About the Book:

Here are a few pages from 3 chapters to give you a feel for RADICAL COLLABORATION.

Chapter 2

HEY, BUZZ OFF! . . .

I Am Not Defensive!

Remaining nondefensive is the single most important thing you

can do to increase your effectiveness when working to turn conflict

into collaboration. Defensiveness fans the flames of conflict and divisiveness.

We’re consistently reminded how important an authentic nondefensive presence can be.

BOX 2-1

Maintaining an authentic nondefensive presence is the single most important

thing you can do to increase your effectiveness when working to turn conflict into

collaboration.

The main reason people get into relationship trouble is because

they get defensive. As a judge, Jim rarely had to deal with pure legal

issues. Parties usually ended up in litigation because one or both sides

became fearful and defensive. When people get defensive, their

thinking becomes rigid, and they are lousy problem solvers. Defensiveness

not only impacts their own problem-solving skills, it also

invites everyone else to get defensive, rigid, and ineffectual as well.

When the room is filled with defensive, rigid-thinking, ineffective

problem solvers, the result is disaster!

BOX 2-2

Defensiveness is a poison pill to good relationships. In conflict, defensiveness is

like blood in the water to a shark. A little here, a little there, and in no time the

situation has degenerated into a feeding frenzy.

Defensiveness, ultimately, is not about protecting ourselves from

other people. People get defensive because they don’t want to experience

uncomfortable feelings within themselves. Getting defensive

will temporarily block the feelings that they don’t want to experience.

Psychologist Gary Chapin calls defensiveness “secrets we

unknowingly keep from ourselves.  For example, if we (Ron or Jim)

are leading a workshop or giving a speech and we fear we are not

doing a competent job, that fear can create considerable discomfort.

Instead of letting ourselves feel and explore this discomfort, we may

unconsciously behave in ways that allow us to avoid, dismiss, or

diminish it. This usually involves blaming someone else.

During a workshop, for example, we may start making excuses

about how the participants didn’t really want to be in the workshop

or tell ourselves that they were all required to attend, which explains

why the workshop isn’t going well. Or we may imagine that the audience

just wanted to get away from work for a while to dine out in

some wonderful San Francisco restaurant at the company’s expense.

By behaving this way we may unconsciously create the illusion that

the problems are the fault of others. We thus avoid feeling our own

fear that we are not doing a competent job.

BOX 2-3

Defensiveness is secrets we unknowingly keep from ourselves.

Dr. Gary Chapin

To summarize: We fear that we may not be doing a good job. The

fear causes discomfort that we don’t want to feel. So, we behave in a

way that lets us avoid feeling that discomfort. We get defensive and

blame others in order to protect ourselves from experiencing our own

uncomfortable feelings and thoughts.

BOX 2-4

Defensiveness is always based on a fear.

Defensiveness is always based on a fear. Always, always, always! If

someone is acting like a defensive jerk, it can be helpful to know that

he or she undoubtedly feels threatened or afraid. When people feel

insignificant, incompetent, or unlikable, they may act in ways to

avoid those uncomfortable feelings. They may act out toward others,

become sleepy, intellectualize issues, overeat, flood others with information,

talk too fast, trivialize issues with humor, abuse alcohol or

drugs, or act in dozens of other ways to avoid or suppress their own

discomfort. By exploring skillfully enough and deeply enough, it is

possible to learn more about the underlying unresolved feelings and

fears and take action to reduce them. Being able to create an atmosphere

that reduces other people’s overreactions as well as your own is

a great asset in building collaboration.

BOX 2-5

Defensiveness does not defend us from others. It arises to protect us from

experiencing our own uncomfortable feelings. The prescription for dealing

with your own defensiveness is to let yourself experience those feelings.

Do not avoid them.

The prescription for dealing with your own defensive fears, then,

is to let yourself experience them. Do not avoid or deny them by

moving away from them, but rather move toward them, bringing

them fully into your consciousness and acknowledging them. While

this is counterintuitive, it is the most effective way known to cope

with fears and to reduce defensiveness.

Remember that defenses are biologically based and usually

charged with physical energy in the body, so defensiveness can sometimes

be detected from physiological cues. These may include more

rapid breathing, an increase in pulse rate, feeling too hot, too cold, or

restless. Other individuals might experience the opposite effect, feeling

fatigue or drowsiness, inattention, and poor concentration. There

are diverse ways to avoid experiencing uncomfortable feelings.

Defensiveness is so difficult to deal with because defenses operate

independently of our conscious thinking processes. They are by

nature autonomous and unconscious. People are not consciously

aware that their behavior is a strategy to defend themselves from feeling

some of their own unwanted feelings. If they had that awareness,

they would act differently because unconscious defensive attitudes

and behavior are never in their best interest.

