Langmaid Practice

The Home of Breakthrough Psychology

We’ve all been there: the evening is late, the second group is halfway through and the energy is gone. Both the moderator and the group are running on Auto-pilot. A new stimulus/test concept is introduced and there is a sense of random choosing in the responses. There is definitely a feeling of inauthenticity in the replies. People are being polite – just!

The group in the video tackle this and come up with suggestions for re-energising the group. The two I like best, because they work best, are getting people to change places which literally ‘breaks’ the set territoriality of the group and asking people to speculate about what other people they have met in the group might think about the ideas.

This latter works well because people will be nervous and excited about commenting on other group members – and the others themselves will be engaged lest their reputations (in the form of their opinions) are misrepresented. This slightly ‘anxious’ edge re-energises the session.

The group in the video are a talented and enthusiastic group of young researchers from 2cv. Thanks to you all!

Where shall I start? This is one of the most common misunderstandings of qualitative procedures. It tells both of the quantitative (how much, how many?) orientation of many buyers and practitioners – and more fundamentally in group work – it demonstrates the failure to take the group seriously! It is part of what David Rennie, a brilliant academic commentator on qualitative process calls, “Dragging the chains of positivism along the corridor of qualitative inquiry.” Well put David!

I’m going to tackle the quant. thing first. No matter how many people said or didn’t say something in a qualitative study it has no statistical validity if you try to generalise it to National or Regional or Demographic levels. It may have face validity and be a jolly useful insight that happens to scale up, but it is no test for the frequency or universality of the idea across large populations at this early stage. However, although every sensible client and researcher knows this, it still emerges as the question people have to ask, because they don’t know a language for better questions. It is a failure of the qualitative industry generally to inform and teach our associates better questions to ask of us.

There are hundreds of things we say just because – well – it’s our turn, we’re due to speak, we’re feeling left out. These remarks are likely to be based on winning formulae we’ve used before – which have got us us noticed, past a sticky moment, allayed our inner critic etc. In other words, we say them because we always say them when we’re feeling the need to say something in a situation where we’re trying to do well and must compete for attention with others! Groups are full of such utterances and they exist to promote norms and comfort among participants – not to describe deep-felt feelings or motivations about your brand or product. Because of this, stuff that lots of people say or agree to is likely to be among the least significant of all the things they say. In my experience the really telling remarks are those that stand out from the others!

Insight nearly always emerges from things you haven’t heard before, or things said in a way you’ve never thought of before. It does not reside in polite, safe, normative remarks unless these serve a deeper purpose for the brand or service.

Sadly, the ‘how many of them?’ criterion leads us to focus on the remarks driven by the need to norm as the most significant when they are neither significant or really about the product or service at all!

There is, however, a much more serious problem underlying this: what I call ‘the failure to take the group seriously’. Nearly all of us, practitioners, clients, psychologists alike really harbour the notion that the group is actually a collection of individuals whose statements can be  aggregated or counted to generate an analysis. But what if the group can be considered as an entity with character and personality in its own right. And that the people in it, for the time of the group, are parts of a whole? In other words that the voices in the group are sub-personalities of the group personality and that this is in truth the aspect of the group worth attending to. How did it feel to be with this composite person? What parts of this person did you meet (sub-personalities)? What feelings came up in you, the facilitator whilst with this ‘person’? Could these have been feelings travelling around the group? If you had to offer a sensible explanation of this feeling, how would you explain it?

As well as feelings, there is usually a tone of voice that the group ‘finds’ after a while. If you have too intensive a topic guide, this tone of voice is likely to be dependent – waiting for the next question. Such tones are flat, polite, take-it-in-turns in form and resemble people giving answers on a questionnaire in form. As moderator you can encourage spontaneity in tone and content by setting challenges for the group which it cannot solve by normative processes. We teach these challenges in our Breakthrough Psychology Course.

I think this is such an overlooked area in our practice of qualitative research that I will return to it soon.

 

Please click on the thumbnail to play movie.

This is our first movie from the recent Facilitation workshop pilots. Here we can see participants receiving feedback from other group members about what works when they are in front of the room. Many of us do not clearly know what our great qualities are – especially those we take for granted – and this exercise is a way of getting in touch with the things about you that are appreciated by others.

With these qualities that show up every time you show up, you do not need to be afraid that you don’t have the right capabilities for the job!

 

“The word is not the route to the psyche.  In the beginning was not the word, but the act.”

Jacob Moreno is the founder of Psychodrama, the use of theatrical performance and staging to re-enact events and circumstances from life. Trained as a doctor in Vienna 1912-1917, he rejected Freudian theory while still at medical school. In his autobiography, he writes that he told Freud after a lecture that he gave:  “I start where you leave off.  You meet people in the artificial setting of your office.  I meet them on the street and in their home, in their natural surroundings.  You analyse their dreams.  I give them the courage to dream again.  You analyse them and tear them apart.  I let them act out their conflicting roles and help them to put the parts back together again.”

Starting in 1921 he began experimenting with drama as a way of treating psychiatric patients in groups.  He founded The Spontaneity Theatre which used improvisational drama as a means of treatment.

In the 1920’s he also developed a set of ideas which he termed Sociometry – a research method for looking at the social structure of groups which involved Sociograms illustrating these structures. Moreno moved to the USA in 1925 and held  position at Columbia University. These ideas are very useful in group work.

