What are effective listening and questioning strategies to help clients overcome resistance to change?

1 The importance of listening

Listening is more than just hearing what your clients say. It is also paying attention to their tone, emotions, body language, and underlying messages. Listening helps you build rapport, trust, and empathy with your clients. It also helps you understand their goals, challenges, motivations, and values. By listening actively and attentively, you can show your clients that you care about them and their situation, and that you are there to support them, not judge them or tell them what to do.

2 The power of questioning

Questioning is a key skill for any coach, as it helps you guide your clients to explore their own thoughts, feelings, and actions, and to discover their own solutions and insights. Questioning also helps you challenge your clients' assumptions, beliefs, and perspectives that may be holding them back from changing. By asking open-ended, curious, and empowering questions, you can help your clients to clarify their goals, identify their obstacles, generate options, and commit to actions.

4 The strategies for listening and questioning

Depending on the type of resistance your client is experiencing, you can use different listening and questioning strategies to help them overcome it. For rational resistance, you can use questions to help your client gather more information, analyze the pros and cons, and evaluate the risks and benefits of the change. For example, you can ask what they need to know more about the change or what the advantages and disadvantages of staying the same or changing are. Emotional resistance can be addressed by helping your client acknowledge and express their emotions, as well as reframing their negative or limiting thoughts. You can ask how they feel about the change or what they are afraid of or worried about. Behavioral resistance requires identifying and breaking unhelpful habits, as well as creating and reinforcing new ones. You can ask what they are doing or not doing that is preventing them from changing, what triggers or cues lead to their old behavior, and what new behaviors or actions they want to adopt or practice.

5 The tips for effective listening and questioning

To make the most of your listening and questioning skills, it's important to listen with curiosity, openness, and respect. Don't interrupt, judge, or assume; strive to understand your client's point of view and experience. Additionally, when questioning, be sure to ask with purpose, clarity, and relevance. Don't ask too many, too vague, or too leading questions; instead, try to help your client focus on their goals and solutions. Lastly, ensure that you listen and question with balance. Don't dominate, dictate or interrogate; aim to create a dialogue, a partnership, and a collaboration with your client. Through effective listening and questioning strategies, you can help your clients overcome their resistance to change and embrace it as an opportunity for learning, growth, and transformation.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?