Assessing Motivation: Who Wants Change and Who is Invested in the Status Quo

Strategic therapy begins the moment the telephone rings. We do not assume the person on the other end of the line is the one who will undergo change. We define the client as the person who is most distressed by the problem, not necessarily the person who carries the symptom. If a mother calls to complain that her twenty year old son refuses to look for work, you are speaking to the person with the highest motivation. The son, who stays in his room and eats food his mother provides, has no motivation to change his behavior. He is comfortable. You must assess this power dynamic before you agree to see the whole family.

I once accepted a referral for a couple where the wife insisted her husband was depressed. When they arrived, the wife did all the talking. She described his lethargy and his lack of interest in their social life. The husband sat back with his arms crossed and nodded occasionally. I noticed that every time he started to speak, she corrected his wording. We see this often in marriages where one partner has become the spokesperson for the other person’s internal life. If you attempt to treat the husband for depression, you will fail because the husband is not your client. The wife is the client because she is the one who wants the situation to be different.

You must identify who benefits from the symptom staying exactly as it is. A child who refuses to go to school often keeps a lonely parent company at home. If the child goes to school, the parent must face the isolation of an empty house or the friction of a failing marriage. In this structure, the child school phobia serves a stabilizing function for the family. We call this the status quo. When you interview the family, you look for the person who becomes most anxious when the symptom shows signs of improvement.

I recall a case where a young woman began to recover from an eating disorder. As she started to eat more regularly, her parents began to argue more frequently. They had spent years united in their worry for her. Without that shared worry, they had nothing to talk about except their own mutual resentment. The daughter sensed this tension and relapsed. She used her illness to bring her parents back together in their shared role as caregivers. You must anticipate this reaction. You ask the parents directly what they will do with their time once their daughter is healthy and eating three meals a day.

You assess motivation by observing the effort each person puts into the first session. The person who arrives early and provides a detailed history of the problem is your primary lever for change. The person who sits without speaking or claims they are only there because someone else made them come is a spectator. We do not try to convince the spectator to want change. Instead, you address the person who is suffering. You tell the motivated mother that her son refusal to work is actually a sign of his loyalty to her. You explain that by staying home, he ensures she is never alone. This intervention changes the meaning of the behavior and puts the mother in a position where she must reconsider her own role in the cycle.

We use the initial phone call to set the stage for these observations. When someone calls you, ask them whose idea it was to call. If the answer is that a doctor or a judge suggested it, you know the motivation is external. You then ask what will happen if they do not follow that suggestion. If the caller says nothing will happen, you have no leverage. You must find a way to make the problem a problem for the person sitting in front of you.

I worked with a man who was sent to me by his employer because of his explosive temper. He did not think his temper was a problem. He thought his coworkers were incompetent. I did not try to teach him how to manage his anger. I told him that his coworkers were clearly using his temper to get him fired so they would not have to work as hard. I framed his anger as a tool his enemies used against him. He became motivated to stay calm not because he wanted to be a better person, but because he wanted to win the power struggle at his office. You give the client a reason to change that fits their own perspective.

You watch the seating arrangements in your office to map these motivations. The person who sits closest to you is often the one seeking an ally. The person who sits furthest away is often the person who feels blamed for the problem. If a father sits as far as possible from his teenage daughter, we see a fractured hierarchy. You do not ask them how they feel about the distance. You ask the father to move his chair next to his daughter so he can better hear what she is saying. His willingness to move tells you more about his motivation than any verbal statement. If he refuses, you know you must work through the mother or use a different strategic maneuver.

We avoid the mistake of believing that everyone who enters a clinic wants to get better. Many people come to therapy to prove that they cannot be helped. They want to show their spouse or the court that they tried everything and the problem is still there. This is a high level of motivation, but it is motivation directed toward the status quo. I once met a man who had seen ten different specialists for his chronic insomnia. He began the session by listing all the famous experts who had failed him. He was proud of his resistance. I told him that I did not think I could help him either, and in fact, he should probably expect his sleep to get even worse before the end of the month. By agreeing with his hopelessness, I took away his reason to fight me.

You must be precise in your use of directives. If you ask a family to perform a task and they return having ignored your instructions, you have gained valuable information. They are more motivated to resist your authority than they are to solve the problem. We do not see this as a failure of the technique. We see it as a successful assessment of the power structure. You then assign a task that is even harder to do, or you suggest that they are not yet ready for change. You tell them that the problem is serving such an important purpose that it would be dangerous to solve it too quickly.

In a corporate setting, you might find that a disruptive employee is actually shielding a manager from their own incompetence where hidden loyalties govern behavior.

