By Martha Beck
If at first you don't succeed... ask yourself, Am I an otter? A squirrel? A mouse?
The answer could spell the difference between things going swimmingly and squeaking to a halt. Find your own winning style.
It was a problem I'd never anticipated: My brainy daughter was having
trouble in school. Katie began teaching herself to read at 15 months
and tested at a "post–high school" level in almost every subject by
fourth grade. Yet her middle-school grades were dropping like a lead
balloon, and her morale along with them. I cared more about the morale
than the grades. I knew Katie was quickly losing something educational
psychologists call her sense of self-efficacy -- her belief that she
could succeed at specific tasks and life in general. People who lack
this trait tend to stop trying because they expect to fail. Then, of
course, they do fail, feel even worse, shut down even more, and carry on
to catastrophe.
I couldn't understand what put Katie on this slippery slope. True,
some people seem genetically inclined to believe in themselves -- or not
-- but experience powerfully influences our sense of self-efficacy. I
knew Katie had been confident as a preschooler, but her current trouble
at school was destroying her optimism. I tried to help in every way I
could. I created homework-checking systems, communicated with teachers
like bosom buddies, doled out penalties and rewards. Mostly, though, I
just kept cheering Katie on. I was sure that if she would stop
hesitating, believe in herself, and just throw herself into the task at
hand, she'd get past the problem.
Boy, was I ever wrong.
It took years of confidence-battering struggle -- for both Katie and
me -- before I finally got the information I needed. It came from a
no-nonsense bundle of kindly energy named Kathy Kolbe, a specialist on
the instinctive patterns that shape human action. Kathy's father
pioneered many standardized intelligence tests, but Kathy was born with
severe dyslexia, which meant that this obviously bright little girl
didn't learn in a typical way. She grew up determined to understand and
defend the different ways in which people go about solving problems.
The day Katie and I met her, Kathy was wearing a T-shirt that said
"do nothing when nothing works," a motto that typifies her approach. On
her desk were the results from the tests (the Kolbe A and Y Indexes)
that my daughter and I had just taken to evaluate our personal "conative
styles," or typical action patterns.
"Well," said Kathy, glancing at a bar graph, "I see you both listen better when you're drawing."
Katie and I stared at each other, astonished. Bull's-eye.
"And you've both had a zillion teachers tell you to stop drawing.
They said you could do only one thing at a time, but that's not true for
you two, is it? You have a hard time focusing if there's nothing to
occupy your eyes and hands."
Unexpectedly, I found myself tearing up with gratitude. I'd never
realized how frustrated I'd been by the very situation Kathy was
describing. Katie sat up a little straighter in her chair.
"But," Kathy went on, "Martha, you go about problem-solving in a
different way from Katie. There are four basic action modes, and you're
what I call a Quick Start. When you want to learn, you just jump in and
start messing around."
Another bull's-eye. I cannot count the times I've been defeated,
humiliated, or physically injured immediately after saying the words,
"Hey, how hard can it be?" But that never seems to stop me from saying
them again.
"Now," Kathy went on, "Katie's not a Quick Start. She's a Fact
Finder. Before she starts a task, she needs to know all about it. She
needs to go through the instructions and analyze them for flaws, then
get more information to fill in the gaps."
To my amazement, my daughter nodded vigorously. I've never understood
why some people hesitate before diving into unfamiliar tasks or
activities. I couldn't imagine wanting more instructions about anything.
"There are two other typical patterns," Kathy explained. "The people I
call Implementors -- like Thomas Edison, for example -- need physical
objects to work with. They figure out things by building models or doing
concrete tasks. Then there are the Follow Thrus. They set up orderly
systems, like the Dewey decimal system or a school curriculum.
"And that, Katie," she said, "is why you're having trouble. The
school system was created mainly by people who are natural Follow Thrus.
It works best for students with the same profile. Your teachers want
you to fit into the system, but you have a hard time seeing how it
works. If you question the instructions -- which you absolutely need to
do -- they think you're being sassy."
Katie nodded so hard I feared for her cervical vertebrae. I was
stunned. I'd spent years trying to understand my daughter, and a
veritable stranger had just nailed the problem in ways I'd never even
conceptualized. Katie wanted more instructions? You could have knocked
me down with a feather.
Basic Instinct
I've told this story in detail because since meeting Kathy, studying her
work, and seeing how dramatically it affects people and their
productivity, I've become convinced that many of us feel like failures
because we don't recognize (let alone accept) that our instinctive
methods of acting are as varied as our eye color. Our modus operandi
shapes the way we do everything: make breakfast, drive, learn math. Not
recognizing natural differences in our conative styles -- assuming
instead that we're idiots because we do things unconventionally -- can
destroy that precious sense of self-efficacy.
