The Strong Model
A Process of Interaction and Intervention
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The Strong Model
of Interaction and Intervention
Is the Strong Model Revolutionary? Yes ..... And No.
The Strong Model is not a revolutionary approach to controlling troubled teens. But it may be a revolutionary approach to discovering untapped strength within others, including adolescents. In other words, the Strong Model does not simply reward, punish, and control. It demands. It immediately exacts demands upon individuals to control themselves, and to take responsibility for finding solutions to their problems, seeking help, if necessary, from their society of peers and leaders. At the same time, it demands that people rise to a higher level of interaction among one another. Value-based performance is required, not only of the child, but of peers and adults.
About the Author
The author of the Strong Model, Michael Behning, has worked for more than 13 years in the treatment care industry, having been employed as line staff, a high school instructor, a Transitional Director, and as an Executive Director. However, he is not a therapist. In fact, he holds a master's degree is in business administration, rather than education or psychology. And although he is surrounded by students of psychology, he stubbornly cites the importance of his early business education and experience in the origination of the Strong Model.
Mr. Behning began his professional career not in the treatment industry, but as a corporate trainer, and later as a manager in a large financial services corporation. During this time he studied business administration (at university), and taught management principles (in profession). Later, as a manager, he sought to apply the principles he had espoused and taught others. But he quickly realized, as most management professionals do, that there is a gap between management theory and practice.
The Problem
Addressing this problem, initially for his own benefit, he developed a simple model that rooted its premise in why we manage and lead other people, and focused on the true outcomes of what we hope to see from our management efforts. He determined that theoretically the concepts of leadership and management resist overbearing, authoritative control, and in fact praise effective delegation and reliance upon the expertise of those being managed. The benefit to both the manager and the organization is, theoretically, higher performance and productivity.
However, in practice, managers feel the bite of scrutiny and performance standards, and naturally lean to stronger intervention strategies such as systems of warnings and threats of jeopardized employment. The result is a natural drift away from leadership of empowered individuals toward authoritative management of underlings.
Interestingly, the more managers drift into consequence-based control of their workforce, the more they perceive their employees as inept, and incapable of functioning properly without systems of punishment and superficial rewards. Rather quickly, the managers compromise their roles as effective leaders, and become overseers. Another interesting dynamic in this process is that the manager's anxiety level actually increases as he/she takes more personal responsibility as an enforcer, a punisher, and as a professional firefighter - chasing down, attacking, and subduing threats to productivity. Delegation decreases. Trust disappears. The system of control, with its hoops of rewards and consequences becomes an economy of its own, resting atop the objectives of the corporation.
Who loses? Everybody. Note the departure from strong leadership to aggressive control.
But going back to theory, why do we manage? To summarize it in a nutshell, we manage to increase performance and productivity. Yet both performance and productivity, not to mention job satisfaction at all levels of the organization, decrease as we depart from the theoretical objectives of management. What is the solution?
Development of a Model
Mr. Behning determined that ideally management would like employees to perform well because they want to perform well. Moreover, management presumes that an effectively trained workforce would be comprised of experts capable of identifying and solving their own problems, rather than falling victim to those problems, and awaiting the all-powerful hand of management to intervene and create solutions. Such a workforce of value-driven experts would naturally work well together, and would both consult with management, and respect the role of the manager/leader in maintaining the direction, vision, and mission of the group. In addition, should the group or its individuals enter into crisis situations with regard to their ability to confront and resolve problems, the leader's role would be to assist in bringing such situations under control, and back into the realm of the experts (the workforce) for final, long-term resolution.
In such an environment the values of trust and respect, along with the aggressive assumption of personal responsibility are paramount. Objectives are achieved via Value-Based Performance in all levels of the organization (authority, team, and individual). And productivity is most effectively enhanced by the organizational experts closest to the problems that must be resolved - the individuals and their teams.
