How to Give a Directive Through a Third Party: The Message Technique

Strategic influence depends on the redirection of resistance rather than its confrontation. When we work with a system, we recognize that the most direct route to change is often blocked by the history of the client’s struggle. You will encounter clients who have already defeated dozens of direct suggestions from well-meaning professionals before they ever sit in your office. If you provide a direct instruction to such a client, you simply provide them with a new opportunity to fail. We bypass this stalemate by delivering the directive through a third party. This technique shifts the power dynamic of the session because the target of the intervention is no longer the person you are speaking to. You are speaking to one person to reach another. This creates a psychological distance that allows the message to bypass the usual defensive responses.

We observe the hierarchy of the family or the organization to determine who holds the most relational leverage. You do not always choose the person with the most formal power. You choose the person whose voice the target client is most likely to hear without immediate rebuttal. I once worked with a young man who had stopped attending university and spent his days playing video games in his parents’ basement. Every time his father spoke to him about his future, the young man became more withdrawn and sullen. The father’s direct pressure only solidified the son’s refusal to move. I realized that any direct encouragement I gave the son would be categorized as the same pressure he received from his father. Instead of talking to the son, I turned my back to him and spoke only to the mother. I instructed her to tell her husband, in private, that she was concerned the son was not actually lazy, but was sacrificing his own future to keep the parents focused on him rather than on their own marital problems.

This message was not intended for the mother to keep secret. I knew the father would hear it, and I knew the son would eventually hear it or feel the shift in the parents’ attitude. By giving the directive to the mother, I removed the son from the center of the conflict. He was no longer the problem to be solved, but a participant in a larger family dynamic. We call this the message technique because the practitioner acts as the sender, the third party acts as the carrier, and the actual client acts as the receiver who is ostensibly not supposed to be listening. You must deliver these directives with a sense of clinical gravity. Your tone must indicate that you are sharing a professional observation that the third party is now responsible for managing.

You start this process by identifying the person in the room who is the least invested in the current symptomatic behavior. In a corporate setting, this might be a peer who is frustrated by a colleague’s lack of productivity but has no formal authority over them. I worked with an HR manager who was dealing with a department head who refused to implement new safety protocols. The department head viewed the HR manager as a bureaucratic obstacle. I told the HR manager to find a junior employee whom the department head respected and liked. The HR manager was to tell that junior employee that she was worried the department head was becoming so focused on high level strategy that he was accidentally leaving himself vulnerable to a safety audit that would ruin his reputation.

The HR manager followed this instruction exactly. She did not approach the department head directly again. Within two weeks, the junior employee had mentioned the risk to the department head during a casual lunch. Because the message came from a trusted junior colleague rather than a competing authority figure, the department head adopted the protocols immediately. He even claimed the idea was his own. We do not care who gets the credit for the change. We only care that the change occurs. You must be willing to let the client believe the improvement was their own discovery or the result of a conversation you were not even part of.

When you use a third party to deliver a directive, you must provide the precise words they are to use. You do not leave the phrasing to chance. You tell the intermediary exactly what to say and when to say it. For example, if you are working with a couple where the husband is emotionally distant, you might speak to the wife. You tell her: Tonight, when your husband is sitting in his chair, I want you to walk past him and say that you realize you have been demanding too much of his attention, and you have decided to give him three hours of complete solitude every evening to protect his need for quiet.

The wife will often resist this instruction. She will tell you that she wants more time with him, not less. You must explain to her that her previous demands for his attention have only taught him how to withdraw. By giving him the solitude as a gift, she regains control of the distance between them. When the husband hears this, he is placed in a therapeutic paradox. If he accepts the solitude, he is following a plan his wife initiated. If he seeks her out, he is breaking the rule and moving toward her voluntarily. In either case, the old pattern of him withdrawing and her pursuing is broken. We use the third party to set a trap that the client can only escape by changing their behavior.

You must also watch for the reaction of the person who is supposedly not being addressed. While you are speaking to the mother about the son, you keep the son in your peripheral vision. You look for the slight shift in posture, the clearing of the throat, or the moment the client stops fidgeting. These are the indicators that the message has reached its destination. If the son begins to argue with what you are telling the mother, you do not engage with him. You turn to him briefly and say: I am speaking to your mother right now, I will get to you in a moment. Then you immediately return your focus to the mother. This reinforces the hierarchy and signals that the client’s usual methods of distraction will not work.

