....and dysfunction.
Qualities: Each
person is much appreciated by the others for their personal qualities and skills --
although each has very strong reservations about the limitations and blindspots associated
with
these skills Interpersonal skills: Each person favours, and uses very skilfully, a different
interpersonal style -- which others appreciate in many situations but find totally inappropriate in
others
Conflict avoidance: Each person has
particular skills for avoiding overt conflict or engaging in
ways they do not personally favour -- effectively undermining consensus on collective action or
discussion of these issues
Vision: Each person has particularly
valuable insights into the way forward and a vision of a
desirable future -- but is effectively blind or indifferent to the insight and vision of others
Articulation: Each person has unusual
skills in articulating the way forward and its associated
opportunities -- but has limited capacity to appreciate the articulation of others, notably
because of failure by their proponents to acknowledge the limitations of such alternative
articulations
Management challenge: Each person
has valuable insight into the opportunities and constraints
of the collective working environment -- but assumes this is sufficiently comprehensive to
ensure the sustainability of that environment, effectively denying the relevance of other insights
Working style: Each person has a
significantly different understanding and preference for
working style -- and is either insensitive to, or suspicious of, the style favoured by others
Use of others: Each person has an
idea of how the skills of the others should be most
effectively used -- and creates resistance and resentment when endeavouring to manoeuvre
them into a mode they find inappropriate
Acknowledgement: Each person acknowledges
some qualities and contributions of others to
them and to third parties -- but fails to recognize the contributions for which the others would
value being acknowledged
Learning: Each person perceives themselves
to be willing to learn from the collective working
challenge and from the group situation -- but fails to recognize what others would value that
they learn to ensure the sustainability of the collective intiative
Attentiveness: Each person perceives
themselves as very attentive to the views of others, which
they assume that they have adequately understood -- except that on vital matters such
understanding is perceived by the other as an irritatingly incomplete caricature of that for which
they stand
Enthusiasms: Each person is nourished
and motivated by particular and somewhat
unconventional enthusiasms -- which the behaviour of others tends to erode and undermine
Difficult decisions: Each person
is reasonably courageous, if not skilled, in taking difficult
decisions -- but each also has well used skills for channelling conflicting perspectives and
demands for uncomfortable behaviours into unconscious mechanisms which undermine their
efforts to achieve their own goals.
Consistent with the above pattern,
a statement such as this is both part of the solution
-- as well as exacerbating
part of the problem
1. Constraints
