Upcoming book: Making Change Happen

See an excerpt from David Kantor's upcoming book Making Change Happen: the Art and Science of Intervention in the latest Mobius Strip: Magazine for Transformational Leadership Professionals! Page 21. http://lnkd.in/dX44YB8

Johns Hopkins Medical Philanthropy Institute

See how KI is helping development officials develop their models for medical #fundraising! Register now! 

From the website: "The JHMPI Summer Institute will introduce you to a different way of working, one which will enable you to effectively incorporate insights and new experiences into your practice of medical development. In this session, we will apply Dialogue and Structural Dynamics, two theories that can guide intentional change in settings involving communication and interaction, to the practice of medical development."

http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/philanthropy_institute/summer_institute/

Reading the Room: Continuing Education Course

We are excited to announce that Reading the Room is now a CE course. Earn your credits by simply reading and taking an online test! 

The Reading the Room course aims to enrich psychologists, consultants, coaches, therapists, leaders, and all professionals’ understanding of communication within their teams through the use of structural dynamics theory. The course will offer a background in structural dynamics with in depth coverage of communication differences in low stakes versus high stakes situations. With a focus on leadership behavior in high-stakes situations, the practitioner will be able to intervene effectively in group dynamics and its outcomes. The textbook serves as a go-to resource for leading teams.

Reading the Room is available at Ce-credit.com for 18 Continuing Education credits. Visit: https://secure.ce-credit.com/aff/46504/?go=/courses/102017

You can receive 15 Continuing Education Credit for reading and for a limited time, receive a 25% discount off the price of the CE course at GenesisCE.com.  During registration, enter the Discount Code word “Leadership” at the Discount/Promotional Code button.  Visit: Genesisce.org

Jewish Icons

Interested in a unique look into cultural and intellectual trends that have shaped the last 50 years? Through a series of anecdotes, Jules Chametzky brings Jewish writers to life. 

The full list of authors and icons you can get to know on a personal level when reading Out of Brownsville: Encounters with Nobel Laureates and Other Jewish Writers by Jules Chametzky:

1) ALFRED KAZIN

2) NORMAN PODHORETZ

3) ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER

4) MORTY GUNTY

5) HOWARD SACKLER and FRIEND

6) GRACE PALEY

7) ISAAC ROSENFELD

8) SAUL BELLOW

9) JOHN BERRYMAN

10) WILLIAM PHILLIPS

11) HAROLD BRODKEY & ERICA JONG

12) IRVING HOWE

13) CYNTHIA OZICK

14) LESLIE FIEDLER

15) TILLIE OLSEN

16) ADRIENNE RICH, ANNE HALLEY, MARILYN HACKER

17) ALLEN GINSBERG

18) KADYA MOLODOWSKY

19) AMOS OZ, SHIRLEY KAUFMAN, ABBA KOVNER

20) JOSEPH BRODSKY

21) MAISHE MIRSKY

22) PAOLO MILANO

23) EDWARD DAHLBERG

24) PAUL GOODMAN

25) RUTH WHITMAN, TRANSLATIONS and TRANSFORMATIONS

26) HARVEY SWADOS

27) CLARA AND RICHARD WINSTON

28)   MELVIN JULES BUKIET, etc.

29)   JULIUS LESTER

30) NAT HENTOFF and OTHERS

31) HELEN and JOSE YGLESIAS

Purchase Online Here

Art Kleiner Interview published to Strategy+ Business

"Building the Skills of Insight

To eminent systems therapist David Kantor, learning to recognize the hidden patterns in conversation is the first step toward more effective executive leadership."

View full interview here:  http://www.strategy-business.com/article/00154?pg=all

Many thanks to Art Kleiner. 

Guest Post Published

Check it out on the thoughtLEADERS Blog, LLC.

Link here:   http://www.thoughtleadersllc.com/2012/10/how-to-do-a-better-job-of-reading-the-room/

Let me know what you think!

