Your psychosocial orientation involves four elements, when combining its inward and outward dynamics with its positive and less positive aspects. The traditional SWOT or SVOR grid puts this into perspective.
Your psychosocial assessment: SVOR
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Your psychosocial strengths forges your political assets
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Your psychosocial vulnerabilities creates your political liabilities
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Your psychosocial opportunities anchors your support base
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Your psychosocial risks expose your political blind spots
Love compels us to start out affirming both sides equally. No, this doesn’t assume both sides always produce equal outcomes. It does debunk the notion that one side is always better than the other.
It takes love to appreciate the nuances of our diverse experiences, and needs. Generalizing too easily pulls us into hating each other, instead of lovingly respecting each other’s differing needs.
When starting out with generalizing, your safest generalization is to love all equally. All needs sit equal before nature; in the larger scheme of things, no one’s need exists as more important than another’s.
Once the need behind each political generalization gets equally affirmed, it becomes much easier to honestly face quality differences specific to each situation.
In later iterations, we shift from this ‘lateral approach’ toward a more ‘vertical approach.’ We go from comparing both sides equally (lateral) to differentiating specific qualities within each side (vertical).
For now, we parallel parse the strengths and weaknesses on each side. Later, we can link these strengths to desirable outcomes, and such vulnerabilities to poor outcomes, for specific situations. In short, we transition from hit-and-miss generalizations to accountable-to-outcomes specifics.
Your psychosocial-political strengths
Where your needs routinely resolve, you model strong leadership. Your satisfied needs anchor your capacity to serve others.
Of course, the process is much more complex than briefly represented here. For a more thorough treatment, please check out the eCourse at Udemy, starting with the free previews. If you're on a tight budget, ask me about any available discounts. I trust it will open doors for you in ways you’ve never seen before.
Next: Empower your love
WIDE
Your self-needs are generally more resolved than your social-needs.
Your self-needs routinely get resolved on tried-and-true specifics. For example, you know who you are individually, and less prone to conform to stifling traditional norms. You appreciate the personal challenges minorities typically endure.
DEEP
Your social-needs are generally more resolved than your self-needs.
Your social-needs routinely get resolved on tried-and-true specifics. For example, you are deeply supported by those you personally know and know you. You appreciate the importance of maintaining a close-knit bond with those closest to you.
Your psychosocial-political vulnerabilities
Where your needs remain painfully unresolved, your leadership likely appears weak. Your unmet needs compromise your capacity to serve others.
It’s definitely a strength where you can address your need—or the needs of your own group—in a way that:
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minimally does not interfere with the needs of others, or
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optimally can benefit your needs and the needs of others.
Those needs you:
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routinely resolve
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by reliable specifics
provide you a solid base to build upon.
Others can then see themselves safely generalizing your values to their own needs. You connect by modeling hope for satisfying their burning needs. All else is commentary, the context in which to practice legitimate leadership.
You are vulnerable to the natural pull for urgent relief to ease your unresolved needs. You’re likely blind to how your generalizations negatively impact the needs of others.
Your psychosocial orientation prompts you to address your need—or the needs of your group—in a way that either
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mildly limits how well you can resolve your own needs to ensure you can continue honoring the needs of others, or
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severely interferes with the needs of others.
Your generalizations for relief can easily provoke pushback from impacted others. How you negotiate such resistance speaks to your leadership’s legitimacy.
Your psychosocial-political opportunities
Where your needs routinely resolve, you model strong leadership. Your satisfied needs anchor your capacity to serve others.
DEEP
You risk political mistakes from BLIND SPOTS resulting from your unresolved self-needs.
Your trusted generalizations for easing your self-needs—insisting anyone can succeed on the merits of their own hard work, applying self-initiative, and personal responsibility—easily impact the specific resolved needs of wide-focused peoples.
What you find as amply self-sufficient they experience as overwhelmingly limiting. You pass over more social contributors that they see more readily than you.
Your generalizations may help relieve the ceaseless discomfort of deep-focused peoples, but getting stuck on general relief risks leaving their needs unresolved, to provoke more blinding pain.
You risk exposing your irrational prejudice about wide-focused peoples. You wonder why “those” people keep voting for “bleeding heart” candidates.
Too often, you’ve presumed the best intentions among conservatives while assuming liberals could be no better than their worst examples. You might dismiss them as “whiners” and “snowflakes” who lazily choose to remain irresponsible, or incentivized by government to consume more than they individually produce.
You rarely if ever look at matters from their unique perspective, or try to relate to their wide-focused experience of needs.
You generally assume your deep-focus is gospel, the way everyone should be looking at political issues. Your painfully unresolved self-needs distort your perspective, so you’re less likely to see (i.e., your blind spot) how you impact the vulnerable needs of deep-focused peoples.
WIDE
You risk political mistakes from BLIND SPOTS resulting from your unresolved social-needs.
Your trusted generalizations for easing your social-needs—like government mandated inclusion, or for shame-based social justice, or for protective economic supports—easily impact the specific resolved needs of deep-focused peoples.
