How Enquire Within Works

 

An Interactive Process to Develop Cognitive Maps

The Enquire Within tool is an interactive process which begins by asking you to describe how you have learned to understand the content of your Enquire Within session. It does this by taking you through a compare-and-contrast process using the subject-matter of the session. This process leads to your developing a matrix which shows how you describe the subject-matter in your own terms.

Then, using nothing but the information you give it, it applies a statistical analysis whose result is a complete graphical representation of the structure of your perceptions. It will then challenge you to refine this graph in any way you want to. It will indicate any inconsistencies, stereotypes, or prejudices. It will challenge you to examine any gaps, and identify areas where you might choose to refine or modify your perceptions, with instant feedback so that you can track the growth of your cognitive map. It does not have an 'ideal' model to which it expects you to conform; it feeds back to you only what you tell it. It acts rather as good teachers do when they set out to enhance their students' analytical skills. A good teacher has a repertoire of questions: How do you know that? What is your evidence? Will that statement generalise? What in practice does that statement mean? Are there any other examples which fit the case? Are there any examples which would challenge the case? Where and how can you find out more? Enquire Within behaves like this, with the inherent fascination and challenge that you know that it bases its questioning on nothing but your own input.

You can draw your cognitive map about any topic within your experience. You can use it to analyse your relationships with your team at work, or your family. You can use it to help you analyse opportunities, challenges, and decisions in work, study, or personal life. You can use it as an aid to study; as a research tool; to design an expert system; as a selection interview; to develop competency statements, to identify and resolve conflicts... the possibilities are almost endless.

The Strength Lies in the Interactivity

The strength of Enquire Within lies in its being an interactive program which first elicits and then analyses the Grid allowing for an ongoing iterative construct development process. It allows flexibility in moving between the various processes while imposing disciplines required for good practice. The use of analysis as an integral part of the interview process is just not practical manually.

The analysis process used, dendritic (cluster) analysis, allows for additional refinement and development of the user's construct system; this form of analysis, unlike multivariate analyses, does not lose any of the fine detail but rather goes on to refine it.

Thus, taking these processes together, Enquire Within meets Kelly's fundamental view that 'Repertory Grid is a conversation.'

Enquire Within: Structured introspection with practical outcomes.

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Related Resources

• An overview about how the Enquire Within application implements the Repertory Grid interview
• An overview about the most common ways that grid can be applied in business, management and education
• An outline detailing the stages in the interview process, the purpose of each stage and how the stage is implemented using, as an example, an interviewer assessing a salesperson's skills for training needs analysis or as part of a selection interview.
• A free standing tutorial for showing how Repertory Grid and Enquire Within fit within the process of developing management competencies.
• Understanding George Kelly and Personal Construct Theory
• Easy Guide to Repertory Grids
• Manual for Repertory Grid Technique
• Recent Advances in Personal Construct Technology (Computers and people series)

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