How to listen to unlock

Listen to unlock: here is Jennifer Garvey Berger with a really useful questioning and – perhaps more importantly – listening technique that works when you are dealing with somebody who can’t move forward to resolve a problem or issue.

The idea is to try to help the person uncover what is holding them back. It is a way of helping them articulate their fears or reservations so that they can then start finding ways to deal with them and move forward.

1. Ask different questions that push to the edges of what is at stake.

This is about getting past the surface reasons that are being given for not solving the problem. It involves questions like:

2. Ask the question several times focusing on what it means for the person and how they are making sense of the problem.

Here you are looking to delve deeper with each asking of the question.

For example, the answer to the question ‘what is at risk here for you?’ might be:

“If I do this I may risk damaging my relationship with the head of that part of the business.”

You should then ask: “So what is at risk for you if you damage that relationship?“

If the answer is: “It may mean others are influenced against me,” the next question is “So, what is at risk for you if others are influenced against you?“

And so on…

3. Get to the boundary and find what it means

Eventually your questions take your counterpart to the point where there is nowhere else to go, i.e. where there is no deeper answer or explanation.

So, following through on the example above, you might get to point where the answer is: “it will mean that nobody likes me.”

You can test it further, but an answer like that is likely to signpost the boundary of the issue and what it equals – i.e. what it means for the person or what else is bound up with it at a personal level.

It is with this knowledge you can start to construct potential solutions that take into account these deep seated concerns.

You can find all of my posts on listening categorised with the posts on leadership.