We use this technique because direct communication often triggers a power struggle. If you tell a defiant child to sit in a chair, the child realizes that if they remain standing, they have won a victory over you. If you instead tell the mother that she must ensure the chair is kept empty because it is too unstable for the child to use, the child is faced with a different choice. Sitting in the chair is no longer a way to defy the mother, but a way to challenge your assessment of the chair’s stability. You have moved the conflict from a battle of wills to a matter of furniture safety.

I once coached a manager who had a subordinate who was constantly late. The manager had tried reprimands and formal warnings to no avail. I instructed the manager to speak to the subordinate’s closest work friend. The manager told the friend: I am worried that if our colleague continues to arrive late, the upper management will think he is doing it because he is bored with his current high level tasks, and they might move him to a much simpler, more repetitive role to help him manage his time better. The friend passed this on within the hour. The subordinate was never late again because the threat was no longer a matter of rules, but a matter of his professional status as perceived by his peers. Your directive must always be grounded in the specific motivations of the person you are trying to influence.

You must maintain a position of neutral curiosity while the third party delivers the message. If the intervention does not work immediately, you do not apologize or try a different direct approach. You simply refine the message or choose a different messenger. We treat the system as a series of interlocking cogs. If one cog will not move, you turn the cog next to it. You continue this process until the entire mechanism begins to function differently. The message technique is a tool of precision that requires you to step back from the need to be the primary actor in the room. You become the director of a play where the actors provide the dialogue that leads to the resolution of the conflict. The most effective interventions are those where the practitioner’s hand is the least visible. If a client leaves the session believing that a conversation with their sister was the turning point, you have succeeded in your task. Strategic therapy is the art of arranging the environment so that change becomes the most logical path for the client to take. Your success is measured by the disappearance of the symptom, regardless of who the client believes is responsible for the cure. The hierarchy of the system determines the flow of communication, and your role is to ensure that flow is directed toward a functional outcome. Every word you speak to the third party is a seed planted in the target client’s mind. We wait for those seeds to grow in the quiet moments between sessions when the client is away from our direct influence. The most lasting changes often happen when the practitioner is not even in the room. This is the ultimate goal of the third party directive. You use the existing relationships within the client’s life to do the work that a stranger could never accomplish alone. We trust the system’s own capacity for realignment when the correct pressure is applied to the correct point. Your task is to find that point and speak to the person standing next to it. Clinical change is a matter of shifting the relational balance until the old behavior is no longer sustainable. We do not ask for change; we create the conditions where change is inevitable. In a family with an over-involved mother and a peripheral father, you might give a message to the father that he must secretly thank the mother for being so over-involved because it allows him to avoid the stress of parenting. This message, delivered in the mother’s presence, forces a reorganization of their roles. The father’s silence is now redefined as a selfish convenience, and the mother’s over-involvement is redefined as a burden she is carrying for him. Neither can continue their old behavior without acknowledging this new definition. The message has changed the meaning of the interaction. You watch for the mother’s indignant response and the father’s uncomfortable shift in his seat. These are the signs that the system is beginning to move. We use the third party to introduce a new reality that the clients must then navigate together. The practitioner remains the calm observer of the shift they have initiated. Your authority comes from your ability to remain outside the system’s dysfunction while speaking directly into its heart through an intermediary. This is the essence of the message technique. It is a calculated use of the social network to produce a clinical result. You are not just a talker; you are a strategist who uses every available voice in the room to reach the one that is currently silent. The effectiveness of the message is directly proportional to your understanding of the power dynamics at play. We never speak without a purpose, and we never assume that the person we are looking at is the only one who needs to hear what we are saying. A directive given to a husband about his wife’s behavior is often the most efficient way to change the wife’s behavior without ever having to argue with her directly. This is how we move a system that has become stuck in a cycle of direct confrontation and failure. We change the conversation by changing who is talking to whom. Your clinical observations provide the map for these interventions. You must trust your assessment of the hierarchy and your choice of messenger. When the message is delivered correctly, the system has no choice but to respond to the new information. The old patterns are disrupted, and new, more functional patterns begin to emerge. This is the work of a strategic practitioner. Your words are the tools that reshape the client’s reality. We use those tools with the precision of a craftsman. The third party is the conduit through which your clinical expertise reaches its target. Your focus remains on the outcome of the intervention. You are the architect of the change, even when you are speaking to the person who seems the least relevant to the problem. Every part of the system is connected, and a message delivered to one part will inevitably vibrate through the others. We use those vibrations to bring the system back into balance. You are the one who decides where the first movement will begin. Your choice of a third party is the first step in a larger plan to resolve the client’s complaint. We do not leave these interactions to chance. Every directive is a deliberate move in a larger strategic game. You are playing for the client’s well being, and the message technique is one of your most powerful opening moves. When you master this, you will find that even the most resistant clients can be moved toward health. The resistance is not a wall; it is a force that you can use to propel the system forward. You only need to know where to stand and which voice to use. The third party provides the leverage you need to move the weight of the client’s history. We observe the result, we adjust the strategy, and we continue until the symptom is no longer necessary. This is the clinical reality of strategic therapy. Your expertise is in the arrangement of the message. We are the guides who show the system how to heal itself through its own members. Your directive is the catalyst for that healing. The client’s response is the evidence of your success. We look for that response in the subtle changes in the way the family members look at each other. The shift in power is the primary indicator that the intervention is working. Your role is to maintain that shift until the new hierarchy is established and the symptom is gone. This is how we achieve lasting results in a short period of time. You use the third party to speak the truth that the client is not yet ready to hear from you. The intermediary makes the message palatable. We use the social bond to deliver the clinical cure. The client’s own relationships become the vehicle for their recovery. You are the one who sets that vehicle in motion. This is the message technique in its most potent form. We use it with the knowledge that the system is always listening, even when it appears to be turned away. Your voice is the catalyst, the messenger is the medium, and the client’s change is the goal. We observe the system’s reaction to the third-party directive as a measure of its readiness for further change.

