Creating The Conditions For Agency With Notes Updated 2011
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This presentation was peer reviewed and accepted by the British Psychology Society in 2010 for the special symposium on unemployment.
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Creating The Conditions For Agency With Notes Updated 2011
- 1. Creating the Conditions for Agency Nancy Doyle C. Psychol Training Attention Ltd
- 4. The Drama Triangle www.trainingattention.co.uk
- 6. … in practice www.trainingattention.co.uk
- 8. … in practice www.trainingattention.co.uk
- 10. … in practice www.trainingattention.co.uk
- 11. A Calmer Triangle www.trainingattention.co.uk
Editor's Notes
- Training Attention Ltd were commissioned to design a short motivational courses for people who were long term unemployed. By long term unemployed I mean over 25s who had been unemployed for over 18 months OR 18-24’s who had been unemployed for 6 months plus. We used the Drama Triangle, a model from the field of Transactional Analysis, to analyse our own responses to unemployment, the group and individual clients. We were interested in the wider system, or structure in which the unemployed person was operating. Also, how would we feel as recipients of the service we were offering? If someone wanted us to change our behaviour, what would we need from a course? We wanted to find a group work technique that allowed us to maintain a position of fellow group member rather than expert. We chose Clean Language, an interviewing technique based on using open questions, to get people to reflect on their own experience. Asking open questions forces you to be curious about their actual answers rather than saying what you already think. This helped prevent us from getting sucked into the drama of trying to manipulate others. We evaluated courses between 2004 and 2008 and found that overall we had a job outcome rate of 70%
- In this short presentation I will first talk you through the Drama Triangle as the underpinning theory of our efforts. I will then explain how we adopted group work into a job focused group course, how the courses worked and how they fit into a wider organisational and community context. I will share with you the results of the evaluation we undertook over 5 years and discuss some of the wider implications.
- The Drama Triangle*, proposed by Stephen Karpman, explores 3 prototype roles that we can assume when we are not getting what we want; Persecutor, Victim, Rescuer. When working with people who are long term unemployed we often hears phrases that fall into the victim category “I can’t find work” “I was supposed to go for an interview last week but I didn’t have the bus fare / my advisor gave me the wrong address” “there’s no point trying”. In terms of Career Management theory, clients often perceive their worklessness to be a result of the structure in which they are operating, rather than something over which they have control, or ‘agency’. Regardless of how much an individual’s career is actually within their control, we were struck by the thought that a feeling of helplessness is rarely useful for someone who wants to improve their situation. We looked at how the welfare to work system could reinforce those beliefs and inadvertently help someone stay ‘stuck’ or powerless to change. Employment Advisors with the best intentions could fall into the rescuer role very easily – taking over and assuming they know best. We could also get cross and blame the client for not doing enough. Additionally, there is the very ‘stick’ approach of Job Centre Plus rules, which stipulate that you must do x y or z or you stop getting your benefits combines with the ‘carrot’ approach of PSL agencies who offer rewards such as clothes and cash. Stick and carrot can be interpreted as persecutor and rescuer. This combination leaves no room for the individual to take a position other than victim, from whence it is difficult to regain a sense of autonomy. In order to provide the conditions for clients to move on from feeling like victims, we needed to stop persecuting or rescuing them.
- In Clean Language, the facilitator’s job is to ask simple, open questions which make minimal inferences about the response and direct the clients attention to their patterns of thought, language and behaviour. The creates the context for reflection and change. We simplified this coaching technique so that the group could start to do it with each other and we facilitated them to apply it to interview skills, personal communication, CV writing, goal setting and more.
