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Key ideas in phenomenology: The natural attitude

20 August 2012

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Updated September 13, 2023

From a phenomenological perspective, in everyday life, we see the objects of our experience such as physical objects, other people, and even ideas as simply real and straightforwardly existent. In other words, they are “just there.” We don’t question their existence; we view them as facts.

When we leave our house in the morning, we take the objects we see around us as simply real, factual things—this tree, neighboring buildings, cars, etcetera. This attitude or perspective, which is usually unrecognized as a perspective, Edmund Husserl terms the “natural attitude” or the “natural theoretical attitude.”

When Husserl uses the word “natural” to describe this attitude, he doesn’t mean that it is “good” (or bad), he means simply that this way of seeing reflects an “everyday” or “ordinary” way of being-in-the-world. When I see the world within this natural attitude, I am solely aware of what is factually present to me. My surrounding world, viewed naturally, is the familiar world, the domain of my everyday life. Why is this a problem?

From a phenomenological perspective, this naturalizing attitude conceals a profound naïveté. Husserl claimed that “being” can never be collapsed entirely into being in the empirical world: any instance of actual being, he argued, is necessarily encountered upon a horizon that encompasses facticity but is larger than facticity. Indeed, the very sense of facts of consciousness as such, from a phenomenological perspective, depends on a wider horizon of consciousness that usually remains unexamined. Any individual object, Husserl wrote:

“Is not merely an individual object as such, a ‘This here,’ an object never repeatable; as qualified ‘in itself‘ thus and so, it has its own specific character, its stock of essential predictables which must belong to it … if other, secondary, relative determinations can belong to it.”

Hence, any individual object necessarily belongs to multiple “essential species,” or essential structures of consciousness, and “everything belonging to the essence of the individuum another individuum can have too…”

The gray cat I notice crossing the street is both unique and, if investigated phenomenologically, reveals a common structure or essence “cat” that can apply equally well to other members of the species. Indeed, without the structure “cat” in some sense accompanying or preceding the experience of this particular gray cat, I would be unable to identify it as such. There would still be an animal present to me, but even this identification is dependent upon another essence, that of “animal.”

The point here is that seeing the individual cat presupposes a meaningful structure that is inclusive of a wider horizon of possible cats—black, spotted, green-eyed; big, small, healthy, sick, four-legged and three-legged, etc.—and the empirical cat, the individuum, is the empirical foreground upon a background of possible cats unified by the structure “cat.”

No empirical object, Husserl insisted, is sui generis. The idea or essence is a “necessary general form,” Husserl wrote in “Experience and Judgment,” a structure of and for consciousness that can be grasped within the reduction, that which makes the very seeing of individual empirical objects as objects possible for us. In other words, “that without which an object of a particular kind cannot be thought, i.e., without which the object cannot be imagined as such.”

All of this is evident once one begins to actively phenomenologize. Yet, from the natural attitude, we see everything at face value: There is simply this cat, this tree, this house, simply accepted in their facticity as self-evidently present; we do not inquire further into our perceptions, our intuitions.

Expanding on this theme, Husserl wrote in Eugen Fink’s book “Sixth Cartesian Meditation: The Idea of a Transcendental Theory of Method (Studies in Continental Thought)“:

“In the natural attitude, in which for ourselves and for others we are called and are humans, to everything worldly there belongs the being-acceptedness: existent in the world, in the world that is always existent beforehand as constant acceptedness of a basis. So also man’s being is being in the world that is existent beforehand. In phenomenology, this being-beforehand is itself a problem.”

Within the natural attitude, the world is experienced as always already present, prior to my reflection upon it. Yet, this theoretical attitude—for as Husserl noted, there is a theorizing about the world implicit in this attitude—represents a fundamental naïveté.

Simply put, from an empirical or natural standpoint, I see my ego as fundamentally separate from the world around me, a world that is obviously already here, quite apart from me, and which has no relation to me other than as my context and the container for other objects of interest to me.

In essence, the entire theoretical structure of positivist thought is implicit in the seemingly self-evident assertion that the world is fundamentally separate from me and preexists me. In beginning to tease out the implications of natural attitude, this description may appear questionable as a description of the life-world, though it is recognizable as the world of the natural sciences. One of phenomenology’s primary claims is that the ego is never severed from the world, that the sense of “world” is always more than a collection of empirical objects, that I am always implicated in the world and vice versa.

What is Phenomenology Reduction?

For Husserl, the process he calls the phenomenological reduction is the means by which the phenomenologist frees himself from the reifications of the natural attitude, gaining a standpoint from which to view and explicate both real (Ger: real) and irreal (Ger: reel) objects, having bracketed their facticity, in pure phenomenal flow. The word “reduction” is used philosophically. It doesn’t mean diminishing something but instead relies upon one of the meanings of reduction’s Latin root: to restore or return something to a more primordial mode.

Husserl uses the term reduction to signify a specific shift in attitude that can be employed by the researcher in a variety of contexts. Hence, Husserl referred to phenomenological, philosophical, psychological, eidetic, transcendental, ethical, and intersubjective reductions, according to Joseph J. Kockelmans’ “A First Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology.” Not only is my perception of external objects transformed when I adopt the attitude of the reduction, but likewise my perception of the most intimate of objects: my personal ego. Phenomenology’s reductions reveal not only the phenomenal nature of objects but also, Husserl claimed, transcendental subjectivity and intersubjectivity.

The researcher “reduces” everyday, empirical reality through use of the phenomenological epoché or “bracketing.” The meaning of ἐποχή(epoché) is “to hold back” or “to withhold”; in affecting the epoché, I withhold my assent to the ontological status of the perceived: I “bracket” its facticity. In E. Spiegelberg’s “The Phenomenological Movement: A Historical Introduction (Phaenomenologica),” the author wrote that the reduction is the conscious act in which the:

General thesis of belief in factual existence characteristic of the natural attitude is inhibited, suspended, bracketed … or turned off, and which uncovers in transcendental subjectivity the acts which constitute pure phenomena.

Edmund Husserl’s “Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology (Husserliana: Edmund Husserl – Collected Works)” explained the reduction’s rigor in his discussion of the “Principle of all Principles”: “Everything originarily … offered to us in ‘intuition’ is to be accepted simply as what it is presented as being, but also only within the limits in which it is presented there.”
Employing the phenomenological reduction, I take no position with respect to the ultimate (existential) reality of what I see. Instead, I simply witness it just as it presents itself to me and describe it as such. This instance of the reduction is properly termed the phenomenological reduction because facts are “reduced” to the way they stand out to me as presences.

Phenomenology uses the reduction to entirely set aside existential questions and shift from existential affirmation or negation to description. It is a method involving a bracketing or parenthesizing (in German: “Einklammerung”) of something that had formerly been taken for granted in the natural attitude.

