In the introduction, I want to say that if it was enough to ask someone for something to get it, it would be known. No, in most cases - and we encounter this every day in our lives - it is essential to remove identified resistance to change. This is why we talk about strategic communication.
We all mentioned earlier examples of resistance to change: no employee commitment, no support for an HR system by general management, a contact who remains on his preconceptions during a decisive interview, students who continue to provoke each other, to argue, a patient who does not observe the treatment prescribed to him despite his desire to improve his condition, a coachee who remains on his positions, so many different registers of management, life at school and support.........
Among the main attempts at solutions, we can cite insistence, conviction, trying to get your idea across at all costs, but "the heart has its reasons that reason does not know" and it is absolutely necessary to take into account the emotional burden of the other.
We generally face 2 modes of opposition: explicit opposition and implicit opposition.
- explicit opposition
The challenge is not to present a recipe but to see the mechanics at play between two individuals when one is in systematic opposition to the other: teenagers, depressed people, friendly or family relationships. They are in an emotional communication, in a high position, express anger. They say no because it's no, invite confrontation as a challenge, feel powerful, and welcome attention.
Faced with this, the absence of a response is not desirable because there is a risk of establishing an unsatisfactory balance. The temptation is then to respond to confrontation with confrontation, which leads to a spiral of arguments, to a sterile escalation, unless one is sure of being the strongest; sometimes, one responds, the other does not (positions itself as a lightning rod).
Faced with the use of persuasive tools where reason is no longer enough, the role of positive reframing will allow the person to give another meaning to what they are experiencing. In fact, telling her she's right to oppose prepares her for better cooperation to come. We also sometimes prescribe this opposition in the perspective of this better cooperation.
- The implicit opposition,
It amounts to an impression of unwillingness to cooperate but gives the same result. The tools at our disposal are available on several levels: non-verbal communication in particular, everything that the body will translate beyond words, the voice for example, all body language will be an issue to invalidate or confirm what the message got through.
To tame the non-verbal, it is recommended to enter into a strategic communication by taking a position complementary to that of the interlocutor to make him feel his coherence, what will seem reasonable to him, his perception, his behavior, his attitude, and create something emotional.
The idea is that, whatever the form of resistance, to clarify the coherence of one's interlocutor, to give him a place, is to take him into consideration and recognize his emotional state and therefore to propose a reframing, another way of seeing the things. Persuasive communication techniques are moreover as many tools that we use on a daily basis and to which we would have more interest in resorting to the strategic plan as a leverage effect.
