Food for thought: Handling resistance

We've all felt it. The frustrating sense that your brilliant idea or the team's important next step is getting blocked. You spot the body language - loss of eye contact, moving away from you, crossing arms and legs - but still they won't say what's wrong. You can't argue a client out of resistance, because it's an emotional response. How do you cope?

Peter Block addresses this nicely in 'Flawless Consulting' and proposes 3 steps:

Step 1: Pick up the cues

Step 2: State, in a neutral way, the resistance

Step 3: Be quiet

In step 1 pick up the words and actions that indicate resistance.

In step 2 you find a way to put into non-judgmental words the problem the client is indirectly expressing. e.g.

• if the client is avoiding responsibility for the problem or the solution, say "You don't see yourself as part of the problem"
• if the client appears to be over-compliant, say "You seem to be willing to do anything I suggest - I can't tell what your real feelings are"
• if the client is silent, say "you are very quiet - I don't know how to read your silence"

In most cases, this will lead to a more direct statement of what the client is feeling about the situation.

If this doesn't work, you can talk about how YOU are feeling about the situation e.g. "I am very frustrated with this discussion" or "It is feeling like my comments are irrelevant". This will often bring the client up short and take the conversation to a different level.

These tools may not solve the resistance but they allow you to address it more directly.

Alastair Campbell