Understand to Be Understood: By Using the Process Communication Model

COPYRIGHT © 2016 BY GERARD COLLIGNON, PASCAL LEGRAND.

FOR THE ENGLISH EDITION

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Original title: Gérard Collignon, Pascal Legrand :

Coacher avec la Process Communication

Foreword by Taibi Kahler, InterEditions, Paris, 2010 © InterEditions-Dunod, 2010 All rights reserved.

Translated from the French by Kathleen Flanagan

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 10/20/2016

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CONTENTS

Foreword

Introduction

Using Process Communication in coaching

Helping relationship or rescue?

PART 1

PROCESS COMMUNICATION

1. The Process Communication Model®

Taibi Kahler

Key ideas in PCM

A model for self-knowledge, awareness and management

What the model says and doesn’t say

What the model does and doesn’t do

2. Life Positions and Communication

Life positions and communication / miscommunication

The -/- life position – Peter’s story

Positions and coaching

3. The Six Personality Types

Personality Structure: A Six-Story Condominium

The Harmonizer

The Harmonizer personality type

A coaching example:

The Harmonizer profile

Coach’s supportive attitude

The Thinker

The Thinker personality type

The Thinker profile

Coach’s supportive attitude

The Persister

The Persister personality type

The Persister profile

Coach’s supportive attitude

The Imaginer

The Imaginer personality type

The Imaginer profile

Coach’s supportive attitude

The Promoter

The Promoter personality type

The Promoter profile

Coach’s supportive attitude

The Rebel

The Rebel personality type

The Rebel profile

Coach’s supportive attitude

4. Connecting With Others – Speak To Their Base

5. The Primary Source Of Motivation – The Phase

Motivation Is Through The Phase

Conflicting Needs – Internal Conflict Between The

Base And Phase

The Influence Of The Base

Under Sustained Distress – Phase Changes

Experienced Phases (Stages)

6. The Floor Above The Current Phase

The Importance Of The First Secondary Trait

Interpreting Robin’s Story And Condominium

7. Psychological Issues, Authentic Feelings, And Phase Change

Psychological Issues – The Issue Corresponding To Each Phase

Anger, the issue for the Harmonizer Phase

Grief, the issue for the Thinker Phase

Fear, the issue for the Persister Phase

Autonomy, the issue for the Imaginer Phase

Intimacy, the issue for the Promoter Phase

Responsibility, the issue for the Rebel Phase

Resonance With The Past – Reactivating Issues

8. Why We Change Phases

Developmental Stages In Childhood And How They Relate To Phasing

Stages Of Development

Dependency Stage

Contact Stage

Trust Stage

Solutions Stage

Relationship Stage

Coaching Applications

9. Secondary Traits

The Elevator In Coaching – A Tour Of The Condominium

PART 2

COACHING WITH THE PERSONALITY PROFILE

10. Management Styles

Coaching Using The Four Management Styles

Autocratic

Democratic

Benevolent

Laissez faire

Management Styles In Groups

Management Styles To Adopt And To Avoid According To Personality Type

11. Are We On The Same Wavelength?

Communication Channels And Personality Parts

Personality Parts In Communication

Communication Channels

Interruptive Channel (Channel 1)

Directive Channel (Channel 2)

Requestive/Informative Channel (Channel 3)

Nurturative Channel (Channel 4)

Emotive/Playful Channel (Channel 5)

Tuning In – Personality Parts And Communication Channels

Channel surfing or using the elevator

Communication Channels and Coaching

12. The Importance Of Psychological Needs

The Eight Psychological Needs

The need to be recognized as a person

Sensory needs

The need for recognition of one’s work

The need to structure time

The need to be recognized for opinions

The need for solitude

The need for incidence

The need for contact

Motivation Depends Upon Satisfying Psychological Needs

Negative satisfaction of needs

How to satisfy psychological needs positively

Satisfying psychological needs in coaching

13. The Assessing Matrix And Preferred Environments

The Goal Axis

The Relationship Axis

Four Preferred Environments

A Note Regarding Base And Phase Behaviors

14. Perceptions

Thoughts, Opinions, Feelings, Reactions, Reflections, Actions

Origins Of The Concept

Our Relationships With The Other Personality Types

Our Inner Prejudices (Types We Don’t Understand)