Key ideas

• Humans are not just biologically determined (as Freud thought) but have a spiritual side and are influenced by their social context.  “He did not believe in Freud’s model … Freud came from biology,  Moreno was inspired by the great religions of this world.  Freud was atheistic.  Moreno was not.”
• He emphasises the importance of creativity and spontaneityin human life.  Children have a lot of these things but they get squashed.  Life produces constraints, society demands conformity, and therefore people get mired in habitual ways of responding where their spontaneity is stifled.  He believed that therapeutic intervention should have the aim of enabling people to reconnect with their spontaneity and thus allow them to:
  • be more integrated as people
  • be able to respond more flexibly and creatively to new situations, and in the way they lead their lives
• Psychodrama as an intervention is designed to bring these aims about.  He developed a range of techniques within Psychodrama such as role reversal and empty chair (before Fritz Perls).

In Zerka Moreno’s words (in an interview with Victor Yalom Ph.D. on psychotherapy.net)

“The easiest way to think about [Psychodrama] is ‘the mind in action’.  Instead of talking about your concerns we say ‘Don’t tell me.  Show me!  Showing means to act it out … it helps you to express yourself in a new way .. a way that life doesn’t usually permit [in order to] make you more integrated.”

“We’re all broken and need to become more cohesive, more integrated from within.  Through the catharsis of integration, we become balanced, within and without.”

You can find a download of this summary here: Psychology on a Page 11: Psychodrama

By far the best thing if you want to experience this style of work is to do one of our Action Techniques Days.

Can you keep the warm-up down to 5 minutes?

How many times did I hear that request? It is one of the most common misunderstandings of group process to assume that you can cut the warm-up to the briefest of introductions and then proceed with your topic guide as if your participants are really there!

If you were sitting in a group of strangers in an unfamiliar setting about to embark upon an encounter that you hadn’t seen the agenda for, how much of yourself would you have readily available to put on show?

I would be pretty scared, at the very least nervous, and cautious about coming forward. If I were a participant, quickly I would appraise the moderator – the person in charge – and then my fellow members, looking for a friendly or attractive face, decide a strategy (“I’ll take my turn but not go first/make a joke whenever I can/talk about my kids/try to figure out what they really want/look at my knees/feet/coffee/play with my mobile/fiddle with my collar.”)

A whole bunch of displacement activities and mild evasions. Keeping most of themselves hidden. Avoiding awkward silences but not breaking any boundaries or norms.

Into this shy, nervous, occasionally impulsive gathering you must start to ask the questions you have agreed with your client – who may be watching you, while talking to friends and colleagues (about you?) behind the glass – with a glass of wine in hand.

Because it is so unregulated, so lacking in encouragement and invitation to come forward in that first few minutes, it is quite usual that one group member is more outgoing and forward than the others and gets the approval of the moderator for livening things up in these early moments. 30 minutes later this forward person has become a ‘dominant respondent’ and won’t shut up. Dominant respondents are only 10% driven by dispositional factors: the other 90% is the result of poor group process.

If you do the first twenty minutes differently you will never be bothered by dominant respondents again – or even if the odd unquenchable tongue-wagger shows up – you’ll know exactly what to do. See the Top Tip 10 Next Week.

Self Consciousness – and why it matters to insight seekers

We are very different when gripped by emotion from times when reason dominates.

Most of us go to considerable lengths to present a reasonable – and reasoning – self to others. Special circumstances for allowing emotion and unreason to dominate are available but carefully boundaried – sports fans in all their regalia, music concerts, services and rituals which mark transitions or passing on.

The tool we use to govern and monitor this presentation of ourselves in everyday life is self-awareness.

There is a uniquely human form of self-awareness called self-consciousness. This is the basis of our capacity both to fit in with others and cultural norms, but also to transcend the immediate situation and live in terms of the possible.

This in turn constitutes the basis of psychological freedom. It means that the future is not the past, but a place of possibility.

Self-consciousness arises as we start to distinguish ourselves from others in infancy and is increased when we acquire ‘theory of mind’ – the knowledge that other people are conscious too and that their worlds might be similar to ours in some respects but different in others. As we grow in years self-consciousness is moderated by cultural norms and lessons we are taught by experience and education.

By the time we are adults we have a veritable dictionary of modes or practices that we use to moderate the self we display. We continually update this dictionary if we are smart, but may choose to become ‘fixed in our ways’ either as a conscious strategy or as an unconscious defence against disappointment.

You will have your own opinion of how you are seen by others. The way you are perceived may also vary between the different groups you find yourself in. You might be the life and soul of the party at home, yet very quiet among strangers. You might make your workmates laugh ‘til they cry, or be someone who pursues their work quietly. You may have all these characteristics yet play them differently from time to time.

The important point is that self-consciousness is the filter through which everything you do, say and feel is passed and moderated. There is hardly a moment, except when securely alone in the most intimate parts of our homes, that we are free from this filter: ‘what will they think of me if I do or say that?’

For the insight seeker, this applies to all meetings and encounters where you are in search of insight. Everyone has their filters in place – especially among a group of relative strangers, where you do not know your status or have control of the agenda. This is a recipe for caution and carefulness.

It is this fact, that we are all already moderated by self-consciousness that has led us to create micro-cultures where the standard norms do not apply when we want to gain insights. It has also made us quite suspicious of attempts to standardize, stereotype or assign traits to people. People are deciding their comportment based on norms, culture and minimizing risk or maximizing effectiveness. It may not reflect their true desires or intentions at all! We are all actors.

