Remember the story about the blind guys and the elephant? Each one touched a different part of the elephant and interpreted what they felt within the limitations of their own experience. With an integral approach, the first step is admitting we have a problem: every viewpoint is blind in the sense that it is not a complete representation of what is being seen. There are many parts, levels, lines, stages, etc. of any particular whole. And that “whole” could be in the form of an idea, a situation, a person. Using an integral approach means integrating information from different perspectives to create a more comprehensive picture of the whole. Then, once we have a better sense of what we are actually looking at (in this case, an elephant), we can figure out what to do about it.