The Patterns of Behavior Now human beings being human tend to react in patterns and to be governed by patterns of behavior. And once you’ve started a pattern of behavior they tend to follow it. You don’t realize how very rigidly patterned all of us really are. In Fort Benning, Georgia I was there training the advanced marksmanship team for the events of the rifle team in the International Shoot. And I was dining in the mess hall with two lieutenants and several people came in and I watched one girl pick up her tray and look around the mess room for a suitable table. She walked past several tables where there were the possibility of her sitting down . . . and she sat down at a table where she could sit on the west side of it. I told the lieutenants, “That girl is an only child.” They said, “How do you know?” “I’ll tell you after you verify the fact.” They went out, asked her if she were an only child . . . and she said, “yes”. She wanted to know why? They said, “That doctor over there said you were.” “Who is he?” They gave her my name. “I never heard of him.” Came back . . . how did I know she was an only child? She was looking around the restaurant looking for a table where she could sit down and she had to find a table where the west side of the table was available. So at home papa sat here, mama sat here, she had to sit here. People have many patterns in their behavior—don’t try to formulate what those patterns are. Wait and see how they disclose themselves.
Category: Other
Many years ago, when I was teaching English at a high school in Japan, there was one particular class of students that I really disliked teaching. I really enjoyed most classes at the school, but every time, I went into the room to teach that group, my mood used to fall because I really felt that I wasn’t reaching the students at all.
So every day before I stepped into that classroom, I stopped outside the door and tried really hard to get into a good state so that I could still do a good class for the students. Still, at the end of the year I felt disappointed.
About 8 years later, I was playing guitar with a band in a Irish pub when a young woman walked in. She saw me on stage and I knew immediately from her face that she knew me. I also recognized her, but I couldn’t remember how I knew her.
At the break between sets, she came up and said to me, “Do you remember me, I was in your class 8 years ago?”
At first I didn’t remember, and then it all came flooding back. Oh yes, I remembered that whole class very well, but all for the wrong reasons. “Yes, I remember you and your class. How are you doing now?”
She answered me in excellent English, which is quite unusual in Japan. “I became so interested in English in your class that I continued to study myself, and when I decided to study nursing, I applied to a school in the United States and have studied there for the last year.”
Wow! That was not what I had expected, and I said to her:
“Really, I remember your class, and no-one seemed interested in English. I’m delighted to hear that you became interested.”
She smiled and said, “oh yes, there were a couple of noisy students in that class, but the rest of us could see how hard you were trying, and that was really good.”
I realized that we just never know what the long-term effect of our actions can be, so it is good to always be there for the people that we communicate with.
“I can’t believe that!”, said Alice.
“Can’t you?”, the Queen said in a pitying tone. “Try again – draw a long breath and shut your eyes.”
Alice laughed, “There’s no use trying,” she said: “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes, I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
Chapter 1
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost … I am helpless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.
Chapter 2
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in the same place.
But it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.
Chapter 3
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in … it’s a habit.
My eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.
Chapter 4
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.
Chapter 5
I walk down another street.
Young couple living in Beverly Hills raising a young son. Want him to know that they don’t live like many other families do. (Want to teach
him to understand about poverty.) Driving across the country, stop at a restaurant in a poor town. Converse with family at next table –
they invite the B.H. family over. Son goes to play with the kids, goes swimming in the river. Later, time to leave. Parents ask their son, ‘What did you learn today?” “Mom, dad, we have trees and shrubs around our back yard… they have the whole horizon. We have a swimming pool, they have a river. We have the lights at night, they have the stars. Thank you for teaching me how poor we are.”
A woman in one of our seminars recounted the following excellent example of establishing rapport and a therapeutic relationship by matching a person’s content and cultural world models: She was staying with friends when one evening the friend’s little boy came running out of his room because there were “monsters in my room”. His parents told him that there was no such thing as monsters and compelled him to return—crying—to his room. The next day the boy overcame a great deal of embarrassment and fear to ask the visitor if she thought there were such things as monsters. She became serious and replied that CERTAINLY there were monsters, but that they were afraid of bed covers and of milk. He was visibly relieved to hear this and reported the following morning that there had been monsters in his room that previous night but that he had pulled the covers over his head, and when he poked his head out a minute later the monsters had vanished! This is an excellent example of mirroring an individual’s cultural model to create rapport, and then utilizing that cultural model to make the appropriate changes. The parent’s pontifications about “reality” did nothing to change the boy’s reality, serving only to begin him questioning either his parent’s judgement or his own. Whether disrespectful of the boy’s culture, for among children it is a well known fact that monsters are possible, if not prevalent
An old man lived a quiet simple life until one day his village was taken over by Nazi occupation forces. A storm trooper dragged him into the street and said, “From now on, you will let me live in your house, and every day you will serve my meals, make my bed, and shine my boots. Otherwise I will kill you. Will you do as you’re told?” The old man did not answer.
For two years he served meals, shined shoes, made beds and obeyed every order with one exception – he would not say a word.
Then one day the allied armies liberated the village. As they dragged the soldier from the cottage, the old man took a deep breath and finally answered the question: “No!”