This text is downloadable as a pdf here: Self-Consciousness

Whatever you think of Tony Blair, in terms of technique the work we did for him in 2005 was a unique piece of insight work. So much so in fact that this work with its innovations in understanding the use of personality in political markets has made its way into the American Annals of Political Science and – even in the UK where Blair has been demonised – the paper was nominated for Best Paper at the MRS Conference, 2006.

People have short memories and have forgotten that 54% of us supported military action in Iraq in 2003. There is a very British tradition of gung-ho militarism that tends to fade as the real life-and-death consequences of war play out on our screens and papers. We are still not averse to the odd bit of Johnny Foreigner bashing provided we can convince ourselves that right is on our side.

My purpose in making this paper available here is not to condone or castigate Blair and his administration. It is to make the insight work that helped him recover his standing in the run-up to the 2005 election available to students of qualitative technique – particularly Two-Chair work which, under Nicky’s direction – was fundamental to this project. As far as I know it has never been used on a national issue, before or since.

Download the Paper here: Reconnecting the Prime Minister, 2005

 

Rogers’ theory of the self is humanistic and phenomenological. However, in spite of a ‘New Age’ fascination with Rogers, his work is neither ephemeral nor lacking empirical foundations. He always stood for embracing and evaluating evidence from the phenomena and experiences of the people he met and the meanings that they made of their lives.

His theory was based on 19 propositions that I have reduced to the 12 most important for our Course and practice:

1. All individuals (organisms) exist in a continually changing world of experience of which they are the centre.
2. The organism reacts to the field as it is experienced and perceived. This perceptual field is “reality” for the individual.
3. A portion of the total perceptual field gradually becomes differentiated as the self. [This is my favourite: a wonderful description of how we emerge from our background in a way that allows never-ending re-evaluation and renewal!]
4. As a result of interaction with the environment, and particularly as a result of interaction with others, the structure of the self is formed – an organized, fluid but consistent conceptual pattern of perceptions of characteristics and relationships of the “I” or the “me”, together with values attached to these concepts.
5. The organism has a basic tendency and striving – to actualize, maintain and enhance the organism. On occasions this can lead to maladaptive behaviour.
6. The best vantage point for understanding behaviour is from the internal frame of reference of the individual.
7. Behaviour is basically the goal-directed attempt of the organism to satisfy its needs as experienced, in the field as perceived.
8. Emotion accompanies, and in general facilitates, such goal directed behaviour, the kind of emotion being related to the perceived significance of the behaviour for the maintenance and enhancement of the organism.
9. Most of the ways of behaving that are adopted by the organism are those that are consistent with the concept of self.
10. In some instances, behaviour may be brought about by organic experiences and needs which have not been symbolized. Such behaviour may be inconsistent with the structure of the self but in such instances the behaviour is not “owned” by the individual.
11. Any experience which is inconsistent with the organization of the structure of the self may be perceived as a threat, and the more of these perceptions there are, the more rigidly the self structure is organized to maintain itself.
12. Under certain conditions, involving primarily complete absence of threat to the self structure, experiences which are inconsistent with it may be perceived and examined, and the structure of self revised to assimilate and include such experiences.

Additionally, Rogers is known for practicing “unconditional positive regard,” which we have adapted for our Course and practice as a ‘culture of acknowledgment’. You will find many more  examples of the influence of Roger’s on my thinking and practice here, published in the IJMR (International Journal of Market Research, May 2012): Paper Website Version

Here is a pdf of this page for your records: Psychology on a Page: Carl Rogers

There is simply no place for the dominant respondent in a well facilitated group. It shouldn’t happen. But it does. The reason it happens is due to many things:

1. In the first minutes of the group, people are nervous – some react by keeping quiet, others by ‘blurting’. It is quite usual that one group member is more outgoing and forward than others. If the moderator does not deal with this immediately, it may be interpreted by the talkative one – and the group itself – as tacit acceptance that this person will occupy first place in the pecking order and will speak first on every occasion. These things happen in seconds at the start of a group.
2. Another reason is that forming procedures have not been handled right. Under pressure from the brief, it is far too common to barge straight into the topic. Very often the product, service or advertising makes it into the room before the people!
3. Due to the lack of invitation and participation, a democratic level playing field has not been created. No emphasis has been put on the importance of including all views in the conversation and that the moderator will support and seek out anyone trapped in silence by nerves or shyness. Even if the moderator has done a two-minute spiel, talking about how important everyone is – he has not demonstrated that – and respondents will respond to what he does, not what he says.
4. Another factor is the lack of listening – and lack of attention to listening in the group. If people think that their job is to speak, then those who are interested in power and status will be hard to stop – after all that seems to be the way Brownie Points are gained here. Not only that, people will not actively listen to others. They will simply wait for their turn to speak. This can be overcome by doing an introduction process in which everyone has to introduce someone else, after listening to them in a paired conversation for a few moments.
5. Social loafing is common in focus groups. Make no mistake, your participants know they are being paid for their time. There is a professional transaction underlying their attendance. Some people like to do as little as possible for their money! Some moderators too!
6. Production blocking is another regular feature and can be heightened by verbose types. Some quieter members will feel ‘blocked’ by the interruptions and rapidity of the responses from the eager, talkative members. This will drive them further into the background and they may need the moderator’s support in coming forward.
7. Groups that are too topic focused and full of questions will lack affect (emotional depth). Such groups are hard to listen to for everyone, energy flags, responses become routine, process dominates and everyone wants to get to the end. In these circumstances a group can feel grateful to a dominant mouthpiece – at least he keeps the thing going! Make sure activities & pace are varied and that people get to be themselves in several different ways during the group.
8. A group member might feel that they have genuine, unique, in-depth experience or knowledge of your topic. You have to make a judgment call on whether to allow this kind of ‘dominance’ – based as it is on larger capability. It will have effects on the feelings of the other members, but you can ameliorate these by thanking them for their listening and asking for their input immediately afterwards.