We select the messenger based on the existing power structure, not on who is the most articulate or willing. We look for the person with the most latent influence within the system. In a corporate setting, this might be the executive assistant rather than the department head. You identify the individual whose opinion the target client values even if they pretend they do not. I once worked with a CEO who ignored his board but listened to his ten-year-old son. I directed the CEO to ask his son what he thought a brave leader looked like. This is not about the child’s wisdom but about the CEO’s desire to be a hero in his son’s eyes. You use that existing emotional bond to carry a therapeutic directive that you cannot deliver directly from your professional chair. The child becomes the carrier of the message, and the CEO becomes the motivated recipient.

We do not give general suggestions to the messenger. We provide exact scripts. If you tell a wife to go home and be more supportive of her depressed husband, she will likely nag him about his mood. Instead, you tell her to say: I am worried that you are working too hard to keep our family happy, and I want you to take an hour tonight to be as miserable as you feel. This is a paradoxical directive delivered through the spouse. It removes the pressure for the husband to perform happiness. You watch for the husband’s response. If he becomes angry, the message has hit a nerve. If he becomes quiet, he is processing the permission to be unwell. I used this specific script with a couple where the husband had been hospitalized three times for clinical depression. The wife reported that for the first time in five years, he stopped pretending he was fine and started discussing his actual fears.

We wait for the moment of maximum readiness within the session. You do not deliver the message during the initial intake when the hierarchy is still being defined. You wait until the client has attempted and failed at their usual solutions. I observe the breathing patterns of the people in the room. When the client leans back and sighs, they are admitting defeat. This is the moment you turn to the third party. You say: Since your husband cannot find a way to stop this behavior, I need you to perform a specific action every time it occurs. You are positioning the third party as the responsible agent. This relieves the symptomatic client of the burden of self-control while simultaneously making the symptom an inconvenience for someone else.

