How I Use Psychology in IT, Another Installment

To carry on with my previous post, I described the idea that you, as a person who is trying to help, the situation, and the person you are trying to help are three separate things. If you work for a company or a corporation, there is a "fourth voice" in the conversation.

In graduate school, I went through an exercise in which I roleplayed a therapist dealing with a client who what dealing with a particular situation, only there was another person providing a dialogue that was going on during the counseling situation. This fourth voice was very critical, and was actively attempting to block the work I was doing. Although this may be present in some or many situations, the tenacity and degree to which this voice was present made it impossible, as a novice counselor, to make any progress with the client.

It has become very apparent to me through these years of experience, that the fourth voice in IT consulting is often the Account Manager or some other agent of the company that the IT consultant is employed by. This voice can be either positive and empowering, or critical and defeating. Far too often it is the latter. This is, of course, due to the fact that in IT there is little to no formal training in management, much less how to deal with people. As a result, many of the managers own "internal critics" become the voice that they use to work with their staff, and as a result, serve to only reduce their staff's effectiveness when dealing with clients. I belive the intention is to improve, but like much of human endeavor, the full picture is not realized, resulting in the failure of the single procedure.

So, as a technician or a helper how does this help you? First, you need to identify if there is there a "fourth voice" present? Is it your employer or manager? You need to be able to separate out this voice, just as you did with the client's process, in order to complete the task at hand. You may be in a situation where the situation has been dealt with satisfactorally, the client is happy, yet your manager is unhappy for some reason, or - and this is the worst case - dislikes you as a person because you did not approach the situation the way that they would have wanted you to. Dealing with an intense negative personalization by a direct superior is hard, especially when they are emotionally invested in blaming their subordinates rather than leading them. This happens very often, and if you have the means, make use of your benefits for counseling, because you will need an objective third party to bounce your experiences off of until the economy picks up enough to the point where you are able to secure a position with an employer who will appreciate and support your contribution, rather than work to negate it.

How I Use Psychology In Information Technology

When people find out that I have a Masters in Counseling Psychology (Ed Psych, Community Counseling Focus at the graduate school I attended. I also have a certificate in Trauma Counseling), they will usually ask me if or how I use my psychology knowledge or training in my work as an IT consultant. The answer is, yes, that I actually do, and at times, in some very particular ways.

One example of how I use my training is in emotionally charged or high-pressure situations. As a counselor, you are trained to separate the client's process, your internal process, and the demands of the situation. When working with client's in times of high stress - which the failure of a tool to perform their job can trigger - their anger and frustration at the situation may be directed at me, occaisionally in some very extreme ways. It has been said about me in these situations that I don't let my ego interfere, and I believe it is because I separate who I am from the client's process. They may have a need or want to vent uncontrollably at that time. That fact does not require me to react in kind, or actually, to react at all. How I react is then my choice. The situation and the needs to attain the client's goal, which I am dedicated to by virtue of my position, is the most important thing, so I focus on that. The personality issues, as they arise, can be attended to, or set aside to deal with at a more appropriate time. So my focus is on the task at hand, the goal, and the satisfaction of that goal. When I talked with a business owner about bringing in someone else to be a buffer and put a "nicer face" on what I do, he responded, "You do what you do, you get it done, what is the nicer face?" Speaks volumes.

So, if you are interested, and so inclined from your personality, you are inclined to think, "great, but how to I apply it to my life?" Well, the answer is, you have the power to apply it yourself. The first step is to understand each situation as three things: 1) your process, 2) the situation, and 3) the other person's process. This is actually a functional adaptation of Field Theory (but you don't need to know that). The first step is to see that the situation, and your reaction to it, are two entirely separate things. One does not equal the other. Gloss it up or dress it down, I'm sure you can come up with examples of how you reacted differently to very similar situations. The truth between the two is that you were more capable (by choice, perhaps?) to deal with one differently than the other. In those situations, you allowed your process to be affected moreso than the other.

Similarly, you are likely to be able to come up with situations where one person's reaction to a situation has affected you differently than another persons'. Some of this is natural, but some of it is by choice. One person's process may dictate that they react in a particular way to a situation. Your choice is the degree of impact it has on your process - and your sense of reason - as a result.

If you have difficulty with this I have two ideas: 1) one of the essences of Zen Buddhism is being able to separate oneself from the world and understand the true nature of things. This is not something that you just do. It takes time and practice. 2) You may be invested in reacting in some ways, or you may be conditioned to reacting in those ways because they get the results that you are looking for. The question then becomes, "if you reacted differently, could you achieve the same, or even better, results?"