Workshop Methodology

Each workshop begins with a review of your current thinking. What is happening? How does it affect you? Why are things the way they are? How could you make them better?

We could end there and people would probably be satisfied. But we keep going. Even though the next step can get tricky.

We connect to other ways of thinking that take some getting used to. Like riding a bike, new thinking feels awkward at first, without seeming particularly new or effective. Yet with practice, your balance automatically improves.

When our daughter couldn’t ride a bike without training wheels, we got her a scooter. A week later, she was riding her bike. We never taught her a thing.

This is the way we like to teach. Where everything you learn is self-taught. Where what you learn is not a matter of our opinion, but what works best for you under the circumstances.

In our workshops, we invite you to work on real problems, not mere exercises. There are several reasons for this:

• Because you already know the problem, we don’t waste valuable time setting it up.
• Because you chose the problem, it should interest you far more than anything we could invent.
• Because the problem is real, the benefits of working on it will also be real.
• Because the problem has proven difficult for you, the progress you make on it will develop skills you actually need.

Using real problems means that people are often disappointed if, after a couple of hours of workshop, the problems don’t seem to have been solved. Still, they report significant improvement in other areas of their lives. They don’t notice how they are learning to solve their problems, because it feels natural.

When we exclaimed to our daughter that she was actually riding her bike, she said, “Oh, yeah.” And that was it.