Diane Weston said: "He said, when I encounter resistance to an idea
or approach that I am suggesting, I stop and think, What is it about this
person's experience and his/her current situation that makes him or her
react this way? What can I learn about this person's experience and
situation such that I can frame a response to meet his or her perspective?
Wow. What a powerful idea. This starting point takes personal
responsibility and gives respect to the individual."
We designed a set of exercises under the rubric "Aikido" into our training
for executives relative to "mastering change", with this particular
approach as the foundation. Essentially, we were saying, find a way to
align the wants of the other person with the desired change (the framing
issue) and all his/her energy will move to support change rather than
oppose it. The executives immediately smelled something inauthentic in
this approach, and labeled it "manipulative". We were unable to redesign
so as to meet this objection, since the methodology involved finding out
the presumed "opponent" wants and then tailoring your approach to feed
those feelings. The stigma attached to this module after only a couple of
deliveries proved too difficult to shake, and we dropped the module from
the training after only two excursions...
--Jack Hirschfeld What do you see when you turn out the lights? jack@his.com