Notice the attention doing the noticing
Notice the attention doing the noticing, as something distinct from your thoughts, your sensations and what you are looking at.
Pourquoi ça marche
Starr and Torbert (2005) describe triple-loop awareness (their term for holding the other territories in view together) as an attention distinct from mental thinking, from physical sensing and from the objects of perception, one that holds all three at once with a kind of witnessing quality. They say these experiences are more likely when you put yourself at the edge of your known reality, on the not-necessarily-comfortable threshold between the known and the unknown. On this page’s reading, practicing it means returning to that witnessing when you notice you have been absorbed.
Comment faire
- Choose one routine moment of action, such as a reply or a small decision.
- Before you act, ask what is doing the noticing right now.
- When a thought or a feeling takes hold, ask whether you are the one watching it or are caught up in it.
- Note in one line what changed in your attention.
- Return to the task without forcing a particular result from the noticing.
Données probantes
Starr and Torbert (2005) describe triple-loop awareness as a witnessing attention and report that it is more likely at the edge of one’s known reality. The description is phenomenological. The sources read do not test it as an intervention, and this page does not claim outcomes for it. (mechanistic)
The witnessing language overlaps with contemplative traditions. This page does not claim Torbert’s use is the same as those traditions’ practices.
Sources
- Starr, A., & Torbert, B. (2005). Timely and Transforming Leadership Inquiry and Action: Toward Triple-loop Awareness. Integral Review, 1, 85–97.
- Torbert, W. R. (2013). Listening into the Dark: An Essay Testing the Validity and Efficacy of Collaborative Developmental Action Inquiry for Describing and Encouraging Transformations of Self, Society, and Scientific Inquiry. Integral Review, 9(2), 264–299.
Erreur fréquente
Treating the witnessing attention as a calm state to reach, instead of a noticing you return to each time you catch yourself absorbed.
Pratiquez cela avec IX Coach
Plus de pratiques pour Torbert’s Action Inquiry: Practicing Timely Leadership
- Check which territories of experience you are holding
Pause and check how many of the four territories of your experience your awareness is holding right now.
- Test your reading of someone while you are still talking
Check your reading of another person while the conversation is still going, instead of acting on it and finding out later.
- Research your own action while you are in it
Study your present action while you are in it, and let what you notice feed back into what you do next.
- Sort your question by person and by time
Name whether your question is about you, about the people you act with, or about things at a distance, and whether it concerns the past, the present or the future.
- Keep team feedback in people’s own words
Keep the actual phrases people use when they describe your effect on them, instead of averaging them into one score.
Concepts associés
- Torbert’s Seven Action Logics of Leadership
Seven ways leaders make sense of pressure, how common each is, and how to work with your own
- La théorie sujet-objet de Kegan, en pratique
Passer d'être mené par ses présupposés à pouvoir les examiner
- First, Second, Third and Fourth Person Perspectives
How the number of viewpoints you can hold grows, what the research does and does not show, and how to practice it in a real disagreement
- Le leadership adaptatif, rendu pratique
Distinguer les défis adaptatifs des problèmes techniques — et diriger en conséquence