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Welcome to episode 178 of The Non-anxious Leader Podcast. I'm Jack Shitama. Today's episode is based on an article from Eric Barker. This is how to get people to change. Five secrets from research. If you are a regular listener, you know that I love Barker's stuff. He takes the research and summarizes it for us, and then I like to give my family systems take on it. The first major heading in Barker's article is Nobody likes to be told what to do. I've been saying this for years and this is the first time that I've seen it in print, although I usually say nobody wants to be told what to do, but they're essentially the same thing. The reason we know this is because when you tell somebody what to do, you're defining them, and this sets up a conflict of Wills. This will almost certainly result in resistance even when you're on good terms with the other person and in the worst case can result in a reactive response where there's arguing or even blaming. What Barker recommends in this article is an approach based on motivational interviewing, a technique that is used by therapists, and what it does is it avoids the conflict of Wills.

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It enables you to be a nonanxious presence with people while you help them explore their potential for change. The article distinguishes between three types of approaches directing, following, and guiding. Directing is telling somebody else what to do. It is defining them. Following is adaptivity. It's giving in without doing anything to try to change the situation. Guiding is different. Guiding is being in connection with another person without telling them what to do. It creates emotional space, and it gives the other person the freedom to make their own choice. Barker makes the distinction between change talk and sustain talk. Change talk is talk in which people are actually seeking a better future. Sustained talk is when people cling to the homeostasis. They do not want to change. They want to keep the way things are. I think it's helpful to note Edwin Friedman's definition of self-differentiation, which is the capacity to define one's own goals and values in the midst of surrounding togetherness pressure. So when you are guiding somebody, when you are helping them to actually have a conversation that involves change talk, you're helping them to self define, you're helping them to clarify their own goals and values.

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The question is, how do you do this? According to the article, there are four primary skills and motivational interviewing, and they use the acronym Oars. OARS. The O is open-ended questions, the A is affirming strengths, the R is reflective listening, and the S is summarizing. If you followed my work, you know that I recommend listening as a way to remain a non anxious presence in difficult situations. By definition, you are remaining present. You're emotionally connected, but you are also able to regulate your own anxiety because you're not needing to take a position. You're just listening. And doing that through open ended questions is the most effective way to keep the anxiety in the situation down while remaining connected. This approach in motivational interviewing is a little different because you're not likely to be in an nonanxious situation, but you can use the same skills, the same connection, the same open-ended questions to help another person explore how they might want to change. The key here is to be able to shift the ratio of talk from sustained talk. The I don't want to change talk. I want to keep things the way they are talk to change talk.

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The I want things to be better talk. And you don't want to deny sustained talk, but you want to help somebody look at how things might get better for them. You want to guide them without directing them. Motivational interviewing uses another acronym to help you to remember what to do. And the acronym this time is Darn. DARN. The first is desire. Here you're trying to evoke desire in the other. So a question like, how do you want your life to be different a year from now? Is a question that it will evoke desire. Ability tries to evoke the feeling that the other has, that they could actually do what they want to do. An example that Barker gives is to ask the question, if you did really decide you want to lose weight, how could you do it? Our stands for reasons, and here you're trying to get the other to establish the reasons they want to do something. In the article Barker uses, Why would you want to get more exercise? But you may know that I don't like to use the word why? Because people don't often know why they believe something, why they want to do something, and so it can sometimes shut things down.

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I would use a question like how would you benefit from more exercise? Both questions get at the same thing, but I believe the latter would be less threatening. Then finally, N stands for need. You're trying to get to the need that the person has for wanting to change. The example Barker gives is how serious or urgent does this feel to you? I think the beauty here is that you don't have to take these in order. You don't have to do desire, then ability, then reasons than need. But if you are listening earnestly, and if you're asking honest questions, you can think about the questions that will help them to get to these important things that will be the basis for the desire to change. The next step is to develop discrepancy to actually help the other person see that things are not the way they want them to be. And research shows that this is a primary motivator for change. When people are honest with themselves and they realize that they're not where they want to be in life or they want something to be different, they are going to be more motivated to change.

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Now the important thing here is not to point it out to them, but again, to try to evoke it through asking questions. One way to do that is to ask them about the subject at hand. For example, what do you know about weight loss? Or what do you know about exercise? Or what you know about quitting smoking? Another way to develop discrepancy is to ask them about their values and their desire to change. An example I can think of here is to say something like you've told me that being healthy is one of your goals. How important is that to you? Again, nobody likes to be told what to do. But if you ask questions in a way that helps people express their own desire to change and acknowledges that they are not there yet, that they are able to acknowledge the discrepancy between the way things are and the way they want them to be, then you can take the next step, and that is to evoke hope. The way to do this is to help them to see that this type of change is possible. And again, you want to do that by asking questions.

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Some examples that Barker gives are what changes have you made in your life that were difficult for you, or what things have you managed to do that you weren't really sure at first you would be able to do? These questions help them realize that it's going to be difficult, but they've done difficult things in the past. Another example would be suppose that you did succeed, and we're looking back on it now. What most likely is it that worked. How did it happen? In this case, you're trying to evoke a vision of success and even more importantly, some specifics about how that could happen. This leads to the final step, which is planning. And this uses an approach that a coach would use asking questions such as, what's next? When will you do that? What else do you need? We know from research that the more specific someone is about their plans, the more likely they are to follow through. The whole point of this approach is to help somebody else differentiate, to help them to find what it is they want to do, and then to develop the desire and the motivation to follow through.

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One caveat here is that the more we are tied up in their change, the less differentiated we are, the more we are dependent on what they do for our own well being. And that should be an alarm. That means that we need to think about what's going on in us so that we can give the other the freedom to make their own choices. I think when we do that though, especially as a leader, we help bring out the best in other people. That's what nonanxious leaders do. That's it for episode 178. You can connect with me at thenonanxiousleader.com you can find the transcript at thenonanxiousleader.com/178 and if you want to ask a question or suggest a topic for a future episode then email me at jack@christian-leaders.com until next time. Thanks and goodbye.