Release Resistance and Increase Productivity

Nothing is so much of a time waster than trying to help someone solve a problem when they are not willing to implement your solution.

No matter what the problem, it’s never really about the solution... at first. That’s why you shouldn’t get disappointed when you try to offer a solution, whether the solution is for your employee, your associate, your client or your teenager.
You can see the solution because you are not as attached. Your employee, client or kid cannot see the solution because he or she is in a state of “resistance.”

When you offer a solution and it doesn’t work, it’s not because the solution isn’t a good one, it’s because on some level there is resistance. Resistance shows up as disagreement, the need to be right, the need to make you wrong, or just the need to complain.

You must face the fact, that often the person whom you are trying to help doesn’t really want a solution after all. She just wants to vent. He just wants to be right. Many complaints are disguised as an inquiry into a possible “solution.”

I see many leaders, not to mention consultants and coaches getting stressed because they don't understand that it isn’t really about their solution. It is not really about solving the problem or convincing your employee (or client) to actually implement advice they paid for. It’s about first understanding the underlying resistance and the energy component, not just the physical solution.

It's easy to make the assumption that just because you are in a leadership role, or because someone paid for your advice that there is readiness on the part of the other party to actually agree with, or implement your advice.

You make their resistance worse if you get too attached to them taking your advice. It becomes YOUR goal instead of their goal. When you get attached to someone else's outcome, it’s only because you have a judgment about what they should be doing because your own ego is attached or because you think the way to solve the problem can be found in the “how to.”

Let’s face it, if it was all about the “how to” all the world’s problems could be solved at the public library and an accountability partner. Look at all the books out there on making money, finding love, building a business and losing weight.

The “how to” is already in place. What is not in place is clarity and willingness. The first step is to get clear. When you get clear about who you are and what you want, you will then see if there is willingness or resistance.

If there’s resistance on the part of the client, that resistance needs to be drilled down until you eliminate the “buts” the “shoulds” and the excuses. You must find the “fulcrum point of change.”

The attitude of willingness is “The Fulcrum Point of Change.” Until there is willingness, nothing else happens, even if you give them the step by step solution, the instruction manual and the workshop. Until one is willing nothing changes, period.