How to Set Up the Group

Introduce yourself NOT THE TOPIC, and let the group members know that you will ensure fairness, equality of opportunity and inclusion in the session. At this point people should precede products! If you are nervous about dominant respondents – or have an anxious client behind the mirror who worries about this – say something like: “I am keen to hear from all of you and will challenge you if you take up more than your share of space to an extent that prevents others. I understand that people get carried away and I will step in if that happens too much. I won’t allow bullying or overtalking or cutting off other people’s heads to make yourself look taller.”

Next you need a go round to give everyone an equal opening to speak – preferably on a subject that is important to them – like ‘what is the biggest thing in your life at the moment’ – rather than small talk about products or usage. This ensures that they arrive in the room – as themselves, not ‘users’ or ‘lapsed users’ or ‘potential users’.

Here is an example, following on from the remarks above:

“Having said that, I do want you to feel free to share your thoughts and feelings and for us all to have the chance. Let’s practice now, by introducing ourselves to the group by talking about something that’s very much on your mind today. It doesn’t have to be about the commercial topic, I’ll brief you on that in a moment. I will go first to give you an example of the kind of thing I mean.

Then the moderator introduces h/herself at the level that h/she wishes other people to share themselves. Model the kind of behaviour that you want in the group. You are the leader, others will follow you. Being a table rasa (blank observer) will frighten people and flatten your group. Also, make no mistake about it, you have a duty of care to these people.

Once people have brought themselves to the room via their introductions you should set the Primary Task: ‘we are here this evening to….’ And give the group some information about the activities and styles of work you anticipate. Also give them reassurance about time. ‘We will end at…’ They will be worrying about it even if you are not.

Now you’re ready to go. It is twenty minutes or so into the session. Rock on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In our second look at the unconscious mind for insight workers we think about a human being, full  of vulnerabilities – as well as potentials – and ask ourselves what role would make sense for an unconscious mind in such a creature?

Above all, you would want to preserve its life, its existence. This must be a primary process for without this life there can be no person. This simple fact shapes an unconscious mind that, whatever else it might come up with, must be conservative, attracted to reliable solutions, routes and routines. Thus the unconscious favours things it has ‘seen’ before, it favours the usual route to work, the brand of biscuits you’ve already tried, the people you know and the tried and tested idea. This explains how you can do familiar things like driving home without thinking.

It was under the influence of Jung (see here: Psychology on a Page 2: Jung) that our notion of the unconscious took a turn towards the mystical, ephemeral & unknowable, while at the same time the Behaviourists (see here: Psychology on a Page 4: Behaviourism) proposed an unconscious that was animalistic, instinctive and unknowable in a different way. I believe both of these ideas are inaccurate to a considerable degree (though contain ‘grains of truth’ that we will explore further) and have created a popular idea of the unconscious an unreachable, impenetrable place – when in reality it is in view at every moment.

My own view is that the unconscious is made up of symbols, all of which are represented in language (for language is after all the structure of thinking as well as of communication). Its building blocks are words and its structure is grammatical. As we shall see over the next posts, these words are not simply sounds, but each one is attached to an image, a set of associations – and the uncomfortable examples of these are repressed or hidden from the view of others and ourselves.

The results of the experiments described in the link below are unsurprising if you’re following these posts about how the unconscious mind operates.

People are biased against creative ideas, studies find

The next time your great idea at work elicits silence or eye rolls, it might pay to think about this reaction. This research indicates that people don’t know what a creative idea looks like and that creativity, hailed as a positive change agent, actually makes people squirm. We found this out very early on in our co-creation work and from this generated an orientation approach that would help participants overcome their unconscious rejection of novelty. You must model and adapt such a process if you don’t want the ideas you are evaluating or generating to be automatically rejected!

 

 

 

 

 

 

What do people do when they put aside their professional roles? What do you and your mates do on the way home from a match or a party? What level of debate do you usually reach when watching the X Factor? What sells newspapers and magazines?

The answer to all of these is one word: gossip.

We love to chat with no holds barred about the things that piss us off, excite us, amuse us and just intrigue us. Much of this chat is superficially critical – a kind of offloading of judgments, assessments, opinions. But its real role is more profound, it generates a kind of creative commons where everyone’s input is welcome and irreverence rather than compliance rules the roost.

We have, of course in our wisdom, largely banished gossip from focus groups and qualitative research. It threatens to be too irreverent, critical and judgmental and we are worried that members of the public will pour cold water on anything given the chance. Just as you and I do!

Yet in gossip, what we really notice and pay attention to is revealed. Our envy, desire, status anxiety, drivers – both to fight and flee – are all apparent in five minutes gossip and you don’t have to ‘probe’. You only ever really have to probe if people are scared or indifferent – more often the latter than the former in market research.

So, how can you use the Power of Gossip to illuminate your work?

Here’s how. Set up a Gossip Game in the group. Here’s an outline of how I might do it.

“Let’s start with a well-known figure who polarizes opinion. Someone who has both fans and foes. Let’s take Bono of U2. Who is willing to represent him as fans, who as foes? Let’s have a couple of minutes each way. We’ll let the foes go first!”