We are not saying, however, that people should never defend

themselves. The world has seen all too clearly that at times defense

from attack is appropriate. This is true at both an international level

and an interpersonal level. Not everyone can be trusted to take each

other’s interests into account. When people legitimately defend

themselves from attack, however, they should do so from a place of

centered self-awareness, rather than from a reality distorted by

unconscious defensive fears.

Another problem with getting defensive is that it provides only

temporary relief. Because defensive behavior occurs as a way to avoid

uncomfortable feelings, it only works as long as the individual is engaging

in distorted thinking. The defense is not dealing with the deeper

problem, that fearful, vulnerable place inside you that may reduce your

effectiveness in dealing with any substantive issue. Rather, your defensive

strategy is trying to hide that vulnerability from your consciousness

in order to avoid discomfort. It will never resolve the underlying anxiety.

The real issues are obscured and the process becomes an exercise in

self-deception, an internal trick people play on themselves. Anyone

doubting the power of self-deception should view a few of the early

rounds of the American Idol television talent search .  . . .

CHAPTER 3

UNHOOKING YOUR BUTTONS

un•hook: to free from a habit or dependency.

Imagine you are in an important meeting. You feel comfortable, well informed,

creative, and collaborative. Suddenly someone across the

table from you says something, and for no apparent reason a strong electrical

shock surges up through the table and right into your body. It

sends such a jolt through your body that you lose your train of thought

and you start sweating. Then, as you start to get angry, you realize that

nobody else at the table seemed to feel this jolt of electricity.

You don’t say anything about it, but just when you start to regain

your composure, someone raises the same subject that caused the earlier

jolt, and sure enough you get another jolt of electricity. Now

you’re not just shocked, you’re really mad. You may even start yelling

at the other people, accusing them of shocking you. Now, of course,

the other people at the table, who have no idea about the jolt of electricity,

are all looking at you as if you were from another planet. They

may not say it out loud, but everyone is probably thinking that you’ve

gone a little crazy and that you are overreacting to what was said.

You don’t feel that you are overreacting, however, because

through their words, ideas, tone of voice, or maybe body language,

someone is shocking your system just as though they had their hand

on a button with your name on it. That person has said or done something

that pushes a tender and vulnerable spot deep inside you. It’s a

spot that can cause you pain or fear or other uncomfortable feelings

whenever it is touched or exposed. It typically also triggers a strong

reaction from you when you are reminded of that spot. This is what

we mean by the phrase getting your button pushed.

One of the tricky things, however, is that you are probably not

even conscious that a button is being pushed or that you are having a

reaction that may seem unreasonable or out of proportion to others.

People are often not aware of their own buttons, so they react unconsciously

and sometimes irrationally when their buttons get pushed.

Getting their buttons pushed makes people horribly ineffective in

relationships or in problem solving.

When their buttons get pushed, people typically get dumber

rather than smarter. By our informal calculations there is about a

twenty-point drop in IQ. Unfortunately this is often accompanied by

an equal but opposite conviction that we have become more perceptive

rather than dumber.

People aren’t getting their buttons pushed every time that they have

a strong emotional reaction to something. Strong reactions can often be

appropriate. What we’re talking about is when a reaction is over the

edge from what is appropriate: when it is an overreaction. Occasionally

a pushed button is reflected by a significant underreaction (i.e., where

the individual froze and did nothing). When looking back on the situation,

the person might ask himself, “Where did that reaction come

from?”

You can be pretty sure that someone pushed your button if, when

describing the incident, you want to end with the sentence “and

therefore they must suffer!” It’s a little like the difference between

Teflon and Velcro. If some annoying action of the other person slips

off you like Teflon, you probably don’t have a button that’s getting

pushed. If, however, the incident sticks in your throat or heart or gut

like Velcro, then you’ve probably got some unresolved fears or pain

that will create a button just waiting to be triggered.

BOX 3-1

The difference between a small annoyance and a “button” is like the difference

between Teflon and Velcro. If it slips off you like Teflon, it’s not a button getting

pushed. If, however, the incident sticks in your throat, heart, or gut like Velcro,

then you’ve probably got some unresolved fears or pain that is a button just waiting

to be triggered.

MANAGING YOUR BUTTONS

There are two main ways to manage your reactive buttons. The first way

is to gain a better understanding about what is going on inside you, to

become more aware of your buttons. Then you realize that the feelings

that accompany them come from a tender spot inside you, a vulnerability

that you carry around with you, rather than from what somebody else just

did to you. Having this awareness is a way to start unhooking your buttons.

