Using Collaborative Problem Solving to enhance Power Posing

What each one is actually for

Collaborative Problem Solving

Collaborative Problem Solving treats a child's recurring blow-up — refusing to get in the car, melting down over homework, hitting a sibling at the same time every evening — as a sign that some specific expectation is colliding with a skill the child does not yet reliably have, not as defiance to be punished. The adult runs a conversation called Plan B, done at a calm moment, never mid-meltdown: first, the Empathy step, where the adult asks what's going on for the child around that specific expectation and keeps asking without guessing, until the real, concrete obstacle comes out in the child's own words — not "I don't want to," but something like "I can't find my shoes and I get scared I'll be late and get in trouble." Second, the adult states their own concern about the same expectation, briefly and honestly. Third, both people brainstorm solutions together until they land on one that actually addresses both concerns — not a consequence handed down, a plan built jointly. The whole method depends on the adult genuinely not knowing the answer walking in.

Power Posing

Power Posing is a short, physical ritual: for about two minutes before something you're dreading — a hard conversation, an interview, a presentation — you stand or sit with your body taking up space rather than folding in on itself: feet planted wide, shoulders back, hands on your hips or arms raised, rather than arms crossed and shoulders hunched over a phone. The original 2010 research claimed this measurably shifted hormones — testosterone up, cortisol down — within minutes. That specific hormonal claim did not hold up in a large 2015 preregistered replication, and one of the original study's own authors later said publicly she no longer stands behind the hormone data. What has survived more carefully, in later work, is a smaller, subjective claim: for at least some people, spending two minutes in an expansive rather than a collapsed posture changes how confident and in-control they report feeling right afterward, even without any measurable hormone shift behind it.

What you get out of pairing them

The reason to bring these two into the same conversation is not that Power Posing fixes anything about what a child needs — it doesn't touch the actual obstacle, which is the whole point of doing the Empathy step honestly. The reason is that Collaborative Problem Solving only works if the adult walks in genuinely curious rather than already braced for a fight, and an adult who has done three of these conversations this week and lost patience by the fourth is not walking in curious by default — they're walking in ready to manage, which a kid reads immediately and responds to by shutting down or escalating. Two minutes of deliberately not standing like someone about to referee a fight, right before you sit down to do the Empathy step, costs nothing and is available exactly when you have nothing else left to try. It is not a fix for the conversation's content. It is a way of not sabotaging the conversation's opening before it starts.

What Collaborative Problem Solving rests on

• Externalizing makes pattern visible randomised trials
  Putting an internal pattern into an external, structured form makes it visible and available for examination instead of remaining implicit and merely enacted.
• Parts have positive intent clinical practice
  A behavior that looks like misbehavior is usually a mistaken strategy aimed at meeting a legitimate underlying need rather than an expression of badness itself.
• Collaborative solution generation increases buy in observational studies
  Jointly generating a solution with the person who has the problem produces more durable follow-through than an imposed solution.

What Power Posing rests on

• Embodied posture shapes felt state practitioner report
  Adopting an expansive body posture can shift a person's subjective feeling of confidence apart from the contested hormonal claims.
• Self perception through behavior plausible mechanism
  Noticing one's own confident body language can update one's self-perception of confidence.

Where they actually meet

Both practices refuse to leave a hard moment's opening state to chance. Collaborative Problem Solving refuses to let a repeated blow-up stay a mystery — it puts the actual obstacle into words, out loud, between two people, instead of letting it keep running as an unexamined pattern re-enacted every evening. Power Posing refuses to let a person walk into a stressful moment however they happen to feel — it puts a deliberate two minutes between the dread and the door. Neither leaves the state you show up in to chance; they just intervene on different parts of it, one on what you understand, the other on what your body is doing.

The principle underneath both

The state a person brings into a hard interaction is not fixed in advance — it can be changed on purpose, in the few minutes right before, by a deliberate act rather than by will alone. Collaborative Problem Solving changes what the adult assumes about the child's behavior, replacing a guess ("he's just being difficult") with an actual, specific answer. Power Posing changes what the adult's own body is doing in the minutes before they say anything at all. Different targets, same bet: you do not have to just hope you show up right.

What that makes the real goal

If the state a person carries into a hard interaction is genuinely changeable on purpose, the goal both practices are reaching for is the same one: arrive at the moment already in the condition that lets you do it well, rather than discovering what condition you're in once you're already three sentences into the conversation and it's too late to recalibrate.

