More Intersections
Frans Johansson writes extensively about how to forge Intersections in ourselves and in our organizations. He offers many suggestions in his original book, The Medici Effect (2004), and his more recent books (Johansson, 2006, 2012). I will identify only a few of the strategies offered by Johansson in his first book and suggest that the reader turn to his abundant toolkits for more ideas. Johansson first suggests that we expose ourselves to a range of cultures. This is certainly possible in our Cosmopolitan world and with a coach’s encouragement this can also be part of the agenda for a client when considering ways to expand the number and diversity of Intersections in their life: travel, reading, or lingering around the less-often visited neighborhoods in our “flat”, interlocking world (Freidman, 2006).
Second, Johansson suggests that we learn to learn differently. While he doesn’t mention the work of David Kolb (1984), I imagine that Johansson would be in full support of Kolb’s description of differing learning strategies and Kolb’s recommendation that we learn how to learn using each of these strategies: (1) concrete experience (learning by going out into the world and experiencing it directly), (2) reflective observation (learning by watching how other people engage their world and reflecting on one’s own experience of the world), (3) abstract conceptualization (building a conceptual model of the world into which to place, categorize, and interrelate various experiences) and (4) active experimentation (directly engaging the world through specific actions that yield feedback for use in further modification of the action). Intersections are likely to be more often encountered with the use of this diverse set of learning strategies. A coach or consultant can not only encourage this diversity—she can also emulate this diversity through the different ways in which she engages with her client in his own work as a coaching client.
The third Intersection strategy suggested by Johansson is the reversal of assumptions—which seems to be akin to Rorty’s contingency. A coach can be particularly helpful in facilitating this reversal. As Argyris and Schön (1974) and their very successful protégé, Peter Senge (1990) have noted, we move through the world with many untested assumptions (what they identify as the “left column”) which profoundly influence the way in which we interact with other people (and Johansson would add, the way in which we interact with ideas).
With my colleague, Agnes Mura, I have written about the use of coaching techniques that surface and test these assumptions. (Bergquist and Mura, 2011) Our description of “decisional-coaching” is particularly appropriate, though Johansson moves further than we do in encouraging not only surfacing and testing the accuracy of assumptions, but also reversing these assumptions. Mura and I identified a similar strategy (the “absurd suggestion”) in describing the Argyris and Schön-derived coaching strategy called “advocacy-inviting-inquiry”. (Bergquist and Mura, 2011, p. 283)
Fourth, Johansson invites us to try on different perspectives. This means viewing a specific issue from several different angles. This seems to be even more closely aligned with Rorty’s contingency. Many years ago, I worked with a woman who taught drawing at a Chicago-area university. She would invite her students to sit in a circle, surrounding a still-life (fruit, several goblets and a ceramic bowl). She would have them draw what they saw and once they had done so, would have them compare their own drawing with those drawn by the other students. Not only would differing drawing styles (and skills) be on display, but also different perspectives on the still life.
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