The Debate

In Chapter 15 of Reading the Room, a structural dynamics analysis of Barack Obama, I identified the President as a Bystander in Open System Meaning. The downside of this profile (see chapters 2-5) is a tendency to internally follow and process information while simultaneously gearing up for a response (a strong move and oppose would be appropriate). Romney's strategy, a blast of words misrepresenting even his own position, overwhelmed Obama's strategy of presenting facts. The result was that he seems slow, detached, and ineffectual. All a consequence of an otherwise effective behavioral repertoire based on the above, sited, profile.

Raising the Bar for Leaders and their Coaches

1.    Introduction

 

     It is the very nature of the beast—leadership is a high-pressure position whose occupants are expected without rest to make decisions that affect the lives of constituents and the well being of the entities they oversee. That it is lonely at the top has become a cliché, and though the spoils, when they come, may be plentiful, it is well that more and more leaders are, like kings of yore, hiring executive coaches to advise them.

This brief paper is a snippet from a soon-to-be-published book, Reading the Room: Group Dynamics for Coaches and Leaders,[1] that attempts to put leadership in a new conceptual perspective — that of structural dynamics — that is firm in its belief that leaders who do not develop a model of their own are vulnerable to hidden forces originating both in personal histories and current environments. Unexamined and left to chance, these forces take leaders down paths that too often do serious damage. Having a practice model of his or her own is my answer to this leadership dilemma. Needed — and this is crucial — is a coach who herself is armed with a model for how to help leaders develop their models in the context of leading their management teams.

Four Developmental Stages

While helping the leader develop his practice model, his coach simultaneously guides him through four developmental stages.

Stage 1: Functional Awareness

       In the functional awareness stage the leader comes to understand how the structure and patterns of communication in all his relationships play out in key face-to-face relations (Structural Dynamics is a theory of face-to face-relationships), differently with each of his management team members and with his private partner and or spouse[2]

     Once a leader can recognize behavioral profiles in action[3] and can read them in himself and in the room where interactions take place, the coach can lead him to the origins of these behavioral patterns in himself. These are key stories gathered from childhood through young adulthood and determine his typical ways of interacting with others.

     Later in this stage, coaches round out leaders’ discovery of the self in action by helping leaders see their shadow behaviors, or, more dramatically, their dark sides. These, too, originate in stories, inconveniently and often destructively rising to the surface in high-stakes situations. The leader gains much in understanding what these are and where they come from.

   Stage 2: System Awareness

       Systems thinking relies on circular rather than linear ideas about cause and effect. No theory in my opinion has contributed more to our understanding of how organizations work. Many leaders have been exposed to it, but for the greater part have yet to grasp it to any meaningful degree. Repeatedly the coach will focus the leader on system awareness. For example, she might point out circularities at the heart of a controlling system. “What is it about your behavior that causes X, whom you can’t stand, to behave toward you in such a way that you can’t stand him?”

       A leader who fails to understand circularity in communication risks cutting off valuable feedback about goings on in the organization. Poor insight into systems may be at the root of why his or her most valuable close relationships fail. Without good systems-thinking skills, the leader may also not understand how the organization works and how its parts interact—how, for example, if people in marketing fail to communicate effectively with people in sales or product design, the product may ultimately sit on a shelf.

   Stage 3: Moral Awareness

       The moral dimension of leadership behavior has come to occupy a central place in structural dynamics theory.  This stage of the process aims at promoting moral awareness in leaders, meaning basically an awareness of the forces that tempt fundamentally good people to do basically bad things.

       Lawrence Kohlberg and others have begun calling attention to moral behavior and its corruption in leaders and their organizations.[4]  Business schools, the most prolific generator of leaders and decision makers, are adding moral behavior to their curricula. If the fall from grace of some of their best and brightest graduates is indicative, however, that curriculum has a long way to go.

     Stage 4: Responsible Self-Evolution

       Advocates of structural dynamics insist that leaders and their coaches make the demanding but rewarding effort to develop and continue to “build their models.” The advocates also hold their coach trainees to this same standard.

