I recently finalised a ‘measurement of performance’ guide and, within this, I explain various archetypes of services, and the types of measures that best fit each.
I’m particularly interested in relational services – the big hairy ‘social system’ ones that (should) really matter for the most vulnerable and ‘in need of help’ humans.
Most societies have decided to organise (i.e. intervene) because of a desire (or perhaps obligation) to help people. As such, knowing whether that ‘outside help’* is valuable to those in need is rather important…and it really won’t be about ‘how many/how much we did’ of something, or ‘how fast we did it’ (Ref. Our work this Year)
It will be about whether:
- it is wanted/ accepted/ engaged with;
- it assists, moving a person forward to a better place – as defined by them; and
- any progress is sustained and transformative
…noting that achieving and sustaining 1. above is very probably a pre-requisite for any advances in the space of 2. and 3.
* Why do I write ‘outside help’?
Sociologists have defined different types of social groups and two are of particular interest to me:
- Primary social groups: these are typically small and made up of members that share close, personal and (often) long-lasting relationships. The (subconscious1) ‘point’ of the group is simply about creating, maintaining, and developing relationships – for their own sake.
In (what we might term) ‘healthy’ primary social groups, we would expect these relationships to be about such things as love, care, and support.
Examples of primary social groups: family, friendship groups, close neighbours, crisis-support groups, religious groups.
- Secondary social groups: these can be relatively large groups that exist to achieve a specific and shared2 purpose:
- inter-relationships are important in meeting the purpose, rather than just for their own sake.
- there is likely some exchange (e.g. wages for labour, payment for services, fees for membership)
- the concept of roles within the group is important, such that individuals can leave, with others able to join, with relative ease.
Examples of secondary social groups: workplaces, educational establishments (e.g. schools, universities), associations (e.g. sports teams, political parties).
Clarification: whilst the definitions above look ‘nice and neat’, the reality is not. There aren’t clear, crisp boundaries that define such groups. It’s a complex tangle.
To illustrate this tangle:
- if I was to ask you to define your primary social group(s), you might struggle to decide who’s in vs. out of a given group, and where the boundaries are between groups (e.g. different friend groups)…because it doesn’t ‘work like that’;
- we likely belong to multiple secondary social groups, each with different purposes; and
- membership of our primary and secondary social groups will likely overlap e.g. a work colleague that has become a best friend, or a sibling that has joined your football team.
However, with these concepts, I hope you can see that someone tasked by an organisation to intervene (for whatever reason) in another person’s life is ‘outside’ their primary social group, attempting to ‘come in’ via a secondary social group.
An Interface
In the perfect world, primary social groups would be able to self-serve their psychological & physical needs – and, if we look back in time, this is exactly what they did. However, in our increasingly complex world, this is no longer the case in most societies.
Further, we understand that primary social groups don’t always function in a way that is healthy for the individuals within, or for the community that they live among3.
In such circumstances, the wider societal group wish to alleviate such problematic relations.
There are many societal roles that work in this realm e.g. health workers, social workers, counsellors, clinical psychologists, etc. These might be the obvious ones. We could (ought to) also include roles like police, probation…any and all public sector ‘case workers’4. We might generalise them into a ‘client helper’ role.
Of primary importance to such attempts of help is whether it is wanted/ accepted/ engaged with.
Which takes us to the topic of engagement…between a person (‘client’) and a would-be helper.
Definition:
The Oxford dictionary provides several uses of the word ‘engagement’ but, setting aside things like ‘an agreement to get married’ or ‘a battle between armed forces’, I’ll go with the one that meets my needs:
“The action of engaging or [the state of] being engaged.
Similar: participation, taking part, sharing, partaking, involvement, commitment.”
The similar words listed from the dictionary help us think about what ‘being engaged’ is about.
The quality of the alliance between a person and their helper (particularly as perceived by the person being helped) directly predicts continuation of the relationship and the outcomes from it.
“Coming together is a beginning, keeping together is progress, working together is success.” [Henry Ford]
Engagement is the process of establishing (and maintaining) a trusting and mutually respectful helping relationship.
And so, a key measure for a relational system is whether the person values their relationship with the (their) helper. We can either ask them this directly5 or deduce this from how they behave.
Making use of such a measure
If we understand not to cannibalise the measure (ref. Goodhart’s Law6) then, if we usefully track the quality of engagement over time, we may derive value from it as:
- a leading measure (of potential outcomes to come); and
- an indicator (i.e. to reflect upon) as to whether to amplify or dampen our interventions and/or to ponder experimenting in different directions.
