Kinds of responses to 'sixing'

[phil]

[Beginners' please note: By 'sixing' I mean the pattern in some Emergent Knowledge work of asking the same question (usually 'And what do you know now?') six times in sequence]

In another thread, Corrie affirmed that:

The message is: you give me an answer (proclaim), I repeat the question, you think I didn't understand, so you explain it a little further, then I ask again, so you start to doubt anything you said before made sense at all, I insist, so you (unless you are a really independent person) drop your view (crash and burn), I keep asking, so you come up with something else, I don't give up, so you start to believe in what you just said (the Phoenix rising from the ashes)

If I 'play' that description as a dialogue, it comes out like this:

And what do you know now?
I know it's seven o'clock.
And what do you know now?
Er... I just told you... it's seven o'clock in the morning.
And what do you know now?
Um... I don't get you... Are you listening? This is a bit stressful...
And what do you know now?
I'm obviously not giving you the answers you want. OMG! Wobble-trauma!
And what do you know now?
It's Monday
And what do you know now?
Yes, it's definitely Monday and actually it IS seven o'clock (well, five past by now!)

I take that as one kind of response that B might have to A asking a question repeatedly. It seems to me that this might be likely to happen to someone who received 'six of the best' without expecting it, say in a social setting.

Another kind of response might be what I think of as a 'compound' response.

And what do you know now?
I know it's seven o'clock.
And what do you know now?
It's seven o'clock and for the first time for ages I don't have to get up straightaway
And what do you know now?
Realising that I don't HAVE to get up is a lovely feeling
And what do you know now?
I'm luxuriating in that feeling
And what do you know now?
I'm thinking of ways to enhance that feeling, like coffee and toast
And what do you know now?
Now I realise I am going to get up and make toast and coffee and bring it back to bed - deep joy!

I call that compound because in me it seems as if each (genuine) response builds upon the previous one, each response acting as a context for the subsequent question-answer pair.

How many other ways are there of responding to an EK sixing?

And what do you know now?
It's time to make that coffee and toast - and now it's eight o'clock!

Phil

[Corrie van Wijk]

Good moring Phil,

I hope you enjoyed your coffee and breakfast; how was the conference?

Regarding the issue above:

I'm not in favour of asking 'AWDYKN?' repeatedly, because it is suppossed to be the pause question, meant to return to A here and now.

However, since in this example you are modelling your feeling here and now, it may be appropriate. I like your title 'sixing' but I deliberately avoid mentioning a number, as I am not in favour of doing that either.

Your script for a compound response makes sense. Matthew would go with 'AWDYKAT?', because 'each response builds upon the previous one' and indeed, it works to encourage the process, since you intended to get out and made breakfast (did you actually manage to; you have a laptop at your bedside table?)

You ask: "How many other ways are there of responding to an EK sixing?"

Could you do the script with 'AWEDYKAT' tomorrow morning? (or do you have to get up at a certain time?)

The discussion was to use 'else' or not. You say that "The definition of what 'else' means will rest with the respondee, rather than what the questioner intended." I know English is an ambiguous language (that's what you get living on a island and having to be diplomatic with everbody or else some tribes from the north or east will cick you out!): that's why we all have trouble to translate the clean questions the way David intended them to be. All the more reason for being explicit about it.

Other than that most clean questions are being used in an iteration process.

My point is, if you want to ask about the same thing, which question would work best, because it seems to either elaborate on the thing (which would just be modelling it, as Matthew says 'list' it) or to start a process (in which case you shouldn't ask A about it).

So far: "Tell the story" or better "Would there be a story that needs to be told/represented?" does the job best. Like that you also avoid the dialogue effect. David made Rob tell the story to six witnesses. (In Speaking Circles you get an audience that is supposed only to give positive feedback.) RueMeese: "it is the nature of telling to require some kind of organization to its subject and this is what I mean by the organizational filter. Telling is the attempt to express relationships within some kind of cogent narrative and that very attempt sets up a state within us of searching for associations and structure."

Enjoy your day and remember: not having to turn in early can be joyful too!

[phil]

In my coffee and toast example, AWDYKN? was the perfect question for me because it was happening live. In one sense it always is - the question AWDYKNAT? is also gets answered 'now'. The 'that' may be a past or future projection; the knowing is now.

The coffee and toast were great, as was the conference.

[Corrie van Wijk]

Hi Phil

Indeed, "the question AWDYKNAT? is also gets answered 'now'. The 'that' may be a past or future projection; the knowing is now."

That's why you can only ask it from A: so it would be 7, 8, etc.

What we need to deal with is how the iteration would work. I think it "makes you think twice, hence probably selects. When all that information is primed and perhaps already started to interact, only then you can ask the neocortex (the self-conscious executive) what (in the space of A) it knows now." (from a previous posting of me).

Which question would work best?

[phil]

Sorry, not sure I understood your last sentence. I do know that, whatever it's 'supposed' to do, using AWDYKN? iteratively worked for me at triggering a compound response. This may have been because my natural inclination at the time of asking was to build upon the previous 'knowing' to form the next, catalysed by the question AWDYKN?. The question could have been just 'And?' and the effect might easily have been the same.

It's worth remembering that while we may have a particular intention for a question, it doesn't necessarily follow that the intention will be carried out by the person answering. Thank goodness!

[Corrie van Wijk]

In this case it works because you are at A.

You say: "while we may have a particular intention for a question, it doesn't necessarily follow that the intention will be carried out by the person answering". That's o.k., since clean.

However, if a facilitator aims at a certain process, it is nice (s)he uses the kind of question that usually works. That's how David invented his clean questions in the first place, because he experienced they worked for the client.

GMRS is my term for establishing boundaries.