Self-help books, coaching books, management books? They promise too much, and nothing changes after reading them. Fortunately, that is not always true. Here is the seventh book that gave me direction: it gave structure to my inner voice dialogue.

INSPIRING AND QUALITY IN ORGANIZATIONS

During my three-year Transformation Psychology training at the ITP and with Shakti Gawain, Hal & Sidra Stone in the US, I became fascinated by the phenomenon of inner voices. I engaged in daily voice dialogue with myself and facilitated this for my clients. And my hunger for more knowledge led me to Daniel Ofman’s book “Inspiration and Quality in Organizations: In Search of New Values ​​in Work and Society.” I even analyzed his book to use it for my graduation project.

Daniel Ofman introduces the core quadrants: it is a wonderfully practical model in which four inner voices take turns speaking: core quality-pitfall-allergy-challenge. Your core quality comes easily to you. In your pitfall, you overdo your core quality. Your allergy is the opposite of your pitfall and the opposite of your core quality. And your challenge is the positive opposite of your core quality. That is how you become more yin yang. Here is a list of four that suits me: decisiveness–nagging–passivity–patience. For years, I worked with the core quadrants in leadership training, and many participants gained valuable insights and adopted new behaviors. I, too, increasingly embraced my challenge: patience.
Nowadays, I focus less on the core quadrants: the model does not explain the causes of our behavior. In Transactional Analysis, the Drivers & Stoppers do: they are the conscious commands and the unconscious prohibitions that we carry within us. Those Drivers & Stoppers explain why I fall into my pitfall behavior. That nagging. That has not only to do with my allergy (in my nagging moments, I usually label others as ‘passive’). It also has a lot to do with my Stoppers. Unconsciously, I forbid myself from doing things like ‘Don’t feel’ and ‘Don’t be a child’. These inner judgmental voices cause me to become too decisive and to overdo it, leading me to become pushy.

With the knowledge from Transactional Analysis, I can now better choose how to handle stressful moments: I work on my ‘pusher’ or on my ‘patience’ or – and I often prefer this even more – I work on ‘actually feeling’ and asking myself what the child within me actually wants in that situation.