I’m a fan of techniques but many of my colleagues are dismissive. They see techniques as lowly, mechanical aids that fall well short of authentic skills. I believe that techniques provide invaluable stepping stones that, once practised and internalised, become skills.

Take people skills for example. There is no argument about the eventual end point; we all want people to behave thoughtfully and authentically. The difference is over the most promising way to reach this desired end, via either an attitudinal or behavioural route. The ‘internalists’ assume that attitudes and beliefs must come first. In other words, I’d have to believe something before I could behave it convincingly. The ‘externalists’ assume that behaviour is largely situational and that it is possible to artificially induce behaviour, leaving beliefs and attitudes to follow on behind. This means that I could behave in a particular way without necessarily believing in it.

Now, I am sure that in a perfect world people would be nice to each other, not because they had to, but because they believed it was the right thing to do. But the world isn’t perfect (and it would probably defeat the whole object if it was). Fortunately there are a whole host of tried and tested techniques ready and waiting to come to our aid. It seems such a pity to insist that passionate beliefs are a pre-requisite before they can be employed for the common good.

Have you, for example, come across a technique called the itemised response? This is a technique that ‘forces’ people to search hard for the good in someone else’s idea irrespective of what they really think about it.

Briefly the technique goes like this: in order to counteract the tendency to find fault with other people’s ideas and pull them to pieces, a rule is imposed whereby you have to say three things you like about an idea before you are allowed to state a concern. This guarantees a ratio of three pluses for every minus. There is also a formula for expressing the concern: you have to start with the prefix ‘my concern is how to...?’ The concerns are thus posed as open-ended questions searching for answers, rather than damning condemnations that can too easily bring things to a halt.

I think this is a particularly interesting example because it encapsulates everything that internalists tend to loathe about techniques. The positive behaviour is artificially induced - by no stretch of the imagination could it be claimed to be authentic. Indeed, the technique works best precisely when internal attitudes are hostile to the idea under consideration. But if you want to over-ride negative attitudes and, at a stroke, get people to behave positively, the itemised response is the best short cut I know. Furthermore, my experience has been that when the technique has been imposed, ideas that would have been cast aside with inadequate consideration have survived, even flourished. Best of all, over time (not overnight) other important side effects become evident. Slowly, negative or hostile attitudes towards ideas from other people give way to more positive, enquiring ones where playing with ideas is seen as a good and useful thing to do.

And all this because of the imposition of a mere technique! So please don’t knock techniques; they offer the best hope for bringing about the improvements we crave for. As the saying goes (internalists please skip this bit – it is simply too offensive!), ‘If at first you can’t make it, fake it’.