Coaching practices for The Satir Model with My Team

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For The Satir Model with My Team, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

  • My team keeps landing in the same wrong place no matter how we tweak our actions, and it’s dawning on me that the real problem is some unspoken belief we all just take as how-the-world-works
  • I trust my favorite framework so completely that I apply it everywhere without checking, and lately it’s been quietly steering me wrong
  • I’m stuck on a decision and I’ve only really looked at it one way, and I’m not sure how much to trust that one read
  • When I’m upset it all comes out as "you did this, you always do that"
  • We did the exercise where we imagined it failing and listed why, but I have a nagging sense the most likely way this actually goes wrong is something nobody was willing to say out loud in the room

Practices that may help

  1. The Satir Model
    Virginia Satir’s model identifies four defensive communication stances people adopt under stress — Placating, Blaming, Computing, and Distracting — each driven by low self-worth. The fifth stance, Congruent communication, aligns what you feel, what you say, and your regard for yourself and the other person simultaneously. Satir used the model clinically with families and couples; the goal is not to eliminate the stances but to recognize them and choose congruence.
  2. Surface and test the mental models driving behavior
    Make the assumptions behind decisions explicit — they are often the root structural cause.
    Systems Thinking
  3. Constantly distinguish the map from the territory
    A model is a simplification — know precisely where yours breaks down.
    Mental Models: Charlie Munger’s Latticework Approach
  4. Apply several models to the same problem at once
    When models from different fields point to the same answer, confidence rises; when they conflict, you learn something important.
    Mental Models: Charlie Munger’s Latticework Approach
  5. Correct blaming by adding accountability for self
    When blaming, add an honest account of your own contribution to the problem.
    The Satir Model
  6. Combine the pre-mortem with red team pressure
    Run a pre-mortem and then ask the red team to find the failure mode the team missed.
    Red Teaming: Stress-Testing Plans Before They Fail
  7. Red-team your plan with a formal adversarial review
    Assign someone the explicit role of finding every way your plan could be wrong or fail.
    Confirmation Bias: Seeing What You Expect to See
  8. Black hat: identify risks and why something could fail
    Apply the most rigorous critical scrutiny to the idea — the black hat is the voice of caution and evidence-based pessimism.
    Six Thinking Hats, Made Practical
  9. Run a structured team morphological session
    The method is most powerful when multiple perspectives populate the dimensions and values.
    Morphological Analysis, Made Practical
  10. Work on the self-worth beneath the stances
    The defensive stances protect against low self-worth — building the worth reduces the need for protection.
    The Satir Model

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