Four Corners: TUCCC Conference

Four Corners: TUCCC Conference

Marshall Bewley, Ph.D.

Kari Leavell, Ph.D.

Presenter Outline:

10 minutes: Introduction of Leaders& Establish Credibility for conducting this program
Rationale for doing this activity
Give participants credibility for where they are in their career
Highlight opportunity for lifelong learning about oneself and how this impacts practice
Offer perspective that they can take this activity back to their own work
Encourage presence and vulnerability despite established career
Acknowledge requests for movement and identify chairs placed around the identities for those needing to sit
Ground Rules for Exercise
PROCESS handout
Instructions

30 minutes: Facilitation of Four Corners, Part I:
5 minutes: Leaders read identities of the four hypotheticalindividuals, and are then asked to choose a life to live through and move toward it

Person 1

10 minutes: Leaders then facilitate exploration and sharing of why participants made their choices
Why did you choose the person you did?
Why did you not choose the other people?
When you think about these people what assumptions do you make about their quality of life, their occupations, their education level, and their happiness?
To what extent did financial status impact your decision?
Was there any guilt about your choice?
Did you feel compelled to align with or abandon an identity that you hold?
Now if you imagine yourself interacting with or seeing a client with any of these identities, what feelings/thoughts come up?
What assumptions might you make about their capacity to be successful in their life?

10-15 minutes: Facilitation of Four Corners, Part II
Each identity has two elements of their identity that is changed; leaders will facilitate a brief process of participants’ reactions to living that person’s life based on identities that were not initially chosen

Person 3

Person 4

Facilitation Questions:
How does your perception change based on the changes of these identities?
How do these changes impact your initial decision?
What assumptions come to mind in light of these changes?
How does imagining having this identity yourself impact or not impact how you would think of a particular colleague/ client?

20 minutes: Group level process about what participants took away from the activity and emotions that arose
Invite participants to return to their seats, they are encouraged to reflect in silence about what is coming up for them
Leaders bring selves into the room
Acknowledge our own visible identities
Acknowledging that we have made assumptions about these 4 people, we intentionally want to ask what assumptions have you made about us? (Invite you to consider possible identities that you assume we hold)
What’s it like to voice these genuine assumptions toward two real people? (Acknowledge discomfort & willingness to go there – edge of comfort zone)
Connect to what participants say about why they chose the identities they did
“You mentioned you chose a white male for xyz, would you be willing to share what you think my life might be like based on those IDs?”
Even as a skilled professional, we still hold biases and areas of value regarding different identities
How do we manage that? (i.e., how do we not self-shame, remain ignorant to it)?
Ultimately connect to the vulnerability of being a supervisee or client
If no one is talking—“What makes this so difficulty for us right now?”
Still crickets—Connect to training (there and then vs. here and now)

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