[Parts 1 and 2. These posts on listening are part of my larger series of posts on relationship-based organizing.]

In the previous post, I used the example of Connor being ambivalent about standing up to his boss Bill to illustrate how to use the general listening tactics OARS (open-ended questions, affirmations, reflections, summaries) to build trust and strengthen the relationship. While building trust is one essential ingredient, in the counseling approach of Motivational Interviewing (MI) there’s an additional set of practices that are used to help people get past ambivalence and that can be applied to specific such organizing situations. While these are not essential organizing tools that every organizer should know and practice (like AEIOU), I nonetheless have found them helpful in talking with those coworkers who seem stuck.

The goal of these methods is evoking the will to change that people already have inside of them, tapping those enormous reserves of motivational energy that everyone possesses but can be suppressed by ambivalence. The main way to do this is to support people in expressing their values, interests, abilities, and aims out loud. “In particular this process occurs in MI by literally talking oneself into change. People tend to become more committed to what they hear themselves saying.” 

The Psychology of Ambivalence

When people are ambivalent about taking action they are often wrestling with opposed and competing reasons. MI characterizes this as like a committee of people divided against each other inside your head, with each member arguing a different point, half of the members arguing against the other half. 

As soon as one member of the committee makes a good point, it provokes defensiveness and reaction in a committee member on the opposing side who then amplifies their own point in response. “I should really stop taking all of these extra shifts the boss tells me to do, but what if the boss turns against me for not taking extra shifts? Well that’s his problem not mine. But what if that leads to me not getting my annual raise? I’ll just do the extra shifts until I get my raise, then I’ll stop. But that’s what I told myself last year.”

Even when a still ambivalent person does take concrete steps to alter their situation they will inevitably hit roadblocks, which gives the committee members against taking action evidence that any change is too hard and not worth it. The state of ambivalence is thus a state of being stuck, where any force pushing out of ambivalence is invariably countered by an equally strong force pushing back into it. 

Direct and heavy-handed outside intervention is usually not effective in helping people overcome ambivalence. That half of the ambivalent person’s internal committee who is against change is usually very experienced and effective at countering such interventions. Sadly, ambivalent people have probably gotten a lot of bad and unsympathetic advice about their problems in the past and are apt to view such direct interventions with deep suspicion, even those coming from close friends and with the best intentions. 

What is actually needed for change is for the person to bolster the side of their committee pushing for change but doing so gently in a way that doesn’t provoke over-activation of the opposing side. This committee has to deliberate for itself, and as an organizer and good listener, your task is to gently support those committee members in your coworker’s head pushing for change. When people feel listened to and trusted to explore an issue themselves, and those parts of their committee that want change are affirmed, this can start to shift the balance of power on the committee and increase the will to change. This is the most common and effective way ambivalence is overcome. 

Change Talk vs. Sustain Talk

MI calls those spoken arguments for change “change talk” and those spoken arguments against change “sustain talk.” An important skill in MI is being able to identify each of these as they show up in conversation and respond to them differently.

Typically, an ambivalent person will voice change talk and sustain talk in equal proportions, alternating between them as the different voices on their committee take turns speaking. Remember, ambivalent people aren’t just undecided on an issue, waiting to hear a persuasive argument before committing to change. Not at all; ambivalent people are waist deep in the ambivalence quicksand. Thus, very different strategies are helpful for merely undecided people, where rational argument or more traditional union agitational methods may be strategic, versus ambivalent people.

When hearing sustain talk from ambivalent people, it’s good for them to know that you’re listening to them, validate their concerns, but not to dwell on them. It’s easy to get into arguments with people when they give sustain talk, but that mostly tends to just aggravate the sustainers on the committee and increase their resistance to change. Arguing against sustain talk often sends the unintentional message that you’re not listening to their concerns or don’t care about them. In any case, the person usually already knows most of the flaws and weak points in their sustain talk, so the aim is to get them to argue against sustain talk themselves instead of you doing it for them. Or even if they don’t know some of the arguments against their sustain talk, if you ask simple questions they can usually discover and formulate the arguments against the sustain talk themselves. This is much more effective because it slips under the radar of all the mental weapon systems that get activated by defensiveness in response to feeling pressured from someone else.

Evoking Change Talk

In evoking change talk you want to elicit, explore, and solidify it. 

Eliciting Change Talk

To elicit more change talk, you can ask evoking questions. Such questions can help them to express their want for change, their ability to change, and their reasons for change. 

I’ll use an imagined example of my coworker Bob, whose workload was significantly increased after one of the positions in his department was cut without any cut in their production targets. The new workload stresses him out all day and many days he doesn’t get his work done and has to stay late, occasionally missing dinner with his wife and kid. The boss has said there’s not enough money in the budget to bring the old position back and lashed out at workers who repeatedly raised the issue. Bob feels trapped, aggravated on the one hand at what he and his coworkers have to do to reach their targets but afraid of putting a target on his back and risking reassignment to a different department where he doesn’t know the people or the tasks.