We recognize this as a stabilizing triangle. When you enter this environment as a consultant or a coach, you first observe how information flows through the hierarchy. You look for the person who is most invested in the status quo because they are the person who will most effectively negate your interventions. We define the customer as the person who complains about the problem and is willing to perform a task to fix it. In a corporate structure, the person paying the invoice is often not the customer. If a department head hires you to fix a team, but that team’s conflict allows the department head to avoid making difficult personnel decisions, the department head is a visitor. You must convert that visitor into a customer by making the problem more uncomfortable for them than the solution. I once worked with a senior executive who complained that his management team was incapable of independent thought. He claimed he wanted them to take initiative. I instructed him to go on vacation for two weeks and to leave no way for them to contact him. He immediately provided twelve reasons why the company would collapse in his absence. This refusal showed me that he was the primary obstacle. His management team was not incapable: he was unwilling to relinquish the control that their supposed incompetence provided him.

You use directives to test the strength of these systemic bonds. When you give a client a simple task to perform between sessions, you are not just looking for results. You are looking for the reaction to the directive. If you tell a manager to observe and record every time a specific employee performs a task correctly, and the manager returns with a list of only failures, you have identified a lack of motivation for change. The manager is more invested in their narrative of the employee’s failure than in the employee’s improvement. We call this a diagnostic directive. You do not expect the manager to succeed. You expect the manager to reveal their true position in the hierarchy.

As practitioners, we understand that power is often held by the person who appears most helpless. In a professional setting, the employee who cannot learn a new system or the leader who cannot manage their schedule holds the rest of the organization hostage. Their incompetence forces others to work around them. This creates an incongruent hierarchy where the person with the least skill dictates the pace of the entire department. You identify this by looking at who is doing the most work to compensate for the problem. If a Director of Operations is spending ten hours a week fixing the mistakes of a junior clerk, the Director is the one who is suffering. The clerk has no motivation to change because the Director has removed the consequences of the errors. To change this, you must redirect those consequences. You tell the Director to stop fixing the errors and instead to spend that same ten hours sitting next to the clerk, watching them work without offering help. This intervention makes the problem more exhausting for the Director while simultaneously making it more visible for the clerk.

I once met with a business owner who was distraught because her business partner was consistently overspending the budget. She had tried logic, she had tried anger. Nothing worked. I observed that her constant vigilance allowed the partner to remain irresponsible. She acted as the partner’s external conscience. I told her that she was too efficient a partner and that she needed to become slightly more disorganized. I instructed her to lose a financial report for three days. When she did this, the partner panicked. The partner had to take responsibility for the first time in years. This is a strategic move where you move the burden of the symptom back onto the person who is causing it.

We watch for the person who talks the most but does the least. In any meeting, the person who provides the most detailed explanations for why a solution will not work is often the guardian of the status quo. You do not argue with this person. If you argue, you become part of the system that keeps the problem in place. Instead, you agree with them. You say: I think you are right. This problem is much more complex than I first thought. In fact, I am not sure we should try to change anything yet. It might be dangerous to change too quickly. This use of paradox removes the person’s ability to resist you. If they want to disagree with you, they must now argue that change is possible. You have moved the motivation from yourself to the client.

You must also pay attention to the physical space. In a professional office, where does the client sit? If you are a coach invited into a manager’s office, and the manager sits behind a large desk while you sit in a low chair, the manager is asserting a hierarchical advantage. You cannot accept this position if you want to be effective. You might stand up and look at a picture on the wall, forcing the manager to turn around or stand up to join you. You break the physical pattern to break the psychological pattern. We know that motivation is tied to the feeling of being in control. If a client feels too much in control, they have no reason to listen to you. If they feel too little control, they are too anxious to follow your instructions. You must maintain a balance where you are the expert in the process, and they are the expert in their own lives.

I worked with an HR manager who was tasked with firing an employee who was also a friend of the CEO. The HR manager felt trapped. She was motivated to solve the problem, but she lacked the authority. I gave her a specific script to use with the CEO. I told her to say: I am concerned that your friend is being treated unfairly because people are afraid to give him honest feedback. To protect his reputation, we must either give him a specific set of goals to meet in thirty days or we must move him to a position where his skills are better utilized. This reframe moved the CEO from being a protector to being a provider of fairness. The motivation changed because the definition of the situation changed.

We use the follow-up session to measure the commitment of the system. If the client arrives late, or forgets to bring the data you requested, you do not ignore it. You do not offer an empathetic ear. You treat the lateness as a clinical fact. You might say: Since we have only thirty minutes left instead of sixty, we will focus only on the most difficult part of the task. Or you might say: Since you were unable to complete the task I gave you, it seems we have met too soon. Let us reschedule for two weeks from now when you have had more time to prepare. This puts the responsibility for the progress squarely on the client. If they want the problem solved, they must provide the energy. You are a consultant, not a cheerleader.

