Human Functioning™Volume 1 · Issue 2
The Discipline of Noticing
A brief reflection on the first professional skill — and the one most often skipped.
Professor Cheryll Holmes, PhD, PsyD, MDR
Founder and Professor of Relationship Science and Human Functioning™
July 30, 2026
4 min readPractitioner
Cover plate reserved — Human Functioning™, Volume 1 · Issue 2
A brief reflection on the first professional skill — and the one most often skipped.
Before a practitioner can help anyone, they must be able to describe what is in front of them without decorating it. This is harder than it sounds. We are trained by ordinary life to interpret quickly and to be rewarded for the speed of our conclusions.
“Do not tell me what the couple is. Tell me what the couple did, in the order they did it.”
I ask students to write three sentences of pure description before they write a single sentence of judgment. Most cannot do it on the first attempt. By the end of a term, they can — and their work changes, because the plan is now built on what happened rather than on what they assumed happened.
Noticing is not a soft skill. It is the foundation of every defensible decision we make on behalf of another human being.
References
References are recorded with the manuscript and published with the article.
Estimated citation
Holmes, C. (2026). The Discipline of Noticing. Human Functioning™, 1(2). Holmes Knowledge Center, Holmes Training Academy™.
