At the heart of the Water Family is the movement of resilience.  In response to pressure, you first adapt to it, by allowing yourself to be reshaped by it.  Then when the pressure is released, you find yourself spontaneously springing back to your original shape.  

In other words, resilience is the completion of adaptability.  Not knowing this, many people have gotten stuck in the belief that yielding, bending, giving in, and giving way are signs of weakness.

Writing this, a particular client comes to mind.  I was brought in to resolve an ongoing conflict between Helen and one of her peers, Dave.  Bottom line, she acted as though she did not trust him or his opinions.  

Interviewing them it was clear that Dave's preferred style was Water-like.  While introducing Helen to the Five Rings of Strategy we discovered that she had real difficulty in grasping the positive contributions of Water.

To find out more about her habits of response, I used two movement simulations.  We first explored Ground or the ability to resist pressure.  As you might imagine, this was easy for her.

Building on this, I showed her a strong Water move, that is, first resist and then as the pressure continued to grow take a step back.

First thing I discovered and that she refused to notice was that no matter how much pressure I used and given that she had said she would step back, she acted as though stepping back did not exist as a possibility.                                      

I brought this to her attention and asked her to try again.  And, still no movement.

Next I described the actual mechanics: first I press, then she moves her front foot back. 

Her response was to move her front foot back as she moved her back foot to the front.  Her bureaucracy of habits found a way to say yes to something new by doing something that kept things the same.

Attempting to be even clearer about how I wanted her feet to move, we began again.  This time she did step back and then back again, under more pressure.  However, she did so by leaning forward with all of her weight pressing against my hand as though she was holding off utter disaster.

Helen didn't trust her Water-oriented teammate "because" he embodied a quality that she could not or would not even consider.

We resolved the problem by teaching Dave to meet Helen by accessing a more Fire-like attitude.  This immediately relaxed her and her natural capacity for cooperation surfaced.