“OK, we’re talking about salad dressings. I’d like to divide the group into two, four of you to discuss salad dressings as fans for a couple of minutes. The other four to listen and be ready to express your criticism of salad dressings in response to the praise of the fans. Don’t worry fans, you’ll get a chance to get your own back on the critics once they’ve done their bit.”

Here’s another method. Print off Mastheads from newspapers like the News of the World or the Sun and invite members of the group working as pairs to write headlines or stories about the product or service as they might appear in the Sun/NOW. They can search Google for images to go with their story. We only need the headline and the first couple of sentences of the story.

The point here is that this is emotional material, there is a freedom to express emotional positions without fear of looking bad or stupid.

The fact is that these may not be committed opinions, but they are social & cultural tropes – and so say a lot about the underlying opinions and judgments we hold. In a way, these games with gossip allow a group to reverse the process whereby they are invited to comment on an endorser or presenter associated with a brand. This kind of endorsement is obviously done to sprinkle stardust on a product, but allowing people to gossip about it will show you your product’s strengths and weaknesses quicker than anything.

We often want to maximize the appeal of the brand/person/service we’re working on. Giving people rational measurements like scales or discussions drives satisficing, not maximizing measures. Gossip is, by its very nature a maximizing activity. Everything gets exaggerated, good and bad – and in the exaggerations the true attachments or problems with the brand lie.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My tip today is: don’t probe or pressurize people to provide reasons or justifications. They’ll just make stuff up to satisfy you. This is known as ‘confabulation’. Instead, take the pressure off, open things up, don’t pursue! How would you like to be ‘probed’. Sounds like the dentist!

To get a better sense of the ways in which we deceive ourselves have a look here: http://www.spring.org.uk/2007/11/10-piercing-insights-into-human-nature.php

I am amazed by the amount of poor and unhelpful process in focus groups – and process that flies in the face of our increasing scientific knowledge of how choices are made. Much of it stems from the early ideas of psychodynamic psychologists like Freud and Jung that the psyche is a bit like an iceberg, with only a little showing on the surface while much is hidden beneath. From this the idea of probing surely emerges, what if we could poke about beneath the surface to find out what’s there?

This leaves a lot of researchers busily seeking tools or techniques to dig deeper. The favourite is the question: “Why?” Unfortunately this is usually both unhelpful and leads to false attributions. We know for sure that people don’t want to appear thoughtless or irrational in front of others, so they make up a reason that satisfies the questioner.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Look at the beautiful iceberg. You could say the white bit represents conscious mind and the larger part beneath the surface the unconscious. It’s true that more and more research shows that much of our decision-making happens automatically, within the unconscious, and so it is important to think about how to reach these more hidden areas. But if you think for a second about how Freud and Jung went about it, they created settings that were as pressure free as possible and just asked people to talk about what came to mind. They did not pressure or probe people, they realised that matters of importance would surface if people were free to raise them in the manner and pace that suited them!

So, my favourite ‘probe’:

“Could you please say some more about that?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fascination!

 

My tip this week is this:

If you are to get the most out of an inquiry or study, become immersed in the phenomenon you are investigating. More particularly, see if you can begin to reflect upon & empathise with the significance that it has in everyday lives. Do this particularly if the product or service you are exploring has little attraction or interest for you in your life.

Everything I have ever worked on has had such significance, it’s just a matter of letting yourself be open to experiencing it. It’s best to start this process long before the fieldwork actually begins. Get yourself some experience of buying, using, chatting about, taking the mick out of, finding some friends who love/hate the thing you are about to explore.

Take this on as a ‘way of being,’ not just a mere data collection exercise. Become someone who is embroiled in the laundry and all its related activities. See if you can take the automobile you’re hired to investigate for a test drive. If it’s an insurance product, get a quote and while you’re doing so, ask what the most useful and the most irritating aspects of that experience are.

Many of the products or services that qualitative researchers are asked to explore are ordinary, everyday things. Such things, although you personally may not use them, constitute significant small acts for their users and it is the researcher’s job to get under the skin of these acts in order to appreciate their weight and significance in the lives of others. Their significance will always have some psychological value too – from products that remind them of their mum or dad to those that offer hope for their children. Things as apparently commonplace and dull as washing powder and toothpaste can command this sort of significance.

It is often in the territory of ‘small significance’ that you will find the clues that can best help your client, whether h/she was prompted by strategic or tactical reasons to do the research.

The key to discovery is letting go. Once you have formed your group or team, you need to set them free on their journey with whatever brief(s) and resources you plan to make available. This need to let go is one reason why I have focused so much on disinhibition in my group work – hoping to let go of my own inhibitions as well as everyone else’s!

Last time I talked about tips for evaluation. This time we’re talking about discovery projects where you are setting out to uncover things that haven’t been found before. Such projects might have innovation as their goal, or to update and catch up with changes in attitude or behavior due to time or new arrivals in the market place.

If you are briefed to discover & innovate, then the diagram below gives you a strong sense of the ideal shape of your research sessions. As you can see the major part of the session is devoted to opening up or divergent thinking which is very different in shape and nature from the kind of control-oriented work you might do in an evaluation group.

Here the forming part of the group or session is crucial, you are going into unknown territory with strangers so you need to be able to count on each other. Although this ‘unknown territory’ exists in an urban or suburban comfortable room or viewing facility, or perhaps a hotel meeting room – don’t think this doesn’t mean people won’t be anxious – they will. And so will you! Whatever you do don’t adopt a ‘nonchalant’ or devil-may-care attitude as if you were a complete expert, which almost certainly covers nervousness – and is likely to create mimicry in the group as they copy you, the most powerful person in the room!