       The capacity for responsible self-evolution is my phrase for addressing the question, “When does the power to acquire skills and knowledge shift from others to the self?” In this stage, when leaders have achieved functional, systemic, and moral awareness, and have achieved an initial grasp of what I call communicative competency,[5] structural dynamics recommends that they take responsibility for developing a model of their own making; a leadership model that is uniquely theirs.

Four Steps in Model Development

Four things are essential for building one’s model:

1.     Knowing one’s personal model[6] is the first step. Your personal model is unveiled in the first stage, achieving functional awareness. It has a profound influence on what leaders do and say, and thus on any model they attempt to imitate or develop.

2.     Working with a coach with an articulated model of her own, and a model for helping leaders develop their own.

3.     A meta-model for developing any model in the realm of human systems.

4.     A pre-existing model context; here, Structural Dynamics’ Accelerating Team Performance.⁷ It provides a framework that anchors the leader’s effort to build his model from the ground up.

 A Model of Models

Model building may sound dauntingly abstract. Where does one begin? How does one sort through the plethora of models that have bombarded the marketplace of ideas on leadership. To think about what to look for as you unearth and organize your model, it is useful to have an organizing set of theories (or requirements) that I call a meta-model. The meta-model, (or “model of models”) is a framework that defines the aspects of a fully formed and robust model. Within it we can organize and interrelate the pieces of our models. Any social meta-model needs to propose three kinds of theories: theories of the thing, of change, and of practice.

A Theory of the Thing

       A theory of the thing describes the entity on which your model focuses:

§  What is it? For example, Reading the Room presents a systems-oriented theory and examines the skill of leadership.

§  What are the underpinnings of that skill? Reading the Room singles out communicative skill, beginning with communication in face-to-face relations.

§  What assumptions does the thing (in this case, leadership) depend on? One assumption is that leadership often entails leading high-performing teams; such teams identify a second thing in SD’s model.

§  What skills are required of a high-performing team? In a high-performing team, each member acquires communicative competency, an understanding of the structure of successful and unsuccessful communication and how they contribute to each.

A Theory of Change

     The theory of change describes how to bring about change for that thing on which your model focuses. It describes the nature of change and how change happens within or for that entity.

§  What are the prerequisites of change (in our case, the changing of a person to become a better leader, or a team to function with maximal effectiveness)?

§  How does change happen? What brings it about?

§  How does context—time, place and person—affect change?

§  Does change occur the same way in an intimate human system versus a larger, more impersonal one?

For the thing called leadership:

§  If leadership’s goal is optimal personal and team performance, what is the baseline (in our model, low-stakes behavioral propensities) and what is the standard (for us, communicative competency in both low and high stakes) at the other end?

§  Through what stages do leaders and their teams evolve?

A Theory of Practice

          

     A theory of practice fully articulates the conceptual underpinnings of what the practitioner does on the ground, based on his understanding of the thing and its theory of change.  [Note: Your theory of practice should not be confused with your practice model. The latter is what the practitioner does in the room. It is circularly derived from interaction with our meta-model’s three component parts.]

§  What is the conceptual language system behind the practice (in our case, structural dynamics) model?

§  How do the methods, techniques and tools used in your practice model reconcile with your theory of practice?

§  What is the theoretical rationale behind a practice model designed to occur in distinct stages (three, in our case)?

§  Is the theory behind the practice consistent with the goals of the practice?

Building Your Own From Pre-Existing Models

Structural dynamics posits three phases to building a model—imitation, constraint, and autonomy. In seeming contradiction to the first phase just cited, SD contends that it is not possible to imitate another’s model, not for long anyway. Our personal models and other “constraints” see to that. Still, it asks leaders and coaches who undertake model development, to begin with two of its own models—one on leadership, and the other on how to lead teams. Models get built, according to Structural Dynamics, by constraining and being constrained by existing models such as these.

The Bar Raised High

It must be evident that this brief paper has a rhetorical message. It insists that leaders and those who coach them must undertake the lengthy, demanding, but rewarding journey through our three phases of model building if the quality of leadership is to be raised. Building a model includes articulating it, making it public, and responding to constraints by those who challenge its premises. This not only raises high the bar on leadership, it brings transparency and accountability to a new level.   

