The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life

by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander

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Boston: Harvard Business School 2000.   206 pp   $22.50

I love this book! This is now one of my favorite books to recommend and to give as gifts to friends and colleagues.Rosamund Stone Zander is a family therapist and painter, and her husband, Benjamin Zander, is the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic – a volunteer Orchestra that is rated among the best in the world, where most of the other orchestras in this league are salaried. Over the years of their professional and personal collaborations, Ros and Ben have developed approaches for reframing challenging situations in positive ways, so that people who might otherwise end up in conflict are able to find their ways to negotiate mutually acceptable and satisfying resolutions to their disagreements.

Simple steps are detailed for re-conceptualizing prickly and knotty issues so that both sides discover ways around apparently insurmountable blocks and discover cooperative, mutually satisfying resolutions to problems. Much of their approach encourages the development of positive attitudes and expectations about dealing with such situations.

Each chapter is richly illustrated with personal anecdotes of how the methods Ben and Ros recommend have been successful in diverse challenging situations. Here are but a few of the many gems from this sparkling book:

An apocryphal story

A shoe factory sends two marketing scouts to a region of Africa to study the prospects for expanding business. One sends back a telegram saying,
SITUATION HOPELESS STOP NO ONE WEARS SHOES
The other writes back triumphantly,
GLORIOUS BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY STOP THEY HAVE NO SHOES.

Ros and Ben point out that when we get our backs up, much of what we assume to be fact is actually a reality that is created in our imaginations. By keeping this in mind, we allow ourselves to open to new possibilities in our negotiations.

A simple way to practice it’s all invented is to ask yourself this question:
What assumption am I making,
That I’m not aware I’m making,
That gives me what I see?

And when you have an answer to that question, ask yourself this one:
What might I now invent,
That I haven’t yet invented,
That would give me other choices? (p. 15)

Reframing one's situation in a major way:

You define yourself not as a piece, nor as the strategist, but as the board itself, the framework for the game of life around you. Notice we said that you define yourself that way, not that you are that…

When you identify yourself as a single chess piece – and by analogy, as an individual in a particular role – you can only react to, complain about, or resist the moves that interrupted your plans. But if you name yourself as the board itself you can turn all your attention to what you want to see happen, with none paid to what you need to win or fight or fix.

The action in this graceful game is ongoing integration. One by one, you bring everything you have been resisting into the fold. You, as the board, make room for all the moves, for the capture of the knight and the sacrifice of your bishop, for your good driving and the accident, for your miserable childhood and the circumstance of your parents’ lives, for your need and another’s refusal. Why? Because that is what is there. It is the way things are.

You ask yourself, in regard to the unwanted circumstances, “Well, how did this get on the board that I am?” or, “Now, how is it that I have become a context for that to occur?” You will begin to see the obvious and then the not-so-obvious contributions of your calculating self, or of your history, or of earlier decisions that landed you where you are, feeling like a victim. This reflection may bring forth from you an apology that will knit back together the strands of raveled relationships. And then you will be standing freely and powerfully once again in a universe of possibility. (p. 146-7)

This book is very highly recommended for anyone in the helping or managerial professions, as well as for anyone wishing to improve their negotiating skills in their personal lives.

Review by Daniel J. Benor, MD
IJHC Editor in Chief

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