Here is the shape of the Discovery Journey with key markers along the way:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you have difficulties interpreting this on-screen you can download a pdf of the discovery diagram here:

Discovery.pdf

We will return to the Phases or stages in this journey in future Tips, but notice if you will similar journeys of your own, where you have opened yourself up for new experiences. Going on holiday is a favourite [although if you’re a worrier like me, you may have packed everything but the kitchen sink!] Think of a time when you took things as they came, tried out some new stuff and went with the flow: that’s the kind of headspace to employ if you’re leading a creative journey.

More on what all the phases involve soon!

 

 

My Tip this week: get your groups arguing. Read on and you’ll see why.

If you have a set of alternatives to evaluate its likely there are two main question you’ll want to answer: which is strongest and why?

There are any number of ways in which one thing may be stronger than others, but we know that liking is a key attribute of preferences that lead to purchase. In many years of market testing Unilever have established this attribute’s importance. They have also shown that ‘likelihood to purchase’ is strongly correlated with buying in the real world – so you want to ask your respondents: ‘which do you like best?’ and ‘which would prompt you to buy?’ Of course you’ll do this in the words that work best for you but my advice is to keep it simple!

Next we come to the question of ‘why?’ If yours is a qualitative project, almost certainly some degree of diagnostics will be expected of you. Here the science and the state of our knowledge suggests that our respondents are much less likely to know why they chose one thing over another than they think!

http://www.spring.org.uk/2007/11/10-piercing-insights-into-human-nature.php

Of the ten seminal papers on this site, 1,2 6 & 7 are relevant to this issue of awareness of our own ‘reasons’.

So, what should we do? The answer to this kind of methodological question is often to be found by questioning your own daily practices. How do you and your family reach decisions about prefrences in daily life? In my family it is almost always by discussion and argument, in which one side (even if only one side of your own mind!) presents its arguments against the other and they battle it out. We try to stop short of outright fights!

In my experience modern focus groups might do a bit of discussing – if there’s time, – but almost never any argument. This is for two main reasons:

1.    There is a fear of argument and dissent in groups – that this activity would make the respondents uncomfortable – and more importantly, might make the moderator and the clients uncomfortable too.

2.    Rhetoric, or the skill of argument is unfashionable in this empirical age. We are not taught how to argue in a civilised manner – and thus argument often appears uncivilised!

This is where Breakthrough Psychology comes in handy. One of the key techniques of abnorming (the founding principle of Breakthrough psychology), is called the Flip. To do it you just flip what is normally done on its head and do the opposite. So, if most groups don’t argue, we must find a way to use argument – and everyday life is actually packed full of it – in our groups or interviews.

How do you do that? My experience suggests that making it into a game is the best way. To do this you divide your group up into 3 teams, two trios and a pair (for a standard 8 member group – vary numbers if you have different size groups). Each trio chooses a different route from those you are evaluating and has five minutes to come up with a ‘pitch’ to the other group members on why this route works best for them. The pitch must be no longer than a couple of minutes. Then, once the first trio has done its pitch, the second trio goes on, pitching another preferred route using their arguments.

The point of this is that in order to ‘pitch’ something, people have to grapple with the original, turn it into their own words, extract what is of value from it and also what it means to them. It is these two elements meaning and value that will give you the best diagnostics. They also have to practice condensation, another crucial ingredient of evaluation work – forcing us to summarise virtues.

The remaining pair + the moderator form an audience and create a score out of ten for each pitch. That score can be linked to some attribute if you wish, like true to the brand, strength of appeal, whatever your client is trying to understand about the value of the routes. Or they can just comment on their experience of the pitches without scoring if you prefer. I recommend getting the scores!

Whether you end up focusing on one preferred route or more in your report/analysis is up to you and shaped by your brief.

Try this out in your next focus groups or post a comment with any questions you have and I will try to answer them.

 

This fourth video starts to tackle the conditions needed for creating depth in contact with people. It is in my view an illusion that you create any reliable real contact by venturing straight in to what may be twenty or more questions to strangers about their lives! I think that Relationships are the Source of Results and that at least one third of our time should be spent creating and building them!

 

 

Each of the layers of Freud’s three-part system is derived from different sources.

The Id is the container of biological and species history – embodied in our instincts: a ‘seething cauldron’ as it has been called. It is the energy that makes you want to push someone out of the way if you are hungry or thirsty, acquire status if you are envious or to be drawn to make love to an irresistible other.

This system is in conflict with the superego – a repository of social rules, inhibitions & permissions – also derived from previous generations and taught through parents, custom and norms. It is this system that warns you to keep off the grass, drive on the left, be polite & not to grab that irresistible other without permission!

The ego is the mediator and moderator, the container of contemporary experiences – though not a holder of them (it is made up of moments of ‘now’). It is a referee but not a player in the internal drama. The ego is only a player in the sense of manipulating (or trying to) the external world in service of the internal.

So human beings are the arena in which two powerful, awesome armies confront each other, with the ego, powerless to limit their energies, engaged in a damage limitation exercise. In the picture we see a hapless ego overlooking the conflict between a beast and a highly compliant, well-ordered automaton.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For our work, the key issue here – and the reason why I focus so much on disinhibition, play, non-verbal exercises, empathic emotional connection & allowing the internal to express itself in my own practice – is that while the external world is important, it is always subordinate to the internal. And people almost certainly will not tell you this, especially if the internal desires are selfish, greedy, power-orientated, highly competitive, sexual or bizarre. Given this perspective it is easy to see why ‘reportage’ – just telling your client what they said – can so often be the booby prize!

