Imagine that you have a group of people working for you.  Do you just tell them to get to work?  If you do that, they are not working for you.  What you do is organize the people to work together in some way that matches the job.  You notice what skills each person has.  You think about what the job is and what skills it needs.  You assign people to tasks that fit their skills.  You form work groups or teams to gather the combination of skills the job needs. 

Canvas, paints, palette.  Anyone can have these.
 The art is in how you put them together.

You probably have noticed that some managers are more effective than others.  You may have worked under an ineffective manager and seen how you could do the job better.   Here is your chance to practice your management skills in your own head. 

You’ve already met the staff in your head office.   You have probably used them for mulling things over.  Here we offer our version of the Mulling Team, with specific job descriptions for each player.  You may want to use this team the next time you have something to mull over.  Or you may want to specialize the team for some project you are currently working on. 

What if people think you are talking to yourself?  Just hold your hand to your ear.   People will think you are on an important call.  With a really small phone.  Or use one of these comments. 

It's a new form of meditation.  Lucid chanting.

Sure.  I like to talk to somebody who understands.

Of course.  Everybody does that when they think.  (Follow with a pause and a quizzical look.)

Head Teams.  What can they do?
Ask questions you fail to ask yourself.
Give you a wider range of ideas.
Build your confidence in your work.
Show weak points in your work.
Show you other points of view.
Show you the big picture.
Forecast questions from other people.
Forecast actions by other people.
Let you avoid blame for what you say.

Mulling Team
explores possibilities, examines alternatives, and develops options. 
Mulling: Main Players  
Mulling: Support Players

The Meaning of Mulling

Action Team
The Action Team gets things done. The work of the Action Team is what some people call motivation.  When you have decided what you want to happen, call up your Action Team.   

Meet Your Head Staff

Players for your Head Team

Sure you have.  They populate all the fiction you have ever read.  Or watched.  Some, like Luke Skywalker and Rocky, are obvious.  Others are more subtle.  As you think about the people in your head, you may want to link them to characters you know well from fiction.  If you know a fictional character well, you mat want imagine that character as part of your Mulling Team.  Imagine what that character might say about the matter you are mulling.

A. Not directly.  We derived them from mythology and fiction.  That seems to be where Jung got his archetypes.  Our treatment of them as characters in the head may be somewhat like the notion of archetypes.  But we prefer the less dramatic term role.   A role is simply a collection of behaviors that a person displays in response to particular stimulus conditions.  We give the characters names to provide easy verbal access to the stimulus conditions.