Communicating Across The Base / Sixth Floor Divide

15. Predictable Miscommunication Behaviors

Drivers (First-Degree Distress)

The origins of Drivers

The five Drivers

Examples

Drivers, Communication Channels and Perceptions

Drivers, associated myths and human interaction

Drivers in coaching – four further examples

Drivers and Coaching

Second-Degree Distress – Failure Mechanisms Drooper, Attacker And Blamer Masks

Masks of second-degree miscommunication

Drooper Mask

Attacker Mask

Blamer Mask

Failure mechanisms (second-degree distress) and coaching

Coaching interventions for first- and second-degree distress

Despair – The Third-Degree Of Distress

Despairer Mask

Typical reported feelings and experiences in third-degree distress

Third-degree payoff from the behavioral position of I’m Not OK – You’re Not OK

Miscommunication

Stressors and failure mechanisms

The Base distress sequence

Masks of the three degrees of distress

Summary

Base And Phase Distress Sequences

Examples:

16. The Compound Distress Sequence

The Role Of Drivers In Compound Process Failure Patterns

Revisiting John Smith’s Story:

A step-by-step analysis

Persister Base Promoter Phase distress sequence

17. Process Failure Patterns

The Kahler Process Failure Pattern Types

Until

Almost Type I and Almost Type II process scripts

Process Failure Patterns And Phase Changes

PART 3

PCM AND COACHING

18. Coach And Client

Connecting With The Client

Examples of miscommunication

Inviting clients to use their elevator

Seeing the world through colored glasses

Using the resources of each floor in coaching

Identifying A Client’s Base And Phase

Observing process

Observing components

The special case of the Imaginer Base

Burnout

Recovery from burnout

Avoiding burnout

Serving Group Performance – PCM and Team Coaching – Case Study

Team coaching

The PCM team profile

Fit between the team personality profile and the corporate mission statement

Team routes for improvement

Managing the differences between individual profile and team profile

PCM applications to team coaching

Managing Group Dynamics

The card exercise

Devising an action plan

PART 4

PRACTICE

19. Seven Cases To Practice On

Case 1: Johnathan

Case 2: Catherine

Case 2: Catherine – Answers

Case 3: Salim

Case 3: Salim – Answers

Case 4: Paul

Case 4: Paul – Answers

Case 5: Mary

Case 5: Mary – Answers

Case 6: Nicole

Case 6: Nicole – Answers

Case 7: Frank

Case 7: Frank – Answers

Going A Step Further

Practice

Take your Personality Pattern Inventory

Benefits from coaching

Attend a seminar

Hold a seminar for your team

Become A Certified Process Communication Trainer

Become an accredited coach

Bibliography

Gerard Collignon

Gerard Collignon is a psychologist, PCM certifying master trainer and executive coach. He began his working life as a youth worker before graduating as a clinical psychologist in 1982. Having discovered Transactional Analysis at the end of the 1970s, he found that Taibi Kahler’s mini-script proved extremely useful and effective in mentoring, as well as in preventing teenage crises and managing teenaged clients actively in crisis.

In 1987 Gerard invited Taibi Kahler for the first official PCM seminar in France. Certified as a trainer in Process Communication since 1989 and a master trainer since 1995, Gerard has trained hundreds of trainers and thousands of managers. In 2011 he became only the second certifying master trainer in the world.

In France, 2,030,00 people had been trained in PCM by June 2016. There are also more than 1250 trainers and coaches certified by Taibi Kahler and by Gerard Collignon, and every year, 50 trainers and 50 coaches become certified in PCM.