In the focus group or interview the ego struggles to limit the damage that might be caused if the real motives were to be revealed. It tones down what might be a seething desire into something more socially acceptable or placates an overbearing superego with a veneer of polite attentiveness. In so doing it maintains form but destroys content – and is much more driven by the ego needs of the current situation to keep the awesome armies out of sight in the group or interview than by any hope, desire, longing or fear arising from the topic of discussion.

‘Internal perceptions are more primordial, more elementary, …[they have] greater economic significance’ (Freud 1923, p22, adapted from Dalal, 1998]

That’s really the key concern for us all. According to Freud, the internal world or sense of things has greater economic significance in individual’s behavior than the external. If we don’t get in touch with it, we fail to appreciate its influence; we are likely to end up with an erroneous picture of what people are up to!

Click here to download a pdf of this summary

 

 

 

 

My tip is:-  think clearly about whether you are being asked to evaluate or discover. And then structure your sample and method accordingly. They are journeys through different landscapes and need different tools and tactics. Just as you wouldn’t use or pack the same bag for a business trip as a holiday – so you need to pack your methodology differently for these two journeys!

I’m sure many of us are grateful and excited to do the evaluative stuff, but it is not in my view the natural strength of focus group methods.

Why do I say that? It’s to do with the nature of the discourse. In any evaluative project the discourse must be sourced in comparisons. Is this better than that? Is this the right direction for this brand or service? Is the logo clear? Is the message on target? Is this more relevant/up-to-date?

Once you create a comparative frame, it’s hard to be sure in your groups who is comparing what with what. Everyone in your group or sample brings a different frame of reference to the topic and quite often the stimuli have at least 5 or 6 parts, so they are complex and symbols & language are often mixed together.

Most importantly, the people in your group are more likely to be influenced by you, the moderator and the other group members than the stimulus material. It is almost always of more importance to each person what the other people think of h/her than to be accurate about the stimulus or their opinions.

Additionally, if the group has dived straight into examining the stimuli and there has been no practice of working with difference or disagreement, the group will regress to the safest norm – and so choose a safe option.  Not because it’s better for the brand – but it is better for the group. They feel variations on a sense of unity, comfort in agreement, sensibleness and that they have got their job done.

In my experience, the question lingering in the debrief of such exercises is often:

“How many people actually said that?” If this question is bubbling about, I think its nearly always a sign that quantitative methods might have worked better to resolve the ‘which is best?’ issue.

That doesn’t mean that evaluative work is a waste of time, far from it. It is essential to hear customers or potential customers working with the vocabulary and personality of the brand, and this can reassure clients and/or stimulate creative. I think though, that to get the best out of this type of group/depth, you need to include the possibility of disagreement and argument since this is the very framework you are using to assess. If it only comes at the analysis stage you will be left with having to guess! I will give you a tip on how to work with difference and argument next week.

 

It’s not very often that your work gets used directly at a National Level. Here is one rare example. In 2004/5 we were asked to help Tony Blair, who due to the Iraq & his relationship with Bush had become disconnected from the British people – and most particularly female voters.

Using two-chair work in focus groups we were able to uncover the nature and source of women’s hostility and what might turn it around. Several weeks later, as part of the reconnection strategy TB uses a speech in Gateshead, seven weeks before the 2005 election to initiate a shift from his Professional/Public level of relationship to the Personal, likening the bad feeling towards him to a domestic squabble. We had advised him on the Relationship Triangle and its power in a debrief a few days earlier.

Whether it worked or not is up to you to decide. But his party’s support did increase by as much as 8% in the next six weeks running up to the election. Nearly all of that increase was with female voters.

After many years of experience with focus groups I came to believe that people could accomplish almost anything given the right circumstances, some time to practice and encouragement. We took that belief into our early experiments with large groups (10 people up to 1,500) in a process we called the Big Talk – to distinguish it from the small talk we’d found prevalent in focus groups.

Creating a micro-culture where anyone’s contribution was applauded proved so fruitful that we were able to co-create a string of innovations for clients like BUPA, British Airways, Holiday Inn, Tambrands and Singapore Airlines. It also proved enjoyable for both clients and members of the public who participated at a level we had never found in focus groups. After the sessions – sometimes two days long at weekends – people came up to us and asked if they could come to another one!

The keys to this micro-culture at Big Talk are simple,

1. We create a level playing field where everyone has equal rights and a big invitation to come forward in their own time and way. There is a ‘ban’ on mockery, taking the piss (except out of yourself), but no ban on fun – unless it is at someone else’s expense and they are not in on the game! Unlike our friends in the ‘Open Space’ movement who we much admire, we do have a basic structure for our process which is led by empathetic facilitators, skilled in creating relational depth. We have found that works better both to meet clients goals and ambitions – and to provide a sense of safety and organisation (‘yes, there is a plan!’) for everyone.

2. However, we appreciate that not everyone will feel comfortable speaking out in front of a big crowd, so we make sure there is a variety of activities from individual work, to pairs, to trios and fours and groups of up to 15 working on something together.

3. We make sure that the contributions of all are acknowledged and applauded! Yes, we clap out loud. A generous spirit is not only vital to the energy of these sessions, it enhances the quality of what people bring – they become generous too!