- For example, we didn’t set group rules. On the first day when people arrived we let people come in late, sit where they liked, some still with coats on, some talking on mobiles, some talking to each other, eating or drinking. We waited until we had enough rapport with the majority of people in the room and then started to de-brief what was happening. We asked them for feedback on what was working for them and not working for them. We start training them to separate their inferences from what actually happened. When they said things like ‘I think he’s really rude’ we asked them “what did you see and hear which let you know he was rude”. For example the person may have been talking on their mobile phone. We discussed different behaviours and values and how our impact on others affects job searching. We made sure that our own preferences about politeness were not dominant but that the group created a norm which was relevant to all. In the 8 years that I have been in this work, I am constantly surprised by how many job interviews and initial work placements fail because young people don’t know how to behave politely in groups of older people. Simple, basic levels of communication such as posture, eye contact, language which I assumed they knew but chose not to use were in fact a major learning experience for lots of clients in the NEET category. Rather than telling the group this from a position of expertise, the above example shows how we demonstrated it with live, in the moment learning. Learning from social role modelling in this way is closer to our natural, organic learning processes as humans and more likely to produce sustainable behavioural change.
- Our role then, as facilitators employing ‘Clean’ principles to group work, was to create the conditions for the group to share what knowledge they had and create a peer coaching network in which solutions could emerge. We deliberately used two facilitators so that when either one of us gave opinions and passed judgement the other could step in and bring in other opinions.
- In any one day participants were getting deeply personal feedback from at least 6 different sources. People who really needed to hear striking information about their conduct, personal hygiene, or attitude heard it over and over in different ways until it began to sink in. And, because this didn’t come from an authority figure it was less likely to be perceived as persecuting. Again, we created the conditions for organic, social learning rather than formal information exchange. We kept the group happy and safe so that this level of feedback was a joy and could be delivered with humour. It was imperative to include ourselves so that we role modelled receiving feedback as well as giving it.
- We considered the organisation that we were supporting with the same degree of respect that we held for the group and the clients. We also wanted to make sure that the environment we were returning our participants to would not undermine our efforts by rescuing or persecuting them.
- This meant that advisors were giving and receiving feedback as part of the group. This undermined any position of expert that they may have been previously holding and was a hard learning exercise for many. How could they still retain their ‘control’ over the clients while submitted themselves to exercises on their future goals and talking ‘on a level’? For the majority of the advisors on our courses, this enabled them to see participants as equals rather than targets. This brought a new level of rapport which prevents some people from ‘rebelling’ against their advisor / the system.
- We routinely had people out working before the end of the course. Most people managed to find their own interviews. All participants were clearer about what they wanted to do, could do and how to make effective use of the welfare to work advisory service.
- Overall, we had a 90% retention rate on Skills4Success. By this we mean that 90% of people who started the course also completed it. We think our results speak for themselves and would like to make it clear that we used diverse groups. Each group contained some NEETs, people with criminal records, substance abuse problems, redundancy, women returners, ESOL needs. By combining the groups we prevented them from getting into a ‘group think’ with each other – i.e. Believing that it was true that they couldn’t find work due to their age, history, ESOL etc. People from ‘outside’ their category challenged their assumptions which meant WE didn’t have to and therefore THEY didn’t gang up to rebel against the assertion.
- From 2004 to 2007 we looked at 6 specific courses, which we compared to a control group of clients who received 1:1 advisory services only. As well as getting job outcomes the agency in this case were also sending clients on part time college courses. Therefore we also looked at how many of our participants completed their courses. We were astonished by the results. However, when we undertook the study in 2007 we had to follow up participants by phone, up to three years after the event. The response rate was low and potentially biased towards those who had found work and completed college.
- To correct the potential bias from the initial evaluation we constructed a feedback system which allowed us to track 100% of clients. In 2008-2009 we evaluated a further 4 courses by interviewing after 4 weeks, 8 weeks and 6 months to get a more in depth view of the individual client’s progress after the course. In between 4 weeks and 6 months we only had one person drop out of work. We think this is a phenomenal statistic. In some organisations we’ve worked with a sustainability rate of 50% is desirable. The longitudinal data show the way our clients make progress. Some of them are starting from a place which is far from job ready. Rather than jump into the next possible job, which will FAIL because they have not resolved their homelessness, their real ambitions, their child care needs, their communication problems, they work steadily and plan with their advisor.
