By setting such high standards, the mother made it easy for the men to succeed at failing. I wanted her to lower her standards and to respond in some kind of softer way with them. What I did sounds really direct, but sometimes the direct approach is best. I took the little girl aside, and I told her «Look, I need your help. I want you to play this game with me, and it's going to be our secret. If you play this game with me, something magical is going to happen when you come back here next time.» Previously the little girl had always run away and hidden whenever the mother started to criticize one of the brothers. I told her «You don't need to do that. I want you to test your powers, because I'm giving you powers that you didn't know you had, that you have now. If she's yelling at Billy, I want you to go up to her and simply tug on your mother's hand and ask her the following question: 'Mommie, do you love Billy?' and keep doing it until you are convinced that she is telling you the truth.»

Of course, this little girl was great at it. She would say «Mommie, do you love Billy?» And the mother would say (angrily) «YES!» When she asked again «Mommie, do you love Billy?» the mother would say (softly) «Yes, yes I do.» «Do you really, Mommie?» The girl just went on and on and on like that.

What's going to happen in this system as a result of this intervention? The whole family was convinced that the mother was the Wicked Witch of the North—and you'd probably agree with them! But it's very hard to be the Wicked Witch of the North when a cute little girl is going «Mommie, do you love Billy?» Now, in the middle of «Look, you indifferent slob, you forgot to take out the garbage!» Billy's going to hear things like «Yes, I love him.» That's going to change the whole ball game.

Man: So he got both the yucky negative and the «Yes, mother loves me.»

Yes. But getting negative messages became an opportunity to then have positive feelings.

Man: «Getting negative messages becomes the opportunity to have good feelings» sounds like the way to program somebody to go through behaviors in order to generate negative messages so that he can feel good.

But these people didn't do anything wrong to get criticized. And when the mother answered the little girl's question, she typically went into an explanation of what she was doing. «The only reason I'm telling him this is that I'm afraid that if I can't do something to motivate him to do well in school, then he's going to have to be a hard laborer like his father and work in the coal mines. I don't want him to have to work in the coal mines. I want him to have a job that is clean.» She started to communicate what she was trying to do—the intention behind her behavior. Basically, that little girl accomplished a reframing of the mother's behavior.

Man: The girl must have had some way of coping with the mother if the mother turned on the girl and said «Stop asking me these damn questions.»

The mother would never do that. I knew that before I intervened. The mother couldn't yell at her, or at any other woman.

Woman: The little girl anchored something for the mother.

The little girl became an anchor. Everybody wanted to hang out with her from then on. It wasn't safe to be anywhere else! This little girl had always been ignored before. Being ignored happens very often to middle children, and to children after about the fourth–born. If you decide that's not useful, find some way to make the child an anchor for all kinds of positive behaviors. That's a very powerful intervention.

When the family came back the next week, the difference in the way they looked and interacted was immense. As this new family system develops, ultimately people are going to respond to the younger son because this little girl is going to demand that they do, and it will happen through the mother. The little girl's job now is to pay attention to all these people because I told her to.

Woman: That's fascinating, because you really used the person who is least troubled. Other therapists would say there is no problem with this girl and the mother.

Well, there isn't a problem with anybody. I don't believe in problems. The important point is this: not only do I utilize the system that is there, I use the existing system to create a new system. In order to do that, I have to determine who is the one person in the system who will be able to change all the others. Very often it's not the aggressive, boisterous person who will be able to do that. People often think that persuasion comes with noise, and it doesn't. Persuasion comes with tenacity. People who are very expressive are also very changeable. Anyone who explodes in anger will also have severe polarity responses the other way.

Too often in family therapy the therapist works with a person who is easy to change, which of course means that the family is going to be able to change him back just as easily. If you change someone who is symptomatic, someone who is flipping out, someone who is already responding massively to the family, that person is going to be really easy for the family to change back. The person who has the symptoms will be the last one that you want to work with. The very fact that the family system can produce schizophrenia or anorexia or whatever means that the symptomatic person is easy to influence. If you can influence him into being normal, then the family is going to be able to change him right back. So you've got to get at him from another angle. The family member you want to go after is the one who is really tenacious. If you make a change in a really tenacious individual, everybody else will bounce around for a while, but eventually they will adjust to the way that person has changed.

Man: Can you recontextualize reframing a family system in terms of the problems that occur in business organizations?

Sure. In many ways, a business is just like an extended family, and much of what we have discussed can be applied directly. However, you have to change some of your verbal and nonverbal behaviors to be acceptable to the business world. For instance, you don't talk about the «unconscious mind," you talk about «habits," and you may need to wear a suit instead of a sport shirt. You also have to change some of your basic presuppositions.

For instance, in NLP we presuppose that choice is always better than non–choice. That is usually not true in business. There are a few business contexts where you want a lot of variability and creativity, but often a lot of effort goes into standardizing and routinizing human beings to make them dependable. You don't want assembly–line workers always trying out new ways of doing their jobs, or doing it blindfolded for variety.

Another thing you have to be aware of in the business context is that there is a certain amount of secrecy and paranoia whenever you deal with anything that business people think gives them a competitive advantage. In the therapeutic context there is no such thing as a «trade secret.» As soon as someone has a new idea, he tries to tell everyone about it so he can get some recognition. Businesses often spend a lot of money developing new techniques, and when these are successful, they try to hold on to them as long as they can.

There is also a lot of conservatism in business people, which is based on two things: (1) they don't have a good understanding of how a business organization works, and (2) they have found out the hard way that often when they try something new, it fouls up the system.

You often see this happen whenever a major position in the managerial or executive area of a corporation is vacated by promotion, dismissal, or retirement. The organization will almost always decide to search externally for a replacement. That's a behavioral statement that says business people have no idea what the qualities are that characterize a good manager or executive. Since they don't know, they have no basis for training or selection except a person's «track record.» Typically they don't want to take an employee from another position within their organization. If they had explicit criteria for what an executive position requires, it would be much more cost–effective to train people within the organization.