notice it and name it to yourself.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: So that first step, simply noticing.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: So quietly saying in your head, okay, this is a wobble.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it sounds almost too simple.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: But there's research on something called affect labelling.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Putting a name to what you're feeling.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: And studies suggest that it can actually dampen down the brain's threat response.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: Naming the feeling seems to give the thinking parts of your brain a bit more room again.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: There's a related idea from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy or ACT,
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: which I find really useful.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: Big fan of ACT.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's about noticing your thoughts rather than getting swept up in them.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: So rather than thinking, oh no,
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: it's all going wrong,
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: you might say to yourself,
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm noticing and having a thought of it's all going wrong.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's a small shift, but it can change your relationship to the thought.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: It becomes something you're noticing, not a fact that you're drowning in.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: And that tiny step back is where your choices come from.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Step two, buy yourself some breathing space.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Once you've noticed a wobble, or whatever you want to call it, you need a few seconds to reset.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: Two things can help here, your body and your words.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: For your body,
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: it can be a slow breath out, longer out than in, or pushing feet down to the floor.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's a simple way of signaling to your nervous system you're not actually in danger.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: That nobody in the room will notice, but you.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: For your words, this is where it can really help to have some go-to phrases ready in advance.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Something rehearsed.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: So it comes out even when your mind's gone blank.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: For example, that's a really interesting question.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: Can you say a bit more about what's behind it?
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Or let me just take a moment to think about that.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Or let's pause there.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: Take a couple of minutes with the person next to you and talk about what you've noticed so far.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: And why rehearse?
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because remembering that our brains under stress or pressure lean on what's automatic.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: So if your go-to phrase is well practiced,
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: it's one of the things that can still be available
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: when everything else might have gone fuzzy.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: You're essentially building a bit of a new autopilot specifically for those moments of wobble.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: And none of these are tricks.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: They're respectful.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: They often help the group too, giving everyone a moment to think.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Step three, get curious and try a different frame.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: In a wobble, our brains jump very quickly to a story.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, this person's being really difficult.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm losing control.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: They don't think I know what I'm doing.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: Shearn talked about how we frame problems.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now the frame that we choose shapes everything after it.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: What we notice, what seems relevant, what responses even seem possible.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: So perhaps try swapping the story for a question.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: What might this person need?
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Did something I said spark this?
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: Could the quiet right now mean that people are thinking rather than just being switched off?
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Is someone testing whether this is genuinely a safe space to say something difficult?
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: That last one is worth staying with for a little bit.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes a challenge is a sign that people do feel safe enough to push back,
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: which is a good thing even if it often doesn't feel like it in the moment.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: A curious frame opens up options.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: A threatened frame closes them down.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: And curiosity is also really hard to feel at the same time as panic,
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: which is another reason it helps.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Step four, try something small and see what happens.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: Schön
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: had a lovely phrase for what skilled practitioners do in these moments.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: Reflection in action.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's having a kind of conversation with the situation while it's happening.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: Noticing, reframing, trying something, seeing how a situation responds, and adjusting.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: He describes it as an artistry rather than a formula, and I think that's true.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: There often isn't a right answer.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: There's almost always a reasonable next step.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: So try something small.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: Ask a question, pause, change the activity, name what you're noticing.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example...
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: You might say something like, I'm aware right now that the energy in the room has dipped.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: What is going on for you at the moment?
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: What are you thinking or feeling?
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then watch what happens, listen and adjust.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: Think of it as an experiment, not a test that you might fail.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that framing alone takes a lot of the pressure off.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then after the wobble,
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: after the session, give yourself a minute, not to beat yourself up, but to learn.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: So for example, three quick questions.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: What wobbled me or through me?
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: What did I do?
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: And what might I try next time?
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how wobbles can stop being just uncomfortable memories
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: and start becoming experiences that we can learn and develop from.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: Over time,
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: things that used to wobble you start to feel more like the high ground
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: and you'll notice new,
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: different wobbles instead,
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: which honestly is part of what keeps this work interesting.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: I find it really interesting for me,
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: for example,
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: that there are situations which the first time I did them felt so enormous
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: and they threw me such a lot.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: So the first time I had to do an assessment as an online assessment
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: with people having multiple devices and it was very confusing.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: I had it in my wall planner and for months was almost counting down to it.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: And now,
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: while there can be times where it might wobble me a little bit,
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: it's slightly run of the mill, to be honest.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: So it just changes over time.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: And now different things I'm always trying to push out of my comfort zone a bit more
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: in order to develop that.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: So we're all always learning.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: So four things.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: Notice and name it to yourself.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: Buy yourself some breathing space with your breath.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: So feet on the floor, a rehearsed phrase maybe.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: Get curious and try a different frame.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: Try something small and see what happens.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: And here's one thing you could do before your next session.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: Choose your go-to phrase.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: Practice it out loud a few times.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: Write it in your notebook if it helps.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then when the wobble comes, and it probably will, you've got something ready.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to go further into the swamp idea,
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: I recorded a longer episode about it on my other podcast,
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: The Human Side of Facilitation.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'll put a link in the show notes.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: There's also a mini version of this if you want a quick reminder or a quick tool
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: to take with you into your next session.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to hear about your wobble moments, what threw you and what helped.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: Do get in touch.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: I read everything and your wobbles might well end up shaping future episodes.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Take care and see you next time.
• 12:55
  [music]