Tag: Correcting

Children, Life, Psychology

Groundhog Day


A simple but profound insight from both the Arbinger Institute and Chris Croft; time is much better spent making things go well in the first place, than trying to correct them when they’ve gone wrong.

Simply said. Harder done. But when the same thing keeps on going wrong, every single day, it’s well worth investing some time and thought on how to make it go better.

One such transformation has been wrought in my lovely son. No more confusion and cross words of a morning; he now falls out of bed straight into his clothes. 

And better still on weekdays, he arrives at the breakfast table to his homework which he now silently and efficiently cracks on with! Less than two months ago you would not have thought it possible.

By simply laying the right things out the night before, everything goes better – for everyone. So much so that on the one occasion the other week that I was out, he laid out his own school clothes for the morning. Unbelievable.

All the upset, anger, shouting, door slamming and plain old misery of the years of everyone trying and failing to ‘correct’ everyone else… Gone. 

No more Groundhog Day! 

Life, Psychology, Work

Peace in our times


‘The Anatomy of Peace’ sounds a heavy read; and the fact it comes from the cultlike-sounding  ‘Arbinger Institute’ put me a little on edge… But I’d promised someone I’d buy it, so I did.

In essence it’s a simple thesis: 

1) We all spend far more of our time tackling things that are going wrong, than doing things to make them go better.

2) When people: co-workers, children, family members etc, resist our attempts to correct them, we combine increased coerciveness with talking them down – first in our heads, then increasingly out loud.

3) Once we start to coerce people and start talking them down, three things happen: 

a) they resist us all the more;

b) we demonise them in our minds and with other people to justify ourselves and our actions;

c) we increase our attempts to coerce them and talk them down further.

This focus on correcting, and the cycle of attempted coercion, self-justification, resistance, demonising and a hardening heart is everywhere, all around and at all levels – all the way up to nation states.

Heavy stuff.

What to do? There’s plenty that’s common-sense: listen more, build enabling relationships etc. But it all starts with the heart and stopping yourself getting into – and learning how to get out of – the downward cycle of correcting, coercing, hot and cold conflict and going to interpersonal war. 

I’ve tackled three difficult work situations with these new techniques this week; pitched battles, either in full-blown standoff or seething with cold professional anger. 

Tricky stuff. But acknowledging people as just that: flawed, frightened, angry and frequently frustrating; but first and foremost people, is the trick to developing a ‘heart at peace’ in the Arbinger jargon. 

And who doesn’t want a workplace, a home and a heart at peace?