But in the absense of sincere intent to benefit one another, as well as one's self, such value-based performance would remain within the realm of theory. The natural drift toward bullying a workforce that expects to be bullied, and therefore disrespected with regard to its expertise, would be unavoidable. Therefore, in order to drive Value-Based Performance, any demand for the discipline to resolve problems must be tempered by Helpful Intent, or sincere caring and respect for the individuals of the organization.
Mr. Behning developed his model based upon the concept that the traditional managerial pursuit of heightened performance must be replaced with the pursuit of Value-Based Performance. This develops true leadership in management. Moreover, the pursuit of productivity must be driven by experts at the most important level of the organization (the individuals), who gain that productivity by masterfully identifying and overcoming barriers to success (or problems). Hence, the model:
The Adolescent Treatment Care Industry - The Teaching Family Model and Behavior Modification
In the early 1990s Mr. Behning made a critical shift in his career: He left the financial services field, and entered the troubled adolescent intervention industry. He immediately began adapting his model to the behavior modification system to which he was initially exposed. Known as the Teaching Family Model, this system comprised a detailed economy of consequences and rewards. He quickly recognized that behavior modification, if not properly implemented, would completely fail in exacting Value-Based Performance from troubled children. Both performance and effective problem resolution could easily become hyper-focused on the economy of rewards and punishment, rather than upon true problem resolution and Value-Based Performance.
Although he initially perceived the concept of behavior modification as flawed, he began to recognize that the flaws were truly inherent to ineffective implementation of both the Teaching Family Model and The Strong Model. For instance, the Teaching Family Model requires all teaching interactions to begin with empathy (i.e., helpful intent). Yet adults truly lacking in empathy would often "go through the motions" of teaching interactions, fronting empathy. Having failed in the core requirement of both models, everything else was doomed to superficiality and failure. The students would feel bullied by the system, and the adults would use the system to punish, rather than to help the students. In the end, the consequences and rewards, absent empathy, would become the driving force in a tense and ineffective treatment environment.
Q: Failure, then, was due to whom? A: Adults lacking the ability and/or desire to be empathetic. Of course, students are ultimately responsible for their own behaviors. But if treatment professionals are to live up to the title "treatment professional," should they not be responsible for creating an atmosphere of growth, versus failure, within their programs? The Teaching Family Model's demand for empathy in all teaching interactions is not a trite, redundant requirement. It is an absolute requirement for the program to succeed.
As Mr. Behning was exposed to additional forms of behavior modification he began to see a consistent pattern among untrained or uncaring staff: Behavior modification was easily reduced to a system of bullying and abuse. Absent effective training and implementation of value-based, empathy-driven interactions, the relationships between students and treatment staff quickly degraded into punitive interventions and aggressive control. The lack of respect for the potential and expertise of the individual (the student) in such treatment organizations became widespread among staff. Anxiety and authoritative control increased. Performance and productivity decreased (among staff and students alike, with respect to their different treatment needs and objectives). Students began to front the program. Broad failure in treatment was the final result.
Sadly, although the previous paragraph is phrased in the past-tense, the problem is currently wide-spread in the treatment industry. Such institutions become warehouses for troubled teens, containing them in seething boxes of authoritative control, as students await the opportunity to escape treatment, either through fronting or rebellion. Parents pay the price through monetary loss and crushed hopes due to flawed systems. Students pay the price through lost opportunities to discover the true, hidden strengths within themselves. Instead they protect their weaknesses and thinking errors as if these poisons to personal success were somehow treasures to cherish. Treatment programs in general, both good and bad, have paid the price as they have come under the scrutiny of increased, albeit justified regulation. Many programs have been, and currently are being singled out for allegations of abuse and negligence which has led, in some cases, to claims of irreversible emotional trauma. In other cases students have actually died due to negligence and abuse.
More often than not, therapists recognize the flaws in residential treatment. But they are at a loss as to how to extend their understanding of therapeutic principles to those who interact with the students 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. In other words, such therapeutic programs must maintain a form of therapeutic management in order to combat the natural tendencies of managers (staff) to drift away from therapeutic principles (values). Absent therapeutic, Value-Based Performance on the part of staff members, their ability to gain Value-Based performance from students disappears.