---

[1] Reading the Room: Group Dynamics for Coaches and Leaders is scheduled for release in April by Jossey-Bass, an imprint of John Wiley & Sons, New York, NY. 

[2] SD theory alleges that leaders have real lives that affect their work behaviors and vice versa, and that love and intimacy play a role in leader behavior.

[3] An assessment instrument, the Behavioral Propensities Profile, measures the leader’s characteristic behaviors, including how different profiles interact and often clash. See www.kantorinstitute.com for details.

[4] Kohlberg, Lawrence (1981). Essays on Moral Development, Vol. I: The Philosophy of Moral Development. San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row.

[5] Communicative competency refers to the ability to read dysfunctional communication structures in the room and to make the appropriate vocal action oneself or to call upon another whose profile and repertoire more appropriately fill the gap.

[6] Your personal model is a systematic framework for how you experience, interpret, and act on events, in particular, the verbal communication structures you encounter in closely held, two or more person groups. Part One of Reading the Room is devoted to explicating how one’s personal model manifests itself in low-stakes situations; and Part Two how these propensities play out when the stakes are raised. It recommends that leaders, all team members, and the leader’s coach all take the assessment instrument, the Behavioral Propensities Profile.

⁷ See Reading the Room, Chapter 12, page 302.

A Model of Models

Model building may sound dauntingly abstract. Where does one begin? How does one sort through the plethora of models that have bombarded the marketplace of ideas on leadership. To think about what to look for as you unearth and organize your model, it is useful to have an organizing set of theories (or requirements) that I call a meta-model. The meta-model, (or “model of models”) is a framework that defines the aspects of a fully formed and robust model. Within it we can organize and interrelate the pieces of our models. Any social meta-model needs to propose three kinds of theories: theories of the thing, of change, and of practice.

A Theory of the Thing

       A theory of the thing describes the entity on which your model focuses:

§  What is it? For example, Reading the Room presents a systems-oriented theory and examines the skill of leadership.

§  What are the underpinnings of that skill? Reading the Room singles out communicative skill, beginning with communication in face-to-face relations.

§  What assumptions does the thing (in this case, leadership) depend on? One assumption is that leadership often entails leading high-performing teams; such teams identify a second thing in SD’s model.

§  What skills are required of a high-performing team? In a high-performing team, each member acquires communicative competency, an understanding of the structure of successful and unsuccessful communication and how they contribute to each.

A Theory of Change

     The theory of change describes how to bring about change for that thing on which your model focuses. It describes the nature of change and how change happens within or for that entity.

§  What are the prerequisites of change (in our case, the changing of a person to become a better leader, or a team to function with maximal effectiveness)?

§  How does change happen? What brings it about?

§  How does context—time, place and person—affect change?

§  Does change occur the same way in an intimate human system versus a larger, more impersonal one?

For the thing called leadership:

§  If leadership’s goal is optimal personal and team performance, what is the baseline (in our model, low-stakes behavioral propensities) and what is the standard (for us, communicative competency in both low and high stakes) at the other end?

§  Through what stages do leaders and their teams evolve?

A Theory of Practice

          

     A theory of practice fully articulates the conceptual underpinnings of what the practitioner does on the ground, based on his understanding of the thing and its theory of change.  [Note: Your theory of practice should not be confused with your practice model. The latter is what the practitioner does in the room. It is circularly derived from interaction with our meta-model’s three component parts.]

§  What is the conceptual language system behind the practice (in our case, structural dynamics) model?

§  How do the methods, techniques and tools used in your practice model reconcile with your theory of practice?

§  What is the theoretical rationale behind a practice model designed to occur in distinct stages (three, in our case)?

§  Is the theory behind the practice consistent with the goals of the practice?

