A Friday afternoon creative session with my 5-year-old, Gus, launched a breakthrough for me this weekend.
Rest and play are vital to our health. Sometimes they’re the whole point. And other times, they precipitate new learning.
Gus and I were playing with a drawing-based facilitation exercise, the Liberating Structures LS-in-development called “Tiny Demons,” which Jeremy Akers guided me through earlier this year.
That Friday session with Gus loosened the connections in my brain, priming me for a Saturday morning Clean Language coaching trade with practice partners and fellow students of Marian Way, Cristina and Mick (Marian, do you know if they’re on LinkedIn?).
Which led to a torrent of inspiration and reworked ideas for how I help leaders and teams realize change, based on a simple metaphor (that’s me in full hyperfocus mode in the crooked, fuzzy photo, also taken by 5-year-old Gus).
I’ve been after this metaphor ever since Blair Enns wrote about it a few weeks ago, but felt stuck to find the right metaphor to go with my perspective of human change, which goes like this:
INQUIRE ➡️ REFRAME ➡️ TRANSFORM ➡️
In a continuous circling process ♻️
After which I shared draft 11 of the metaphor with my brilliant friend and past client Genevieve Walsh. But as I tried to explain it, I knew the metaphor wasn’t there yet.
Then right after turning off the light last night, it descended on me. It turns out I’ve been using it for years.
🗺️ 🏔️🪻
The cycle of human change
Inquire: Map the territory. Find the edges. Sometimes fall off. Keep exploring. ➡️
Reframe: Climb to a new location to gain a different perspective for your situation. Consider how this changes your mindset, actions or message. ➡️
Transform: Observe changes as they emerge. Take a small step toward the ones you want but that aren’t occurring without a nudge. Then another. ➡️
Then inquire again.
Go try it!
Or call me up, and we’ll do it together!
🦄👹🧞♀️🧞🧞♂️
p.s. If you wanna play with Tiny Demons with kids, Gus and I included instructions (which Gus calls “constructions”) and some of the stuff we learned in the fourth photo. Also, he renamed it Scribble Creatures and Wonderous Things.