The second way to keep from getting your buttons pushed is to try

to get the rest of the world to quit pushing your buttons so that you will

never have to feel those vulnerable spots. Maybe you’ll have more luck

at this method than we have. Our experience is that most of the people

we spend time with are remarkably unwilling to change their

behavior simply to avoid pushing our buttons. So our advice is to put

energy into gaining self-awareness about your buttons, rather than trying

to prevent the rest of the world from pushing those buttons.

Unhooking your buttons refers to unhooking the electrical wires

from a button that you push, for example, a doorbell. It may take the

shape of simply minimizing the intensity of your response when a button

is pushed. It may not be possible to unhook all your buttons. Some deep

wounds or strongly formed reactive spots may never completely go away.

But we can compassionately and firmly take responsibility for them.

This capacity to step back and notice our patterns and automatic tendencies

is critical in becoming a nondefensive problem solver.

BOX 3-2

Two Ways to Manage Your Buttons

1. Gain self-awareness about why you have the button.

2. Try to get the rest of the world to always avoid pushing your buttons.

Guess which method works best!

THREE STEPS TO UNHOOKING YOUR BUTTONS

One of the most effective ways to gain awareness about your buttons is to explore . . . .

CHAPTER 9

BREAKING FREE OF THE PAST

ONE THOUGHT AT A TIME

People’s reality consists of their thoughts passing through their

mind. A series of ideas, invented conversations, blessings, accusations,

and monologues are racing though their mind at warp speed. A

good portion of the time they are not even aware the stories exist.

They play a huge role in how people see life and how they relate to

others. The stories create both a person’s joy and their desperation in

life in general and in relationships in particular.

It is those internal thoughts, those stories, and the interpretations

of those stories that people attach to the external events in their lives

that give meaning to those events and relationships. Two individuals

in the same circumstances can get laid off by their employer at the

same time. One sees it as an opportunity, the other sees it as a disaster.

An event may happen, but it is the story about the event that makes

it positive or negative, safe or scary, joyful or sad. Those stories are

more often than not unconscious and unexamined.

People too often come to believe these stories are true, as though

they were cast in concrete. They appear in their lives like movie

scripts that they are powerless to influence. The scripts seem independent

of what people want to do now. They forget that the stories

are of their own creation.

People learn their stories from their experiences. Individuals are

all a bit like clay, molded by their past. If you grew up in a violent

household, your current stories may tend to portray the world as

unsafe, scary, unpredictable, and violent, even if your current existence

is safe, predictable, and pleasant. If your father was weak and

easily manipulated, your stories may support a belief that men are

weak and must be controlled and manipulated for their own good. If

your mother acted helpless and needed protecting, you may carry that

with you in relationships with women. We invite you to explore your

early histories with the intention of understanding and taking responsibility

for yourselves, not to lay blame, make excuses, or get stuck in

the past.

BOX 9-1

Our reality consists of stories we make up about the events in our lives. It is helpful

to explore these stories to increase our understanding and take responsibility

for ourselves. It is not for the purpose of laying blame, making excuses, or getting

stuck in the past.

People’s greatest teachers of who they are, both positive and negative,

are those individuals who raised them, their parents or other

adults who played a significant role in their childhood. People learn

who they are and what the world is like early in life. The lessons they

learn stay with them and are difficult to unlearn. It is easy and natural

to make the incorrect assumption that people are their past. This is

particularly true when they become fearful and can easily lose perspective

because of their rigid thinking.

The past is impossible to change. It is what it is, good, bad, or

indifferent, and everyone is stuck with his or her past. While people

are greatly influenced by their past, however, they are not inseparable

from it. Their past does not have to determine their present selfidentity.

More importantly, it certainly doesn’t have to determine

their future.

BOX 9-2

We are greatly influenced by our past, but not inseparable from it. The past is

impossible to change, but it doesn’t have to determine our future.

Some people find comfort and security by believing they are powerless

to overcome the past. It saves them from even having to try. It

saves them from having to face the possibility of failure, and from the

unknown. Giving up the known can be frightening. The unknown is

scary, but it can also be freedom. It is the freedom to sculpt one’s own

future; the freedom to become authentic and whole; the freedom to

become the kind of person one wants to be.

Identifying and separating from your negative childhood influ-

ences can bring huge rewards, particularly in relationships with others.

It is not an easy task, however. No new system, process, exercise,

or simple tool can do it for you. They can help, but it is ultimately

your job to create change in your life. You are the CEO of your own

redevelopment project, which will consist of relearning the implications

that your past has on your present and future. This has to be

done one thought at a time, one feeling at a time, and one gut reaction

at a time.

CREATING NEW WAYS OF THINKING

This chapter describes eight tools that our workshop participants use to let go of their

past and reclaim their future.  Their common denominators are . . . .

© 2004 by James W. Tamm.  All rights reserved.