Reading this article (Doctor Panels Urge Fewer Tests for Patients), two Structural Dynamics concepts immediately come to mind—Moral Decision-Making and effective Cross-Model Conversation (see below).  The article recommending that “doctors curb the use of 45 common and often unnecessary medical tests and procedures” is encouraging since most previous attempts to rein in unnecessary care have faltered for the obvious reason: a loss of income.  Doctors asking other doctors within their ranks to sacrifice material gain is all but astonishing.  Arguably, to achieve these recommendations, members of the panel must have engaged in cross-model conversation, one—perhaps the best—means for resolving differences.


(Moral Decision-Making At the core of leadership is the act of making decisions.  All decisions have a moral component, but moral decision-making is a special class of decision making, for at its core is a moral action.  We define moral action as a willingness to sacrifice something—money, place or advantage—in order to do the right thing.  Most moral decisions result in a winner and a loser.  In Moral Decision-Making there is compassion for the other, and a willingness to set aside self-interest to a larger cause.

Cross-model conversation is a very specific process for dialogue, grounded in the idea that the difference between the ways two people view the world is not a problem if they have a way to constructively explore these differences. Cross-model conversation is a two-way reflective conversation dominated by sincere inquiry into how the other views the world. It aims at deepening the discourse by offering the other an opportunity to substantiate or supplement his or her model and by doing the same with one’s own. Two principles underlie the process: 1) that difference is a key source of learning about ourselves and our models, and 2) that it is pointless to assert that one model is “better” than another. Every model has its limits, which we must face in order to be able to grow. The only “bad” model is one that does not recognize its own limits, wrongly assumes it is complete, and presumes itself better than other models.

A complete Glossary of Terms will be available coming soon.)

Where to From Here?

I've been away for many months. My book, Reading the Room (RTR), is scheduled for release late April/early May. For now I am putting aside the Obama Chronicles, but may return to it after the book's publication. It contains an entire chapter dedicated to applying Structural Dynamics theory to Obama in his first term. I am hoping it will attract enough attention for me to resume comments, particularly as the presidential campaign heats up. In the meantime, I will devote my blogs to other subjects that are highlighted in Reading the Room as these apply to other significant events appearing in the news.

The Obama Chronicles

The last chapter of my soon-to-be published book, Reading the Room, applies its theory, Structural Dynamics, in an analysis of President Barack Obama’s behavioral profile. These chronicles will, from a Structural Dynamics (systems) point of view, comment on the dilemmas Obama faces as he seeks reelection and the decisions he makes in the period leading up to the election and beyond.

A June 2nd article in the New York Times, Employment Data May Be the Key to the President's Job, begins “No American president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has won a second term in office when the unemployment rate on Election Day topped 7.2%”. Today, roughly 9% of Americans who want to work are unemployed. The chances of reducing this rate to the article’s alleged threshold are dim if not grim. A second article in the Times of this same day, A Way Through the Debt Mess , describes how Lyndon Johnson faced the problem of how to raise the debt ceiling while also raising taxes. Obama faces the same debt dilemma, which is linked to unemployment. Johnson’s tactics offer important lessons.

In systems terms, Johnson, a master politician and tactician, looked for pressure points, what we would call leverage points, to move a stuck system. When a system is stuck, Structural Dynamics says, it is sometimes necessary to perturb it. The idea is that when a stuck system is “blown up”, so to speak, and the dust settles, it will have changed. Such tactics do not come natural to Obama. Let us say that, with reelection at stake, he has no choice and must consider imitating Johnson’s famous ability to twist arms in order to get his way.

Two Testy Questions

I’m back doing this blog after a lapse of just over a year. What follows is a departure from the venue I’d established, as you will see. I’m doing a book which threatens to cross a couple of boundaries, and I’m seeking reactions. The book, Reading the Room, redefines what leadership is all about. In it, I raise some issues that are a challenge to the publisher and probably to some readers as well. In the first, I take the position that those I call behavioral consultants (those who deal with the behavioral rather than the strategic side of consulting) should, with proper training, be free to elicit from leaders what I call their Childhood Stories of Imperfect Love. Some would say that I’m crossing the boundary into the territory occupied by therapists. I take this position because (a) these stories are already in the room when the stakes are raised for leaders, and (b) that many behavioral consultants are already entering this territory behind closed doors but not advertising that they are doing so.

