New Location: We affiliate location with specific behaviors and roles. Our brain wants to make things simple by compartmentalizing what happens, how to act, how others may act within a location. This can be helpful / hurtful. Changing the location may be novel enough to change the discussion and therefore the behaviors and outcomes.
I often find myself stuck or confused or unsure where to start or the next step to take or scared that the choices I make will impact others in a negative way or unsure of what to do with a particular person, team, challenge.
Minimal Change: Working together to create, notice, identify, assist in making the slightest change in the persons actions and perception. Once minimal change happens it may be the crack in the wall to create more change.
By having people do something (not too scary or different) that appears to be novel or unique may be a sufficient change to break their “stuckness in thinking” or the existing patterns of behavior the team exhibits. Once we can shift behavior patterns people sometimes see better, novel, more innovative ways of doing their work.
New Expectations: With a Dire Predication of the Future & Utopian Expectations the current view of a solution may be steeped within a resistance loop. Perhaps, co-creating a slightly different expectation of what works may cause change to break a pattern.
Prior to assuming that “we have strong personalities” and removing (or abdicating) the accountability & authority of the direct manager to an external assessment several questions need to be answered.
Past Successes: Asking the person / team to look into their past and identify successes. These successes may be work related and / or personal. By finding how, when, what happened, the steps that took place, and how they are in the present may help the person / team identify what worked in the past and use that knowledge in the present.
Perhaps different or better results may come by reversing the actions normally associated with your efforts.
Using personality or behavior assessments (DiSC, MBTI, Big 5, etc.) continually reinforces the false belief that people are the problem and they are not good enough being who they are.
Symptom Prescription: Asking the person / team to purposefully do more of the problem / complaint. This is done in the belief that by doing more of the complaint, purposefully, the person may do or notice something useful or break the pattern they feel they are stuck in.