In order, therefore, to examine psychic subjectivity, the researcher must perform a phenomenological-psychological reduction, suspending the “taking-for-grantedness” of psychological phenomena. In the psychological reduction, Husserl wrote, “psychic subjectivity, the concretely grasped ‘I’ and ‘we’ of ordinary conversation, is experienced in its pure psychic owness…” (1973, p. 62, in Zaner & Idhe). Gurwitsch (1966) explained that performing the psychological reduction means a shift in attitude toward everything normally perceived as a mundane existent in the life world (Lebenswelt). Rather than taking them for granted:

All persons, including the psychologist himself, inasmuch as they perceive themselves as human beings, hence as mundane existents, are transformed into phenomena, and by the same token disclosed as subjects of intentional conscious life. (p. 443)

This particular reduction (as has been noted, there are many kinds of reductions for Husserl) leads the researcher to recognize his or her embeddedness in intersubjectivity. Husserl claimed that when one examines the phenomenal ground of what it means to be an “I,” one discovers that it is impossible to have a sense of “I-ness” without an accompanying sense and expectation of “you-ness”—indeed, at the core of the sense of “I,” there is the experience of a plurality of “you’s”—what Husserl termed “co-subjectivity” (Mitsubjectivität).
Moreover, I immediately recognize others as similar to myself—i.e. they are not just objects, they are subjects like myself—and the world I live in is a world of commonly (intersubjectively) recognizable people, places, and things. Gurwitsch (1966) summarized Husserl’s view of intersubjectivity by stating that:

Performing the [psychological] reduction upon himself, the psychologist, in analyzing his own conscious life, becomes aware of its relationship to and connectedness with, the conscious life of other persons…in his very experience of himself as human being are implied references to other human beings, to an open horizon of humanity…and co-subjectivity (Mitsubjectivität). Experience of oneself proves to be inseparable from that of others. (p. 443)

This collectivity is an open horizon of transcendental subjects, that is, subjects whose conscious acts (noesis) transcend the factual objects of experience. Since, Husserl argued, the co-subjectivity of transcendental others is an indispensable constituent of the life world, he concludes that the life world is a field of transcendental intersubjectivity. These insights are close to the foundation of the phenomenological study of empathy by Scheler, Husserl, and Stein, a topic Zahavi (2010) has recently explored.
Therefore, the primacy of one’s ego-pole in experience is not absolute: that is to say, there is never, from Husserl’s standpoint, the experience of a solus ipse. An ego utterly detached and unrelated to others is not even strictly speaking imaginable, in Husserl’s view, if we are true to the essential structure of what it means to be an “I,” namely, to be always located in an intersubjective field. This intersubjectivity can be experienced empirically as the world of other people in their concreteness, psychologically-phenomenally, as the world of other psychological consciousnesses, or transcendentally, as the world of other transcendental subjects. Transcendental intersubjectivity, Gurwitsch (1966) wrote, is:

The community of ego-poles to which my own ego-pole also belongs, though it enjoys a privileged position, since it remains forever the ego-pole with respect to which every other ego-pole appears as an alter ego-pole. (p. 435)

It is in this context that Husserl spoke of a “transcendental reduction” or an “intersubjective reduction.” For Husserl, transcendental subjectivity, always embedded in intersubjectivity, constitutes and bestows sense to the psychological and natural domains (Gurwitsch, 1966, p. 111). Therefore, transcendental subjectivity “can be called the primal basis for all legitimacy and validity…” (Ibid., p. 111). Consequently, it is the transcendental reduction that differentiates phenomenology decisively from every other kind of psychology.

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References and Further Reading:
Gurwitsch, A. (1966). Studies in phenomenology and psychology. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Husserl, E. (1973). Phenomenology. In R. M. Zaner and D. Ihde, Phenomenology and existentialism. (pp. 46-70). New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
Husserl, E. (1982). Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a phenomenological philosophy: First book, General introduction to a pure phenomenology. (F. Kersten, Trans.). Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Kockelmans, J. (1967). A first introduction to Husserl’s phenomenology. Louvain: Duquesne University Press.
Spiegelberg, H. (1965). The phenomenological movement: A historical introduction. (2 Vols.) The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
Zahavi, D. (2010). Empathy, embodiment, and interpersonal understanding: Empathy from Lipps to Schutz. Inquiry 55 (3), 285-306.

Why Niccolò Machiavelli May Have Been Right About Leadership

29 June 2012

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I’m going to make a bold, sacrilegious assertion in a sea of humanistic theorists: I believe Niccolò Machiavelli had it right when he defined leadership 499 years ago—in a bare-bones sort of way. At the very least, he set a foundation for the plethora of leadership theories that exist today. In this post, I intend to deconstruct ‘Machiavellian leadership’ before bringing him into the 21st century.

When Machiavelli retreated to his Florentine study in 1513 and feverishly jotted down his abstract reflections on how the world ought to be in his book “Il Principe: The Prince,” he noted five aspects of a good leader that are still discussed (and even relished) in business and management literature today. These publications typically refrain from referencing him directly for the sake of not proposing workplace theories that may come off as deceitful, cunning, immoral, self-serving, dishonest or Machiavellian, but Machiavelli’s basic premise of a good leader is still there.

In a nutshell, the medieval Italian philosopher asserted that a good leader:

Should be feared rather than loved “if you cannot be both” in order to avoid a revolt.
Should have the support of the people because it’s difficult to take action without their support.
Should hold good virtues.
Should never turn to outside auxiliary or mercenary units, but always rely on his (or her) own arms.
Should be intelligent.

If we translate Machiavelli’s five-point laundry list into modern parlance, a good leader is essentially someone who is respected and supported by the people they guide because this person is smart enough to authentically know, trust, value, and encourage the flourishing of the skills that each individual brings to the group. Consequently, the leader is able to rely on the group because they work to help each member continue to polish and refine their unique skills and abilities, which can only work to make the team stronger as time brings a constant stream of change. As an MBA recipient, I believe any manager who takes time to understand, nurture, cultivate and accentuate the skills and traits of colleagues and support staff is virtuous.

And, yes, I used the word “authentically” in my translation of Machiavelli’s principles. Why? Because, believe it or not, the man didn’t appreciate dishonesty.

As a leader, “there is no other way to guard yourself against flattery,” Machiavelli wrote, “than by making men understand that telling you the truth will not offend you.”

To Machiavelli, authenticity—or at least openness—is essential to good leadership. After all, any leader “who seeks to deceive will always find someone who will allow himself to be deceived.” And, in the long run, that never turns out well.

Machiavelli’s got a bad rap for being a ruthless, cutthroat kind of guy. But, in this context, his vision of leadership softens and his description of a good leader actually sounds transformational, which is the style of leadership coveted by management circles today.

There’s one modern-day distinction I’d like to make that possibly inspired Machiavelli’s laundry list five centuries ago: A leader isn’t always in a position of authority and an authority figure doesn’t always hold the qualities of a leader. As Annabel Beerel, professor of social ethics at Southern New Hampshire University, wrote in her 2009 book “Leadership and Change Management,” “Leadership cannot function effectively without its fellow partner, authority, whereas authority can exist (not for long) without the activities of leadership.”

