Seeing Clearly Starts Within

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Why inner work matters in Logoteleology

Do you find that it is often easier to see what another person needs to change than to recognize what we may need to examine within ourselves? We notice the leader who does not listen. The colleague who becomes defensive. The parent who seems unable to understand a child. The organization repeating the same mistakes. We may even recognize the beliefs, assumptions, or interpretations that seem to contribute to the problem.

And once we see them, a natural impulse follows: We want to help. That desire can come from a good place. But in Logoteleology, good intentions are not enough. Before examining another person's meanings, we must become increasingly willing to examine our own. Why? Because the person doing the examining also has meanings.

The Person Doing the Examining Also Has Meanings

Meaningful Purpose Psychology, scientifically known as Logoteleology, proposes that human beings do not simply encounter reality. We interpret it. We understand ourselves, other people, and situations through meanings that have developed over time. Our experiences, relationships, culture, education, successes, disappointments, values, fears, hopes, and previous interpretations can all influence what something means to us. That applies not only to the person we hope to help. It applies to us as well.

The coach interpreting a client's resistance has meanings. The consultant diagnosing an organization's culture has meanings. The leader evaluating an employee has meanings. The teacher guiding a student has meanings. And the Logoteleologist examining another person's meaning system has meanings.

This leads to an important principle: The examiner must also be examined.

What am I Bringing to What I am Examining?

Suppose someone disagrees with us during an important conversation. We might conclude: They are being defensive. Perhaps they are. But another possibility deserves consideration. Perhaps we have misunderstood them. Perhaps our question was poorly framed. Perhaps something about our behavior made the conversation feel unsafe. Perhaps our own assumptions are influencing what we believe their reaction means.

Even our conviction that we are helping can become something worth examining. This is why one of the most important questions a Logoteleologist can learn to ask is: What am I bringing to what I am examining? And another: What is influencing not only what I believe, but also what I am willing to examine?

These questions do not require us to distrust ourselves. They ask us to become more responsible for how we trust ourselves.

Meaning Lucidity -- Seeing Clearly -- Begins with Ourselves

Logoteleology calls our growing ability to perceive ourselves, other people, and reality more clearly through increasingly healthy meanings "Meaning Lucidity." It can be tempting to think of Meaning Lucidity primarily as something we help another person develop. But ethically, its first application should be closer to home. Before using Meaning Lucidity to examine others, we should use it to govern ourselves.

That does not mean achieving perfect clarity. No point exists at which a Logoteleologist can declare, “Now I see everything objectively.” Indeed, such confidence could itself become something worth examining. Meaning Lucidity is developmental. We continue learning. We discover assumptions we had not recognized. Experience challenges meanings we once trusted. Other people help us see things we could not see from our own point of view. As I will explain, the objective is not perfect vision. It is increasing lucidity over time.

Greater Influence Brings Greater Responsibility

This becomes particularly important when another person has entrusted us with influence. A coach asks questions that may affect how someone understands their life. A consultant may influence decisions affecting hundreds or thousands of employees. A leader's interpretation of another person's behavior can influence that person's opportunities, development, and well-being. A teacher can help shape how students understand themselves and the world. Influence carries consequences.

For that reason, Logoteleology proposes an ethical principle: The more influence we have in another person's life, the greater our responsibility to examine the meanings through which we exercise that influence. This changes the way we approach helping. Instead of immediately asking: “What is wrong with this person's thinking?” we might ask: “What meaning makes this person's response understandable from their point of view?”

However, we should not stop there. We must also ask: What meanings are shaping how I interpret this person? That second question is part of the inner work.

The Practitioner Is Part of the Process

This concern is not merely theoretical. Psychotherapy research has repeatedly found what researchers call a therapist effect: who provides the therapy accounts for some of the variation in client outcomes. A recent review of 29 systematic reviews and meta-analyses reports that therapist effects are generally estimated at approximately 5–8%, although researchers are still working to understand precisely which characteristics and processes account for those differences. Interpersonal qualities and skills appear among the more consistent findings.

This does not mean that therapists who obtain different outcomes have failed to do their inner work. Nor does it establish that one particular form of inner work would eliminate these differences. It does, however, reinforce something important: The person applying the method is part of what enters the helping relationship. The helping professions have long recognized this. In fact, one international study of nearly 4,000 mental-health professionals found that 87% had experienced personal therapy themselves.

That is encouraging. But Logoteleology raises an additional question. Have we sufficiently examined the meanings through which the helper is examining the person being helped?

A practitioner may possess extensive knowledge, excellent intentions, years of experience, and considerable self-awareness while still carrying meanings that influence what is noticed, what is overlooked, what is interpreted as resistance, what is considered healthy, and even what the practitioner believes another person needs.

This does not invalidate existing approaches to professional development. It identifies an additional area worthy of deliberate examination. Meaningful Purpose Psychology proposes that inner work should therefore include more than knowing our strengths, weaknesses, emotions, biases, or behavioral tendencies. It should include examining the meanings through which we understand ourselves, others, and reality—and the meanings governing what we are willing, or unwilling, to question.

This concern is not limited to psychotherapy. Coaching research recognizes that the relationship between coach and client can influence outcomes, while Organization Development has long emphasized the practitioner's “use of self”—the recognition that consultants do not enter an organization as neutral observers. Different professions use different language, but they point toward a common reality: the person providing help is also part of the helping process.

These traditions matter, and Meaningful Purpose Psychology does not seek to replace them. It asks an additional question: Have we sufficiently examined the meanings through which the helper is examining the person being helped?

