Much of the power of the Bear Clan Meta-Compass comes from the process of taking diverse models and integrating them into a blended meta-model. It’s been my experience that this process has multiple benefits.

It makes it easier to remember key points of various models. It leads to insights about movement within a new change model. It leads to insights about how a new change model relates to other models (other compass levels within the Meta-Compass).

One of the themes readers will see within my writings is the integration of a professional business perspective with human service perspectives. What I consider to be the single most important teaching I received during my MBA training is a model for how to engage in strategic planning and strategic management.

Here in The Strategic Change Compass Part 3 of 3, I’m going to demonstrate how to take a change model, in this case one that isn’t from the field of psychology, and create a new level of the Bear Clan Meta-Compass.

If you’re blending in some perspective that’s not a complete change-model, then you can think about where it might fit in the Archetype Compass – The Chief, The Artist, The Scout, The Warrior. To some extent, that level of the Meta-Compass serves as a catch-all for a variety of concepts that make up the character of each archetype.

In Part 2 of The Strategic Change Compass, I introduced an 8-Step model for strategic planning and management:

(1) Clarify Principles (2) Create Shared Vision (3) Analysis (4) The Plan (5) Implementation (6) Reality Testing (7) Feedback and (8) Modification of The Plan.

To create a new compass level on the Meta-Compass it’s necessary to understand the qualities associated with each of the cardinal compass directions, and then assign the various stages to the appropriate direction. Movement within a compass level typically starts in either the North or the East and moves clockwise around the compass.

The North – Clarify Principles:

The North in Bear Clan is the realm of values and beliefs. It includes a person’s (or an organization’s) executive functions and skills. These include planning, organizing, time management, working memory, and meta-cognition. Those abilities allow for response inhibition, self-regulation of affect, task initiation, flexibility, and goal-directed persistence.

The North is represented by the archetype of The Chief. The Chief is particularly concerned with leadership. The Chief takes a holistic and systemic view of self, family, and the community. This is the part of us that is concerned with the big picture and with how all the different parts of our lives and worlds interconnect.

With these Northern aspects in mind, it seems clear that the first step in the strategic process of clarifying principles, mission, values, and vision is a function of the North.

From the Bear Clan perspective, for a therapist the mission is some combination of helping a person to achieve balance and transformation. The relevant values are those fundamental beliefs you hold as a therapist about how to conduct your work and how to live your life.

Communicating those values to your client is an excellent way to begin to form a therapeutic alliance. This discussion is a way to disclose important information about who you are in a way that engenders a sense of trust but does not cross any professional boundaries. First though, before you can share your values, you may need to clarify them and articulate them for yourself.

It can be hard for clients, especially children, to discuss their values. Nevertheless that’s a great way to strengthen a new relationship, without the need for disclosure of sensitive information.

• What were your experiences like with past therapists? What sorts of things did you do together?
• What do you look for in a friend?
• What do you really appreciate about the teachers you like best? What really bugs you about some people?
• What do you look for in music? What do you like best in a tv show or movie?

Values clarification is sometimes thought of as this very deep process of identifying very abstract qualities. A lot of times with kids, you can achieve the same results in learning what they value. It’s a way to help people feel like you’re truly interested in them. You start to establish yourself as an ally.

Blending in concepts from other levels of the Meta-Compass can inform your style as a therapist. For example, while operating primarily from the North, your leadership style will be to present yourself as a mentor. Your focus is on discovering and sharing what you find to be marvelous about your client. You try not to push any specific agenda at this point, you simply want to communicate that you value spending time with your client.

Based on Native American teachings, Fear-of-Being-Judged is associated with the North. Therefore, you try to communicate to your new clients that you will not judge them. Especially with children, it is wise to push aside any valuations or judgments and instead seek the hero in each young person.

While the therapist tends to start in the North, children tend to start the therapy experience in the East. At their age their northern abilities, such as executive functioning, are not yet fully developed. They begin the process in the East, the realm of emotions and basic needs.

Articulating your values and helping your clients articulate their values creates a path from the North to the East. Agreeing on a shared vision begins your shared journey down that path.

The East – Create Shared Vision:

The East in Bear Clan is the realm of emotions and basic needs. It includes a person’s (or an organization’s) abilities to experience and express emotions. The East is also concerned with basic needs. It is attending to basic needs that creates a sense of balance.

Balance, in a therapeutic sense, is similar to a sense of safety. Sufficient balance is necessary before someone will begin to explore different skills. For an organization, a sufficient sense of balance is also necessary before people will fully embrace a transformational change program.

The East, represented by the sunrise, is about beginnings. While in the East people don’t necessarily have great verbal skills. Instead communication from the East is more typically accomplished through body language, intuition, symbols, dreams, visions, play, drama, music, and other arts.

