Typical British (wet! )Summer, 1958 - 4 years old, with parents Ted and Betty.
I first fell in love with the behavioural sciences - Psychology especially - during
my Foundation Year at Bradford University. To me, it was totally fascinating to explore
why people thought and behaved as they did - to discover what biological and mental
processes drove behaviour. Even better was studying various therapies to help people
cope and deal with thoughts and behaviour that weren't conducive to health and happiness.
I was also much taken with investigating philosophical and political ideas as to
how we could make our society a 'better society'.
However, as was - and all too often still is! - typical of academic teaching, the
exploration of matters psychological was in a very abstracted manner. It would be
another 25 years later, with my exposure to Spiral Dynamics and Neuro-Linguistic
Programming (NLP), that l learned how to use Psychology not only to really help others
resolve debilitating issues but also to reflect on what it all meant for me, what
my weaknesses and hang-ups were and to develop strategies to free me from limiting
beliefs (maladaptive schemas).
Although my mid-70s teacher training included a module on the Psychology of Child
Development, for much of the 1980s my attentions were largely elsewhere. After a
year in teaching - a profession to which I returned in 2001 - I was enticed into
the world of industry & commerce, working initially as an export despatch controller.
Jobs in manufacturing, the theatre, the licenced trade and then in administration
followed.
(I also did a little part-time music journalism, writing reviews of rock acts for
several small-time journals and 'fanzines'. Published reviews over the years, albums
and gigs, have included John Phillips, Jefferson Starship, Adam & The Ants, The Teardrop
Explodes, UK Subs, Starship, The Mamas & The Papas, Pete Sears and Crosby Stills
& Nash. (I still ‘dabble’ occasionally. More recently I’ve covered the likes of Jony
Barbata, Peter Kaukonen and Pentangle.)
At the time I was head-hunted into the Bridge management training & consultancy operation,
I was working as National Administration Manager for what was then Britain's biggest
freight forwarding operation, Hellman Mitchell Cotts Ltd (now Hellman International
Forwarders Ltd). At no point had I ever intended going into consultancy & training;
but it seemed at the time I'd gone as far as I could with Hellmann and the Bridge
offer was enticing...and I very quickly learned to be very good at it!
Management Consultant...?
It was an era - the late 1980s - in which it seemed just about anybody with a whiff
of business credibility, who couldn't do something better, could become a 'listed
consultant' under the DTI Enterprise Initiative and provide 'business support' to
smallish companies - 'SMEs' (small-medium enterprises) in the vernacular - with 50%
of the consultant's costs being picked up by the taxpayer. (Surveys have shown since
that the Enterprise Initiative had only a marginal role in improving the competitiveness
of British industry.)
There were good consultants who emerged from the Enterprise Initiative era - and
I'd like to think I was one of them. 4 companies assisted to achieve ISO 9000 and
23 to achieve Investors in People is, I think, some mark of achievement - though
my proudest moment from those days was receiving a commendation from Enterprise Support
(on behalf of the Department of Trade & Industry) for
business planning.
Though the primary emphasis during my time with Bridge was on organisational development,
my interest in Psychology was revived through working with the DISC model of William
Moulton Marston - for which I wrote and delivered courses applying the concepts to
sales and management. I was so impressed with the power of the model that I contemplated
returning to academia to take a second degree in Psychology.
In that sense at least Bridge was a key step on my road to becoming a 'SocioPsychologist'.
However, the real turning point for me came in 1998 when I was trained in Spiral
Dynamics and NLP and exposed to Adizes LifeCycle - all within the space of 6 months!
Over the following 18 months I took further training in Spiral Dynamics and NLP -
being one of only about 20 people in the UK to be trained to the original SD II level
and achieving Master Practitioner grade in NLP.
Those incredible experiences led to
profound changes in the way I perceived myself, the world around me and how I interacted
with it. Now I could understand myself so much more, why I was the way I was and
what I could do about it. To a considerable extent, I learned to manipulate myself.