Imagine a race between four animals: an otter, a mole, a squirrel,
and a mouse. They're headed for a goal several feet away. Which animal
will win? Well, it depends. If the goal is underground, my money's on
the mole. If it's in a tree? Hello, Mr. Squirrel. Underwater, it's the
otter. And if the goal is hidden in tall grass, the mouse will walk away
with it. Now, all these animals can swim, dig, climb, and find things
in the grass. It's just that each of them does one of these things
better than the others. Putting all four animals in a swimming race,
say, would lead to the conclusion that one was better than the others,
when the truth is simply that their innate skills are different.
If we're in an environment (such as school, a job, or a family
tradition) that asks us to act against our natural style, we feel
uncomfortable at best, tormented at worst. Even if we manage to conform,
we don't get a high sense of self-efficacy because although we've
managed the efficacy part of the equation, we've lost the self. When we
fail, we feel like losers; when we succeed, we feel like impostors.
Thanks to Kathy's work (and centuries of psychological work on
conation), I've stopped asking others to match my instinctive style. I
no longer expect squirrels to swim and otters to climb trees. As a
result, I'm better able to support myself, my children, and everyone
else I know. Here's a quick primer on how you can do the same:
Accept that you have an inborn, instinctive style of action
Just learning that there are four distinct patterns of action was a huge
aha for me. When Katie and I accepted that we simply had different ways
of doing things, our relationship and her confidence began to improve
immediately. To identify your own action-mode profile, you can take a
formal online test (the Kolbe Index at
kolbe.com;
there is a charge), or just observe your own approach to getting
something done. To give you an example, people with different profiles
might respond to a challenge -- let's say, learning to crochet -- in the
following ways:
- Quick Start: If you're a
Quick Start who wants to crochet, you'll probably buy some yarn and a
hook, get a few tips from an experienced crochetmeister, and jump right
into trial and error.
- Fact Finder: You'll spend hours reading, watching,
asking questions, and learning about crocheting before actually
beginning to use the tools.
- Implementor: You pay less attention to words than
to concrete objects, so you might draw a pattern of a crochet stitch or
even create a large model using thick rope, before you go near a needle.
- Follow Thru: You'll likely schedule a
lesson with a crochet teacher or buy a book that proceeds through a yarn
curriculum, learning new stitches in order of difficulty.
None of these approaches is right or wrong. They can all succeed
brilliantly. But someone who's programmed to use one style will feel
awkward and discouraged trying to follow another. We can all master each
style if we have to, the way a mole can swim or an otter can climb
trees, but it's not a best-case scenario.
So I finally stopped pressuring Katie to act like her Follow Thru
teachers or her Quick Start mother. Instead I helped her find detailed
information and gave her time to absorb it. She recently devoured a
1,000-page book on Web site design that I would not read if the
alternative were death on the rack. It took her a month to finish the
book. The next day, she made a Web site. Spooky.
Play to your strengths
Once you know your instinctive style, brainstorm ways to make it work
for you, not against you. For starters, choose fields of endeavor where
you feel comfortable and competent. If you love systematic structure,
don't become a freelancer. If you are crazy about physical models, don't
force yourself to crunch financial statistics for a living.
To really boost your sense of self-efficacy, think of ways you could
modify your usual tasks to suit your personal style. For example, Kathy
suggested that Katie might ask for permission to do detailed research
reports in place of other school assignments. I nearly threw up at the
very thought, but to my astonishment Katie agreed enthusiastically.
Of course, you'll inevitably interact with people whose instinctive
patterns are different from yours. Otter, Mole, Squirrel, and Mouse may
all show up in the same family, workplace, or book club. Occasionally,
it's fine to conform, using styles of action that don't come naturally
-- but do it consciously and for a limited time, or your sense of
self-efficacy will suffer. And finally...
Team up with unlike others
As long as Otter, Mole, Squirrel, and Mouse are forced to race in the
same terrain, at least three of them will be out of their element,
looking and feeling like failures. But think what they could do if they
pooled their skills. They could access resources from the water, earth,
trees, and fields, combining them in ways none of the animals could
achieve alone. They could rule the world! (Or at least the backyard.)
This is the very best way to leverage an understanding of conative
style -- to create useful, complementary strategies instead of
disheartening, competitive ones. Many of us have spent a lifetime trying
to be what we're not, feeling lousy about ourselves when we fail and
sometimes even when we succeed. We hide our differences when, by
accepting and celebrating them, we could collaborate to make every
effort more exciting, productive, enjoyable, and powerful. Personally, I
think we should start right now. I mean, hey, how hard can it be?