When you share your values as a therapist and help your child-clients to articulate their values, together you start to develop a shared vision. The key to this concept is that the vision must be articulated in order to be shared.

That’s very hard for kids to do. Therefore, it becomes the therapist’s responsibility to suggest words to help the child-client express what they value. It’s very important to be respectful and humble.

People have strong feelings associated with their values. People generally don’t appreciate being told how they feel. Even if you’re accurate it can be experienced as an invasion of privacy. If you’re inaccurate it can be experienced as an empathic failure. On the other hand, people do appreciate someone valuing and openly trying to figure out what they hold most important.

The East is represented by the archetype of The Artist. To engage your client’s inner Artist you need to create a compelling vision for the therapy experience. What will it look like when your client has completed therapy? What will it feel like? Is it more of a journey than a single picture of a destination? If so, what will that journey be like?

This stage of a strategic approach to therapy is about forming a therapeutic alliance, nurturing a feeling of hope in your client, and inspiring your client to fully engage in the therapy experience. Your leadership style should be that of a muse. Your role is to inspire your client to change.

Bear Clan fears associated with the East are Fear-of-Being-Alone and Fear-of-The-Cold. These are more artistic labels for what would more unimaginatively be called fear of abandonment and fear of neglect.

Blending in a Native American teachings perspective, these fears are countered by the gifts of Love and Respect. It is the appropriate expression of those qualities that will meet your client’s needs while in the East, and create a strong therapeutic alliance.

In terms of organizational change, it’s the same. At this stage the change-leaders need to turn agreement about mission and values into a shared vision. They need to attend to the emotional and basic needs of their team. They need to address fears associated with change, such as not receiving enough support and care. This is what creates a strong sense of belonging and a strong team that is now ready to explore change.

Within a therapy context, it’s with a sufficient feeling of love and respect that your client will experience a sense of belonging. It’s meeting this developmental need that starts to move your client from the East into the South. Where the East is preoccupied with feelings and basic needs, the South is about cognitions and exploration.

The South – Analysis and The Plan:

The South in Bear Clan is the realm of cognitions. It includes a person’s (or an organization’s) abilities to engage in analysis. The parts of the brain that are most engaged when a person is in the South specialize in reasoning, abstracting, logic, hypothesis generation and testing, the acquisition and application of knowledge, and cognitive processing.

The South is represented by the archetype of The Scout. The Scout is especially concerned with exploration. It is in the context of such exploration that The Scout learns about the larger world and learns how navigate that world. The Scout acquires new skills. The Scout reports back to the tribe with the information that is useful to the whole.

To engage your client’s inner Scout you need to create some sort of map to assist in the exploration of new ways of handling emotions, new ways of thinking, and new ways of behaving.

Depending on the age and cognitive development of your client, the Scout has much greater language abilities than the Artist. This is why your client’s “map” is most naturally begun as a picture or vision.

First you establish a shared vision of what your client’s life will look like after therapy. Then you figure out what needs to be packed for this journey. This is the stage of therapy in which you would engage in any needed psychoeducation.

Your leadership style while predominantly in the East should be that of a teacher. Your role is to teach your client the perspectives, techniques, and tools needed for a transformational journey.

The Bear Clan fears associated with the South are Fear-of-The-Dark and Fear-of-The-Woods. In unimaginative terms, that can be thought of as fears of the unknown that turn into anxieties and the fear of becoming lost.

Blending in Native American teachings, these fears are countered by the gifts of Honesty and Truth.

Honesty is your clients’ ability to not lie to themselves. There’re reasons why people are not 100% honest with themselves. Brutal honesty is not the goal. Rather, the goal is to seek honesty. It is in the seeking that is important. It’s about how you journey. It’s not about somehow arriving at a destination of perfection that would be at odds with human nature and human reality.

For a child-client that means nurturing their ability to develop an observing ego, to look at themselves, and to be honest. This involves challenging your clients interpretations of the world, in a gentle fashion consistent with the gifts of Love and Respect.

Truth is your clients’ ability to recognize their reality. Like Honesty, there is no perfect Truth. Truly truth is in the eye of the beholder. Objectively speaking, it is a subjective experience.

You want to nurture your clients’ ability to see the gray in the world. You do this by teaching them to be an accurate reporter. You do this by gently challenging them to identify more than one possible reason why something may have happened. You do this by teaching them how to imagine another person’s perspective.

Like with Honesty, what’s important with Truth is the seeking. There is no destination for Truth. There is an attitude of always seeking Truth. It is in the seeking that the mutability of the world is revealed, including the possibility for transformation.

During your time together predominantly in the South, your client explores new ways of thinking. Your client develops a more honest assessment of their situation. Your client begins to put words and a plan together to achieve the vision that motivated them to move from East to South. Your client faces some key truths and develops a map or storyline that includes transformation.

