ABSTRACT
In Stage 3 of the Breakthrough Conversations process the focus is on loosening habit and reactivity. By taking clients through a process of self-inquiry, challenge and ownership, we enable them to cultivate the capability of self-disclosure. Engaging others from a position of openness and authenticity encourages mutual openness and paves the way for collaboration and shared creativity. Four factors driving conversational tendencies are explored: core needs, personality, attachment patterns and cultural and social conditioning. Three sets of interpersonal needs are identified based on the FIRO model (which will be explained below), and the significance of one or more of these for clients is surfaced by a sensitive exploration of the emotions arising in conversational contexts. Personality models offer frames for understanding how innate biases, combined with environmental experiences, give rise to preferences in how people relate to each other, and seeing the habitual and reactive aspects of these preferences allows clients to manage their tendencies more consciously. Attachment patterns provide a way of understanding how early experiences impact adult relationships by identifying characteristic habitual and reactive conversational tendencies associated with defiant or compliant attachment styles. Recognising how these play out in different situations enables clients to make consciously reflective choices. The fourth area is concerned with how cultural and social conditioning create relational biases, conscious and unconscious. By exploring these through personal stories and observations we create a space for understanding and for bringing potentially limiting biases more fully into view.