The original French version of this book was the result of Pascal Legrand’s and Gerard’s experience in coaching. John Parr contributed new material to the English version and Taibi Kahler provided mentoring, suggested corrections and read the finished work to ensure fidelity to the model. Gerard is grateful to both of them for their contribution to achieving ‘Parlez-vous Personality? Coaching with Process Communication’.

Pascal Legrand

Pascal Legrand has been a coach in companies for 20 years and a supervisor of coaches. He is a member of the French Coaching Society and was a member of the Society’s certifying committee for five years. He studied Transactional Analysis for eight years through IFAT, the French Institute of Transactional Analysis, before becoming an NLP master practitioner and PCM certifying master trainer. He is also MBTI and Golden certified. Pascal has an integrative approach to coaching.

As a trainer and consultant for Kahler Communication France for 11 years, Pascal has led training courses and certified and supervised 250 professional coaches. He has also been a speaker for the Ecole Supérieure de Coaching.

With Brigitte Esnoult, he co-authored ‘Bien communiquer avec son look – Process Communication Image’.

Foreword

TAIBI KAHLER

AS I BEGAN my career in psychology I was introduced to Transactional Analysis (TA) and the brilliant work of its founder, Dr. Eric Berne. His emphasis on observable behaviors of individuals and the implications for communication and miscommunication was immediately fascinating to me. My natural tendency was to observe, categorize and assemble data, and with my love for people, his OK-OK approach to understanding human behavior was an ideal theoretical foundation for me.

In my early research I discovered predictable patterns of behavior that six types of people display when in distress, which led to researching what these same types would do and be like when not in distress. This, in turn, led to discovering how we all have six Personality Types within us. The Process Communication Model® (PCM) was born.

For more than 40 years I, and many others, have been researching and developing this model to the state that it has reached today, applied in business, education, politics, relationships – everywhere communication and miscommunication are important. For example, Dr. Terry McGuire, NASA’s lead psychiatrist for manned space flight from 1959 to 1996, used PCM in his last 18 years at NASA in the selection and placement of astronauts, because of its accuracy in predicting astronaut behaviors in space.

John Parr and I met at a TA conference in South America. We spent a physically relaxing and mentally stimulating day discussing PCM and Emotional Intelligence. I was struck by John’s ability to conceptualize and to think both logically and creatively. I invited him to get involved with PCM in Europe. I had already developed a collegiate relationship with Gerard Collignon, the co-author of this book, and am very pleased that my two friends have also become colleagues, deeply involved with PCM in Europe.

This book is based upon the original work written in French by Gerard Collignon and Pascal Legrand, which applied PCM to coaching. It has been translated into English and John Parr has skillfully brought the theory up to date for 21st century application, having woven into it some additional, latest material.

I was delighted to be asked to contribute by mentoring John in this task. Even though it is aimed specifically at coaches, I can recommend this book to all those interested in discovering the Process Communication Model®. As a result of the redrafting and deep editing, the current book can be considered a key reference for both PCM and the application of the model in coaching. There is indeed something in the book for everyone: coaches will discover how to connect with their clients and establish quality working relationships, and how to offer clear directions for individualized personality interventions for the most effective and helpful outcomes; managers and team leaders will gain insights into how best to communicate with their staff in order to achieve the most effective results; sales personnel will discover how to establish rapid rapport with their customers and know why each is motivated to buy.

For each Personality Type there are vivid and accurate dialogues that will help you to identify personality typology and apply PCM. You will no doubt find yourself, your colleagues, your friends and your family members portrayed in these dialogues.

Enjoy!

