In the early stages, relationships oscillate between three perspectives:
- Agency
- Narrative
- Emergent
Agency is the drive to connect, Narrative is the story we tell ourselves about what is happening, and Emergent is the space of allowing in which the relationship starts to form.
Agency
When we experience high levels of personal empowerment, combined with sufficient emotional and social intelligence, and some degree of body language skills, we can operate in a social space that enables us to build new relationships. We attract potential partners and don’t feel a sense of scarcity.
This is an ongoing experience of personal power in social spaces. We are confident in putting ourselves out there and have an expectation of success, reinforced by positive results. This creates a feedback loop that generates self-confidence. Interestingly, this is not always about skill (although basic social skills help) or about success rates but rather about consistency.
In collaborations, this pole is about feeling empowered, perhaps being a key player. Fundamentally, it is about the power to get things done.
The dark side of agency or personal power, however, is that it can transform into the desire for power over others. This often arises from insecurity, where our fears exceed our capacity for action. This brings us to our next pole, Narrative.
Narrative
Simply put, this is the story going on inside your head. For people who are shy, don’t understand body language or social cues, or have certain forms of neurodiversity, social situations can be intimidating—especially if they wish to make friends or, more daunting still, meet a potential partner. Many people in this group are often highly intelligent, sometimes starkly so.
The combination of a busy mind with a lack of agency, which would otherwise enable action, leads us to create stories and narratives that aren’t well-grounded in lived experience. In social settings, we see this in people who fall in love before a relationship has had time to form, even before having a first conversation.
For anyone who has experienced this, it can be deeply painful. Even if you manage to meet that person and somehow start a relationship, the big story inside your head remains a fiction. The pain occurs twice: first, the person you meet and the relationship you build will rarely match expectations. Second, the narrative inside your head will be revealed as a fiction, leading to something akin to ontological shock as you are forced to rebuild your sense of reality.
In collaborations, this divergence shows up between what is actually happening and our expectations (based on our narrative) of what we believe the collaboration should be.
A healthy narrative is collaboratively generated and evolves over time. While each person holds a separate version of the narrative in their mind, with some degree of divergence, there is enough common ground to understand what is happening.
This clash between our narrative and experience brings us to our final pole: Emergent.
Emergent
We cannot escape our Agency and Narrative poles; they are fundamental parts of our lived experience. Without Narrative, how could we conceive of something greater than ourselves? In a healthy relationship, we experience something more-than-we-are as individuals. Without agency to make things happen, we cannot take the necessary risks to engage in a new relationship.
The Emergent pole is what is actually happening: the ebb and flow of real-life events. Importantly, it’s not what we think is happening, but rather what both parties agree is happening. Even this will never be perfectly accurate.
A relationship or collaboration is what occurs when two parties engage with each other regularly around some shared goals, implicit or explicit. Many relationships fail due to lack of discussion, assuming that implicit goals are sufficient. In relationships, implicit goals often combine (a) avoiding loneliness with (b) seeking intimacy, in the belief that these will yield happiness or fulfilment. In collaborations, implicit goals often assume that both parties will benefit with little cost.
In both relationships and collaborations, making explicit goals is often harder than expected, and it is costly in time and effort to maintain the relationship.
Remaining in the emergent space of the relationship or collaboration creates an attitude of allowing—a “let’s see what happens” approach. While it may seem trivial, this can be transformative. As we gather more information about the emergent outcomes in the collaboration, we revise our narrative. If we shift too far towards the Narrative pole, we lose touch with what’s actually happening in the Emergent pole. Similarly, as we gain insights in the Emergent pole, we may move to the Agency pole to get things done, but without regularly checking in, we lose sight of the emergent reality, and our actions diverge from what is truly useful.
Moving between the Narrative and Agency poles without paying attention to the Emergent pole leads to dysfunction. An entrenched, dysfunctional Narrative can lead to ontological arrogance, where we ignore or even deny emergent reality. To counter the fear this generates, we might turn to the Agency pole. Dysfunctional use of power is rooted in fear and leads to attempts to control our partners or the collaboration. Ultimately, this can destroy the very thing we worked so hard to create. In the worst case, we blame the other party and, absolved of guilt, seek another ‘better’ relationship or collaboration, secure in the belief that the fault wasn’t ours.
If Emergent as a pole has a dark side, it would be a relationship or collaboration where there are no agreed outcomes, no one takes action, and there are so few expectations that no one even has an opinion—so there is no Narrative. This can lead to collaborative inertia or a relationship where people drift apart.
Functional relationships and collaborations
Forming and maintaining relationships and collaborations is challenging and prone to failure. The failure is not always shared; there are times when one party may be unprepared or lack the necessary resources. This road-map is, like all maps, not the territory. It is a starting point for thinking about a complex system that is inherently difficult to pin down.
If you’re in or want to be in a relationship or collaboration, it may be helpful to consider the balance you have between the three poles of Agency, Narrative, and Emergence. A balanced approach will see information and action arise from each pole, informing your movement between them.
Given the inherent difficulty of relationships, the strongest call to action is towards compassionate awareness.
In business, collaborations take on significant meaning for the people involved. When they become toxic or fail, there is an emotional impact as key stakeholders experience a disconnection between their expectations and the loss of their efforts. When they succeed, they create incredible levels of collaborative energy, often leading to satisfaction or even a flow state. The allure of collaborative advantage means that we are continually drawn to create something greater than we could achieve alone. For this reason, collaboration skills—and thus relationship skills—are among the most important in life.
Solution focused approaches
Solution Focused thinking can help us stay in the moment (the Emergent pole), by asking questions that are solution oriented. Though these questions we discover strengths and resources that will allow us to take action (the Agency pole). This can happen at the level of the individual or the collaboration.
Solution focused questions for collaborations
- What have you learned from previous relationships or collaborations that you can apply now?
- How will your collaborative partner know that you are on the right track with this collaboration?
- Suppose you were able to make this collaboration a success. What difference would that make to you? And what difference would it make to your collaboration partner?
- If your performance as a collaboration could be rated between 1 and 10… what would take it one number higher than your evaluation?
- What qualities does your collaboration partner value in you?
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Author: Joel Marks
Also posted on LinkedIn.
Solution focused questions inspired by 1001 Solution Focused Questions, Bannink (2006). Some ideas may inadvertently reference concepts and ideas of others. Image credit, Unspash.