Accompaniment

There is a famous leadership model created by Ron Heifitz at Harvard. It identifies the choice leaders must make when faced with tough problems. They must first determine if the problem requires a Technical solution or an Adaptive solution. Technical solutions require a fix that is familiar, obvious, concrete and known to get specific results. An adaptive solution requires that the leader “hold the container” for all involved with the problem who must leave their comfort zone of known fixes and risk experimenting with the unknown. They must risk a solution that will require them to adapt to the uncomfortable world of unfamiliar, unproven fixes that may solve the problem, or may not.

Accompaniment is very similar to the process of adaptive change. You’ve tried all of the fixes you can think of to solve the issues that demand your attention and they do not work. Your boss, your team, the person in the mirror isn’t satisfied, at peace, confident. There’s something else out of kilter: what is it?

Our work addresses that unknown. Together we walk along the unfamiliar pathways of your mind, my questions acting as searchlights. Together we go: unhurriedly, bravely, curiously.

What you find are the answers to questions that eluded your technical fixes. And you see why you couldn’t apply easy answers. Maybe your values have changed, or your vision for your life has changed, or your need to change the way you express yourself has shifted.

None of this is obvious at the start. Our lives are far too busy for most of us to hear new answers. Accompaniment makes it possible for you to listen, then hear your answers.