You must also recognize when the person asking for help is actually trying to prove that you are incompetent. This happens often with high level executives who have already seen five other coaches. They want to add you to their collection of failures. I once had a client tell me within the first five minutes that he had worked with the best minds in the country and none of them understood his unique situation. I responded by saying: You are probably right. I might not be able to help you either. In fact, I am surprised you are here at all. Why didn’t you just give up? This surprised him. He spent the next twenty minutes convincing me that he was a fighter and that he was ready to do whatever it took. By doubting his motivation, I forced him to demonstrate it.

In a professional hierarchy, the symptom often serves to protect a secret. We see this in organizations where a high turnover rate hides a toxic middle manager. The organization stays busy hiring and training new people, which prevents anyone from looking closely at why the veterans are leaving. You identify this by asking who benefits from the constant activity. If the HR department’s budget is based on the number of new hires, they have a motivation to keep the turnover high. You do not point this out directly. You instead propose a directive that would make turnover impossible for one month. You watch who objects most strongly to that proposal. The person who objects is the person whose motivation you must address.

We do not believe in the concept of a resistant client. We only believe in a practitioner who has not yet found the right lever. Every system is designed to produce the results it is currently getting. If the result is a problem, the system is motivated to keep that problem because it solves a different, larger problem that you may not see yet. You ask yourself: If this problem disappeared tomorrow, what would this person have to face that they are avoiding now? A manager might avoid firing a toxic employee because doing so would require them to actually manage the rest of the team. A CEO might keep a dysfunctional board because their infighting prevents the board from looking at the CEO’s failing strategy. You use your position as an outsider to observe these dynamics without becoming entangled in them.

You must also be prepared to terminate the relationship if the motivation is zero. We do not work harder than our clients. If you have given three directives and none have been followed, you have your answer. The system is not ready for change. You say to the client: It appears that the current situation, while difficult, is still more comfortable than the changes required to fix it. When the pain of the problem becomes greater than the fear of the change, give me a call. This preserves your authority and leaves the door open for when the client is actually ready. You do not waste your time or their money on a charade of progress. The most motivated person in the room must always be the client. If it is you, the intervention will fail.

When you work with a team, you observe the seating arrangement during the second meeting. If the two people who were arguing in the first meeting are now sitting together, something has occurred in the hierarchy. They may have formed an alliance against you. We see this as a positive sign. It means your presence has disturbed the previous equilibrium. You then give them a task that requires them to use that alliance to solve a specific problem. You might say: Since you two seem to be in agreement today, I want you to draft a new policy for the department together. You give them forty-eight hours to complete it. It forces them to either produce or to admit that their alliance is superficial.

I once worked with a team where the manager was constantly interrupted by his assistant. It was clear that the assistant held the actual power in the office. The manager was motivated to change his image, but he was afraid of the assistant. I did not tell the manager to be more assertive. Instead, I gave the assistant the task of keeping a detailed log of every time the manager was interrupted by anyone. This forced the assistant to observe her own behavior through the lens of a professional duty. She became the guardian of the manager’s time. The power dynamic moved without a single confrontation. The motivation of the assistant to be a good employee was used to solve the problem of her overstepping her role.

We look for the smallest possible change that will create a ripple effect through the entire system. You do not need to overhaul the entire corporate culture to fix a single department. You only need to change one key interaction. You look for the point of greatest leverage. This is often an interaction that happens every day, like the morning briefing or the way emails are answered. I once instructed a team leader to stop answering emails after six o’clock in the evening. This one change forced her subordinates to start making their own decisions in the final hour of the workday. Her motivation was to reduce her stress, but the result was a more independent team. The assessment of motivation is the search for that lever.

The lever is found by identifying the exact moment the client benefits from the problem. If a client tells you they cannot sleep, we do not focus on their relaxation. We focus on what they do while they are awake. I once worked with a woman who had suffered from insomnia for ten years. She spent those night hours reading novels and drinking tea. I told her that if she was awake, she was not allowed to enjoy herself. I instructed her that every time she was awake at two in the morning, she had to scrub the kitchen floor with a toothbrush until the sun came up. She had to do this even if she felt tired after twenty minutes. She had to finish the floor. The insomnia vanished within four days because the brain decided sleep was preferable to the ordeal. You use this technique when a client is more invested in the secondary gain of the symptom than in the resolution. We call this the price of the problem. If you make the price high enough, the client will choose health to avoid the cost.