In the context of a trusting relationship with Bob where you’ve already discussed the basic dynamics and feelings behind the issue and where he’s been ambivalent about it for weeks, evoking questions for Bob might be:

“How would you like this problem to get resolved?” (evoking his wants)

“What are you hoping changes?” (evoking his wants)

“If you did decide to try to change this, what would you do?” (evoking his abilities)

“How would you and your coworkers be able to push the boss on this?” (evoking his abilities)

“Why is decreasing the workload important to you?” (evoking his reasons)

“What good would come from getting the workload back to where it was?” (evoking his reasons)

For any ambivalent person, it may be a specific mix of beliefs about their wants, abilities, and reasons that keep them stuck. In talking with them, you can identify which of these barriers is more prominent and focus your questions on those aspects specifically.

Notice how the evoking questions above are inflected so that the answer naturally veers towards change talk and away from sustain talk. More neutral phrasings, such as “do you think change is possible?” are more liable to trigger the usual back-and-forth between sustain and change talk. While the inflection is subtle, it can help people focus more on the active possibilities for change.

Eliciting change talk is similar in some ways but also subtly different from the Agitate part of AEIOU, where you try to help them bring to the surface how the issue is affecting them and making them feel. Exploring the feelings of an issue is important for ambivalent and non-ambivalent coworkers alike, but for the ambivalent coworker, it’s usually not the lack of awareness about the feelings that’s getting in the way. Thus, hammering them repeatedly with agitation to push through ambivalence might just make them feel worse and worse but without really helping them move any closer to taking action. Rather, in eliciting change talk you want to help them explore what change would mean for them and what that would look like.

Also, in contrast to AEIOU where moving from Agitate to Educate often happens in a conversation or two, with ambivalent people they often might be moving much more slowly. And once you recognize that ambivalence around an issue is what you’re up against, that’s ok. Continuing to evoke change talk will help you stay focused for a longer process of talking with a coworker about an issue without getting frustrated.

Exploring Change Talk

When you hear change talk from an ambivalent coworker, don’t just let it float by and wait for the sustain talk to kick in. Rather, get curious about change talk and provide opportunities to explore it. The skills of OARS (Open-ended questions, Affirmations, Reflections, Summaries) discussed in Part 2 of this series can be focused on change talk as a way to explore and amplify it. 

In asking open-ended questions in response to change talk, ask for examples or more detail. Such questions can ask for elaboration on the bad aspects of the current situation or the benefits of a changed situation.

Bob: I came to work sick on Thursday because I knew I couldn’t let the week go without finalizing the program.

Me: How did that feel?

Bob: If I had more time I’d really like to go to more of my kid’s basketball games.

Me: What was it like the last time you went to a game of his?

When you hear change talk, you can reflect and affirm it.

Bob: If they ever hire someone for that old position our product would just be a lot more consistent.

Me: It’s frustrating to not have the time to do your job well. (Reflection)

Bob: I chatted some with Susan over lunch and she had a lot to say about the recent workload too.

Me: That’s great! It seems people really want to talk more about this. (Affirmation)

In a conversation with someone when they express change talk you can periodically collect it and summarize it back to them. Just hearing their own ideas said back to them can make it feel more important and real to them. Or in a conversation that includes both change talk and sustain talk, you can craft a summary to highlight the change talk parts.

Solidify Change Talk

The first time an ambivalent person says out loud that they’re committed to change, they may mean what they say in the moment but later may easily fall back into ambivalence as the sustain talkers on their internal committee revolt against the change talkers. Moving out of ambivalence usually is not so simple as turning on a switch. When someone commits to change but then reneges on it, don’t take it as a personal failure of theirs. Blaming them only bolsters the sustainers on their committee, and rather, you can affirm and reflect even their failed attempts to commit to change in a positive light.

Bob: Well, I said I was done with staying late at work, but then I did it again yesterday.

Me: You’re really working hard to set boundaries. (Affirmation)

Bob: And I missed dinner with my family again.

Me: Dinner with your family is important to you. (Reflection)

Keep eliciting and exploring change talk when you hear it. It may take them committing to change multiple times before they really believe themselves and before that starts to feel normal to them. Smokers who end up quitting do so after an average of at least 6 attempts. Every bit of acceptance, encouragement, and support your coworkers receive from you can add up even if it seems hopeless at times. 

Giving Advice Is NOT Organizing

The opposite of asking evoking questions is giving someone advice, which is often the least effective thing to do in organizing, especially when talking with ambivalent people. Of course, in some circumstances advice is appropriate and effective, such as if someone wants to know how to do a specific work procedure or how to handle a technical problem. Or if you’re interacting with a confident, skilled self-starter ready to rush headlong into organizing around their problem, perhaps all they need is a little advice. But in organizing the most common and difficult problems we encounter with our coworkers are NOT merely technical or procedural and most people are NOT extreme self-starters in relation to their more intractable problems.

