Flex_ Do Something Different - Ben [29]
In this passage Rilke also warns us against knowing only a corner of the room that is our existence. Imagine your life as a vast room. Why, he says, would you only want to live in one corner of it. We agree. And we urge you to explore the other 9/10ths with flex.
flex doesn’t demand we totally change our ‘personality’ – just as leopards don’t change their spots. The aim in flex is to develop and fully optimise aspects of our behavioural potential that we don’t naturally use. To use more than just 1/10th of it. As Rilke says, to be ‘someone who is ready for everything, who excludes nothing’. This will make us more rounded as people, more able to cope and succeed in a wider variety of circumstances, and less stressed by uncertainties we should embrace. Our natural habits make each of us rather constrained and lopsided in how we behave. They limit us to succeed only in those situations we encounter for which we happen to have the appropriate behaviours. Why would any of us choose to remain so constrained? In Rilke’s terms, why would we choose to explore only a small corner of our room? What about the other 9/10ths?
Why wouldn’t we Do Something Different?
1. ‘Flexible’ here refers to being changeable and adaptable. flex is about being able to use an appropriate behavioural response to a situation. Some situations might require the person to flex by being definite, meaning that being flexible is only right when it’s appropriate to the situation.
2. The behavioural flexibility scale, for example, has a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.914 (the maximum score is 1, and this would be considered to show very strong reliability). The scale is also statistically sound in that it has a single large factor that underlies it, without any indications to suggest that the measure has other components.
flex in action – the behaviour-rater
Understanding your behaviour
The behaviour-rater
Please take your time and select any boxes that apply to you.
Scoring your behaviour-rater
In a moment we will look at how you completed the behaviour-rater, but first notice a few things about the words in it.
None of the descriptive words or behaviours are in themselves bad or wrong or inappropriate – only a particular context might make that so.
In the table on p.60 I displayed the same words as fifteen dimensions in the sense that the descriptors might be paired at either end of a response scale. That itself often leads people to believe they are incompatible – you could not be both one and the other! But that is not so. It’s quite possible – and you may well have shown this in your own responses to the behaviour-rater – to have both of the behaviours of one of the fifteen ‘dimensions’ in your repertoire, depending on the situations you might encounter. You can then potentially do the right thing, or the best thing, depending upon the context and your goals.
Without the entire set of behaviours this guarantee cannot be given. If you have any behaviours missing you are reducing your chances of being able to do the right thing by about 3 per cent for each one. If you are missing a fair number this can add up to quite a handicap. It could add up to you only using 1/10th of your potential!
And don’t forget, even if you have the behaviour in your repertoire that is far from a guarantee that you will use it. Old habits die hard. Very hard. So the negatives of having a strong personality, or a narrow range of behaviours in your repertoire, are very marked indeed.
The behaviour-rater is a quick way of measuring your flex score. How did you do? There are two scores we can look at. The second requires a bit more work on your part.
Your behaviour range score
The first – your behaviour range score – can be simply calculated by counting up the number of boxes you ticked out of the 30 possible. Now convert that score to a percentage simply by dividing it by 30 and then multiplying the result by 100. You will