Liminal Thinking
Create the change you want by changing the way you think
By Dave Gray
TOPICS
Creating Change • Systems Thinking • Culture • Problem Framing
The Big Idea
Our beliefs and attention shape the world as we know it. Understanding this opens a universe to explore new possibilities, perceptions, and change.
Liminal Thinking is the art of creating change by understanding, shaping, and reframing beliefs.
Dave Gray
Six Principles of a Theory of Belief
Beliefs are models. Beliefs seem like perfect representations of the world, but, in fact, they are imperfect models for navigating a complex, multidimensional, unknowable reality.
Beliefs are created. Beliefs are constructed hierarchically, using theories and judgments, which are based on selected facts and impersonal subjective experiences.
Beliefs create a shared world. Beliefs are the psychological material we use to co-create a shared world, so we can live, work, and do things.
Beliefs create blind spots. Beliefs are tools for thinking and provide rules for action, but they can also create artificial constraints that blind you to valid possibilities.
Beliefs defend themselves. Beliefs are unconsciously defended by a bubble of self-sealing logic, which maintains them even when they are invalid, to protect personal identity and self-worth.
Beliefs are tied to identity. Governing beliefs, which form the basis for other beliefs, are the most difficult to change, because they are tied to personal identity and feelings of self-worth. You can’t change your governing beliefs without changing yourself.
What’s the Significance?
Once you see the boundaries of your environment, they are no longer the boundaries of your environment.
Marshall McLuhan
See new possibilities. This book reminds me there is a big world and all I need to have an entirely new experience is to change my point of view. Dave Gray encourages me to turn on genuine curiosity—with a large dose of humility—and to not be too hasty to jump to solutions or recommendations.
What’s obvious … isn’t. I reach for this book over and over to show the illustration of beliefs and attention when I’m talking with clients about intractable change. I talk about how the things that seem so obvious to me are a result of where I have invested my focus and what beliefs I hold. However, those things that seem so painfully obvious to me may be entirely invisible to someone whose attention is focused on something else, and who has a different system of beliefs.
Practical Application
Liminal Thinking pairs beautifully with a trauma-informed care ethic.
While asking questions can lead to greater connection and insight, if I am not prepared for and skilled in providing care to a person in distress as a result of me prying into their historical events, beliefs, and needs … then I have no business asking.
So, I ask myself two guiding questions:
How will this information be used? Does it have a purpose?
What does a duty of care look like in my role as designer, researcher, consultant or facilitator?
Exercises & Tools
Need/Belief/Action/Result. What we believe drives our actions and creates the world we live in. To create new results, work backward from the actions you want to change, to the underlying beliefs driving those actions, and the foundation needs to meet.
SCARF Model. The SCARF Model provides a checklist of needs to meet when you’re trying to understand where other people are coming from and to create a safe space for them. Questions to ask include:
Status: Does this person feel important, recognized, or needed by others?
Certainty: Does this person feel confident that they know what’s ahead, and that they can predict the future with reasonable certainty?
Autonomy: Does this person feel like they have control of their life, their work, and their destiny?
Relatedness: Does this person feel like they belong? Do they feel a sense of relatedness? Do they trust the group to look after them?
Fairness: Does this person feel like they are being treated fairly? Do they feel that the “rules of the game” give them a fair chance?
This book pairs well with …
Change by Paul Watzlawick, John H. Weakland, and Richard Fisch.
Practice 6 in Liminal Thinking is almost exactly the second-level change that Watzlawick talks about in Change. In fact, he says almost verbatim: “You have to step outside the problem, and then you have to start looking at the solution as well as the problem; and often, the answer to solving that problem is not attacking the problem, itself, but attacking the solution.”
Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg.
The Need/Belief/Action/Result process is very complementary to the 4 steps of nonviolent communication: Observations, Feelings, Needs, and Requests.
Who should read this book?
Change Leaders
Facilitators
Designers and Researchers
Everyone