[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.”