Teach Yourself Repertory Grid: Part the Sixth, Getting Personal.

Teach Yourself Repertory Grid, Part the Sixth: Getting Personal.

The previous posts have been, inevitably, somewhat procedure-heavy. By now you should have a reasonable working knowledge of constructs and how to elicit them, laddering up to move towards core constructs, laddering down to move towards constructs that are less abstract and more operational; you’ve been introduced to elements, which are concrete representations of the domain you want to explore; how to create a good element set and the different options open to you; and the importance of having a purpose for your Grid session. You’ve come a long way, baby …

I think it might be a good idea to use this posting to offer you some examples of sessions that you can do with yourself, or with someone else, for purposes that offer the opportunity to gain important insights into topics that could matter to you personally. Also these sessions should develop your listening skills, and help you move from seeing Grid as a procedure towards using it as a structured conversation. I’ve also left a few questions unanswered – because I want you to feel the questions develop and to look inside yourself for the answers. (I don’t want you to just learn a procedure – I want you to achieve creative mastery of Repertory Grid and to grow your other skills as well).

One tip: I suggest that you use nine elements (because you can present the triads as 123, 456, 789, 147, and so on) and after you’ve got your nine elements on their separate cards, then shuffle the cards and number them after shuffling. This destroys any order effect, and it can be very useful later – see some of the later posts, where I give examples that use real people as elements but they need to be anonymous.

Please don’t forget to write each element on a separate card, and to place the group of three in front of your subject and physically shuffle them, two-against-one. (You may find yourself inventing new ways of phrasing the two-against-one question … just don’t suggest any of the content).

And don’t forget to ladder up and down. I’d like you to get a sense of when it’s appropriate to do some laddering, so I’m not going to suggest when you should do it; I’ll just say that it’s very, very rare to start laddering the first time you’re given a construct, nor do you have to wait until your subject is exhausted and seems to have run out of constructs.

A. Career Choice:

This is a useful session for anyone contemplating their choice of career – teenagers, people returning after a career break, people who’ve had a choice of careers forced upon them by redundancy, etc.

You should use element creation questions, and (unless the question states otherwise) the answers should be jobs that your subject might realistically expect to be within their range. If your subject wants to give the same answer to more than one question, re-phrase the question slightly so that you get a different answer.

1. Name a job that you’d really like to do;

2. And another one that you’d really like;

3. Now name one that you’d really dislike;

4. Your best friend’s job;

5. A job you’d like to do if money, qualifications, location, etc., were no object;

6. Another job you’d dislike;

7. Another job you’re familiar with;

8. Your present/most recent job (if applicable);

9. Your first job (if applicable);

(If the subject can’t answer 8 or 9, ask them to name two other jobs that they’ve been thinking about).

Then ask your construct creation questions thus:

Can you tell me something that any two of these have got in common that makes them different from the third, in terms of the knowledge and skills they need? and

… in terms of how you feel about them? and

… in terms of anything else that’s important to you?


B. Exploring Relationships:

Warning: this application of Grid gets in very deep very quickly. Don’t you dare do it with anyone else unless (i) you’ve first done it with yourself, and (ii) you really do have their permission to probe the depths of their personal history.

The purpose of this session is to gain insight into the reasons why some of the subject’s intimate relationships have been successful and some less so, with the overall aim of helping the subject try to make more informed choices in the future. You can use friends as elements, or people with whom the subject has had – or wanted to have – a romantic attachment, but don’t mix the two. By the way, I’ve used the word ‘lover’ in the element creation questions, but you might make a tactful enquiry about the most appropriate term for your subject.

Here’s a suggested element set:

1. Your current/most recent lover;

2. Your first lover;

3. A lover who hurt you badly;

4. Someone you know whom you’d have liked to have for a lover but didn’t;

5. Another lover with whom it didn’t work out;

6. Someone you know who wanted you as a lover but you didn’t fancy;

7, 8, 9. Now give me three more names of people who’ve played a significant part in your romantic life.

And the magic question:

Can you tell me how any two of these are like each other and different from the third, in terms of how they behaved towards you … and in terms of how you behaved towards them … and in terms of how you felt about them … and in terms of anything else that’s important to you?


C. Exploring Motivation:

This session can be used for a variety of purposes. The elements are events in the subject’s life – times where they’ve felt they’re on top form, times when they’ve hit a flat patch, times when they’ve been coasting, etc. Sometimes I’ve used this session to help the person make a career choice, reasoning that if they can identify the characteristics of the times when they’ve been on top form it would be a good idea to choose a career that offers more of these opportunities. At other times I’ve use it to help someone who’s hit a flat patch – maybe even sunk into a depression – and they find it helps to revisit the times when they have felt good about themselves and then we can talk about ways of trying to get more of the good times and fewer grotty ones.

Again, you’ll be using element creation questions, but this time you’re asking for events – actual times in the person’s life. And you need to have these events be as concrete, as time-bound, as possible. So, practice some phrases like ‘what could you have caught on film with a camera?’ and even ‘what could you post on YouTube to show this?’ So if your subject says ‘I was good at athletics,’ you need to make this more concrete: ‘And what would you post on YouTube to illustrate this?’ because you need an answer like ‘Winning the 800-metre hurdles when I was seventeen.’

Also, it’s a good idea to ask your subject to think about the whole of their adult life when they’re answering the questions, rather than concentrating on a particular period. Sometimes, with adults in mid-life, I’ve asked them to think of two or three elements from each decade. See how you get on:

Here’s the suggested element creation questions:

1. Name an event in your life when you felt that you were really achieving, performing at your peak;

2. And another event like that, but from a different period in your life;

3. Name an event when you were afraid that you were about to fail, or failing;

4. And another event like that, but from a different period in your life;

5. Name an event when you were doing OK, but you weren’t really being challenged;

6. And another event like that, but from a different period in your life;

7. One more event when you felt you were on top form;

8. One more event when you felt afraid of failing;

9. Finally, one more event that will help give a representative snapshot of the high and not-so-high spots on your life.


And your ‘in terms of’ questions:

in terms of my skills and experience; in terms of the relationships involved; in terms of the type of challenge they presented; and in terms of anything else that seems important to you.


When you’ve practised these sessions, I’ve got two more questions for you:

1. What can you learn from the results?

and

2. if you feel like it, try designing your own session and tell me about it by posting a comment to the blog. The door’s always open, of course, but I’d be very happy to hear about what you plan to do, or what you’ve tried and how it’s worked out.

Good luck,

Valerie.