In other words, a person who embodies the qualities of a transformational leader but holds no authority is the equivalent of a king or queen without a throne. They may influence the people around them positively as they all work to fulfill daily obligations, but his or her reach is very limited.

By contrast, a person in a position of authority who fails to recognize, trust, value, and encourage the flourishing of skills among his or her colleagues and staff will quickly lose respect and support from these people. And when they go, the manager’s stuck in the transactional limbo they created. In this limbo bent on preserving the status quo, morale is low, turnover rates are high, and workers are grumpy among other things.

In 1513, Machiavelli wrote, “I’m not interested in preserving the status quo. I want to overthrow it.” So in addition to having a low tolerance for dishonesty, he apparently didn’t buy into transactional management theory either.
The key ingredient that distinguishes a leader from an authority figure is power, according to Beerel. To the traditional Machiavellian, power makes the ends justify the means, to paraphrase one of Machiavelli’s famous quotations.

But in a frail world where leadership consists of power grabs for the sake of power-grabbing, leadership will ultimately fall apart for, as Machiavelli wrote, “It is not titles that honor men, but men that honor titles.” Any leader who focuses solely on the accrual of power is acting disingenuously and, when the people revolt against this behavior, this leader’s employment status may meet a tragic end.

To Machiavelli, true leaders strive to shatter false pretenses.

“Men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, for everyone can see and few can feel,” he wrote. “Everyone sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are.”

So if you really want to be a transformational leader in Machiavelli’s book, what everyone sees should be your authentic self-guiding and working alongside your colleagues and staff. Are there any leaders that fall into this category, and if so, who is a Machiavellian leader? Well, looking back in history there might not be one single person who checks off every box in Machiavelli’s book. One person that does come to mind for some of Machiavelli’s virtues is George Washington. He had the full support of the people, he had mostly good virtues, he always preached about neutrality, and he was intelligent. The only questionable one is being feared rather than liked.

Looking to more modern times, a person that embodied Machiavellian values was Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was feared by his employees and his competitors, he was intelligent, he was able to avoid confrontation with major stakeholders of the company as well as prevent conflicts with employees.

Machiavelli may not have been such a bad guy after all. He may have just been a little too fervent. I think that the medieval word befits this Italian philosopher.

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What is the DSM-5 Definition of a Mental Disorder?

11 May 2012

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Understanding mental disorders is key for students, educators, and professionals in Saybrook University’s psychology and counseling programs. We provide a breakdown of how the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, Text Revision defines mental disorders, why it adopts an “atheoretical” approach to causes, and the challenges this creates in linking behavior to underlying biological or psychological factors. Saybrook University encourages our students to analyze mental conditions and consider potential influences on behavior, preparing them for careers in academia, research, or clinical practice.

What is a mental disorder?

The American Psychiatric Association kept this question in mind while preparing their latest Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-5-TR). Definitions of mental disorders in the DSM-5-TR consider these 5 factors:

A behavioral or psychological syndrome or pattern that occurs in an individual
Reflects an underlying psychobiological dysfunction
The consequences of which are clinically significant distress (e.g., a painful symptom) or disability (i.e., impairment in one or more important areas of functioning)
Must not be merely an expected response to common stressors and losses (ex. the loss of a loved one) or a culturally sanctioned response to a particular event (ex. trance states in religious rituals)
Primarily a result of social deviance or conflicts with society

To many people, these criteria for mental illness sound pretty good at first read. But how readily does this definition allow us to truly distinguish what is or isn’t a disorder? What are the underlying assumptions that this definition implies? Let’s consider the first two criteria, which when combined hold that a mental disorder is “a behavioral or psychological syndrome or pattern that occurs in an individual that reflects an underlying psychobiological dysfunction.”

Why Doesn’t the DSM Explain the Causes of Mental Disorders?

The DSM has long claimed to be “atheoretical” about the causes of mental disorders. This makes sense if you think about all the constituencies the DSM has to please. Mental health professionals have many different (often conflicting) ideas about what causes people to experience psychological problems in their day-to-day lives.

Professionals also often disagree on how best to alleviate such problems. Should they rely on medication, psychoanalysis, behavioral conditioning, rational argument, extended family discussions, sociopolitical consciousness-raising, or any number of other possible intervention strategies to help those they serve?

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In order to avoid alienating any particular constituency of mental health professionals, the DSM has strategically adopted an atheoretical stance on the etiology or causes of mental disorders in its definitions. At the same time, the DSM conforms to a medical model by organizing mental disorders into discrete categories, just as medicine does with diseases. That is, the DSM is a medical-model manual that is nonetheless atheoretical about the causes of the mental disorders it catalogs. This may be confusing but important to keep in mind.

Trying to be atheoretical about causes makes defining mental disorders difficult. This is readily apparent in the DSM-5-TR’s proposed definition, which says that a mental disorder is “a behavioral or psychological syndrome or pattern that occurs in an individual.” What does this mean? To start with, it means that disorders are internal. They are things people “have.” Can I have a psychological syndrome or pattern inside me? Even though we can’t observe it directly, the idea that our “psychology” is inside us seems would make sense to most people. But what about our behavior? Is it also inside us?

No. Behavior is something people do. It is observable, not inside us. Thus, to say that behavior is something that occurs in an individual doesn’t quite hold together theoretically. At the very least, it might irritate died-in-the-wool behaviorists, who discourage us from relying on abstract mental concepts to explain behavior.

Does the DSM Define Mental Disorders as Biological?

However, things get hairy when we shift to the second definitional criterion, which holds that these “behavioral or psychological syndromes or patterns” reflect an “underlying psychobiological dysfunction.” First, this marks a clear shift away from the aforementioned “atheoretical” position that has been a hallmark of the DSM for more than 30 years. Second, in claiming that mental disorders are psychobiological, the DSM’s reach clearly exceeds its grasp. Let’s take these two points one at a time.

The first point concerns the move away from an atheoretical stance on the causes of disorders. As already noted, the DSM has long sought to keep the peace among professionals of varying theoretical orientations by remaining mute when it comes to specifying the causes of mental disorders. It has prided itself on sticking to descriptions of mental disorders and avoiding speculation about causes.

Discovering etiology, according to past DSMs, is best left to researchers. Given this longstanding commitment to an atheoretical position on etiology, the prospect of changing the definition of mental disorders to one that explicitly defines them as “psychobiological dysfunctions” is big news because doing so is overtly theoretical.

Psychobiology conceptualizes human psychology as something that can be reduced to and explained exclusively in biological terms. As such, the proposed new definition of mental disorders contends that all DSM disorders have biological causes. The goal of being atheoretical goes out the window if the DSM explicitly defines mental disorders as biological.