- Hufrish did not get a job straight away but she DID regain agency over her career. Hufrish got a lot of feedback from group members who did not have her advantages and asked “with all your qualifications, why are you going for work in retail”? She realised how much she had going for her compared to others and resolved to make use of them. She is unlikely to be unemployed again. Our follow up interviews tell us that this was a common experience, and that people viewed the job search process differently as a result of the course. They knew how to undertake it themselves and were confident to do so. Not all our clients had this kind of hidden gem in their career history. Many of our clients had never worked, and some had to make over 150 cold calls to get one work trial. But they worked together and didn’t give up. When asked to rate clients for ‘job readiness’ on a scale of 1 – 10, advisors reported an average shift of 5 points from before the course and after the course. Advisors’ qualitative feedback was that clients came back motivated to look for work.
- What we absolutely didn’t want, was to create a course which gave people hope when there wasn’t any. Our qualitative feedback suggests that past participants who were NOT working at the 8 week follow up point had a crisis of confidence. A highly skilled, non-rescuing, non-persecuting advisor was critical at this stage. We also could run check in sessions for people still out of work at the 8 week point. There are still forces at play which maintain some clients in a bind of worklessness. These include the current recession, changing labour markets, rent, childcare and a capitalist system which requires flexibility in the workforce. The individual IS responsible for their unemployment AND powerless at the same time. This is the paradox of the drama triangle analysis and many clients we talk to know this – they might not use our words but the concepts reflect their daily life. Many clients are happy to talk to people who recognise the complexity in their experience and refrain from jumping on the drama triangle with them.
- We must point out that we have only ever worked in addition to a 1:1 service, with dedicated advisors who were, by the end of our stay, working very hard to stay off the triangle! Our experience as advisors and as group facilitators is that moving people out of drama can be done in a 1;1 setting but there is something very powerful about the dynamic in a 1:1 interaction which is very hard to overcome. The advisor has to work hard to assert no authority whilst maintaining progress. We found that by using the power of the group the individual gained their sense of agency quicker and with more joy. Also, we must note that we were working with the hardest to help, who are, by nature, more likely to be rebellious and opposed to being told what to do, so our approach of asking open questions was more likely to gain their trust and calm their hackles. A person in the hardest to help category is also more likely to be someone who is stuck in a perpetual cycle of being a victim, and is unlikely to come out of that if they are rescued. As such, our approach is consistent with the personal change outcomes that our clients need to achieve if they wish to gain control or agency over their careers.
- We were struck by how many advisors believed it was their job to motivate, control, persuade and bully their clients. Their jobs depended on manipulating the outcomes of others towards what they thought they could do easily rather than what suited them long term. Long term incentives can still reward drama triangle behaviour, just over a longer time period. The most important question is whether clients fall back into the system or whether they develop the agency and the ability to find their own work in the future. Many advisors fall into the role of rescuer and aren’t aware of how disempowering this could be for their clients or how it was likely to create work stress and burnout for them. Some advisors were well aware of this but found it difficult to deal with some clients, who were so habituated into the role of victim that their constant requests for rescuing were draining resources. We include ourselves in falling prey to these traps and think that our continual processes of feedback, dissecting and working in diverse pairs give us have developed our rigor in overcoming the Drama. We were also concerned with how little training there was for group work in the Welfare to Work field; how little knowledge there was of group processes, the advantages of peer coaching and action learning sets, for example.
- What next? We’re interested in how to make the Skills4Success course and its facilitation style just ‘part of the way we do things around here’, rather than another outside intervention delivered by external consultants. We have some experience of training past participants to become facilitators The benefits of developing a sense of agency are not limited to career aspirations but also contribute to effective parenting, academic achievement, crime prevention and more. We believe that by training past participants to use the group facilitation techniques we describe we can empower them to mentor their communities. We want to offer them formal, nationally accredited qualification through the ILM as they learn so that they develop a sustainable career path through their efforts. We hope they will evolve their courses around outcomes that we could not even conceive of.