A Tool for Reframing: "What Prevented You from…?"

I’m in a conversation with a couple people. We were having a great dialogue. Each of us is sharing our views and thoughts, the others are getting curious and trying to learn more, it feels like we’re deepening our understanding and all benefiting from each other’s ideas.

Photo by pine watt on Unsplash

Then, in what seemed like an instant, everything shifted. The two people with whom I am engaged in conversation, let’s call them Charlie and Devona, quickly got caught in what seemed like it could be a downward spiral. Charlie was telling Devona that he figured it out years ago, swears by the approach, and strongly recommends she use it. Devona on the other hand is making a face that suggests she is very doubtful that the method has merit and is responding by saying she doesn’t think it’s the approach that will help her achieve her goal.

I said downward spiral because the conversation started circling back around, with Charlie becoming a bit more insistent and Devona reinforcing her stance and then beginning to withdraw. I know enough about dynamics such as these to know that when people start taking positions it is important to see if you can’t shift them to consider their interests. And yet, this didn’t seem to fit that mold because they were not trying to develop a solution they could both be happy with. Instead, there was a focus on Devona and trying to persuade her to try Charlie’s suggestion.

So, I decided to jump in with something a bit different. Something that would help them both reflect a little more on what the other was saying, as well as what they were not saying, which was their reasoning.

I told Devona I had just heard her say that she really didn’t think the approach had merit. And asked if I had heard her correctly. She said yes and nodded. I then used a tool that I think can be a good way of gauging where someone is on a topic, the Likert scale, and asked:

“On a scale of 1 to 7, with 7 being very likely, how likely are you to try Charlie’s suggestion?”

She responded, “Three.”

Charlie was ready for a low number and wanted to jump into the discussion again, when I asked him if he’d just give me a couple minutes more to explore with Devona. He agreed.

I asked Devona: “What prevented you from giving it a lower number?”

It was at this point that the conversation shifted again. It shifted because I had helped Devona, and perhaps even Charlie, re-frame the discussion. Instead of focusing on the back and forth of using the approach or not, I invited her to think about what features of the approach might be just slightly appealing to her.

Devona had new space to think about the positive reasons that led her to select a three on the Likert scale, instead of a one or a two. And in hearing her reasons, Charlie was able to stop pushing so hard, listen more carefully, and start asking questions again.

This simple move led Devona to be more open to trying Charlie’s approach as the conversation deepened, and to Charlie asking if he could come and help Devona to see if there was something he was not understanding about her concerns.