The following story/parable outlines some potential parameters of a new paradigm for leadership and management. Anthropologist Gregory Bateson spent a number of years studying the communication patterns of dolphins and porpoises. He reports that, in order to supplement their scientific studies, the research center he was involved with often put on shows for live audiences using these animal sometimes as often as three times a day. The researchers decided to demonstrate to the audience the process of how they train a porpoises to do a trick. A porpoise would be led from a holding tank into the performing tank in front of the audience. The trainer would wait until the porpoise performed some conspicuous behavior (conspicuous to humans, that is) – say, lifting its head out of the water in a certain way. The trainer would then blow a whistle and give the porpoise a fish. The trainer would then wait until the porpoise eventually repeated the behavior, blow the whistle again and give it a fish. Soon the porpoise had learned what to do to get the fish and lifted its head quite often, providing a successful demonstration of its ability to learn.
A couple of hours later, however, the porpoise was brought back to the exhibition tank for a second show. Naturally, it began lifting its head out of the water as it did in the first show, and waited for the expected whistle and fish. The trainer, however, didn’t want the porpoise to do the same old trick, but to demonstrate to the audience how the porpoise learns a new one. After spending roughly two-thirds of the show repeating the old trick over and aver, the porpoise finally became frustrated and flipped its tail at the trainer in disgust. The trainer immediately blew the whistle and threw a fish into the tank. The surprised and somewhat confused porpoise cautiously flipped its tail again, and again got the whistle and the fish. Soon it was merrily flipping its tail, successfully demonstrating again its ability to learn and was returned to its home tank.
At the third session, after being led to the exhibition tank, the porpoise began dutifully flipping its tail as it had learned in the previous section. However, since the trainer wanted it to learn something new, it was not rewarded. Once more, for roughly two thirds of the training session the porpoise continually repeated the head lift and tail flip with growing frustration, until finally, out of exasperation, it did something different, such as spinning itself around. The trainer immediately blew the whistle and gave the porpoise a fish. Alter some time it successfully learned to spin itself for the audience and was led back to its home tank.
For fourteen straight shows the porpoise repeated this pattern – the first two thirds of the show was spent in futile repetitions of the behavior that had been reinforced in the previous shows until, seemingly by “accident”, it engaged in a new piece of conspicuous behavior and was able to complete the training demonstration successfully.
With each show, however, the porpoise became increasingly disturbed and frustrated at being “wrong” and the trainer found it necessary to break the rules of the training context and periodically give the porpoise “unearned fish” in order to preserve his or her relationship with the porpoise. If the porpoise became too frustrated with the trainer it would refuse to cooperate at all with him or her, which would create a severe setback to the research as well as to the shows.
Finally, in between the fourteenth and fifteenth session, the porpoise would seem to become almost wild with excitement, as if it had suddenly discovered a gold mine. And when it was led into the exhibition tank for the fifteenth show it put on an elaborate performance including many completely original behaving. One animal even exhibited eight behaviors, which had never before been observed in it’s species.
A friend of mine, Sally, works at big school where there are many teachers. She likes to walk along the corridor of the school and look through the little windows of the classroom doors to see what other teachers are doing in their classrooms.
One day, she was walking along the corridor and she looked into one of the classrooms and saw John. John was standing at the front of the class teaching. He was gesturing and talking and turning to write on the blackboard, and it looked like a very dynamic class.
Sally looked a little further into the classroom and got a big surprise. There were no students sitting in the classroom at all. In fact, it appeared that John was teaching to a completely empty room.
Naturally, Sally felt a little worried about John and wondered if he was okay. So she gently knocked on the door of the classroom. John looked around with a surprised look on his face and came to the door.
“Excuse me, John”, said Sally. “Do you have a minute?”
“Sally, I’m teaching now – please don’t disturb me. We can talk later.”
“But John, there are no students.”
John looked surprised and said, “well that’s got nothing to do with me. I am paid to teach and so I teach.”
Sally knows her head but didn’t really understand. In Sally’s mind, teaching involved students actually learning. For John, teaching obviously meant something else.
Of Water and the Spirit – Slowly Becoming
Grandfather’s respect and love for children was Universal in the tribe… To the Dagara, children are the most important members of society, the community’s most important treasures… This love and and treasured importance is where the saying it take a whole tribe to raise a child…
Grandfather had been my confident interlocutor for as long as I can remember… There is a close relationship betweens Grandfathers and grandchildren… The first few years of a boy’s life are usually spent, not with his father, but with his grandfather… What the grandfather and grandson share — that the father cannot — is their close proximity to the cosmos… The grandfather will soon return to where the grandson came from, so therefore the grandson is bearer of news the grandfather wants… The grandfather will do anything to make the grandson communicate the news of the ancestors before the child forgets,as inevitably happens… My grandfather obtained this news through hypnosis, putting me to sleep in order to question me…
Grandfather knew how to talk with the void, or rather to some unseen audience of spirits… Among the Dagara, the older you get the more you begin to notice spirits and ancestors everywhere… When you hear a person speaking out loud, alone, you don’t talk to them because he or she may be discussing an important issue with a spirit or an ancestor… This rule applies more to holy elders than to adults in general. When I was with Grandfather, I felt as if there were more people around then could be accounted for… When he knew I was not following his stories, he used to redirect his speech to these invisible beings. he never seemed bothered by my not listening…
– Of water and the Spirit
– Malidoma Patrice Some