A therapist may have participated in personal therapy. A coach may engage in reflective practice and supervision. A consultant may be highly aware of how they use themselves in working with a client. These practices can be enormously valuable. But none, by itself, establishes that the meanings guiding the practitioner's interpretation of this particular person or situation deserve confidence. Even the belief “I have done my inner work” can itself become an unexamined meaning.

Inner Work Can Teach Us When Not to Intervene

There is another important consequence. Greater Meaning Lucidity does not necessarily make us more eager to intervene in another person's meaning system. Sometimes it may do precisely the opposite.

We may discover that we do not understand enough. It might reveal that we are making untested assumptions. We may realize that the other person needs to be heard rather than corrected. We may discover that our expertise does not extend to the problem before us. We may recognize that another qualified professional would be better positioned to help. Or we may simply discover that this is not our problem to solve. That too can be wisdom.

The purpose of inner work is therefore not to make us more confident in diagnosing other people's meanings. It should also make us more thoughtful about when, why, and how we intervene.

Inner Work Does Not End

For students of Logoteleology, this has an important implication. Learning the concepts is necessary, but it is not sufficient. We can understand Meaning Antecedents, Meaning Quality, Meaning Validation, Meaning Lucidity, Meaning Regeneration, and other Logoteleological concepts intellectually and still examine another person through meanings within ourselves that we have never seriously examined.

This would recreate the very problem Meaningful Purpose Psychology was developed to address: Knowing something does not guarantee it governs how we live. The student must therefore become part of the laboratory. Not because the student is defective. Not because the teacher possesses perfect clarity. But because anyone who works with meaning is also a person governed by meaning.

That includes me. It includes our faculty. It includes experienced practitioners. And it will always include the Logoteleologist. Inner work is therefore not something we complete before becoming qualified and then set aside. It is part of the discipline of becoming and remaining a responsible Logoteleologist.

Humility is Part of the Science

This is one reason compassion and humility matter so much in Meaningful Purpose Psychology. Meaning Lucidity should not lead us toward: “I can see what you cannot.” A healthier posture is: “I may be seeing something important. But before I ask you to examine what you may not be seeing, I must remain willing to examine what I may not be seeing myself.” That is not weakness. It is disciplined humility. And it protects something essential: the dignity of the person we hope to help.

As logoteleologists, our purpose is not to impose our meanings upon another person. It is to create conditions in which meanings can be examined truthfully, compassionately, and responsibly.

My students know that there have been times when I have taken long sabbaticals to do inner work. I did not step away because I had stopped believing in what I knew or in the work I was doing. I stepped away because I recognized that experience, knowledge, and even good intentions do not make any of us immune to meanings that may need examination. In fact, experience can sometimes make familiar ways of seeing feel increasingly certain simply because we have relied on them for so long. I needed space to examine not only what I was doing, but the meanings through which I was seeing myself, others, and my work.

Not everyone needs to take a sabbatical. But anyone entrusted with influencing the lives of others should be willing to create the time and space for serious inner work when needed. Sometimes that may require stepping back, seeking guidance, engaging in structured reflection, or temporarily giving up opportunities we value. We must have the humility to pay an appropriate price to protect the people we serve from meanings within ourselves that we have not sufficiently examined.

I share this not to suggest that I have achieved perfect lucidity. I have not. I share it because inner work should never become something we expect from the people we help but exempt ourselves from doing.

The Inner Work Comes First—and Continues

Perhaps the ethical sequence can therefore be stated simply: Before examining others, examine yourself. Before questioning another person's meanings, become willing to question your own. Before seeking to bring greater lucidity to someone else, practice Meaning Lucidity within yourself.

And after doing all of that? Continue doing it. Because the goal is not to become someone who finally possesses perfect clarity. The goal is to become someone increasingly capable of seeing yourself, others, and reality more clearly—and exercising influence with the humility, competence, compassion, and responsibility that such influence deserves.

Continue the Journey

The Boston Institute for Meaningful Purpose is updating new experiential learning opportunities and Meaning Lucidity (Insight) Laboratories designed to help students, practitioners, leaders, coaches, consultants, and others engage in this inner work through structured examination and practice.

These experiences are not intended to give participants lucidity, as though clarity were something one person could simply provide to another. Rather, they offer structured methods, guided experiences, and opportunities for reflection designed to help participants develop greater Meaning Lucidity, examine the meanings they themselves bring to their work, and learn to work with human meaning more responsibly.

Stay tuned for upcoming learning opportunities from the Boston Institute for Meaningful Purpose.

If you are already part of an organization, professional community, leadership team, or other group interested in engaging in this work together, you do not need to wait for a future scheduled program. If you have a group ready to participate in a Meaning Lucidity (Insight) learning experience, I invite you to contact me to explore what might be appropriate for your group.

References

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Graßmann, C., Schölmerich, F., & Schermuly, C. C. (2020). The relationship between working alliance and client outcomes in coaching: A meta-analysis. Human Relations, 73(1), 35–58. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718819725

Heinonen, E., & Nissen-Lie, H. A. (2020). The professional and personal characteristics of effective psychotherapists: A systematic review. Psychotherapy Research, 30(4), 417–432. https://doi.org/10.1080/10503307.2019.1620366

Johns, R. G., Barkham, M., Kellett, S., & Saxon, D. (2019). A systematic review of therapist effects: A critical narrative update and refinement to Baldwin and Imel's (2013) review. Clinical Psychology Review, 67, 78–93. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2018.08.004

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Orlinsky, D. E., Schofield, M. J., Schroder, T., & Kazantzis, N. (2011). Utilization of personal therapy by psychotherapists: A practice-friendly review and a new study. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 67(8), 828–842. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.20821