Developing your ‘theorist’ If this is not your preferred style, you may be inhibited from being more of a theorist by: Taking things at face value A preference for intuition and subjectivity A dislike of a structured approach to life Giving high priority to fun loving/spontaneity Consider: Read something and thought provoking for at least 30 minutes each day. Summarise what you have read in your own words. Practise spotting weaknesses or inconsistencies in other people’s arguments. Look at different newspapers of different persuasions and comparatively analyse their points of view. Collect other peoples theories, hypotheses and explanations about events; whether environmental issues, theology, natural sciences, human behaviour, anything which is a topic with different and preferably contradictory theories. Try to understand the underlying assumptions each theory is based on and see if you can group similar theories together. Practise structuring situations so that they are orderly and more certain to proceed in the way you predict. For example, plan a conference where delegates are going to work in different groupings. Structure the timetable, tasks and plenary sessions. Try structuring a meeting by having a clear purpose, an agenda, and a planned beginning, middle and end. Practise asking questions, the sort of questions that get to the bottom of things. Refuse to be fobbed off with platitudes of answers. Particularly ask questions designed to find out precisely why something has occurred: is the relationship between this problem and what ‘What happened last week?’ Developing your ‘pragmatist’ If this is not your preferred style, you may be inhibited from being more of a pragmatist by: A preference for perfect (rather than practical) problems Seeing even useful techniques as oversimplifications or gimmicks Enjoying interesting diversions (and being side tracked) Leaving things open rather than committing to specific action
Developing your ‘theorist’ If this is not your preferred style, you may be inhibited from being more of a theorist by: Taking things at face value A preference for intuition and subjectivity A dislike of a structured approach to life Giving high priority to fun loving/spontaneity Consider: Read something and thought provoking for at least 30 minutes each day. Summarise what you have read in your own words. Practise spotting weaknesses or inconsistencies in other people’s arguments. Look at different newspapers of different persuasions and comparatively analyse their points of view. Collect other peoples theories, hypotheses and explanations about events; whether environmental issues, theology, natural sciences, human behaviour, anything which is a topic with different and preferably contradictory theories. Try to understand the underlying assumptions each theory is based on and see if you can group similar theories together. Practise structuring situations so that they are orderly and more certain to proceed in the way you predict. For example, plan a conference where delegates are going to work in different groupings. Structure the timetable, tasks and plenary sessions. Try structuring a meeting by having a clear purpose, an agenda, and a planned beginning, middle and end. Practise asking questions, the sort of questions that get to the bottom of things. Refuse to be fobbed off with platitudes of answers. Particularly ask questions designed to find out precisely why something has occurred: ‘What is the relationship between this problem and what happened last week?’ Developing your ‘pragmatist’ If this is not your preferred style, you may be inhibited from being more of a pragmatist by: A preference for perfect (rather than practical) problems Seeing even useful techniques as oversimplifications or gimmicks Enjoying interesting diversions (and being side tracked) Leaving things open rather than committing to specific action
IME-Phase-2-Handbook.docx