The second issue is just as tender, and could arouse objection. I am recommending that leaders be required to develop and articulate their own leadership model. It occurs to me that lawyers must pass the bar, surgeons go to medical school for an MD and more schooling for a specialty—why, then, should leaders not do something similar? Why not, to be a little facetious, require them to get a “PhD in Leading”? In any case, why should they not develop a model which gets tested in action, rather than simply setting them free after they complete a stint in business school, which may offer courses in leadership, but does not prepare leaders for what they do in the real world.

I would be interested in thoughts about these two issues.

Change, High Stakes, and Extreme Behavior

The source for this post in is Frank Rich's editorial, The Rage Is Not About Health Care New York Times, March 28, 2010

Following the passage of the health reform bill, the Tea Party has expressed its rage against Congressmen who voted for it. Frank Rich, points out that those who came most under attack, were a Jew and three blacks:

"It's not a happenstance that [Barney] Frank, [John] Lewis and [Emanuel] Cleaver-- none of them a major Democratic players in the healthcare push-- received a major share of last weekend's abuse. When you hear demonstrators chant the slogan "take our country back," these are the people they want to take the country back from."

Rich links the angry outbursts to the rage in the past against Social Security under FDR, Medicare under LBJ, and after the passage of the Civil Rights Bill in the sixties. Frank Rich's point is that the rage is not against the health bill, but is about “an inexorable and immutable change in the very identity of America, not just its governance.”

The rage Rich is singling out is what Structural Dynamics calls a ‘high stakes behavior’. Recently introduced changes in our governing body—Obama, a black President, Pelosi, a female speaker of the house, Sotomayor, a minority female on the Supreme Court, as well as changing demographics--through which, all too soon, whites will become a minority, represent threats on identity, a high stakes matter for all involved.

In high stakes situations, behavior changes, often in the extreme. One phenomenon that raises the stakes is the “Power of ‘Other’”. At these times, ‘other’—the stranger, the outsider, the foreigner, any group or individual perceived as radically different from ‘us’ and from ‘self’--is accorded great symbolic power, which incites anxiety. At such high stakes times, dark, shadowy, and extreme behaviors are stirred up and acted out. Our model’s understanding of high stakes behavior, only partially represented here, perfectly describes the extreme rage we are seeing from the Tea Party movement.

Obama and Rahm Profiles--Match or Mismatch?

Introduction to the Language
The language has many terms—too many to grasp all at once. These concepts will be introduced gradually, from posting to posting. Repeat usage, which certainly will occur, can be followed by using the Labels function on the right pane of the page. Click on the term of interest and you will be brought to all the posts in which it was used. This way, you can see how the terms are applied in different situations, circumstances and contexts.

A Primer
The theory of Structural Dynamics has identified 36 Behavioral Profiles. Each Profile has three components: one covering an individual’s propensity for one of four action Modes (Mover, Follower, Opposer, Bystander;) three preferred Communication Domains (Affect, Power, Meaning) and three Operational Domains (Closed, Open and Random.) A Profile is an individual’s skeletal structure. Voice, nuance, intensity, and other qualities add fuller bodied resonance to a Behavioral Profile. Structural Dynamics emphasizes these core structures. They represent the subtext of all action propensities as expressed in speech and behavior.

Here are just a few quotes from an article that set the stage for my comments on leader's profiles--"The Limits of Rahmism" Rahm Emanuel is a Mover in Closed System Power. Barack Obama, is a Bystander in Open System Meaning.

Source: NYT Magazine March 14, 2010 “The Limits of Rahmism” By Peter Baker Online version

“…Barack Obama and Rahm Emanuel, an unlikely tandem of inspirational leader and legislative mechanic, that was supposed to enact the most expansive domestic program since the The Great Society.”

Leaders choose their Followers carefully. Obama’s choice of Emanuel was a calculated strategic decision. Baker’s article raises questions about the wisdom of this choice.

“[This] paradox…has not been lost on Washington. A visionary outsider who is relatively inexperienced and perhaps even a tad naïve about the ways of Washington captures the White House and eager to get things done, hires the ultimate get-it-done insider to run his operation.”

