Having A Growthful Conversation

A Growthful Conversation

One of the many splendid outcomes of Carol Dweck’s work on Fixed and Growth mindsets is that she provided guidance as to what these are all about and how to shift the perspective.  She points out that a “fixed” mindset is one where intelligence is perceived as fixed and so are other traits or qualities.  The view is you have a certain amount of an attribute and that’s what you have—-there isn’t any good reason to try to grow.  Challenges are avoided in that these may expose a ‘lack of the intelligence’ required. Effort is seen as fruitless. Getting things wrong and receiving feedback reveals limitations or problems that must be avoided.  A “growth” mindset seeks feedback because learning is assumed to be possible and achieved with effort; is patient with discomfort while learning; is more interested in learning than “checking the box”; enjoys complexity, and asks more questions than declares answers.  For sure, as Dweck notes, there are some conditions in which a fixed mindset serves us; on the whole, however, a growth mindset means we learn how to adapt, and find healthy and positive courses of action.

When I reflect on Jung’s declaration that his work on psychological types is on the psychology of the types and not on categories, I sense that he really was a precursor to Dweck’s work on mindset.  I began to wonder how to create an assessment that invited the learner to move into a growth mindset about his or her type processes. This would need to be an assessment that prompts reflection on what is comfortable and what is required.  It needs to be a tool that provides information that invites further questioning about possible areas of stretch and growth.   Listening to my clients over the years gave me some clues  about the elements of the nature of such a tool.

First, people shared with me the challenge that often comes from what feels comfortable and what they must do to successfully or effectively complete their day.  Introverts would share how much Extraversion they have to manage, and at what cost.  Increasingly, the need to explore the energy requirements of dealing with life demands while “owning” what is true of oneself became important.  So it didn’t matter which personality related tool I was using, the issue kept coming up—what is natural and what is demonstrated, and the flexibility to manage the difference.  This conversation is possible given the structure of the Pearman because the learner is asked to explore what is natural and identify what is demonstrated.

Second, people really don’t think in terms of “either/or”.  What is more true is that there may be a “more than” but not a “none of” reality.  An individual may report being more Extraverted than Introverted but the role of introversion matters in significant ways.  I created a tool that honored this reality so that when an individual sees his or her results, they see what they said is more comfortable or more demonstrated than another, AND they see how they feel the other dimensions are accessed and used.  The Pearman gives an indication of not only what a person feels is his or her “more” and the relative role of the other is provided.  For example, you may have indicated a greater use of Extraverted Thinking than other mental processes, but all of the processes are evident in the report.

A few individuals have expressed to me that they fear this could be confusing.  And, it seems to me, that the way a professional interpreter sets up the session really matters.  If you set up the session with the message that you are going to explore the whole system around ways of perceiving and judging more than the parts, and look at both dimensions (such as E and I, S and N, T and F) and the relative use of them, the individual is already in a space to explore the richness of their own personality energies.  Certainly, the individual get’s how he or she scored in Jung’s type dimensions in the most complete sense.  (And if you want to see a script on how to do this, email me: pearman@teamtelligent.com)

Third, a growth mindset invites us to look at how the system works, and with the Pearman Integrator, you are invited to explore how an individual is using the eight functions of Jung’s model of psychological type.  The person gets information on how he or she is comfortable with and uses four avenues of perceiving and four methods of decision making.  Complex and rich, the individual learns about which of the eight functions seems really a big use of psychological energy and which are more moderate.

A number of type enthusiasts have worried that the opportunity to explore dominant and auxiliary as it has been conceptualized and popularized in the last several decades may be lost.  In fact, you can discern the same “rules” of sorting dominant and auxiliary with an additional exploration of what is truly a persistent pattern of what is relied on in the extraverted and introverted worlds of the individual. A professional deeply steeped in this framing can do the same with the Pearman. But just how important is this and to whom?  Who is really served by being totally reliant on a fixed system of organizing type information and being deterministic about it?

What seems clear to me is that the way an individual uses his or her mental resources varies greatly and within the integrity of his or her own psychology, and a very growthful conversation is possible about the psychology of his or her type resources and how these can be productively used in dealing with life challenges.  The Pearman provides all of the data and a comprehensive picture of how the individual sees his or her mental resources.

The connecting tissue throughout each type’s growthfulness is the degree of flexibility an individual utilizes.  Being flexible between what is natural and required, across the mental functions (moving from Extraverted Feeling to Extraverted Intuiting as an example), and flexible within the use of a mental function (very simple to complex use of a process) are examples of the power of flexing.  The Pearman gives five dimensions of flexibility and specific suggestions on what can be done to enhance flexibility for all of the ways it can  help an individual.

I have suggested in other blog entries that Jung’s notations about the subject-object relations evident within each of the eight mental functional types (e.g. Extraverted Thinking, Introverted Sensing, etc) was a key focus of his inquiry.  The psychology of the types was to understand just how powerful these mental processes were in controlling focus, attention, choices, and actions.  Our task is to learn how these processes can be used with greater intention and clarity in our daily lives.  And it seems to me that Dweck’s call to a growth mindset carries a similar challenge: being open to yourself, accessing your natural capabilities, and learning to be a verb! 

Read more at https://tap.mhs.com/Pearman.aspx