Right, so that’s the body of this post – about the idea of ‘engagement’ as an interesting measure. What follows is (I think) an interesting segue into a set of ‘traps’ that will likely lead to disengagement…and, therefore, any organisation wanting to help people would do well to evaluate their current systemic designs against them:
Addendum: Traps that promote disengagement [Summarised from Miller & Rollnick]:
1. The Assessment trap:
An assessment-intensive session (i.e. ‘interviewer’ asks the questions and ‘interviewee’ answers them) quickly places the client into a passive, subordinate role.
“If the [helper] begins his work with [lots of questions to gain information], this fact carries with it the implication that he will provide the solutions to the client’s problems…Such ‘solutions’ are not genuine and do not deeply help the individual.” [Carl Rogers].
2. The Expert trap:
Assessment triggers the implicit expectation that, once you [the helper] have collected the information, you will have answers.
“An expert role does not work well when what is needed is personal change…It sets the stage for both the client and the helper to be disappointed.” [Miller & Rollnick]
Key to effective help is the helper knowing that they don’t have the answer for the client!
3. The Premature focus trap:
This is where the ‘helper’ tries to focus on/ solve a particular ‘problem’ before they have established a working relationship (i.e. the helper wants to focus on ‘problem x’, but the client’s real concern is elsewhere).
The need is to avoid becoming engaged in a power struggle for the ‘right’ topic for early discussion. Start where your client’s own concerns are, listen to them, get a broad understanding of their life situation.
Such exploration will likely lead (over time) to the real problems (which may, or may not be, what you identified in the first place).
4. The Labelling trap:
A specific form of the premature focus trap is where the helper wants to focus on a particular problem and calls it by a name (i.e. gives it a label).
Example: “You are an alcoholic, you’re in denial…”
“There is little evidence for any benefit from pressuring people to accept a label.” [Miller & Rollnick]
Labelling (by the helper) can descend into a struggle, create discord, and hinder progress.
Clarification: If the person labels themselves, there is little point in opposing such self-acceptance.
“The key is to avoid getting into unproductive debates and struggles over labels.” [Miller & Rollnick]
5. The Blaming trap:
A client’s concern with, and defensiveness about, blame is highly unlikely to yield an open and constructive platform from which to help.
So, the helper needs to create an environment in which it is clear that they are not interested in looking for ‘who’s to blame’, but rather what the situation is, and what the person (or others) might be able to do about it.
6. The Chat trap:
Whilst, depending on the culture, it can be useful to engage in ice-breaking ‘small talk’, it doesn’t help if there is no direction to the conversation.
“Although off-topic chat can feel comfortable, it’s not likely to be very helpful beyond modest doses.” [Miller & Rollnick]
The primary attention of the engaging process must be devoted to the client’s concerns and goals.
Footnotes:
1. Re. subconscious: I don’t know many primary social groups that a) see/describe themselves as such…let alone b) write down their ‘purpose statement’ 🙂
2. Shared Purpose: Everyone ‘within’ the group will have their own perspective of what the group purpose means, and the way it fits for them. It might be better to write ‘closely related purposes’ or ‘alignment of interests’ (ref. members of political parties).
3. Re. the community: We impose ‘enabling constraints’ on people that live in the same proximity. Examples: Noise controls, parking restrictions, land usage restrictions…
4. Case workers: Though, we should bear in mind that many social systems have ‘trashed’ what case management means. Ref. True Case Management
5. Re. asking directly vs. behaviours: we would need to take great care in how any ‘asking’ is done, and in interpreting any response – we want to understand what they really think, not what they think we want to hear. This will be clearest in their behaviours.
6. Goodhart’s law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”
7. Blogging overdose: For anyone who’s been a regular reader of this blog over the years, you might be thinking “blimey, what’s happened to Steve? He’s hardly posted over the last year…and now he’s spewing out loads of stuff. Is he alright?”
Well, it just so happened that I had loads of dormant post ideas, some end-of-year down time, and a burst of mental stimulation…so I wrote/ finished half a dozen posts all at once.
I’ve been ‘releasing them’ at circa. weekly intervals so as not to overly bombard any readers out there, and this one is the last of my ‘end of year brain farts’ batch.
I may go back to ad-hoc irregularity…or my stimulus may be sustained. I don’t know yet 🙂
Squire to the Giants 