In our view, for precisely Baker’s point, Obama made a smart choice. Obama is a skilled Bystander. Bystanders hang back, take in as much information as they can, internally reflect, and then act, Move. Emanuel, sleeves rolled up and quick to Act. That is, he is a strong Mover who is a known, arm-twisting Opposer as well. This combination may not endear him to adversaries, but no one doubts he intends to “get things done.” The Domain of Power, in our lexicon, is all about “getting the work done.”

“If Emmanuel’s philosophy is to put points on the board, to take what you can get and then cut a deal, everything negotiable except success, then the White House is testing the limits of Rahmism.”

Yes, the proof of a leader’s choice of Followers is in the results. One can imagine that during this critical search for Democrats to vote yes on the president’s health bill, Rahm Emanuel is not sitting on his hands wondering what to do.

“[Their relationship] is hardly a relationship of dependence and deferral. These are two strong willed individuals, yet…Obama calls the shots. When Obama makes a decision at variance with Emanuel’s advice, Emanuel does what staff members do and adopts the decision as his own.”

There are two main types of Followers. Those who follow faithfully, even blindly, and do not question (Actively Bystand) or Oppose (challenge their leader’s positions;) and those who do all this, but in the end, Move as One with the leader. Baker opines, we think correctly, that Emanuel is the second type.

An Introduction

My Purpose
I bring to this blog a theory of communication developed over decades of published research with families (Inside the Family, Jossey-Bass, Wiley) with couples, (My Lover, Myself, Riverhead Books, Putnam) and with executive teams (Reading the Room, accepted for publication by Jossey-Bass ). I call the theory that has emerged from this research, Structural Dynamics, and the practice that tests and applies this theory, Structural Intervention.

Structural Dynamics is a theory of face-to-face communication, which describes how and why communication works and does not work in the three domains-–Families, Couples, and Organizations and their teams.

Structural Intervention describes how to make these communicative systems work better when they fail or break down.

Target Audience
Until now my audience was professionals in the social and behavioral fields. In Subtexts I hope to extend and test the applicability of these ideas to a wider domain, public discourse.

My Sources
Subtexts draws its material from a wide a array of public sources—from the newspapers, magazines and books I read, from films and plays I see, and from commentary on and literary criticism of these tracts. Focusing on what general audiences are exposed to in the public domain does not rule out my drawing on what I have previously learned in the more private, behind closed door domains of couples, families, and teams. From all above sources, I will focus on leaders and leadership. Leaders play a singular role in all contexts, thus, are singled out by writers in all venues for special attention, interpretation, and critical scrutiny. They are, therefore, meaty subjects for this blog.

How It Works
Each blog posting begins on Twitter, where I list a specific source. For example: Frank Rich’s column on Obama, NYT, Sunday, January 5, 2010, Opinion. On Twitter, I provide a link both to Subtexts and to my website, Kantor Institute. The latter is more for professional colleagues than for a general audience.

Kantor Institute is a commercial entity, which trains therapists and consultants in the two theories described above. It charges for these services and for some materials, but like this blog seeks to operate in the spirit of open source, making some materials available without cost.

On my blog, using concepts from my own model for understanding human discourse, I subject excerpted quotes from the original source and proceed with my own commentary, a reconstructive analysis of the original--in a word, a commentary on a commentary. Where possible, the blog provides a direct link to the original source or merely cites it when this makes more sense.

Many of these concepts will be strange to the general reader and unfamiliar, but less strange to professionals unfamiliar with my work. Readers who know my work will be able to play catch up on more recently conceived ideas. Subtexts, I say without apology, seeks the interest of readers in all three categories. My reasons for wanting to reach the many, as opposed to the few, are as much personal as professional. Failed communication is rampant. It does incalculable damage. My life of work has been devoted to solving the riddles of broken relationships primarily based--I am convinced--on failed communication. I have benefited personally and professionally from these endeavors. It is time to give back. This blog and the powers of Web 2.0 is my way of doing that.