What you find as adequately supportive they experience as coercively paternalistic. You pass over more personal contributors that they see more readily than you.
Your generalizations may help relieve the ceaseless discomfort of wide-focused peoples, but getting stuck on general relief risks leaving their needs unresolved, to provoke more blinding pain.
You risk exposing your irrational prejudice about deep-focused peoples. You wonder why “those” people keep voting for “narrow minded” candidates.
Too often, you’ve presumed the best intentions among liberals while assuming conservatives could be no better than their worst examples. You might dismiss them as “bigots” and “xenophobes” who hate just about anyone who’s different from them, or too privileged to see their own guilt in oppressing minorities.
You rarely if ever look at matters from their unique perspective, or try to relate to their deep-focused experience of needs.
You generally assume your wide-focus is gospel, the way everyone should be looking at political issues. Your painfully unresolved social-needs distort your perspective, so you’re less likely to see (i.e., your blind spot) how you impact the vulnerable needs of deep-focused peoples.
DEEP
Your more resolved social-needs anchor your connection to others with more resolved social-needs.
Together, your pressing self-needs prioritize your shared DEEP focus.
Together, you see the need to protect individual rights against government overreach. You speak for those suffering under the growing weight of intrusive government tyranny.
Together, you see the private sector like free enterprise in a positive light, as more accountable to what is specifically needed than what government dictates. You speak for those incentivized more by individual initiative.
Together, you generalize how to “conserve” traditions of Constitutional liberties. But you also seek to liberate yourselves from what you experience as growing government tyranny.
WIDE
Your more resolved self-needs anchor your connections to others with more resolved self-needs.
Together, your pressing social-needs prioritize your shared WIDE focus.
Together, you see the need for greater social inclusion for the historically excluded. You speak for those you see as still suffering or risk suffering under some form of traditional oppression.
Together, you see the public sector like government in a positive light, as more accountable to marginalized peoples than the self-interested private sector. You speak for those easily exploited by market forces.
Together, you generalize how to “liberate” those historically oppressed by those traditionally self-interested. But you also seek to conserve political gains that help provide this aim.
Sharing the same psychosocial experience allows you to focus together on just the right things for easing your shared needs. No distracting exceptions. Just get to the point. Win.
Your psychosocial-political risks
You risk repelling your foes primarily because you don’t share their same psychosocial makeup. They oppose your rhetoric because they publically need quite differently to how you need.
Your unmet needs burn with a sense of urgency. They relentlessly tug at your focus. You imply your needs are far more important than theirs. Your unsettled needs can easily distort your perceptions.
Such distortions get reinforced by those sharing your psychosocial bias—your prioritized social-needs (if Left) or prioritized self-needs (if Right). Confirmation bias runs deep.
While focusing your energies on your burning needs, you afford less attention elsewhere. Like how others are experiencing their needs differently from you, in quite legitimate ways. You don’t see the shortcomings others see in you: your blind spots.
What you’re quick to dismiss suggests what you’re slow to understand. Your unsettled needs may not let you see as clearly as you presume. In the name of political reasoning, here is where you can become terribly unreasonable. Your political risks run heaviest between your unmet needs and the more resolved needs of the other side.
In short, your psychosocial bias spurs you to build a wall, to trigger their defenses, and fault them for being so disagreeable. With others on your side, you’re quick to dismiss what seems so plainly wrong to you. You are most at risk for being wrong when you cannot admit when you could be wrong. Your greatest political risks hide just around the corner.
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Your social-needs are generally less resolved than your self-needs.
Unlike your strengths of your more resolved self-needs, your unresolved social-needs leave you vulnerable to overgeneralizing and blind spots.
Your unmet social-needs seethe for attention. They urge you to pursue relief. You generalize how to ease them as promptly as possible. You even slide into overgeneralizing, whatever it takes to ease your lingering discomfort.
Others sharing this discomfort latch on to the same relief-promising overgeneralizations. Together, you overlook how your excessive means to ease your painful social-needs negatively impact others.
Your policy beliefs to improve inclusiveness of socially excluded groups tend to be laced with over-generalities. Generalizing how to more broadly include the historically excluded leaves you with a blind spot to your constituents’ unmet individual needs. Their specific self-needs are not likely to be resolved the same way as yours. Their self-needs emerged in a drastically different cultural environment.
DEEP
Your self-needs are generally less resolved than your social-needs.
Unlike your strengths of your more resolved social-needs, your unresolved self-needs leave you vulnerable to overgeneralizing and blind spots.
Your unmet self-needs seethe for attention. They urge you to pursue relief. You generalize how to ease them as promptly as possible. You even slide into overgeneralizing, whatever it takes to ease your lingering discomfort.
Others sharing this discomfort latch on to the same relief-promising overgeneralizations. Together, you overlook how your excessive means to ease your painful self-needs negatively impact others.
Your policy beliefs to assert individual rights of Middle Americans tend to be laced with over-generalities. Generalizing how to personally resist intrusions from distant others leaves you with a blind spot to your constituents’ strained social-needs. Their specific social needs are not likely to be resolved the same way as yours. Their social-needs emerged in a drastically different cultural environment.