Kelly came to me panicked. For financial reasons, she had limited time to finish her dissertation, but the chair of her committee was acting as if she hated Kelly, refusing to talk with her, one of the other members was unavailable, while the third was siding with the chair!
As a former professor in a field related to Kelly's, I saw that Kelly had a good topic and reasonable approach that only needed some modifications. However, Kelly said that Alice, the chair, was refusing to help Kelly when Kelly went to her for guidance and accusing Kelly of wanting Alice to "do it for her" when Kelly tried to get help and feedback.
Kelly was at her wit's end. She had chosen her committee purely for their connections, which she hoped would help her in getting a job. While that was a consideration, she might have done better with a mix of people who really wanted to nurture students and those who had connections. Kelly said she had to finish the first part of her dissertation before she could get a new committee, and she had some people in mind. So the problem was, in Kelly's mind, how to appease the dragon (Alice) so she could escape.
Kelly had also chosen Alice because Alice had given Kelly straight A's on all her papers when Kelly had been in her classes, albeit with lots of criticisms. Kelly, a busy single mother, had done these papers pretty quickly, and was a bit surprised to get such good grades. That made her think that with more effort, she'd do really well with Alice. She couldn't understand what had happened.
Kelly had good social skills and reported tactful communications with Alice, so that led me to think of trait behavior. Fortunately, Alice had written a lot on Kelly's typed papers, and I had Kelly write me a sample write of her own immediately. When I saw it, I started laughing. It was so clear what the major problem was.
Kelly was an Interactive Thinker and Alice was her opposite, a Quiet Thinker. These traits are behind an enormous number of misunderstandings at work and at home. A trait is a habitual way of perceiving and behaving, and we assume that however we see and behave is the normal, right way to do it. "Normal is what I am."
Interactive Thinkers, like Kelly, need to develop their ideas through interaction, usually with others, but sometimes by writing (many drafts). They have to get their ideas out in the air to formulate, develop and screen them -- to figure out which ideas are worth further work and which should be dropped.
Quiet Thinkers do this entire process in their heads. They never say a word until they have the idea in its final form, ready for implementation. In meetings, they don't say a word until they've decided exactly what should be done, and when they say something, they mean they are ready to do it NOW.
Each trait has it's positive and negative side, depending on the situation. (You can read more about that in the chapter I've put in the document files in
The Relationship Dance.) However, it's always a difficult situation when you are dealing with someone with the opposite trait and don't recognize what's going on!
Now it was clear to me why Alice viewed Kelly as asking Alice to Kelly's work. Alice, as a Quiet Thinker, fully developed all her ideas by herself in her head, and never mentioned them until they were ready for implementation. Alice worked everything out by herself before presenting it, and when she presented it, she felt she'd done her best and people should act on it or react to it.
Kelly mentioned ideas when they were in the seed stage, where ideas sometimes can look strange, and wanted to talk about them. Interactive thinkers love batting ideas around, and sometimes it's not clear that those ideas are directly relevant to the issue at hand.
Alice would think that Kelly had half baked ideas and wanted Alice to complete them for her. She probably thought Kelly was incompetent and wasting Alice's time. After all, any normal person (like Alice) wouldn't present something until it was complete and ready for action. Alice would not want to develop her ideas by talking to anyone else. Presenting an idea before it was ready for prime time is, to a Quiet Thinker, lazy, irresponsible, or stupid. (When people don't do things they way we would, we tend to assume the worst reasons for their behavior.)
Kelly didn't want Alice to get Kelly's ideas ready for implementation, she just wanted Alice to listen, bat ideas around with her, and tell her when she was off track. Interactive Thinkers also need Quiet Thinkers to help keep them focused and on track.
When you understand trait behavior, people with opposite traits are actually helpful to each other. For example, Interactive Thinkers can help Quiet Thinkers by pointing out possibilities they might not have considered, and Interactive Thinkers often are good at long term planning.
When Kelly had submitted those papers she'd thought weren't really fully ready, they'd been presented to Alice as fully ready, so Alice believed Kelly had done it right by presenting something fully worked out (her way) and Alice would comment on them. Kelly had never asked Alice to discuss the papers while they were in progress.
It was now clear what Kelly needed to do: only present Alice with products that appeared finished for comment. But Kelly desperately wanted someone to talk with. She'd always talked with a friend before, but the friend had died the previous year.
She couldn't think of anyone who would be appropriate, until she suddenly remembered a neighbor of hers, a professor in a related field, who had seemed very interested in Kelly's topic. She could interact with Kelly so that Kelly could feel comfortable in developing her ideas before she went to her committee and just ask them for their reactions to a finished product.
Now Kelly understood what she needed to succeed. She plans on asking the neighbor for some time and looking for other people with similar interests for interaction. For her new committee, she'll will choose at least one Interactive Thinker.
There are many aspects to these traits. They also explain people's different reactions to and behavior in meetings, and why some people love meetings and others hate them.
You can read more about these traits in the document files on
The Relationship Dance, where I've posted the entire chapter from our book, Trait Secrets.
Namaste,
Hedy
Awareness Transforms
The Relationship Dance Community
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