The second point is that by moving so explicitly in a biological direction, the DSM’s reach exceeds its grasp. Moving in an openly biological direction might make sense, but only if the DSM restricts itself to defining mental disorders where the underlying biological causes are known. In other words, if the DSM plans to shift from an atheoretical to a psychobiological stance, it should probably have pretty clear evidence that the disorders it contains can be diagnosed using biological tests or markers.

Yet, this is not the case. The DSM-5-TR will carry on the long tradition of diagnosing mental disorders using behavioral criteria alone. These criteria will continue to take the form of lists of behaviors. Biological indicators will not be used to diagnose mental disorders because we simply don’t have the ability to do that at the moment.

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Are Mental Disorders Brain Diseases?

This is why the DSM’s reach exceeds its grasp. It wants to define mental disorders as having underlying psychobiological dysfunctions, but very few of the disorders it contains can be diagnosed biologically. The DSM makes diagnoses based on what people do, not tests of biological functioning.

Even in cases where people take drugs for a disorder and feel better, we cannot say with certainty that an underlying biological cause is being remedied. Improved mood notwithstanding, whether we have cured something remains the subject of speculation because, when it comes down to it, we just don’t know enough to say with certainty what the underlying biological cause of any given DSM disorder actually is in the first place.

We must keep in mind that changing a person’s behavior (whether through drugs or other methods) doesn’t necessarily mean we have corrected a psychobiological dysfunction. One might smoke a joint and feel more relaxed, but this doesn’t mean marijuana cures anxiety disorders or that the person was suffering from a marijuana deficiency. It just means that drugs can alter experience. To feel confident that a drug cures an underlying disorder, we need to know what the biological etiology of the disorder is and how the drug “fixes” that etiology. Even if we believe drugs can be helpful, their effectiveness doesn’t necessarily resolve the etiological uncertainty about what mental disorders are.

All the confusion about what defines a mental disorder makes sense when one thinks about the term more carefully. Mental has to do with the mind, and disorder is often (though not always) a euphemism for disease. Therefore, another way to think about mental disorder is as some kind of “mind disease.” Of course, as Thomas Szasz pointed out more than 50 years ago, minds—unlike brains—are not biological, and in a literal sense, cannot be afflicted by diseases.

Most of the disorders listed in the DSM, therefore, fall into two likely categories:

(a) everyday problems in living that warrant professional attention but are not diseases, and

(b) suspected brain diseases whose etiologies may one day be uncovered but currently remain unknown.

When it comes to mental disorders, the psychobiological definition being considered for the DSM-5-TR is not only overtly theoretical but also poorly drawn. The things we presently call mental disorders have not been convincingly explained in psychobiological terms, even if the authors of the DSM-5-TR would like to insist otherwise.

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By exploring how the DSM-5-TR categorizes disorders, its atheoretical stance on causes, and the challenges in linking behavior to biology, our psychology and counseling degree students are better prepared to critically analyze mental health conditions and consider multiple influences on human behavior.

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The Role of Women in Conflict Resolution

30 April 2012

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A widespread notion persists: that women, when compared with their male counterparts, are more naturally inclined toward peace. Is moral superiority a feminine virtue? Traditionally, women are characterized as maternal, nurturing, and gentle; whereas men are seen as having a propensity for violence and belligerence. Women talk about their problems; men solve conflict physically, requiring an outlet for their “natural” aggression. When female-perpetrated violence does occur, it is treated as unnatural or aberrant. This binary notion of gender is reinforced through socio-cultural stereotyping.

Regardless of the validity of this notion, the underlying assumptions are widely endorsed. Clearly, if women are better at making and sustaining peace, their involvement in post-conflict leadership is indispensable. The participation of women in reconciliation efforts is required; however, a properly gendered perspective of the contribution of women is very complex. The recent increase in government representation of women, as in post-genocide Rwanda, is an exemplary trend and can aid conflict prevention efforts. However, for this to be the case assumptions about women must be re-examined and potential dangers avoided.

The topic of gender is an important consideration in any academic discipline or professional field. However, the way in which this is usually done – as an examination of difference – is not especially useful, as it often serves to perpetuate patriarchal underpinnings. Discussing the courses she teaches in negotiation, Professor Deborah M. Kolb suggests ways to “weave insights about gender more directly into the curriculum” so that gender is not just a “footnote in a class,” but rather a “window into some critical processes in negotiation” (Kolb, 2000, p. 348).

Within conflict resolution theory, Kolb points to two expressions of the difference model that have emerged concerning gender: the deficit model and the valuing difference model. In the deficit model, (unfortunately) the most commonly held view according to Kolb, “the focus is on the skills that men have and women lack” (p. 348). On the other hand, the valuing difference model appreciates the insights of women that may have previously gone unnoticed or unarticulated. This latter model is helpful to a point, but there is still a fundamental flaw with either expression of difference thinking. Both the deficit model and the value difference model are guilty of essentializing women. “From the gender difference perspective, our explanations about difference are often traced to essential and fixed characteristics” (p. 349). This is especially problematic since it is clear that stereotypically male or female character traits – if they exist at all – are not of equal value in society.

Considering gender solely in terms of difference is not fair to either men or women. A more accurate, and advantageous, understanding does not treat identities as fixed categories but rather reflects a shift toward the interactive process of negotiation or conflict resolution. Kolb calls this “doing gender” (p. 350). Gender should be seen as contextualized and socially constructed through interaction. “The focus on the interaction emphasizes the fluidity, flexibility, and variability of gender-related behaviors” (p. 350). When gender is “done,” new insights emerge that can further the overall goal of resolving conflicts. Gender is not a fixed category; it is itself a form of negotiation. The wholehearted and open-minded participation of both men and women is required to prevent violent conflict.

-Rebecca Joy Norlander

Kolb, D. M. & Collidge, G. G. (1991). Her place at the table: A consideration of gender issues in negotiation. Negotiation: Theory and Practice. 261-277.

Exploring Emergent change

6 April 2012

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When we look at change, we can easily distinguish between planned and unplanned change. In simple terms, planned change is a change that we seek. Conversely, unplanned change is the type of change we are forced to accept and integrate. This latter type of change may have been planned by others and we are just the unsuspecting recipients of it; or the unplanned change may be totally unexpected by everyone, as in the visit of a tornado and its resulting devastation.

There is also a third type of change: emergent change.

This type of change is not in anyone’s agenda or on any weather radar. It simply manifests in our biological and social systems when the underlying components have achieved a new order that gives way to new behaviors.

If we look back to how social media, like Facebook and Twitter, emerged as a global means of communication, we can see that no one forced us to use them. There was no email or memo that mandated compliance. We simply discovered a new way to meet with old friends, make new ones, and share any information we want from any of our devices and at any time.

Facebook and Twitter are modern examples of emergent change; however, the history of emergence started with the creation of our universe. Looking at the four-and-a-half billion years of evolution on our planet, emergent change has been responsible for moving us from hydrogen atoms to iPhones. Emergence is the phenomenon of a system achieving new order in a totally self-organized manner giving course to new forms and dynamics. Molecular combinations, DNA, the myriad of physical forms in the history of Earth, our manifestation as human beings, and the evolution of our societies are all part of a succession of emergent changes.

