Relationship Awareness Theory

This issue of the e-zine focuses on Relationship Awareness Theory. I have personally found it to be a very practical and helpful tool in understanding myself and other people. Both in working with teams in organizations and coaching individual clients, I have found that Relationship Awareness Theory, the associated Strength Deployment Inventory, and other related 'tools' give people the 'Ahah!' experience, and help them to understand and resolve some of the dynamics of conflict.

I was recently talking to a sales manager who described a conflict with one of his suppliers. This supplier had a history of being frequently on the telephone to the manager about one thing or another. A few weeks before the incident, the sales manager and his supplier had quite a serious disagreement over a faulty item. After that, the manager did not hear from the supplier for over two weeks. As there was no particular reason to make contact, the manager let things be. However, he was unhappy with the situation. He thought that his words had antagonized his supplier and the supplier's silence was a kind of 'tit for tat' to punish him in some way. When he next spoke to the man, he was astonished to hear that the reason for the silence was that the man's wife had had a serious accident and the supplier had taken time off to look after his young family.

This incident illustrates one of the premises of Relationship Awareness Theory, a framework for interpreting our experience developed by Dr Elias Porter. This premise states that we all tend to interpret our experience in terms of our own understanding and typical reactions and particularly our own Motivational Value System (MVS). This can lead to us to being wide of the mark in interpreting other people's behaviour and perceiving conflict where none is intended.

Our Motivational Value System is a cluster of values that, when we act in accordance with them, we feel good about ourselves. Although at a deep level, we may all recognize the same values, we each put the emphasis slightly differently. For example, some of us seem to have a greater need to accomplish and achieve; others get their greatest satisfaction from analyzing and problem-solving; and other feel best about themselves when they are actively communicating and harmonizing with other people. The Strength Deployment Inventory - which is based on Relationship Awareness Theory - makes this very easy to understand using a colour coded triangle.

Different people may do the same thing for very different reasons. For example, A visits a colleague in hospital because she wants to show her support and concern; B visits because he wants to assess the likelihood of the colleague's speedy return to work; C visits because she visited another colleague in hospital earlier in the year and wants to ensure that everyone gets fair treatment; and D visits because everyone else seems to be doing it and he doesn't want to be seen to be the odd man out! Although this may seem very obvious - and it is - keeping it in mind when we are in the midst of a disagreement that has the potential for conflict is not so easy. Relationship Awareness Theory helps here because it directs our focus to the positive intention behind a person's actions.

A person's Motivational Value System (MVS) appears to be a stable constant throughout life. When we act in accordance with our MVS, we feel good about ourselves. This doesn't mean that we always act in accordance with our MVS. Far from it! We do have choice. But we feel a sense of comfort and most in tune with ourselves when we can act from our MVS and a sense of discomfort and disharmony if we feel forced to act in some other way. I have a friend with a very good business sense - but he does not like 'dealing with the public' as he puts it. At one stage in his life, he was involved in a business that brought him into direct contact with 'the public' on a daily basis. He found the strain intolerable and a source of severe internal conflict. He was able to do the work - but at considerable cost to his own psychological wellbeing. Eventually he decided that the costs outweighed the benefits, sold his business and found regular employment in a job that better suited his MVS and needs at that time.

Our sense of self-identity connects with our MVS because it is through our motivational values that we find significance in our lives and experience ourselves as people who have worth and can make a difference. This helps to explain why - as we saw in the last newsletter - conflict can threaten our sense of self-identity and self worth by casting doubt on the value of what makes sense to us. A knowledge of Relationship Awareness Theory can strengthen our understanding of what things give significance to our lives and give us valuable insights into what different things might rate more importantly for others. This non-judgmental approach is key in the process of dialogue, creating conversations that sustain relationships and nurture trust, understanding and respect.

This has been just a very brief introduction to some of the key ideas of this useful theory and the development tools based on it. The Strength Deployment Inventory and a number of other related inventories are used in leadership training, team building, conflict management and 360 degree feedback, to name just a few of the applications. They are amongst the tools that I use in my coaching practice. The Personal Strengths Publishing website is http://www.personalstrengths.com. The Australian PSP website is http://www.personalstrengths.com.au. If you would like to ask me more about how this useful inventory and the family of associated tools can be used to improve your own or your organization's effectiveness, email me at .

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