Resilience, Leadership and Coaching
Mike Jay, CPR for the Soul: Creating Personal Resilience by Design. Leadership University Press, 2006.
It is probably going to become increasingly difficult to keep up with the literature based at least in part on integral theory, even when I am just concerned with leadership and related topics. Mike Jay’s latest is another book that is informed by the work of Ken Wilber, as well as Clare Graves, the Spiral Dynamics folks and various developmental psychologists. Also relying on the work of Steven Reiss, MD, and the work of explorers of resilience, Mike has presented the models underlying the approach to development and coaching that he has been evolving first in B\Coach Systems and now in Leadership University.
You should understand that I have had a relationship with Mike that has varied over the last six years. I have been his student and supporter for much of that time, but have—for the last year or two—spent very little time with him or his programs. But I have spent hundred of hours on the telephone and in person participating in his coach training programs and his advanced courses that served as vehicles for his teaching about the elements presented in this book. Thus, I think I am imminently qualified to present this book to you and challenged to do so while acknowledging the biases that I bring to the task.
These biases include respect for a man who has invested so much in building on a university education crafted around becoming a championship football quarterback, an enlisted manin the United States Marines and a consultant/coach in the world of business. Much of his knowledge of theory is self-taught, yet he has initiated conversations with many of the theorists he has studied. He has trained hundred of coaches and people who sought to develop coaching skills. Beyond the U.S., he has been nurturing his programs in Russia and India while including participants in his virtual programs from various parts of Europe, Australia and Asia.
There is a highly complementary Foreward by Dr. Don Beck in which he states:
“Jay meshes state-of-the-art knowledge regarding human nature with a quiver full of specific strategies and skill to empower self and influence others to fully become what they can become.
“This is a bold, unique and creative synthesis of power-driven leadership, in both theory and practice, to be found no where else.”
The point about becoming what they can become is based on one of Jay’s points of contention with Wilber and many others who, Jay claims, advocate a blank slate approach that suggests that everyone can become anything they want to be. While I have personally pointed out that Wilber has denied that he holds this position, Jay has argued that his and others’ methods and approaches nevertheless hold the blank slate assumption. Jay’s focus is more on lateral development than on vertical development.
Mike is well known to the SDi list serve. Here he has both enlightened and confounded participants. And so it will be for readers of his book. It is a daunting task to lay out the complex set of models and their foundations contained in Mike’s work, much less summarize them. Here are some highnlights.
Resilience is essential to responding to setbacks and the dynamics of chaos and complexity in the world. It is not a state to achieve, but a set of capabilities used along an unfolding path. Jay advocates the use of a memetic mapping tool. Jay states that this tool advances the spiral on spiral concept. The tool isis included in the text, as well as in the lengthy appendix (1/3 of the book) and is also available online. While it is partially described in the text, I find a number of the items to be difficult to understand. Jay would no doubt suggest that is because of my level of development.
The purpose of the instrument is to provide a way for individuals to assess themselves in a number of areas such as fitness, inclusion, power, authority, adaptability and synergy. This self-assessment focuses first on the current situation with an additional assessment for the desired situation. The eight items in each category correspond to the levels of Clare Graves’ levels of development.
He introduces his coaching model:
“THE DNA MODEL of coaching is designed to make practical the duality of desire and fear as it relates to action, purpose and environmental demands or contentions—to create and sustain greater levels of resilience.”
This model is built on an inquiry and a learning process akin to Torbert’s Action Inquiry, but distinctly Mike Jay’s adaptation of Argyris’ loop models of learning, single, double and triple, to which he adds a fourth loop model. The latter essentially is about multiple loops of learning going on simultaneously. He argues for the clarification and development of power, accountability, authority and responsibility (PAAR) in personal, professional, business and network domains.
If you would like to know more about the model, I suggest you read the book or take coach training at Leadership University. If you choose to read the book I offer these cautions. This is one of the two most poorly edited books I have ever read. The number of punctuation and grammatical errors is very distracting. Jay’s penchant to use multi-syllabic words in rather unusual ways is disconcerting. Despite this, the concepts and the ways Jay has put them together is very powerful and challenges integral theorists and practioners to pay attention. The complexity of the overall presentation will be challenging. But if you can work through all of that, you will also discover that his work is full of gems.