We do not typically pay attention to emergent change because it is long term. It may take years and even millennia to manifest. We are currently engaged in a debate of whether global warming is real or not. Scientists who advocate for the effects of global warming forecast a change of large proportions that would dramatically impact life on the planet. Assuming this is true, we do not know the effects of “real” emergent change from global warming. We have individuals on the “doom and gloom” part of the spectrum who predict that our way of life would collapse not only because of global warming but because of our unsustainable use of natural resources. On the other side of the spectrum, there are those who believe that emergent change will align all humans on a common purpose and that great advances will ensue to accommodate new forms of living along a sustainable path.

Let’s take a brief look at how emergent change takes place summarizing concepts from the article “An Information-Theoretic Primer on Complexity, Self-Organization and Emergence” by Mikhail Prokopenko, Fabio Boschetti, and Alex Ryan, as well as the book “Engaging Emergence” by Peggy Holman.

Emergent change takes place in an “open” complex system. In this context, “open” means that the system receives a regular supply of energy, information, or matter from its environment. The system is complex because of its number of components and their nontrivial and purposeful interaction, which results in a coordinated behavior.

The nontrivial interaction in this system is challenged by internal constraints leading to the breakdown of current behavior between the individual components. This creates a disruption in the system.

The system then goes through a process of differentiation in which innovation and distinction among its parts takes place. Higher complexity can be achieved through this differentiation.

When the system achieves a new state of coherence, it is more organized than before. This new order is achieved without a director or any explicit mandates. The parts in the system are self-organized.

The changed system then expresses new patterns of interaction, which emerge as new behaviors. The changed system also exhibits radical novelty (such as new properties or coherence); stable system interactions; dynamic wholeness that is always changing; and downward causation as the system shapes the behavior of its parts.

Once coherence is reached at the higher level of complexity, adaptation is set into motion. When adaptation occurs across generations in the system, the system evolves. The evolution of the entire system gives rise to large-scale effects. Once evolution is achieved, the change is irreversible.

To follow the Facebook and Twitter example, our communication systems evolved from Gutenberg’s printing press to electronic communication, personal computers, and mobile devices. The effects of those changes brought the computerization of our communications and the resulting social transformation of having part of our presence in electronic form.

Once we became ever-present via email and used the web to conduct part of our daily lives, social media was a natural extension. Each stage in our communication transformation underwent the dynamics of emergent change: from cave paintings to the first printed bible circa 1455, the first telegram, the first phone call, the first email by Ray Tomlinson in 1971, the first Facebook posting, and the first Twitter message ever sent.

It is important to differentiate the planned change of designing a product with emergent change. Products such as the iPod and iTunes were designed to transform how we buy and listen to music. Their manifestation was planned change by Apple. The advent resulted in unplanned change for Tower Records and other providers of physical media. Their market gradually disappeared. The emergent change is how accessible our music and other forms of media are to us. We can summon the perfect song at any time from any of our devices. Apple did not make this happen. We did. We could have resisted the planned change from Apple and killed the iPod in 2003, but we did not. Again, there was no memo, no mandate; we simply coordinated with each other to evolve on how we listen to music. We achieved a new coherence.

From the above, we can ascertain that any state of complexity is temporary. Apple and other designers are busy at work to entice us to create another emergent change. However, no company can create emergent change, only us—the members of the social system. This is a profound message as we look at our future as a species. We have the power to create the right interactions as we differentiate in an emergent change cycle.

Disruptions of our current coherence will always take place. We have no choice in that matter. Our choice lies in how we differentiate. The new state of coherence is based entirely on how we interact with each other and our environments. Our future—our new coherence—rest in our hands. This has been true since the Big Bang and has not changed. As satirist Steve Bhaerman through his alter ego Swami Beyondananda said, “The bad news: there is no key to the universe. The good news: it was never locked.”
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Teamwork and the role of reflection

29 March 2012

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Last updated: September 18, 2023

Reflection is one of the hardest things for leaders to implement.

Even if leaders knew the value of reflection, it would be hard to implement. As it is, reflection is an unknown capacity that has enormous potential to accelerate learning. According to Jack Mezirow, founder of transformative learning theory, without reflection, there is no learning. My experience tells me he’s right.

Our Group Reflection

At our last team meeting, my virtual team and I went through a process of reflecting on what is going well and what we could do better. We have made great strides since our face-to-face meeting in January, and our ability to talk together openly and honestly keeps improving. We challenge each other and disagree when we need to, inviting and welcoming all perspectives. It helps us create programs and develop online products and services that are better because of our collective efforts. Everybody has a different part to play, and we coordinate and align our work to contribute our best.

Why Reflection is Important

I had to reflect on the many improvements we’ve made lately that help our collaboration. We’ve improved our technology, including collaborative software, and a server setup to share documents in real-time and manage our projects. We’ve improved our team tools and processes. We are talking together well—inviting different perspectives and learning from them, which strengthens us as a team as well as our products and services.

During our team reflection, everyone spoke up and everyone acknowledged that there were things we could do better, like inviting our quiet contributors to speak, asking for help when we need it, and listening better. But, overall, we are doing well.

When virtual teams get together, they remain disparate parts of a big puzzle if they don’t include reflection. Reflection helps people understand each other. It enables insights to percolate through the group. And there are fewer misunderstandings and conflicts between people. If a conflict arises, it can be dealt with on the spot. Team reflection is a process and, just like learning, it is a process that also has outcomes.

Purpose of Reflection

Reflection has positive outcomes of shared meanings, greater coordination, and clearer communication. When teams reflect together, they gain insights and coordinate their actions to accomplish change. Without reflection, teams still learn and coordinate action, but the cohesive interconnectedness just doesn’t begin to hum with excitement, like a neural net flowing with electricity. Reflection processes help people align and interconnect.

Reflection is both an individual and group activity. Individually, people reflect on things and then bring their thoughts and ideas to a collective process of reflection. The individual and group interconnect. Individual thought is respected and invited; collective thought is encouraged and developed. A team needs to gain the capacity to think together by developing communication skills that include creating the ability to reflect together. Collective intelligence is fostered by face-to-face and virtual interactions and supported by online tools.

How to Virtually Reflect as a Team

IT systems and applications provide valuable infrastructure for working together. There are lots of ways to reflect together with the support of technology:

Circulate a document for comments. The comments are collected and incorporated into the document.
Meeting agendas and notes ensure nobody misses important information.
Implement project management (who needs to do what by when within a guidance process).
Have virtual meetings through teleconferencing or video conferencing.
Use collective writing through applications, such as Google Docs, that manage versions, allow comments, and track changes.