Other practices that serve the same goal

Several other approaches reach for this same goal — showing up ready, on purpose — with sturdier evidence behind at least parts of it than Power Posing currently has. Paced breathing, a longer exhale than inhale for even thirty seconds, has more consistent physiological research behind it for lowering pre-stress arousal than posture does, and takes about as long. Rehearsal — saying the Empathy step's first question out loud once, alone, before you sit down with the child — is a simple form of the same idea used by hostage negotiators and clinicians long before either of these named practices existed. Motivational Interviewing, a counseling approach built specifically around staying genuinely curious rather than persuasive with someone who is resistant, trains the exact stance Collaborative Problem Solving's Empathy step depends on, and has a considerably larger evidence base for producing that stance reliably under pressure than a two-minute posture does.

A tradition that already does this

Crisis negotiators are trained, as a formal part of the job, to regulate their own breathing and body before opening a conversation with someone in an acute crisis — settle yourself first, because an agitated negotiator produces an agitated outcome. That is an older, more carefully tested version of the same idea Power Posing is a stripped-down, popularized piece of: your own state, managed on purpose before you open your mouth, changes what the conversation that follows is capable of.

Find the actual reason you're dreading it, not just the pose

Before you reach for a posture fix, run a much shorter version of the Empathy step on yourself: what, specifically, are you dreading about the conversation you're about to have? Not a mood — a sentence. "I'm afraid he'll say the thing that made me lose it last time and I won't know what to do differently." Once that's named, you often find the actual obstacle isn't your posture at all — it's that you don't yet have a plan for the specific moment that derailed you last time, and posing for two minutes before walking into the same unprepared spot will only make you feel confident for the first thirty seconds. Name the specific thing first. If posture is genuinely all that's missing — you know what you're going to ask, you're just tired and slouched on the couch — the two minutes is worth doing. If it isn't, spend the two minutes deciding what you'll actually say instead.

Two minutes before you sit down for the Empathy step

Before you call your child over to talk about tonight's blow-up — not during, never during — take two minutes somewhere they can't see you: stand with your feet apart, shoulders back, hands loose at your sides or on your hips, instead of the crossed-arms, phone-hunched posture most people default to after a hard day. This isn't about hormones. It's about not walking into the room already in the shape of someone braced for round two, because a child reads that shape before you say your first sentence, and it changes whether they experience your first question as genuine curiosity or as an ambush with nicer words. Pair it with saying your opening question out loud once, so your voice matches the posture: "I noticed getting your shoes on has been really hard lately — what's going on there?" Walking in already sounding and standing like someone who wants an answer, not a confession, is most of what these two minutes are for.

8:40pm, standing in the hallway before you go back into the kitchen

Your daughter melted down over her shoes again tonight, the third time this week, and you sent her to cool off twenty minutes ago while you finished the dishes with your jaw tight. You know the plan — you're going to do the Empathy step, ask her what's actually going on, not lecture — but you notice your shoulders are up near your ears and your arms are crossed hard enough that your own hands have gone cold. You stand in the hallway for two minutes, feet apart, arms down, and say the question you're about to ask out loud once: "What's going on with your shoes lately?" Not "why do you keep doing this." You walk back in already sounding like someone asking, not someone building a case, and when she says "I can't find the left one and I get scared I'll miss the bus," you're actually ready to hear it instead of already forming your rebuttal.

When this is worth reaching for

You will know it's the moment when it's the fourth conversation about the same shoes this month, not the first — you've had this exact fight before, you're tired, and you can feel yourself walking in ready to manage rather than ask. Most Plan B conversations don't need two minutes of standing differently first; the fourth one does.

Where this does not apply

If the child's actual obstacle is the problem — a genuine skill gap, a sensory issue, an expectation nobody has explained clearly — then no amount of your own posture work fixes anything, because the posture never touches the child's side of the conversation at all, only your own. Reaching for two minutes of standing differently instead of actually running the Empathy step honestly is a way of feeling prepared without doing the harder work, and it's worth naming that risk directly: this pairing helps you show up better for a conversation you were already going to have properly. It is not a substitute for having it.

What the evidence does and does not support

Collaborative Problem Solving's own components sit on genuinely different footing: putting an unspoken pattern into words has trial-level support across a wide range of applications, and the idea that a child's behavior problem reflects a lagging skill rather than bad intent is well established clinically, though the specific claim that jointly generating the solution beats an imposed one rests mostly on observational program data rather than controlled trials. Power Posing's evidence has moved the opposite direction over the past decade: the original hormonal claims did not survive a large preregistered replication, and what remains is a much narrower, weaker-grade claim about self-reported feeling, resting on mechanistic reasoning and anecdote rather than controlled trials. Nobody has studied doing two minutes of open posture specifically before the Empathy step of a Collaborative Problem Solving conversation — this is a reasoned combination of one well-evidenced practice and one practice whose strongest early claim has already been walked back, not a tested pairing, and the gap in evidence quality between the two sides is itself worth knowing before you rely on either.