EQ & executive coaching tip - How to use the OK Corrall
26 Sep 2013
Franklin Ernst’s "The OK Corral" is a neat way of illustrating how we see ourselves when we compare ourselves with others. (At Lequin Leadership Development we use the OK Corral in our board coaching, executive and career coaching.)
We take one of four ‘life positions’ (see diagram). Whichever life position we take determines how we interact with others. In different situations we may shift around the matrix but we’ll always have one overarching life position. In all but the healthy, ‘I’m OK, You’re OK’ position, people are either taking too much or too little personal responsibility, leading to either blame or to self-destructive behaviour. These are great energy drainers. In fact, we can map the neurotics and character disordered people on to the OK Corral.
While our 'life position' can be situational we all have a dominant life position. The following coaching exerise is one that Lequin's executive and career coaches use to find a coachee's dominant life position, which helps develop greater self awareness.
Executive coaching exercise
Using the corresponding numbers to plot on the OK Corrall where you think you are when you're:
- With work colleagues
- With your boss
- With your family
- With your partner
- With close friends
- With distant friends
- With someone you dislike
- When thinking about the human race
If we were to aggreagate our scores many of would fall out of the 'I'm OK, you're OK' box.
So how do we learn to move into this box? The following section helps you reflect on the negative emotional states that may keep you from being in the healthy 'I’m OK, You’re OK’ state all of the time.
You’re not OK - Taking a dislike or distain for others
In looking at why we might find someone ‘not OK’ we must address the issue distain for others, for we all have at some point in our lives felt a dislike even hatred for someone. To openly admit we hate someone suggests that we’re incapable of controlling our emotions, of showing acceptance or empathy, or of seeing things in perspective. It implies that we’re in some way a bad person, which is why it’s not something we hear people admitting to very often. Yet though it may seem an uncommon state to be in it should not be dismissed as an irrelevance because distain for others can create a large hole in our energy pot, and often because convention leads us to deny and suppress distain for others it may be state that many of us are unconscious of. Becoming conscious or admitting our distain of others is important because it can teach us a great deal about ourselves.
Distain and hatred is often said to be opposite of love because when you’ve formed a belief devoid of empathy, understanding or acceptance then all that will follow are destructive emotions: disgust, jealously, fear and anger. We can – sometimes should – of course become angry and disgusted by others when they violate our most treasured values. Showing anger and disgust to honour our values and self–respect when trampled over can be a necessary reaction without which we are indirectly encouraging others to wipe their shoes on us. But when we become angry and disgusted not by others actions but rather because of they represent, their outward appearance or our inflexibility to our worldwide then we are draining our energy pot. As the seventeenth century writer, François de La Rochefoucauld states:
“When our hated is too keen it puts us below our hater.”
And when we fix our hatred on others by means of transferring our anxieties and fear on to them then we are only giving our powers to those same people to wind us up (even when they’re unaware of our distain towards them). When someone is truly abhorrent, such as Stalin, then hating them is a complete waste our energy. And when we transfix distain on one individual it is easy to take it one step further and learn to hate a group and to become a misanthropist. As Satre said:
“It is enough that one man hate another for hate to gain, little by little, all mankind.”
From an inability to accept differences in others we create situations where there is no compromise, and so we find it hard to empathise with others. We become very set in our ways, and very narrow in the people we deem fit to socialise with. This narrowness in our lives means we cannot possibly learn to question if the route we have chosen for our life is the right one or not. With nothing to compare ourselves with apart from which we have always known, then we can not taste all life has to offer.
Distain is a lazy emotion. By transferring out anxieties and own failing on to others then we fail to tackle their source. It’s the easy option. “I’ve lost my job and there are none advertised I’m willing to do. I’m angry and I feel let down. I can’t burn down the office but I can vent my anger at something else namely my boss.” When we transfer our own unconscious dislikes and anxieties onto others through distain and hatred we soon start projecting our own imaginary attributes on to this now vilified person in much the same way racism develops. If a white man steals then the racist will rationalise the theft by attributing the act to the thief’s personal character; if a black man steals then it is due his race, his appearance, and the act of theft strengthens the negative stereotype. This skewered rationalisation is how we start to create unconscious prejudices, which cloud our judgement and ability to get the best from others and move towards our goals.
From our experience of career and executive coaching with leaders and managers in business and from working in several international publishing companies, a classic example is an editor’s distrust of publishers. Publisher must control budgets and ensure profitability, and often this involves reining in an editor’s wish list. After several experiences of this an editor sees only a culling of creativity and projects onto the publisher, rightly or wrongly, insensitivity to writers. Speaking with other magazine editors, our editor selectively picks up on similar experiences, and soon he unconsciously concludes that all publishers are grey, Machiavellian, bean-counting toadies. It’s not a useful prejudice for the editor to hold as without the cooperation of a publisher he can find his career restricted. The ability to keep our own experiences, prejudices and beliefs from damaging a relationship requires impeccable self-management, a highly disciplined skill that will be covered in more detail in the section of relationships.
Much as we like traits in others that we recognise in ourselves because they reassure us, it is often the things we dislike in others we dislike about ourselves. A very common area that people look to address through coaching is a difficult relationship with a colleague that has resulted in a confrontation, stonewalling and a breakdown in communication. One question that gets people really thinking is:
“What is it that you really dislike in that person that you also dislike in yourself.”
Very often there’s a pause as they think followed by acknowledgement through the nod of their head and an admission of their projection. One client answered that he couldn’t stand someone because they were so competitive and self-serving, which he said he knew himself to be yet seeing this reflected back through someone else who he couldn’t relate to him without an overwhelming feeling of anger and animosity towards them. When he learned to see that person as an aid for his own learning, someone who in effect was holding up a warning sign to show him how others might see him, his dislike began to be replaced at first by pity and then gratitude. And the more his emotions changed from purely negative ones, so his projections faded and he actually came to realise that the individual in question, while not wholly likeable was not totally unpalatable as previously thought. He’d begun to accept his tormentor’s faults and in doing so accept his own darker nature.
And once we’ve acknowledged that we’re far from perfect and that we too may have behaved in a not totally dissimilar way in the past then we can start to revisit other people’s behaviour and become more tolerant of it. Indeed, one question that can help us empathise with a view to reframing situations that we would otherwise become overawed by is to ask:
“When have I myself behaved like that in the past, and why?”
The why here is important because we if we can start to understand that behind everyone’s action is a positive intent then we can start to really fine tune our empathy to a point where we can see the motivation behind even the most ridiculous, foolish or seemingly unpleasant acts.
If you're in the 'I'm not OK' boxes then you need to work on self belief and many of our previous blogs will help you develop greater self confidence.
Who are Lequin Leadership Development ?
Lequin Leadership Development provide customer service training, executive coaches, business coaches, executive business coaching, coach training courses, coach training, coaching skills for managers, coaching culture programmes, board coaching, outplacement support, executive coach, coach supervision, executive coaching, talent management, change management, change management training, leadership coaching and leadership development.
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