The Four Tendencies Framework: Facilitate A Growth Environment For Your Kids
One of the most difficult challenges we face as parents on a daily basis is how to get our children to listen.
When we say that we want our children to listen to us, we mean that we want them to follow whatever instructions, recommendations, or tasks we give them. Not just with our children, but in any relationship. We all want others to comply with our requests or expectations.
In today’s episode, I want to share a phenomenal concept that I learned from a book called “The Four Tendencies” by Gretchen Rubin. This can be a tool to facilitate a growth environment for your kids, guide them, and help them to make the best choice for them.
How do you define expectations?
Expectation means a strong belief that something will happen or be the case in the future, or it can. An expectation is a belief that someone will or should achieve something and that's what we have with our kids. We expect them to comply with our demand or request.
We want to make sure that our children follow what is best for them in general. We want them to develop healthy habits. We want them to make healthy choices, but of course, if we force them, it's not going to happen. So we have to facilitate the environment because the growth is in facilitation and not force.
There are two types of expectations: outer expectations such as deadlines or demand, and inner expectations, such as a desire to keep up with ourselves. How someone responds to these inner and outer expectations is what determines their behavior.
The Four Tendencies
The four tendencies can be used to gain insights into our nature as well as the nature of the people we work with, want to collaborate with, and travel with. For example, our children, partners, and coworkers, so that we can be more confident, productive, efficient, and effective individuals.
These four tendencies deal with expectations differently.
Upholder
They are the ones who meet outer and inner expectations. These are the people who have no trouble getting to work on time and getting a full eight hours of sleep because they just respond really well to both the expectations placed on them by other people and the expectations they place on themselves.
They find great satisfaction in meeting expectations and following rules, which means that these people find it gratifying and liberating to have a discipline line. A good motto for these upholders is that discipline brings freedom. They are ready to follow the rules that they sometimes neglect to ask questions and end up blindly adhering to rules and directions that are harmful or just plain wrong.
If you're trying to work with them, the best piece of advice is to make sure you give clear and precise instructions, because once they have a clear understanding of the priorities and what's expected of them, upholders can then be left to take care of the business. However, they can have trouble delegating duties and adjusting to changes in routine. So if you see work piling up or things not getting done, then you might want to check in to see if they need help and offer the help.
Questionnaire
Questionnaires are the ones who are resistant to meeting the needs of others, and their nature can be both a benefit and a hindrance. The best way to describe them is like “I do what makes sense, even if it means ignoring rules or other people's expectations” unlike Upholders, because a questionnaire isn't going to just follow your instructions.
But their nature can also be a hindrance when it results in analysis paralysis. Because the main reason for questions is to make sure the right decisions are being made. But if it gets stuck in the analysis paralysis, then of course it might overwhelm us and we might not be able to make the choice that we were really looking into.
The way we can work with questionnaires is we need to give them clear justification if you want them to meet your expectations, because they don't just like being told what to do or comply with your request, they're just not going to do it.
Obligers
These people meet our expectations with no problem, but they resist inner expectations. They struggle to meet their own expectations. People pleasers, that's what we call them, because these are the people who excel at meeting outside expectations and they just fail to meet their desires because that's just how they're built, but this can be solved by imposing outside accountability.
Rebels
Rebels are the group of people who resist outer expectations and they resist inner expectations.The motto for these people is “you can't make me neither can I”. For them it's all about individuality and they want everything to be a reflection of their unique self. So anything that could be considered as an expectation gets rejected.
Rebels love proving people wrong. The challenging part gets done for them, the expectation. Communication just doesn't work for them. They attach themselves to the identity and learn the skill, because at that point it becomes challenging for rebels.
Key Takeaway
When we understand these tendencies, we can create an environment for our partner, our child, or our coworkers in which we can support and help each other. The author's framework was not designed to put us in a box. It is only for us to identify and move on, as well as know how we can improve. It is all about progress.
It's about identifying what your tendency is. This is how you can work around, this is how you can provide the growth environment to yourself, your child,and partner. So whatever tendency you may be, knowing more about yourself can help you succeed in your work, your life, your relationship.