January 24th, 2010 at 11:00 am

Greetings!

Nice perspective and insight into how you have utilised the learning experience. if appropriate I might add a couple of other comments borne out of my experience which inquirers might find useful and an incentive to experience for themselves.

Firstly the provocation aspect is perhaps a bit of a red herring …provocation for me evoked images of someone shouting aggressive threatening and intimidating lacking in sensitivity and compassion. When the discovery was the provocation equates to 100% commitment on the part of the change agent in doing whatever it takes to assist the client achieve the outcome they have commited to with energy heart diligence compassion and integrity.

As to when I use such an approach – I concur with your view that once you have encountered the provocative approach aspects of it have assimilated and become an integral part of who I am and therefore at times spontaneously and quite naturally appear when I work with people. Rather than having it as a totally different tool set which is brought out on special ocassions for particularly difficult jobs I find it sits quite readily as an essential part of a bigger toolkit in a huge personal workshop in which I utilise all sorts of tools gathered from various trainings and encounters with genius in various guises using hammers chisels saws, sandpaper nails glue screws plane varnish and the like to produce a great finished piece of comissioned work.

How do you know when to use what tool for what job? Constant callibration as no two people are the same and even if presenting with the same issue will likely require totally different approaches to get the result.

As to the “What if it goes wrong?” question. The piece Jorgen taught on the power of negative preparation in planning what could go wrong internally and externally together with how to use this to produce a better performance has been a wonderful release for me from the tyranny of the fear of failure and I have happily swapped the need for predictability for a willingness to utilise any experiences and learn.

Also a personal reflection on suddenly finding myself on the “receiving end” of Jorgens provocative approach – I had hallucinated quite mistakenly what it might have felt like for some of the characters he describes in his book and finding myself there I was very suprised to find that at no point did it feel invasive aggressive or threatening. I found it utterly confusing, was knocked completely off balance and most definitely out of my comfort zone and yet it felt secure and indeed highly amusing. The lasting results were absolutely worth it.

hope this is helpful

Jill

March 12th, 2010 at 7:56 pm

Your blog keeps getting better and better! Your older articles are not as good as newer ones you have a lot more creativity and originality now. Keep it up!
And according to this article, I totally agree with your opinion, but only this time!