Technology is an important piece of the puzzle and helps geographically dispersed groups work together seamlessly. A conscious process of reflection on teamwork is also essential for facilitating team learning. Innovation springs from the reflective space. And it takes a very strong leader to see the need to develop the capacity for reflection and to implement the processes.

People are usually in a hurry; empty silence is quickly filled. Sometimes the most awesome innovations spring from silence as people’s minds begin to resonate together and a collective intelligence begins to emerge.

Team Reflection

A process of group reflection helps us learn from what we have done. If we’ve made mistakes, we don’t have to repeat them. If we had success, we can anchor the actions that helped us succeed. Whether on a virtual team or one that meets daily, asking “how,” “what,” “why,” and “who” questions are powerful.

“How did it go? How’s it going?”

“What can we do better? What got in our way?”

“Why are we doing this? Why should we be doing this?”

We rarely ask ourselves “Is this the right thing to do?” to make our “correct” decision is crucial. That’s when the “who” questions are most valuable: “Who can support us? Who needs help? Who is the best customer for this?”

First, we have to ask the questions, and then we have to listen to the answers. Whether a team shares the same room or works from different locations across the globe, our thinking power can be gathered in energetic patterns that help us do collective work with greater alignment. Team reflection helps us connect more deeply than words alone can. When we gain the capacity to reflect together, we begin to attune with each other, and our collective work is strengthened.

Pursue a Psychology Degree

Learn more about the purpose of reflection as a team and how it can influence productivity and teamwork. Here at Saybrook University, we offer a variety of in-person and online Psychology Programs that can explore the human mind and expand on team reflection.

Building a productive and efficient team comes from effective communication, including the use of team reflection. Expand your knowledge of the psychological influences and tendencies that make a great team leader and member by studying in one of Saybrook University’s master’s or doctoral programs, or even one of our professional certifications.

Humanistic and Clinical Psychology M.A. programs:

Psychology Ph.D. programs:

Professional Certificates:

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Fame is a Dangerous Drug: The Psychological Mindset of Being Famous

18 February 2012

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Fame is a dangerous drug. I should know. I wrote the book on it—or, rather, the book chapter.
That chapter, “Ready for the Close-up: Celebrity Experience and the Phenomenology of Fame,” describes the dead-end cycle of fame’s merry-go-round through first-hand reports of celebrity experience in the book “Film and Television Stardom.”
As was evidenced in the death of 48-year-old Whitney Houston, fame and celebrity can closely mirror substance abuse symptomology—and over time, result in actual substance abuse, isolation, mistrust, dysfunctional adaptation to fame, and then, too often, untimely death. The examples are familiar: from Judy Garland to River Phoenix and Michael Jackson to Whitney Houston.
The research conducted shows that fame changes a person’s life forever, and it is felt more as an impact or “overnight” experience rather than a gradual transition.

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Developmentally, the celebrity often goes through a process of first loving, then hating fame; addiction; acceptance; and then adaptation (both positive and negative) to the fame experience. Becoming a celebrity alters the person’s being-in-the-world. Once fame hits, with its growing sense of isolation, mistrust, and lack of personal privacy, the person develops a kind of character-splitting between the “celebrity self” and the “authentic self,” as a survival technique in the hyperkinetic and heady atmosphere associated with celebrity life.
Some descriptions of fame include feeling like “an animal in a cage; a toy in a shop window; a Barbie doll; a public facade; a clay figure; or “that guy on TV.”
Famous people describe a new relationship with the “space” around them as a component of learning how to live in a celebrity world. “It’s like fame defines you to a certain degree: it puffs you up, or it shrinks you down,” one celebrity said.
The psychology of fame is variously described as leaving the person feeling “lonely; not secure; you have a bubble over you; family space is violated; a sense of being watched; living in a fishbowl; like a locked room; and, familiarity that breeds inappropriate closeness.”
Yet, while the celebrity experiences many negative side effects of fame, the allure of wealth, access, preferential treatment, public adoration, and as one celebrity put it, “membership in an exclusive club,” keeps the famous person stuck in the perpetual need to keep their fame machine churning.
The unfortunate truth, however, is that for each and every celebrity, the fame machine can only churn for so long. As a former famous child star revealed, “I’ve been addicted to almost every substance known to man at one point or another, and the most addicting of them all is fame.”
The irony, of course, is the extent to which so many people in our culture clamor at some level for their own slice of fame, first noted in Andy Warhol’s prediction of 15 minutes for everyone. It has become the American way. In fact, iconic filmmaker Jon Waters believes that being famous is everyone’s unspoken desire.
“Most everybody secretly imagines themselves in show business,” he says, “and every day on their way to work, they’re a little bit depressed because they’re not … People are sad they’re not famous in America.”

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And so we watch Snooki and the Kardashians, and cringe at the memory of any episode we may have caught of “Being Bobby Brown” or “The Anna Nicole Smith Show.” Then we quietly ask ourselves “What is going on here? Are we somehow complicit in the downward spiral of so many great talents of our time? Have their lives become an opportunity for our own vapid TV viewing, satiating voyeuristic interests, while munching junk food mindlessly on the couch?” (I am as guilty as anyone.)
And, from the other vantage point, how dangerous are the blinding lights of fame to the unsuspecting and naive star? How does fame affect mental health? How vulnerable are famous people to fame’s addictive qualities and its ensuing engulfing pathology? The answer is: very.
The relevant question becomes how can a celebrity survive fame? How can someone take a God-given talent, like Whitney’s, or Michael’s, or Judy’s, rise to mega-stardom, and ride the merry-go-round of fame with health, grace, and perspective until it is time to finally get off? Clues to the answer lie in becoming part of something larger than oneself (countering fame’s natural tendency toward narcissism) and dedicating all one’s drives and ambitions into making a real difference, in a meaningful way, in the world.
Through such determined commitment to using life to its fullest, as a show of gratitude for all the riches and rewards, and rooted in humanistic notions of self-responsibility, meaning, values, authenticity, and mindfulness, the celebrity has a fighting chance. (See actor Matt Damon and his H2O Africa Foundation; rock star Bono and his many good works to end poverty and hunger; or actor and child advocate Goldie Hawn and The Hawn Foundation supporting mindfulness in early education, among others.)
As an older, wizened celebrity warned about the ephemeral nature of the fame experience: “It’s just so much the will-o’-the-wisp,” he said, “and you can’t build a house on that kind of stuff.”

New existentialists blogger Donna Rockwell, Psy.D., is a clinical psychologist specializing in celebrity mental health and the psychology of fame, and is associate faculty at the Michigan School of Professional Psychology. She is a mental health contributor on WDIV-TV in Detroit, and is a former reporter and producer for CNN and WRC-TV, in Washington, D.C. She is working on a book on the psychology of fame and celebrity.

This blog is based on Dr. Rockwell’s dissertation research from 2004, “Celebrity and being-in-the-world: The experience of being famous: A phenomenological study,” Center for Humanistic Studies.
Recommended Read: Rockwell, D. and Giles, D.C., 2009, “Being a Celebrity: A Phenomenology of Fame,” Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, (40) 178-210

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Martin Buber: Are you a ‘thou’ or an ‘it’?