4. We do not judge – except occasionally as a ‘game’ – the contributions within the sessions. We can have little genuine idea of what might work other than an intuitive one from the creative space, so we don’t subject ideas to too much scrutiny at the time of their inception. That can be done later.

5. We continually remind the group of how well they’re doing and put ideas back into the community where they become everyone’s, to work on and discuss. We might ask the whole group to ‘build’ on an idea or theme, but not to criticize it.

This sounds to me like an exciting basic recipe for a society where everyone is valued and gets appreciated for their contribution. I believe it could be so if, for example, politicians and big organisations co-created with their communities, both internal and external. To gather momentum, engagement and inspiration you need to work with people not on them!

If you click on the thumbnail you’ll be invited to download the pdf. Be my guest! This is to accompany the video called Facilitation.

I cannot over-emphasise the importance of learning to consider the domain of the social in facilitation. All social encounters have a set of rules, many of them hidden! Each one of us is good at some relationship levels, less good at others. In our job you are certain to meet people who have a propensity to each of the four levels.

Most common are those who choose to fix at the Professional level. You need to create permission and ‘games’ that allow/encourage them to step out to the public or personal levels.

Least common are those who go straight for the Private Level: they will occur in your encounters as ‘boundary busters’ and can be a great asset to a group or a project – but can also be very unsettling, even scary for the people around them!

Fabulous examples of boundary busting are to be found among stand-up comedians, who oscillate between the personal & private domains: which of us would feel safe standing alongside them onstage as they do their act?

 

This is the second video in my series. Click on the Thumbnail above to see the film.

This one lays out some of the important ‘socially constructed’ boundaries that face any facilitator. These boundaries determine what is permissible and what is not in each level of encounter with other(s). Inevitably the position and strength of these boundaries varies with different people. Some are much more personal, others more professional. Some have a well-developed public persona (entertainers or entertaining people for example), while others do not.

To make contact with people – and to explore things at some depth – you need to be able to cross these boundaries readily and without creating offence.

The unacknowledged existence of these levels is, I believe, one foundation of the idea of ‘talking at cross purposes’ where you want to explore something in more (or less!) depth and your group or interviewee seems to be missing the point. It’s helpful to practice these transitions if you want to reduce the amount of time you’re out of synch with each other – in your personal & private relationships too!

Over the next year its my intention to publish 100 tips that I have found useful in the practice of qualitative research, co-creation and depth work of all types. I think we are lacking a forum for sharing the intimate tools of our trade – including all the frustrations, disappointments and difficulties we meet along the way. I hope that others from our professional community might join in the conversation – posting if they will not only reactions to my suggestions but also good ideas of their own.

As early as 1988, I promised I would get off the road, give up the nights spent in unfamiliar homes, viewing rooms, hotels and in the company of strangers. Yet in spite of efforts to change direction, modify my practice and do it differently, I have come back to trying to understand what makes people tick (and hence what makes me the person I am!) over and over again. This is the central journey of my life, and I have spent my career  pursuing it. Apart from the mysteries surrounding my own childhood, if I look back for the source of this fascination I can recall a childhood passion for detective stories and trying to figure out who was the culprit, the motive and the plot. Sherlock Holmes was a hero of my youth! There are other more intimate sources to this story and, perhaps, if I find a curious audience I will recount them in more detail.

It is, I believe, important for practitioners to know why they are in the room with others, engaged on journeys of discovery, for if the motive is only money it will get tougher and tougher to endure the double-day working (daytime + evening), the endless travel and hotels, the tension of being ‘viewed’ by clients, critics and peers and the effort to make an intervention that goes beyond reportage.

This last is a key point: if we are merely to report what people said, you can see that the days of truly interactive, face-to-face qualitative are numbered, for why should we not just collect people’s opinions gathered in a ‘room’ online? I am a big fan of online qual work – especially done in the community style – but nothing can match the face-to-face encounter for the skills of building empathy and permission to dive beneath the superficial to explore what lies beneath.

I will publish the first of the 100 tips next week.

Although I am the storyteller, the story is not mine alone. It is born from the thousands of people who have given me their time, their opinions and their feelings across 29 countries in nearly 40 years – on topics ranging from toothpaste to athlete’s foot, from tax dodging to thoughts of dying.

Without them, I could not have honed my craft, such as it is, and I would not have had the privilege of watching them uncover insight and the impact it had upon them.

From windy wet nights in Northern Cities, to sunny days in Singapore and Sydney I have gigged again and again. I have never missed a group or an interview, although I once was swept off my feet by the power of the wind in a snowstorm in Edinburgh, carrying an art-bag which acted as a sail to lift me into the air. Another time I left the results on the train and cowered for days wondering whether to come clean or hightail it to the badlands. One night in Bristol I listened to a woman tell a rapt group her recipe for roast Badger. I hope you don’t want it; I have forgotten everything except the unusual fact that it contained Flora margarine – the proper subject of the discussion.

This is my first blog and the very first post. Over the coming weeks I will do my best to share with you what I have learned in all those years and hope you will join me in talking about these matters, sharing your own tips or advice and creating a community among those of us who form the frontline of the insight business.

Every week I will post a new video, talking about some of the topics that matter most to me. I will also accompany these with pdfs of the text and slides so that you can use them for study or in projects or contact me about them if you want to. Nearly all of this is original material as far as I know.

Each week will follow a similar structure. I’ll tell you more about that soon. I hope you enjoy the Blog and look forward to hearing from you…