Active Constructive Responding

I begin with some thoughts about geniuses and then will explain how one modern-day genius offers unique practical advice on improving relationships, specifically the technique of “active constructive responding” (ACR). Ever heard of it?

It is easy to label posthumously Newton, Einstein, Mozart, Da Vinci, Darwin, Aristotle, Gandhi, Henry Ford, Benjamin Franklin, Van Gogh, Galileo, George Carlin, Elvis, Sinatra, Hendrix, Niels Bohr, Janis, Ray Charles, Buddha, or so many others as “geniuses”: people who made original, innovative, life-changing contributions to the lives we lead.

They expanded our consciousness. No one can look at the universe the same after learning about the theory of relativity, space-time continuum or quantum mechanics. I defy anyone to listen to Janis Joplin sing “Ball and Chain,” and come away unmoved.  

It is a bit more challenging to apply that standard to those who live among us. What do you think? Who would you nominate? Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates come to mind, no matter what you think about their lifestyle choices. Elon Musk should be considered.

Daniel Kahneman would make my short list.  He was first person to win a Nobel prize in behavioral economics, completely debunking the myth that we all make rational economic decisions. He shredded Adam Smith’s foundational theories of capitalism and developed theories of cognitive bias that have had a dramatic impact on many fields of study, including negotiation theory. I wonder how many people have even heard of him.

Another non-household name is Mihaly Csikszentmihali, the psychologist who identified and articulated the theory of flow.

Roger Fisher comes to mind for his contribution to negotiation theory and dispute resolution, as originally stated in Getting to Yes.

I could go on, but that is simply my way of introducing Dr. Martin Seligman. Just as Kahneman turned decision making theory on its head with his theories on cognitive bias, Seligman turned psychology on its head with his completely original and mind-expanding theories on positive psychology.

Imagine hundreds of years of psychologists focusing on pathology and mental illness, and a guy comes along and asks, “Instead of focusing on how to mitigate mental illness, what if we focused on what makes people happy?”  An emperor’s new clothes moment!

Seligman formulated positive psychology out of whole cloth, based solely upon his common sense and experience. He has built a system of thought and developed theories of learned helplessness, happiness, flourishing, and wellbeing that are now taught in schools all over the world and have been adopted by the US Army. Some have said that positive psychology is now as much a part of Army life as the pushup.

Some interesting history here, but I will save the details for future blogs because I want to get to ACR. Please be patient enough for another minute of digression.

The short story is that Seligman worked with Aaron Beck in his earlier years. Beck was the founder of cognitive behavioral therapy. He and Albert Ellis, the founder of rational emotive behavioral therapy, gave credit to the Stoics, a school of philosophy following Socrates and dating back to Zeno around 300 BCE.

I have been studying Stoicism for the last several years, particularly with an eye on how it can serve as a platform for coaching, and will have much more to say about that in future posts.

Here is an excerpt from Beck’s classic Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders: 

… the philosophical underpinnings of this approach go back thousands of years, certainly to the time of the Stoics, who considered man’s conceptions (or misconceptions) of events rather than the events themselves as the key to his emotional upsets.

I am miserly about how I spend my time and to show you how much respect I have for Seligman, I am taking a 90-hour course from him on positive psychology.

The purpose of this blog is to share one of his techniques for increasing well-being in your life. I will shut up now, and let Marty speak for himself: 

And, so, here's the exercise, we're going to talk about it. It's called active constructive responding. So, when your spouse comes home from work, for example, with a victory, what do you say to her? So, imagine your spouse comes home and she's been promoted at work. What do you say? What then ensues?

Well, there's a two-by-two table of the ways in which you can respond to her. Active, passive, constructive, destructive. And, so, she comes home from work, and she's been promoted, and he says, you know what tax bracket that's going to put us into? So that's active destructive. It doesn't help the relationship.

The most common form, which is what I did, is passive constructive. And that's, “Congratulations, dear. You really deserve it.” That has no effect: wallpaper.

There's also, by the way, passive destructive, which is, “What's for dinner?”

The only thing that works, and it doesn't come naturally, you have to learn it, we script it, and teach you how to do it, is “active constructive”.

Now, in active constructive, what you're trying to do is to get her to relive the experience of being promoted. And, so, for example, it might start in the following way: “You know dear, I've read the reports you wrote to the corporation for the last year. And that last one you wrote on retirement is really the best fiscal document I've read in my 25 years of corporate life. Now, exactly, what did your boss say to you when he told you that you were promoted?”

And she tells you. [You then say] “Well, where were you, and how did he start the conversation?”

So, you're getting her to relive it. So, she starts to relive it. And then, “What do you think the real reasons you got promoted are? What are the highest strengths that you've shown that have gotten you promoted? And how can you use those more with the kids in a church? And let’s go open a bottle of champagne.”

Now, it turns out, when you teach couples to do that, love goes up, sexuality goes up, and the divorce rate goes down. And active constructive responding to good news is not just about couples. It's certainly about friendship and about the workplace as well.

My apologies to my friends in the family law bar if I just saved a few marriages!

If you are interested in other techniques to improve your relationships, whether personal or professional, please call me for a consultation. I am not a licensed therapist, but I am a pretty good Stoic.