What can appear especially confusing is when, in talking with colleagues about workplace issues, they directly ask you for advice. But that’s a trap, don’t fall for it! I like this quote by Terry Pratchett I found in an MI book: “After all, when you seek advice from someone it’s certainly not because you want them to give it. You just want them to be there while you talk to yourself.” 

You should feel good that your coworker trusts you enough to ask for advice, but what they really trust you to do is listen to them. When I’ve made the mistake of actually giving advice in these situations, it has stunted the flow of the conversation and taken the focus off of how they were relating to the problem for themselves. It’s sometimes appropriate to offer your own thoughts in snippets here and there after they are first given plenty of space to think out loud, but for god’s sake don’t start by telling them what to think or what to do. When a coworker asks you for advice, the best thing is to acknowledge and validate that the problem is concerning, summarize the problem as you understand it, rephrase the problem back to them as an open-ended question, and then listen.

The Transition from Evoking to AEIOU

In many organizing traditions, after talking about an issue an organizer will make the “big ask”, putting the question front and center whether the worker will get on board or not. “Will you join the picket line?” “What are you going to do about X?” 

Such asks can be effective with non-ambivalent people in clarifying what it means to get involved in affecting the change they care about. However, for people who are ambivalent about an action or issue, these kinds of blunt questions can feel like the kind of outside interventions that activate their defensiveness and sustain talkers. Any external pressure an ambivalent person feels is likely to backfire. Rather, you can keep focusing your questions on evoking what someone thinks rather than confronting them about it.

For example, these kinds of questions can be re-framed in more evoking language that is more comfortable for ambivalent people to think about. Rather than “Will you join the picket line?”, reframing it in terms of wants, abilities, and reasons can be helpful here. “What needs of yours would be satisfied by joining the picket line?” “If you wanted to join the picket line, how would you do that?” “Why would you want to join the picket line?” Notice again the positive inflection that steers the answer towards change talk.

As someone starts to increase their commitment to change, you can start testing the waters by shifting into more traditional AEIOU conversation topics. Go at their pace, stay focused on their level of motivation, and adjust your approach to them.

Final Thoughts

Is this practical within the time constraints of workplace organizing?

One might object: “An MI counselor will have an hour of time set aside each week to talk with a client specifically about all of this, but for my dozens of coworkers who I see in fleeting moments throughout the day, how is any of this practical?”

Ambivalence can take some people a long while to work through, and like all aspects of relationship-based organizing, it’s best to organize at the pace that’s best for you. You’re not gonna be able to use all of these techniques with all of your coworkers all of the time. If there’s just one coworker you can pick out who is ambivalent and you’ve struggled in trying to talk with about workplace grievances, you can try these techniques out and see how they work. 

Tools like OARS and evoking questions can be applied just as well in occasional 15-minute break room conversations as in longer 1-on-1 conversations you have with someone outside of work. While a counselor may have the advantage of time exclusively devoted to these conversations with a client, the workplace organizer often has the advantage of knowing coworkers over a period of many months or years and being able to support them in navigating their ambivalence over a much longer time frame.

These techniques are not neutral

Clearly the techniques described above are not politically neutral with respect to your coworkers and to workplace grievances. While the focus is on the other person’s wants and goals, MI explicitly puts your thumb on the scale in favor of their will to change and against their will to not change in the context of the workplace status quo.

Even though these techniques are not neutral, neither are they deceptive. There’s no part of this where you’re concealing your intentions or using jedi-mind tricks. In practicing good listening and drawing out people’s own interests and motivation, you’re just doing what every respectful conversationalist does only in a more targeted and skilled way.

When you don’t try to force or pressure anyone into changing their behavior or beliefs, coworkers can decide for themselves whether to keep engaging you with their concerns. Ambivalence can be a very uncomfortable place to be, and often ambivalent people will seek out those who they feel truly listen to them. When I am conflicted or ambivalent about an issue, I often know I want to change but am afraid to for various reasons. I’ll naturally seek out those who I know will listen and support me in making the change, those who don’t get frustrated at me when I express fear or hesitation, and those who want to help me to become the best version of myself in my own way.

Trying out these ideas

MI is a pretty comprehensive system, and I’ve tried to just pick out here the parts that are most relevant to organizing. Still, all of this is a lot to take in. In trying these tactics out in your own organizing, I recommend focusing on one or two things in each conversation instead of trying to implement this all at once. Reflections in OARS generally and in responding to change talk specifically are good and helpful things to focus on at first.

What do you think of these ideas?

While thinking and talking about mental health has been immensely helpful in developing my own self-awareness and improving my ability to relate to others, this series is the first time I’ve taken concepts directly from mental health discourse and applied them explicitly to organizing. I’m very curious what you make of these ideas and how they resonate with your experiences. If you have something to say or experiences to relate, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below.