[Side-note: If you currently run a program in need of a therapeutic management system, you may want to consider The Strong Model.]
Enter Positive Peer Culture and Life Space Crisis Intervention
When Mr. Behning was introduced to Positive Peer Culture (PPC) he couldn't believe the natural fit of his model with the treatment concept. Of course, PPC had different names for the pieces of the model, but every component was naturally present. The core of the model, in PPC terms, is care and concern. The levels of discipline, along with their dynamics of interaction, and their intent to create solutions for underlying problems is perfectly outlined. And ultimately, the pursuit of Value-Based Performance is defined, in PPC, as the greatness of caring.
This treatment program, however, also added a component to its treatment processes that Mr. Behning believes is critical to successful treatment. This component is called "Life Space Crisis Intervention," or LSCI. Without strong training, awareness, and application of LSCI, the upper tier of the model (proper intervention on Crisis and Safety and Security issues) is easily compromised.
An example of such compromise comes in the form of traditional staff intervention on crisis situations. When a student either can't or won't maintain self discipline, and a group either can't or won't help him, he escalates to the authority level. Ideally, the student will respond to the authority figure, and return to the group to seek additional help in solving his/her problems. However, students sometimes escalate beyond authority-level discipline. At this point staff members often make a critical mistake in treatment. Because most staff members are trained in various forms of restraint, they, having perceived that the student is nonresponsive to their instructions, physically restrain the students. Justifiable? Absolutely not. The restraint itself puts the student, the staff member, and the treatment program in a dangerous Safety and Security situation.
Prior to most physical restraints there should be an overt attempt at non-physical crisis intervention. Note that this requires a change in communication - an altered form of interaction. Instead of confronting the student's symptoms, the staff member begins the process of diagnosing the student's problem, and in helping the student to discover the problem and the solution with him/hersef. LSCI, with all of its dynamics, empowers staff members with an incredible system of empathy which builds trust, and contributes to effective, long-term solutions to the problems of the individual. From Mr. Behning's perspective, lack of LSCI (or some other therapeutic intervention system) leaves any program flawed and vulnerable to unnecessary Safety and Security issues.
The Revolution Begins
As the Transitional Director in this remarkable program, Mr. Behning began teaching PPC and LSCI to staff members, students, and parents alike. He based his teaching of often complex principles upon the Strong Model. By altering its words to reflect common PPC terms, he called the model The PPC Model. Other treatment professionals who have continued to train staff members and students in other facilities often refer to the model as "Mike's Equation" or "Mike's Model."
As a purist in PPC, Mr. Behning later accepted a position at a residential treatment program as Executive Director, and aggressively reformed the entire treatment process to reflect proper implentation of PPC and LSCI.
His model has been introduced into at least one prison rehabilitation training program, and he has been invited to train staff and students involved in gang intervention in California.
But most importantly, the lives of troubled teens and their families have been impacted. Currently Mr. Behning seeks to expand awareness of the model and its applications to multiple treatment programs. He regularly conducts workshops, wherein he trains parents, as well as academic, therapeutic, and intervention professionals on the dynamics of the model.
So How Does Strong Fit into The Strong Model?
Originally, Mr. Behning's model had no defined name. At one point he labeled it the "ReFraming Model," after suggestion from a marriage and family therapist, in consideration of its application to Systems Theory. However, benchmarking off of PPC, Mr. Behning ultimately recognized that the model's pursuit of Value-Based Performance and proper problem resolution constitutes a demand for strength, or maturity, from students, groups, and adults alike. It encompasses the concept of excellence and empowerment. Therefore, Mike's Model (i.e., the PPC Model, Mike's Equation, and the ReFraming Model) was appropriately, and more simplistically renamed, "The Strong Model."
Endnote: Mr. Behning regularly conducts workshops on The Strong Model, and on the treatment industry in various cities throughout the country. To support these workshops, and to provide training to those who cannot attend them, he is also developing and implementing coaching services based upon the Strong Model of Interaction and Intervention.