25 January 2012

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“I believe that the key to creating society that is nourishing, empowering and healing for everyone lies in how we relate to one another.” — Martin Buber, an Austrian born Jewish philosopher

I came across Martin Buber’s work early in my studies of existentialism and existential psychology. Buber’s philosophy was genuine, and showed his love and hope for humanity. His existential philosophical piece entitled “I Thou” is a philosophical discussion on how we relate to other, consciously and unconsciously, and what makes us human.

This is what drew me to his idea. Buber introduced two distinct ways of relating I-Thou and I-It.

I-It vs I-Thou

In the I-Thou encounter, we relate to each other as authentic beings, without judgment, qualification, or objectification. I meet you as you are, and you meet me as who I am. In the I-Thou relationship, what is key is how I am with you in my own heart and mind.
The I-It encounter is the opposite in that we relate to another as object, completely outside of ourselves.

I-It and I-Thou Examples

Let’s step out of the philosophical language. How does this show up in reality?
I remember when I was an intern working at a shelter for families who were experiencing homelessness. The greatest asset that I had was the relationships I formed with the families that lived at this shelter.
It was both hard and wonderful to listen to their stories. I found that I carried them in my mind and heart even after being away for days. I would relate to them even when they were not with me in the room. I would think about the last conversation I had with a mother about her feelings of grief around a lost family member.
My relationship with her was constant even if she was not there. This was an experience of her becoming part of me and part of my own identity. How? Her stories were always on my mind. As a result, her stories become part of my own stories that I am reflecting on now.
This way of relating was or rather is powerful. I was far more effective as an intern therapist because of what Buber suggested.

The I-It relating would be radically different. I have been participating in community organizations for nearly 15 years. Over the years, I have sat in numerous meetings with the agenda of helping “the homeless.” The term “the homeless” distances us from seeing the humanity in the families that I was working with at the shelter.

They were more than homeless families. Being homeless was just a state of being, not who they were as individuals. A few years ago, I began to shift my internal and external language away from using the term “the homeless” as way to describe the lovely folks I was working with.
In doing so, I moved away from the I-It relationship that Buber described as being a relationship based on seeing others as things or in this case as objects, which can easily be dehumanizing.
The I-Thou relationship where one meets the other as who they are rather than what they represent is powerful and healing. Rather than looking at a mother who is living at a shelter as a “homeless mother,” we can see her as a mother and a woman with a name and a personal story to share.
Her story becomes part of our lives and in turn part of our humanity.
When I consider Buber’s philosophy in relation to social change, how we relate to one another would be a great service.
Even when I was no longer working with the homeless, I was working with people to help them find themselves and a new home.
Consider these terms that are often used in policy, health, and community services.

HIV infected individuals
Single mothers
Alcoholics

Do we relate to someone as an HIV infected individual, or do we relate to this person for who they are in their experience being HIV infected?
I believe that is the question Buber’s I-Thou and I-It philosophy can address. We would be better served in our intentions to create a better world for so many if we considered how we relate to one another.
On a conscious level, we can acknowledge how the labels and assumptions we have about others impact our conversations and relationships. On a more intimate level, we can acknowledge how we hold each other in our thoughts even when we are not with others.
It takes work to be open to such a deeply intimate relationship with others. I am still working on developing a similar relationship with others in my world, really as a way to become a better therapist and person.
I still think of the families I had the opportunity to be with at the shelter. I hold them in my heart and in a sense still have what I would consider a genuine relationship with them, even if they are not here with me. That holding of another is I-Thou relating. It is this type of connection to others on a spiritual and emotional level that can only lead to true relating and compassion for one another.

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Saybrook University introduces PhD program focusing on Creativity Studies

19 January 2012

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A complex fast changing world demands new, creative approaches to everything from corporate strategies to food preparation: Saybrook University is pleased to announce the creation of a unique psychology PhD program specializing Creativity Studies.

Saybrook has a long connection with the study of creativity: one of its founders was legendary psychologist Rollo May, who wrote The Courage to Create, and significant work on creativity was also performed by Saybrook faculty such as Abraham Maslow.

Today Saybrook is home to many of the leading contemporary scholars studying creativity, including Ruth Richards, Editor of Everyday Creativity, and Steven Pritzker, Co-editor of the Encyclopedia of Creativity. Together, they are creating a community that helps students become scholars in their own right.

The program will appeal to students interested in studying every aspect of creativity, including the traditional arts as well as a variety of other fields such as organizational creativity, mental health, education and social transformation. The curriculum will also include research into aspects of everyday creativity including, family life, daily decision making, and relationships. This study of creativity will be both academic and hands on: as they become scholars of creativity theory, students will also apply what they learn to enhancing their own creative process and providing learning skills to help others.

Steven Pritzker, Director of the program, stated: “Saybrook’s rich history and unique program has helped us attract a faculty that includes some of the foremost writers and researchers in the world. Students working on their thesis or dissertations will be able to work with leading scholars such as Mark Runco, Sandy Russ, Louis Sass or Dean Keith Simonton.”

The Psychology PhD Program specializing in Creativity Studies will allow students to participate without relocating: most classes will be held online, at a distance – but students will be required to come to San Francisco twice yearly for conferences, intensives, and direct interaction with faculty.

Located in San Francisco, California and Seattle, Washington and with students and graduates across the United States and around the world, Saybrook University provides humanistic values-based graduate education to nurture and professionally train and develop humanistic action-oriented scholar-practitioners. The University is comprised of the Graduate College of Psychology and Humanistic studies; the Graduate College of Mind-Body Medicine; and LIOS Graduate College (Leadership Institute of Seattle).

For more than 40 years, Saybrook has empowered students to find their life’s work and achieve their full potential. Saybrook’s programs are deeply rooted in the humanistic tradition and a commitment to help students develop as whole people – mind, body, and spirit. Saybrook University is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC). It is also authorized by the Washington Higher Education Coordinating Board and meets the requirements and minimum educational standards established for degree-granting institutions under the Degree Authorization Act.

To learn more about Saybrook University visit www.saybrook.edu.

To learn more about the psychology PhD program specializing in Creativity Studies, visit https://www.saybrook.edu/phs/academicprograms/psy/phdcs

For more information, contact Dr. Steven Pritzker, program director, at [email protected] and 415-681-6999.

Family code of conduct: Getting everyone together to listen, learn, and grow

11 January 2012

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A family is a delicate edifice with a natural tendency to fragment, split, and move in different directions over generations. New people enter as spouses and children with their own interests, preferences, and lifestyles. But when a family shares ownership, oversight, and dependence on shared investments, they challenge this tide. Such connected, “enterprising” families must work continually to head off and manage conflict between an ever-enlarging pool of family members, who share blood but know each other less.

