Voice Dialogue: a powerful coaching methodology to develop resilience

This Voice Dialogue exercise is a nice way to become conscious of all the identity roles that determine your behaviour and course of action.​

Draw a bus on a piece of paper. The drivers seat is your EGO. Out of autonomy you determine the course of your bus. At times, however, it happens that one of your sub energies takes over the wheel and determines what happens.  This is the automatic, reactive behaviour you demonstrate under certain circumstances. Name all the different sub-energies that you recognise in yourself and seat them in the bus according to their frequency of appearance. These are your primary identity roles.

Questions that can support you to identify your primary identity roles:

• Before you knew you…(already had taken over/ said yes/ etc.…)
• Your reaction to someone that irritates you.
• How do other people describe you when they think of you?
• Behaviour you demonstrate under pressure.
Next to your primary roles, there are sides to your personality that you suppress. Those sides of your personality that you once decided to hide from others. Give these energies a seat in the trailer of the bus.
Your suppressed or hidden personality roles:
• Take the opposite of primary.
• What behaviour do you see in other people that irritates you?
• What type of behaviour or people do you feel as ‘less worthy’?
• What are you daydreaming about?

Next, choose 3 primary roles that you like and want to keep and 3 primary roles that you feel are not appropriate to you any more. What possibilities do they create when they can step aside to make room for something new? What new identity roles now have a chance to develop?