I also got to understand the behaviour of others to the point where, at times, it
became entirely predictable.
With my parents, June 1985.
In shades! August 1996 - holidaying in Gran Canaria. [Photo: Val Horsfall]
So much about me changed that, as a consultant, the work I had been doing previously
now seemed to be, at best, only 2-dimensional. The term 'consultant' clearly was
no longer adequate to describe what I now could do. It was no longer a job, more
a vocation. I tried 'Management Faciliator' and 'Management Psychologist' before
settling eventually on the title of 'Change Engineer' in 2001.
SocioPsychologist!
In the years since the main emphasis in my work has shifted more and more onto people
as it’s people who really make the difference. It is people who plan, lead, design,
manage, sell, buy, maintain systems and plant, deliver, and collect the money, etc.
It’s also people who divorce, get depressed, become alcoholics and drug addicts,
burgle, rape, murder and wage war, etc.
Finally, in 2007, having coined the term 'Integrated SocioPsychology' in 2004, I
decided to adopt the term 'SocioPsychologist' to reflect the fact that, as a teacher,
consultant, trainer and therapist, my emphasis had come to be almost exclusively
on people - and that was the area of expertise I would focus on from then on.
These pages cover my Career Highlights, starting with my move into training & consultancy
in 1988. While I'm proud of my work in the early 1990s, for obvious reasons it is
only covered briefly. Far more space is devoted to being first a change engineer
and now a sociopsychologist than being a management consultant!!
Conceptually the role has expanded over the years to take on one-to-one Therapy &
Counselling and even the function of A-Level Psychology teacher. Who knows? I may
even be growing a new generation of Change Engineers and SocioPsychologists!
Indeed it was a stint (2003-2006) teaching Psychology at Vermuyden School in Goole,
East Yorkshire, that led me into experiences almost as profund those of 1998. Through
adding so much to my knowledge of Psychology by teaching it to A-Level and studying
it way beyond, I began to conceive how an integrated approach to the behavioural
sciences might be developed, based in large part on Spiral Dynamics. I call this
approach: Integrated SocioPsychology.
Precious last moments, January 2000 - with my mother a few months before she died.
[Ted Rice]
I had been integrating many elements of NLP with Spiral Dynamics and running training
courses on the integrated material since 2001; but the span of integration I now
began to conceive was of a different order altogether. Eventually my studies led
to my own book, 'Knowing You, Knowing Me: an Integrated SocioPsychology Guide to
Personal Fulfilment & Better Relationships' (Trafford, 2006). 'Knowing Me, Knowing
You' has received accolades such as "groundbreaking" and "wonderful" from right around
the globe.
While there was always a significant social/societal element in my thinking around
the development of Integrated SocioPsychology and I read the sociologists and philosophers
when time allowed and preference swung that way, of necessity my main emphases were
on things psychological.
That changed somewhat in 2007 when I took a part-time post at Rossett School in Harrogate
where I found myself teaching modules of A-Level Sociology and Health & Social Care
alongside the Psychology. Once more I found the scope of both theory and application
expanding as my studies explored the nature of social groupings in much greater depth
and breadth. While theses studies add little to the kernel of what I call Integrated
SocioPsychology, they do provide material for a much broader application.
Presently I mix teaching A-Level Psychology, Sociology and Health & Social Care with
one-to-one therapy, couples and small group therapy, consultancy & training in management
development & human resources and, of course, research for my next book.
40th birthday, December 1993.
On a personal level I live in the grand North Yorkshire town of Harrogate with my
gorgeous wife, Caroline, and our 'magic cat', Artemis.
Thanks to...
Along the way, certain people have been particularly influential, both in terms of
career progression and/or personal development; so it's appropriate to acknowledge
as many as I can remember. In approximate chronological order...