Introduction

IN THIS BOOK there is something for everyone. The theorist will have ample opportunity to test his or her current knowledge against this model, to find answers to questions and to stimulate more thinking. The person who needs to see and understand the value of committing time to learn something new will not be disappointed. We believe you will certainly find a rich source of material that will add value when applied in the workplace. The person who likes to play with theory, tossing it around, testing it on friends and even applying it at work, will like this book, as there will be stimulation enough to satisfy. Those who care about people and want to know how to further improve on the quality of their relationships will love this book. People who need to grasp the nettle of tricky situations and apply what they know to get results quickly that make positive impact on their bottom line will grasp the power of this tool. Those who need to take time to turn things over and examine them by reflecting upon the learning points and seeing how to use the tools will find plenty to stimulate their imaginations. This book about coaching using PCM is overflowing with the complexity and at the same time the ordinariness of people in relationships.

Are we always fully aware of good communication? Being able both to listen to others and be heard is the key to fruitful collaboration between people. This applies to all of life’s situations, especially in helping relationships such as coaching.

From the very first meeting with a potential client, the coach must be able to make an assessment accurately, devise an efficient and relevant intervention plan and come to an agreement about it with the client. In addition coaches must be able to relate to their clients in a true and meaningful way to ensure an environment within which the process of coaching can flourish. To establish an effective coaching relationship the coach must have finely tuned listening skills and the ability to speak the language the client understands best, by having a sound understanding of the client’s perceptual frame of reference.

How can we as coaches adopt a sincere attitude that inspires trust, reassures and will encourage the client to want to set off on the coaching adventure with us? Because coaching can indeed be an adventure: through enabling self-discovery, as it helps us confront our fears, it frees us from what can be very long-standing barriers; it allows for new behavior to be explored in a safe environment; and it gives us a place where we can dare to be vulnerable, yet not feel ashamed, deskilled, or odd. What Carl Rogers would have called positive unconditional regard is in PCM referred to as the existential position of I’m OK – You’re OK, the win-win position of respect for both self and others. Because of this we do not refer to people as being Personality Types. Rather, we refer to types of personality in people, and as you will soon discover, each of us has to some extent all of the characteristics of all six Personality Types. When we adopt this existential position we are effectively being ourselves: in other words, displaying all of the positive aspects of our personality. When we are in distress, as we often are, we actually abandon our existential position and act from a Not OK behavioral position, using patterned defense mechanisms. These mechanisms are incredibly predictable. The PCM profile shows the coach and client this picture in order to facilitate change, personal growth and development.

The primary resource available to help the coach accomplish an assignment is him- or herself: personal qualities, experience, training, degree of personal growth, etc. Coaches must also be aware of their own psychological barriers from which they are not yet liberated; we cannot help someone achieve that which we have ourselves not yet been able to achieve. In a 1975 article, Dr. Kahler called this The Silver Rule of Therapy. For coaches, this can be taken as The Silver Rule of Coaching.

Each coach has a toolbox containing analytical and intervention methods and techniques. Process Communication is an additional set of tools that will powerfully and efficiently refine and complement your existing tools. It therefore has an important place in the coach’s armory. This model can help you develop skills in four areas:

• self-knowledge and self-awareness

• self-management

• knowledge and awareness of others

• relationship management.

Self-knowledge and self-awareness

In Process Communication, self-awareness is facilitated by the coach’s analysis of their own Personality Pattern Inventory (PPI), otherwise known as a Personality Profile, or Profile. For example, what is their Base personality? What are their current sources of motivation? Have they experienced one or more Phases¹ and, if so, what in their personal history caused these changes? What behavioral indicators or signals do they show when entering distress? To what do these correspond? How do they take care of themselves appropriately in order to be in a good place to act as a coach?

Self-management

This is largely facilitated by the coaches’ understandings of their own internal dynamics. PCM predicts with a high degree of accuracy how we behave when in distress and which of our psychological needs we need to attend to on a regular basis, i.e. what is it in the coach that activates pleasure and satisfaction, positive motivation and energy?

What could activate negative emotions in the coach? How is this identified? How can it be managed so that these influences do not interfere with the coaching process?