We ensure the third party makes the symptom more work than it is worth. I once worked with a young man who refused to find a job and spent all day playing video games. His mother was the third party. I instructed her that every time he played video games for more than two hours, she was to enter his room and begin cleaning his windows with a loud spray bottle. She was not to argue. She was not to mention the job search. She was only to clean the windows with excessive vigor. You are using the mother to create an ordeal. The son eventually found a job not because of a sudden realization of his potential, but because the spray bottle was an irritant he could only avoid by leaving the house. We do not look for insight; we look for a change in the environment that makes the symptom impossible to maintain.

Sometimes the third party is afraid to deliver the message. You must address this by framing the message as an experiment rather than a permanent change. We tell the messenger that their failure to follow the script is a data point. I often tell a reluctant wife: If you find you cannot say these words to your husband, it tells us that his symptom is currently stronger than your desire to change the marriage. This challenge usually motivates the messenger to comply. You are utilizing their pride to ensure the directive is carried out. We use this strategy to force the system into a new alignment.

In an HR setting, we use the message technique to manage a disruptive employee through their direct supervisor. You do not pull the employee aside yourself. You instruct the supervisor to deliver a message of inevitable consequences. I once advised a department head to tell a chronically late employee: I am concerned that your punctuality is making it impossible for me to defend your talent to the upper management when the next round of promotions comes. This reframes the lateness not as a rule violation, but as a barrier to the supervisor’s ability to protect the employee. You have turned the supervisor into an ally who is being hindered by the employee’s behavior. This creates a different psychological pressure than a standard reprimand.

We also use the third party to deliver the prediction of relapse. You instruct a mother to tell her recovering son: I noticed you were very helpful today, and it makes me think you are preparing for a massive explosion tomorrow to balance things out. By having the mother predict the failure, the son cannot have the explosion without proving her right. If he wants to remain independent, he must remain calm. You have placed him in a therapeutic bind. I used this with a family where the son used anger to control the household. The mother delivered the message on a Tuesday. The son was quiet for the rest of the week because his only other option was to behave exactly as his mother predicted.

We must respect the hierarchy even as we attempt to change it. If you bypass the person who holds the most power in a system, they will sabotage your work. You must instead give that person a role that feels powerful but serves your therapeutic goal. I once worked with a grandfather who was the true head of a family where the parents were struggling with a rebellious child. Instead of telling the parents what to do, I asked the grandfather to tell his son that he was being too hard on the boy. This instruction was meant to create a specific type of tension between the father and the grandfather. When the grandfather told the father to soften his approach, the father actually became more firm and consistent because he wanted to prove he was his own man. We use the third party to provoke the desired reaction in the target by understanding the underlying power dynamics.

You look for the specific physical reaction of the target when the message is being prepared in the room. If the target client begins to fidget or interrupts the instructions you are giving to the third party, you know the message is already working. I often stop and say to the target: Please do not listen to this, as it is a private instruction for your partner. This increases the target’s desire to hear every word. We use this selective attention to ensure the message is received with the highest level of focus. You are not just speaking; you are creating a vacuum that the client’s curiosity will fill.

The third party must remain consistent in the face of the target’s reaction. You must prepare the messenger for the inevitable pushback. We tell the messenger to expect the target to get worse before they get better. I tell a wife: When you give him this message, he will likely yell at you. This is how you will know he has heard you. If he does not yell, you must say it again louder the next day. By framing the target’s resistance as proof of the technique’s effectiveness, you ensure the messenger does not retreat. You are training the third party to be an extension of your strategic intent.

You do not ask the target if the message was helpful. We ask the third party how it felt to deliver the message. If the wife says she felt powerful telling her husband to be miserable, you have successfully altered the marital hierarchy. I watch the husband’s face while she describes her experience. If he is smiling slightly, he is relieved that the burden of being the strong one has been lifted. You use the follow-up session to reinforce this new distribution of responsibility. We never ask the client to explain why the change happened. We only ask what they will do next. The message serves as the catalyst for a reorganization of the entire family structure. We observe the speed of this reorganization to determine the next directive.

You do not criticize a messenger who fails to deliver the directive. We treat a failed delivery as a diagnostic event that clarifies the actual hierarchy. I once worked with a manager who refused to deliver a performance warning to a subordinate who was also a friend. Instead of insisting he perform his duty, I told him that his reluctance proved his loyalty was a greater asset than his authority. I then directed him to tell the subordinate that I had forbidden the warning because the subordinate was too fragile to handle feedback. This message was more insulting than any warning.