The time of wandering starts to close. It is now a time for purpose. The need for meaning pulls your client from the South to the West.

The West – Implementation:

The West in Bear Clan is the realm of behaviors. It includes a person’s (or an organization’s) ability to take action, to implement plans, tactics and strategy, and to find meaning in one’s actions.

The West is represented by the archetype of The Warrior. To engage your client’s inner Warrior you need to connect the inspiration of The Artist and the exploration abilities of The Scout with a sense of purpose and meaning.

Strategically, this is the direction in which The Artist’s inspired vision and The Scout’s thoughtful planning is implemented. New behaviors will stick when they are meaningful to your client.

This meaning can arise from new behaviors being reinforced with positive feedback and results. However, it’s less than ideal to rely solely on simple reinforcements. You should constantly help your clients see the connection between the new behaviors and the vision and principles that support those new behaviors.

Your clients were initially inspired by a vision of happiness and success. Now, your intention is to inspire them through pointing out their movement in implementing their plan.

What commonly gets in the way of implementing a plan that includes new behaviors is fear. Bear Clan fears associated with the West are Fear-of-Animals and Fear-of-Water. Fear-of-Animals represents the fear of being attacked, the fear of being hurt, and the fear of pain. Fear-of-Water represents the fear of being overwhelmed by forces beyond an individual’s control.

Blending in Native American teachings, these fears are countered by the gifts of Bravery and Humility. Bravery is taking action despite feelings of fear. Simply surviving something is not bravery. Bravery requires an actual action that in some way faces a fear.

I think that the reframing of someone’s self-image as a victim to that of a survivor is extremely important. However, at least for kids, that’s not enough. Kids, and I suspect a lot of adults as well, need to go further than simply being a survivor. They need to be a hero.

Heroes survive incredible challenges, and perhaps even torture, but somehow go on to triumph. It is that eventual victory that gives meaning to the horrible things that happened along the way.

The concept of “being brave” has been criticized in some abuse literature because, especially for boys, it tends to correspond with keeping quiet about abuse. Breaking that silence can be the action that truly makes someone brave.

Humility, in the context of the West, is more than the acceptance that there are all sorts of forces in the world that are more powerful than any individual. Beyond feeling humble, to counter the fears all human beings naturally have about becoming overwhelmed, you have to behave with humility. In other words, it’s not just feeling humble, it’s acting with humility.

Acting with humility includes recognizing your own limitations and reaching out to others. Recognize that you are an imperfect human being and take actions to try and improve yourself. Ask for and accept help from others. Sincerely praise and appreciate others. Be thankful.

Your role, while predominantly in the West, is to coach your client. It’s now time to help your client achieve peak performance through practice, conditioning, and attitude. Change is difficult. Meaningful change is compelling.

As your client practices bravery and humility and finds meaning in his or her own actions, it is natural to begin to focus more on others and on being part of a community. Service to others is the bridge to the North cardinal direction.

The North – Modifications based on Reality Testing and Feedback:

As your client progresses around The Strategic Change Compass you next travel back to the North. It’s The Chief in the North who has the meta-cognitive executive skills to engage in reality testing and to utilize feedback. The Chief has the holistic and systemic perspectives to review the changes in feelings, cognitions, and behaviors that have occurred through the therapy experience.

As mentioned earlier, the fear associated with the North is Fear-of-Being-Judged. The gift that counters that fear is Wisdom. Wisdom is the result of experiencing and expressing Love and Respect, seeking Honesty and Truth, and acting with Bravery and Humility.

We really only fear being judged when we fear that those judgments will happen without Love, Respect, Honesty, Truth, Bravery, and Humility. A big part of Wisdom is to not judge others without a firm grounding in these qualities.

Your role, in the North, is to mentor your client. It’s now time for your clients to take full responsibility for their own feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. It’s time for your clients to take responsibility for their own transformation. It’s also time to focus on being part of a community.

A sense of integrity, both in the sense of moral uprightness and in the sense of being whole and undivided, drives the Northern perspective back around the compass. You return to the East and the shared vision becomes modified based on the changes you’ve made. You return to the South where an analysis of the past outcomes results in a revised plan. You then return to the West where you implement this latest vision and plan. That drives you back to the North once again.

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Questions for the readers:

Does this progression from clarifying values to inspiring vision to analysis and planning to implementation to reality testing and feedback make sense in your work with kids?

Is there a different way that you organize the course of therapy?

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For a Bear Clan story about strategic planning see When Deer Had Rabbit Clear the Brambles: The Strategic Change Compass – Part 1 of 3.

To read about how the strategic planning and management model is more commonly presented in business school textbooks, read The Single Most-Powerful Process in Business (and How It Applies to Therapy): The Strategic Change Compass Part 2 of 3.