Knowledge and awareness of others

The client’s Personality Pattern Inventory will provide the coach with a wealth of information to facilitate better understanding of the client: their most highly developed resources, the Base Personality Types they will communicate more naturally with and the Base types they will be likely to find it difficult to establish good communication with. In other words, a coach will know which personality types the client will require more energy to be with and which relationships will increase the risk of significant stress for the client.

Relationship management

Establishing and maintaining the coaching relationship will be largely facilitated by using the communication channel and perceptual frame of reference that match the client’s personality type.

The coach will identify the client’s behavior under stress, guide the client to gain awareness of these behaviors and help him or her to discover and adopt new behaviors that are more effective.

Using Process Communication in coaching

The main aim of Process Communication Coaching is to offer the coach and client powerful tools for managing themselves and their relationships with others.

Through understanding the six personality types identified by the model’s founder, Taibi Kahler, we find keys for developing the right coaching strategies and for responding appropriately to the client’s needs².

By providing clients with insight into their Personality Pattern Inventory, the coach facilitates them thinking about their behavior and recognizing strategies that enable them to be efficient. The coach guides clients in identifying their current resources and devising action plans for achieving their goals.

With the coach’s assistance, clients will increase their self awareness and develop their interpersonal relationship skills. Process Communication will also help them increase their ability to analyze difficult situations and if necessary, devise options and plans to increase their level of comfort in their interactions with others. As clients gain awareness of their distress signals, how to interpret them and how to satisfy their needs in order to manage their distress better, they discover tools that are easy to use, pragmatic and respectful of both others and themselves.

Using this model is a win-win choice. The principles of respect for self and others, along with the win-win relationship, are core beliefs in Process Communication.

Helping relationship or rescue?

Beware of rescuing (defined here as entering a relationship whereby our behavior may tend to maintain others in dependency). At its worst, rescuing may reinforce peoples’ need for dependency and so invites them to give up their autonomy.

To establish the difference between a helping relationship and a rescue, coaches should ask themselves four questions:

• Did the client request my intervention?

• Do I want to help this person and/or is it my role as a coach to do so?

• Am I competent to help this person? The level of competency is important, especially regarding the degree of dysfunctionality the presenting problem involves. Also, when the other person explicitly asks us for advice, we need to decide clearly whether we are qualified to offer it and whether it is helpful in the coaching process.

• Am I investing less than 50 per cent of the energy required for the client to resolve the issue?

If you answer no to one of these questions, you are most likely experiencing a pull toward the rescuer role.

Now let’s have a look at the different tools in the Process Communication toolbox.

Part 1

PROCESS COMMUNICATION

Chapter 1

THE PROCESS COMMUNICATION MODEl®

Process Communication is a model for discovering and understanding our own personality as well as those of the people with whom we interact. It is also a very effective tool for enhancing communication in general.

Communication is at the core of all human activity. In every situation where we work and relate with others, we benefit from improved communication, which, in turn, deepens our relationships, thus enabling us to be more effective in our dealings with our friends, colleagues and loved ones. However, if today’s world creates more and more physical means of communication such as the internet and e-mail, this does not necessarily mean that we communicate better. While information exchange has been made faster and easier through electronic means, these tools can’t replace the human ability to develop truly constructive relationships. When we were in school we learned to reason and accumulated useful knowledge, but education systems do not teach us to communicate, or how to invite others to want to pursue and develop quality relationships with us.

We observe that the way something is said is at least as important as what is said and generally even more important. People often react positively or negatively to the way things are expressed irrespective of the content of the message. A good communication process helps optimize the relationship, gets to the essentials and builds on the best each person has to offer. Conversely, inappropriate process risks leading to miscommunication, which is a source of disagreement, conflict, incomprehension and loss of motivation. Comments like, What’s the use? or He just doesn’t understand! often reveal that we have failed to communicate with the other person at that moment.