Ted Rice, Betty Rice, George Chandler, Rita Smith, Maureen Smith (Williams), Mike
Holland, Ian Mackenzie (?), John Bentham, Dave Twist, John North, Steve Smith #1,
Peter Parris, Linda Rice, Steve Holton, Jane Rice, Jeremy Gilson, Ian Foster, Andrew
Michael, Tom Stock, Steve Bleasby, Wal England, Tony Brown, Iswar Kautick, Gizelle
Harrison, Carol Stretch, John Slack, Val Horsfall, Carol Lloyd, Brother John Tonner,
Vanessa Lindsay-Smith, Brother Stanislaus Neild, Brother Robert Moore, Kay Wright,
Steven Beevers, Diana Johnson, Angie Patterson, Barbara Gomersall, Kate Dallas-Wood,
Ian Lavan, Phil McMahon, Jack Holt, Ian Woodhouse, Christopher Cooke, Christopher
Cowan, Margaret Wood, Lynn Cooper, John Lavan, Ann Slack, Robert Dilts, Suzanne Wade,
Sue Lavan (Poskitt), Lee Holt, David Taylor, Peter Dawson, Steve Smith #2, Grey Wolf,
Mark Duffy, Paul Edwards, Dennis Turner, Mike Laxton, Penny Parks, Dawn Turner, Stephen
Farrer, Dr L Michael Hall, Ian Wilkinson, Jennie Beasty, Dr Jerry Coursen, Dave Yaffey,
Richard Royce, Angela Ogilvie, Lewis Lynch, Dr Peter Child, Dr Sheila Kaye, David
Burnby, Dr Gregg A Lichtenstein, Jennifer Crossland, Gareth Lucier, Cathy Byrne,
Helen Ezard, Chris Massender, Martin Patrick, Max Herold, Duncan Harper, Bernard
McGuinn, Max Hodgson, Joan Sanders, Adrian Hartley, Gernia Van Niekerk, Wendy Baxter,
Jenny Gavin-Allen, Matthew Kalman, Peter Fryer, Liz Olson, Steve Gorton, Jacky Wass,
Martin Evington, Tony Cosgrove, Dr Natasha Todorovic, Nick Bull, Anne McErlane, Kevin
Murphy, Graham Sykes, Jonathan Taylor, Linzi Hanlon, Emma Simmons, Diane Barker,
Maria Bowers, Russ Volckmann, Dr Susan Blackmore, Dr Eric H Chudler, Alan Tonkin,
Kate Bowers, Steve Atkinson, Kate Coulter, Caroline Crummack (Rice), Andrew Mills,
Dave Lowe, Nick Taylor, Bill Hajdu, David Hunter, Kelly Robinson, Barbara Larisch,
Tim Roberts, Claire McIntosh, Pat Hunter, Mike Benson, Ali Standen, Viki Crummack,
Dr Emma Dunmore, Elizabeth Clarke, Jane Wild, Nancy Newton Verrier, Jane Walton,
Jinnie Powell, Ramla Akhtar, Bruce Gibb, Jon Freeman, Dave Watkins, Martin Hulland,
Lynda Lee, Ian McDonald, Jon Twigge...
...also my A-level course students and the participants in my workshop programmes
- all of whose comments, queries and sometimes criticisms force me to think and expand
my own perceptions...
...and not forgetting Ken - the Bradford University History lecturer whose surname
I can't remember. In 1971 he told me: "Just because it's written in a History book,
it doesn't mean it's true"...
...and certainly not forgetting the Psychology lecturer whose name I can't even begin
to hazard a guess at now. Drop-dead gorgeous blonde, perched on the edge of a desk
a little indiscreetly in a micro-mini skirt, talking explicitly about the sensory
pleasure of passing faeces....!!!!!
Shocking and formative experiences both! - the meanings of which have made more and
more sense to me as Spiral Dynamics and NLP have driven my revitalised interest in
the behavioural sciences and given me many new outlooks on life.
Special thanks to Dr Don Beck - not only a true inspiration but a real provider of
sustenance, both material and psychic.
With Caroline and Artemis, October 2005. [Adam Harris]