They often fear conflict because they are more of a mystery to each other. While a second generation of brothers, sisters, and cousins know each other while growing up, as they get older, they tend to grow apart and see each other only at rare and restrained family gatherings.

They may be relative strangers, but they could share ownership and potential ownership in significant businesses, investments, real estate, and philanthropic assets. Because of the deep emotional family history, they cannot just be business partners coming together to exercise rational self-interest. Other ties must be taken into account, like whose uncle did what to your father or how your siblings are being treated in a business. Actions that are “just business” can hurt personally, and the personal hurt can lead to anger and conflict in other areas.

So a family that remains together as partners over three or more generations should always put family communication, conflict resolution, and alignment of interests at the top of their list of critical challenges. They should look for professional help to anticipate or deal with their differences.

The professional often tries to help by convening a family meeting, like a focused gathering of family members (defined in various ways, depending on the context) to discuss the conflict, provide alternatives, and take action on troubling issues. This seems reasonable and simple, right? Yet, I hear many stories where getting together was not just not helpful but led to feelings that make further contact even less likely while the problems remain simmering.

“We had a family meeting, and it was terrible.”

“No one wants to get together a second time.”

“Things came out that were better left alone.”

“Dad (or Uncle Jerry, or cousin Bob) had a meltdown and walked out.”

“No one listens to me because….”

Poorly planned and executed family meetings can further traumatize a family even when a professional brings them together with the best intentions.

Setting the stage for a family meeting

Nothing is as difficult as the first moments when an intergenerational family comes together as a whole.

While not total strangers, they are a collection of differing styles, viewpoints, values, ages, genders, and often ways of living and working. Their whole lives may be formed regarding the benefits of this legacy, but it does not change the reality that they may be strangers to each other.

Even smaller family meetings—such as of parents and their adult children—share this anxiety about starting. The feeling of awkwardness or the fear that one person will dominate, that others will not be heard, or that a business issue will trigger deep family emotions may lead to avoidance. A family expresses this by finding it difficult to schedule the meeting, postponing it, or limiting the time together.

The problem is that family members may not know how to create an environment for effective communication. They enter a strange environment without knowing how they can act to overcome the emotional traps and bad habits that they have eluded over time as a family. The first family meeting must make people feel safe to talk to each other in a respectful way and to be listened to by others.

One way to create a safe harbor in the meeting is to start by having the family create what we call a code of conduct that is about how they will talk to each other, not what they will talk about.

A code can be a guide to the difficult process of communicating in a fair and safe manner. It is a list of rules (or expectations) for communication that everyone agrees to hold each other to when they meet or interact as a family. Often a family has many bad habits—dominating, interrupting, blaming—that inhibit communication. A family meeting must begin by confronting these bad habits and deciding to help each other change. They are like addicts who have to support each other to make difficult changes. The regular family “rules” used to deal with personal relationships and emotional realities may be counterproductive for a family meeting. The family rules need to change or adapt to meet the difficulties of family members defining their future and agreeing on policies.

Creating the code of conduct

Developing a family code of conduct might start with each family member sharing something that they feel the family has to agree on in order to have a safe harbor for communication at the meeting. This gives each person a chance to share their anxieties before things start. It is not hard for a family member to begin to talk about things that inhibit communication.

The first things that inevitably come up are things like “Don’t interrupt,” “Get everyone to talk, not just the people who always dominate,” or “Talk about yourself without blaming others.” Each of these can be discussed and defined by the family as a principle of communication. When the family is done, they should write the principles on a large piece of paper and place it on the wall so that everyone can see them through the entire meeting. The more each family member can express concerns and feel that others have heard them and that the code reflects their own family, the more committed the family will be to them. They understand that the code marks the family’s entry into a new way of working together, which will be difficult for them as it means overcoming earlier habits.

Some facilitators begin the discussion with a list of behaviors for good communication. For example, many use the four principles defined by anthropologist Angie Arrien as a guide, which echo another set by Steven Covey:

Show up.
Pay attention.
Tell the truth, without blame or judgment.
Be open to outcomes, not attached to an outcome.

This is helpful only if family members have a chance to talk about how each rule would look if it were practiced by their family. They are deceptively simple and easy to think up but hard to practice. The point is to actively engage them and move them from good ideas to practical tools to guide behavior that they accept.

After such a discussion, the family will come up with a set of ground rules for communication that they agree will make them more effective. Setting up (or reminding people about) rules or a code of conduct should always be the first topic on the agenda of a family meeting (even if the meeting consists of three people). The family may define a code that they use for every meeting, but at the beginning, they need to be reminded of it. Each person will come into a family meeting with fears about talking and concerns that what he or she wants to share will not be heard or respected.

There are many types of statements in a family that act as “emotional triggers” that give rise to memories of other events that were hurtful. These memories may bring upset feelings or anger to the surface. Rules about behavior can’t always stop these triggers or the eruption of feeling the triggers generate, but they can limit them. At their best, rules can help a family consider other ways to deal with being upset. Also, the presence of other family members at a meeting can sometimes help two people who are upset over something take a step back and look at what is actually happening.

So when there is a code of conduct, who is in charge of policing it? And what happens if someone doesn’t follow it? This role can be jointly handled by a facilitator, the person—a family member or outside helper—whose role is to make sure the meeting goes well for all family members.

A family often allows anyone to break in and observe that someone is not observing the rules. For example, a working family may find family members making comments like “He isn’t finished” or “Let’s slow things down. People seem to be getting upset.” These process comments show that all family members feel responsible for adhering to the rules and are able to call each other to account.

Core purpose

A second element of the family code of conduct is setting clear expectations for its purpose, what the group is doing, and when or how decisions will be made.

Each meeting should have a core purpose or a focus that guides the conversation. This might be to learn about the structure of the family trusts, to learn what we all want for our family philanthropy policies, or to plan for the new family leadership. Having a focus helps make the meeting safer in that there is a sense of what will be off-limits or what issues can be shared. Sometimes the agreement is that a person can raise an issue, but any individual can decide that they don’t want to talk about it. Or, there may be an agreement that decisions will not be made and that the purpose of the meeting is to learn about each other.

These understandings about the nature of the meeting and its focus are part of the code of conduct and allow family members to feel comfortable with what will and will not be talked about. This sort of understanding is often critical to having one or more individuals decide to participate in the meeting.

Beyond the family meeting

In summary, a family code of conduct is a set of agreed-upon rules and understandings that a family creates to make a safe, comfortable, and positive setting for family communication in a meeting. A family often has one general code of conduct that they adopt for all meetings, and they may also have some agreements about the purpose they add for an individual meeting. Each meeting begins with a discussion of what the ground rules for that meeting are, beginning with the general code the family has drafted.

The family that adopts a code for behavior in a meeting may decide that the rules are important not only in meetings but in their relationships in general. The whole family may agree to strive to adopt these standards for all their communication and behavior together. The code of conduct may become part of their family mission, vision and values, and their family constitution.
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