In the course of this book, we will explore how Process Communication enables us to communicate naturally, communicate by identifying the other person’s preferred style, and use the communication channel that best fits the other so that our message is more likely to be understood and the risk of miscommunication is reduced.

Taibi Kahler

Taibi Kahler was born in Kewanna, Indiana in 1943. He received his doctorate in Child Development and Family Life from Purdue University in 1972, based on his dissertation utilizing the Kahler Transactional Analysis Script Checklist.

During this time, while in an internship program at a private psychiatric hospital, Dr. Kahler created a model called the Miniscript based on observations of his patients in distress, the moments that preceded these phenomena, and the predictable nature of the distress depending on the preliminary signs. Subsequently, for this discovery, Dr. Kahler won the 1977 Scientific Award.

In that same year he was asked by Dr. Terence McGuire (lead psychiatric consultant to NASA’s manned space program, 1958-1996) to consult in the selection and placement of astronauts, to help answer such important questions as: Who naturally works well with whom? Who does not work as well with whom? How will each individual probably behave under stress?

In order to manage the growing number of potential astronauts, Dr. Kahler researched and validated a written inventory for these selection purposes. This Personality Pattern Inventory became the basis for the Process Communication Model® (PCM).

Key ideas in PCM

According to this model, there are six main personality types, each with clearly identifiable behavioral characteristics, with specific strengths, needs, and motivations, a specific way of perceiving the environment and communicating, and predictable behavior when they enter into distress.

During our individual histories, each of us develops characteristics of these six personality types to varying degrees. We have a Base personality type, which is acquired for life. During our lifetime we may experience other parts of our personality structure – a process that Dr. Kahler calls a Phase change. Our current Phase determines our psychological sources of motivation and tells us the most probable reactions we will display under stress. Later we will see that 66 per cent of the population will experience a Phase change at least once in their lifetime.

A model for self-knowledge, awareness and management

Process Communication helps answer these essential questions: What are my current psychological needs? How can I satisfy them to enjoy an optimum level of energy? How can I train myself to use the part of myself that is most appropriate for any given situation to match my contact’s personality? What are the warning signals that tell me I am activating a negative or self-defeating stress sequence? How can I manage myself, to return to a state of positive energy?

For these reasons Process Communication is primarily used as a model for self-knowledge, awareness and management.

Self-knowledge:

Arnold is nine years old. This weekend he is very excited. His parents have invited the family over and he will get to see his cousin Alexander, whom he likes very much. The children have lunch at a table placed next to the adults’ table. During the meal, Arnold affectionately lays his head on his cousin’s shoulder. His cousin briskly pushes him away. Arnold seems confused, does not say anything, hangs his head and does not show much spirit for the rest of the afternoon.

It is hard to be a boy and show affection to a peer in a culture where spontaneous emotional expression is strongly discouraged and forgetting oneself, as Arnold did, is firmly rebuffed by all but very small children. We can see from this example how difficult it can be for a boy to have a Harmonizer Base (one of the six personality types identified by Dr. Kahler). Boys are encouraged to fight and play sports more than to express their emotions; that is why a boy with a Harmonizer Base, who spontaneously behaves differently from his classmates, could wonder why he is not like the others and suffer as a result. As he begins to grow and develop he may come to understand his personality and be able to understand better the meaning of commitments and choices in both his personal and professional life. The model will help him discover the sources of his Harmonizer motivation and that fulfilling his psychological needs is quite acceptable.

He will also understand why a relationship with a given person can be difficult; for example, why he simply can’t stand a certain colleague who he perceives as tending to be dogmatic and judgmental.

Self-awareness:

By becoming aware of preferred communication channels, we can know whether or not we are on the best frequency with any given individual or if we are in a channel that could be a possible source of misunderstanding between us. Our most probable reactions under stress are revealed to us in our Personality Pattern Inventory. Just like the dashboard in a car, we have lights that flick on to alert us to problems so we can use second-by-second observation of patterns