The subordinate improved his performance immediately to prove my assessment was wrong. You use the messenger’s resistance as the raw material for the next intervention. We often encounter situations where the person who requires the directive is not present in the room. You do not wait for that person to attend a session. You give the directive to the person who is present and frame it as a message they must not deliver. I told a wife whose husband refused to participate that she must not tell him how much she was changing. I instructed her to act somewhat secretive.

When he eventually asked what she was doing, she was to say that her consultant had forbidden her from discussing her development with anyone who was not part of the contract. This message, delivered through a deliberate omission, forced the husband to demand entry into the meetings to regain his position in the hierarchy. The words you choose must be simple and specific. You avoid professional jargon because the messenger will lose the rhythm of delivery. We use the language of the client’s own social circle to ensure the message fits the environment. If you are working in a corporate environment,

you speak of leverage, assets, and liabilities. If you are working with a family, you speak of chores, protection, and respect. You tell the messenger to wait until the target is in the middle of a task. You might say: “Tell your son you are worried he is playing too much and you were told to make sure he rests his eyes every twenty minutes.” This directive is designed to provoke a specific reaction. If the target is a rebellious adolescent, telling them they must rest will drive them to play longer to assert their independence. The symptom is communication.

You interrupt this communication by introducing a message that makes the symptom a requirement rather than a problem. I worked with a woman who had chronic headaches that she used to avoid social obligations. I met with her husband and told him he must encourage her to have a headache at least twice a week. He was to tell her: “I think you need to lie down and have a headache now so you do not get a worse one during the dinner party on Friday.” The symptom lost its power. The wife stayed healthy to resist his control.

You are the architect of the social situation. You do not need the client to understand why you are doing what you are doing. Insight often prevents a successful directive from taking hold. We do not explain the mechanics of the message to the messenger. You give the instruction and observe the results. If a coach is struggling with an uncooperative athlete, you do not talk to the athlete. You tell the coach to tell the athlete that you are concerned the athlete is physically incapable of effort. This challenges identity. The coach is the delivery vehicle for strategic provocation.

The athlete cannot ignore this message. We know the technique has worked when the target of the message begins to act in a way that makes the messenger redundant. The reorganization occurs when the hierarchy changes. If a supervisor starts managing a difficult employee without your intervention, the loop is closed. I once saw this in a hospital setting where a head nurse was being bullied by a surgeon. I told the administrator to tell the surgeon that the head nurse was being considered for a promotion that would put her in charge. This was not a factual statement,

but the message changed the surgeon’s behavior immediately. He began treating her with the deference he showed to his superiors. You do not need to correct the information later if the new behavior becomes the baseline for the relationship. The timing is as important as the content itself. You do not deliver a third party directive when the system is calm. You wait for a crisis or a peak in tension when the system is fluid and most likely to accept a new configuration. We use the message to create a therapeutic ordeal. If a husband is overly involved right now,

in his daughter’s life, you tell the daughter to ask her father for financial advice on a topic he knows nothing about. She is to do this every evening for one hour. The message to the father is that his daughter values his wisdom, but the ordeal of having to research complex topics every night makes his over-involvement a burden. He will eventually suggest she become more independent to save himself the effort. In HR settings, you can deliver messages through the organization. You tell an executive that the board is worried about their health. This message is more effective.

than telling the executive to work less. The executive hears that the board is watching them closely and they will moderate their behavior to appear more in control. You are using the board as the third party to deliver a directive about self-regulation. We see this as a way of utilizing the existing power dynamics to achieve a goal without direct confrontation. Erickson used metaphors as messages to reach the person who was not the focus. You can tell a story to a third party while the target is listening. I once sat with a couple where the husband was

passive. I ignored him. I told the wife a story about a plant that refused to grow until it was moved into the shade. I went into detail about the soil and the watering. The husband, a gardener, eventually interrupted to correct my botanical facts. He then took an active role. The message was delivered indirectly through a conversation about plants. You use this method to draw out a participant without making them feel interrogated. Every message you send must be verifiable. You ask a mother the time her son threw his plate. We observe resulting reorganization of the hierarchy.