Try these 5 powerful leadership strategies if you work with people who seem stuck or “resistant.”
1. Look Forward/Look Backward
Ask the person to look at what life was like prior to the current problem. Exploring this will identify their potential motivators. Also, look forward to goals and plans and exploring how my current behavior “fits” with these goals.
For example, ask:
- What was life like for you before this became a problem?
- Tell me how you see your life two or three years from now.
- How might this affect your goals or plans?
- What kinds of things did you do with your time?
- What things do you miss?
2. Explore Values and Discrepancy
A conflict with values is often the strongest motivator for change. Chances are if you don’t understand why someone isn’t changing despite many consequences to their behavior, this is what’s going on.
For instance, if you suffer many financial hardships yet don’t change, you may be motivated to make a change when you see the negative consequence for yourself and others in your work or personal life.
This sometimes happens when a person values other things in their personal/professional life more highly than financial security.
In cases where there is a discrepancy, you can explore the person’s values and how they don’t match their current behavior by asking:
- What is most important to you?
- How does your ______ (undesired behavior) affect the things in your life that you value?
- When you look at your life/work, what are you most proud of and least proud of?
3. Consider Pros and Cons
You can help a person weigh the costs versus the benefits of the behavior. This will reveal their ambivalence and move in the direction of positive change.
Examples of questions to ask with this strategy include:
- “What are the good things about _____ (undesired behavior) and what are the not-so-good things?”
- “When you look at these lists of pros and cons, what do you think?”
4. Importance/Confidence Ruler
This is a tool to identify a person’s current readiness to change. It assesses potential motivators.
You ask a person to choose a number between one and ten to describe the level of importance they see in changing their behavior.
Then you ask the person to place themselves on the scale in terms of the confidence they perceive in their ability to make that change.
Examples of scaling questions include:
- On a scale of 1-10, with ten being the most important and one being the least, how important is it for you to make this change?
- If the person chooses a 4, follow up with the question, “What puts you at a 4, and not a 3 or a 2?” Asking this question encourages talking about “change” rather than talking about more of the same.
- On that same scale, how confident are you in thinking that you can make a change in this behavior if you decide to?
5. Exploring Extremes
Rather than arguing for change (which often causes the person to argue against it), you ask the person to consider, “What is the worst thing that could happen if you continue with your current behavior?”
In essence, you are aligning with or coming alongside the individual instead of taking the other side. You can also ask, “What is the best thing that could happen if you changed?”
You may notice that each of these strategies involves asking powerfully transforming questions. My approach to working with leaders has always involved asking the right questions.
You can find many more of these transformational questions in my book “Leadership Success in Spite of Stress.”
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What are your Leadership Strategies?
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