We often encounter the client who arrives with a list of all the experts who have failed them. This client is motivated to maintain their status as an unsolvable mystery. You must not try to be the one who finally succeeds. If you try to prove your competence, you join the list of failed experts. Instead, you agree with the client that their problem is likely beyond help. I once saw a man who had seen twelve specialists for his chronic pain, all of whom had found no physical cause. He challenged me to provide a solution. I told him that I was likely the thirteenth person who would fail him and that he should probably prepare for a life of permanent disability. This statement took the pressure off me and placed the responsibility for change back on him. When I suggested he walk three miles a day to see if it made the pain worse, he did it to prove me wrong. He returned a week later and admitted the pain had lessened. He was motivated to succeed only if success proved that my low expectations were incorrect.

You must recognize that motivation is often suppressed by a hidden loyalty to another member of the system. We see this in children who fail in school to keep their parents focused on them instead of on a failing marriage. If the child improves, the parents have nothing to talk about except their own misery. You must address the marriage to release the child. I worked with a teenage girl who was caught shoplifting repeatedly. Her father was a strict disciplinarian and her mother was passive. I realized the shoplifting brought the parents together to discuss her discipline. I instructed the girl to keep shoplifting but to only steal items that her mother specifically requested. This move forced the mother to become an accomplice and broke the father’s ability to simply punish the child. The girl stopped stealing immediately because the secret loyalty was exposed and the behavior no longer served its purpose.

We use the directive as a way to clarify the hierarchy. When you give a task and the client fails to perform it, you have learned that the current arrangement of the system is more stable than your influence. I once worked with a couple where the wife complained that the husband never helped with the housework. I instructed the husband to spend exactly ten minutes every evening washing dishes while the wife sat in the kitchen and read a book. The wife returned the following week and admitted she had interrupted him after five minutes to tell him he was doing it wrong. Her motivation was not to have help. Her motivation was to maintain her position of moral superiority over her husband. You must recognize when a complaint is a tool for control rather than a request for a solution.

You should always look for the person who is most upset by the problem. That person is your primary customer. If a mother brings in a son who uses drugs, but the son says he is fine, the son is not your client. The mother is your client. You do not try to motivate the son to stop using drugs. You motivate the mother to change how she responds to the son. I instructed one such mother to stop paying her son’s phone bill and to change the locks on the house every time he came home high. When the mother changed her behavior, the son was forced to deal with the consequences of his own actions. His motivation to change increased only when his environment became uncomfortable. We do not create motivation where it does not exist. We rearrange the system so that the client finds it in their own interest to act differently.

Strategic therapy requires you to be comfortable with the possibility of failure. If you are afraid the client will not like you, or if you are afraid they will leave, you cannot lead. You must be willing to tell a client that you cannot help them if they are unwilling to follow a directive. I once told a corporate executive that our sessions were over because he had failed to complete three consecutive assignments. I told him that I was taking his money under false pretenses because no change was happening. He became furious and demanded another chance. He completed the next task within twenty-four hours. My willingness to walk away was the only thing that moved him. We call this the position of maximum leverage. You only have power in the room when you are prepared to lose the client.

We look for the repetitive loops that keep a problem alive. You often find that the very thing the client does to solve the problem is what keeps the problem going. A person who worries about their health checks their pulse fifty times a day. The checking increases the heart rate, which increases the worry. I instructed a client with this habit to check their pulse on the hour, every hour, for exactly five minutes, and to record the results in a notebook with three different colored pens. By making the checking a rigid, boring requirement, I took the spontaneous anxiety out of the act. The client became so bored with the record-keeping that they stopped checking altogether. You change the motivation by turning a frantic compulsion into a tedious chore.

You must also account for the physical space of the session. We use seating as a diagnostic tool. If a husband and wife sit far apart with a child between them, you see a system where the child is being used as a buffer. I once had a family where the grandmother sat in the center chair and spoke for everyone. I asked the grandmother to go to the observation room and watch the session through the glass. Without her presence, the parents were forced to speak to each other for the first time in years. Their motivation to parent their own children emerged only when the grandmother’s dominance was removed. You must be willing to disrupt the physical comfort of the room to see how the participants react.

The final test of motivation is the client’s willingness to accept a reframe. If you describe a husband’s anger as a sign of his deep concern for his family, and he accepts it, he is motivated to change his behavior to match that new identity. If he rejects it, he is telling you that he prefers his identity as a victim of his own temper. I once told a woman who was obsessed with cleanliness that she was not a perfectionist, but rather a woman who was terrified of losing control of her environment. I instructed her to leave one room in her house completely messy for a week. She could not do it. Her inability to follow the directive showed me that her motivation was rooted in fear rather than a desire for order. We use this information to decide if we must work with the fear or the behavior.

A system will always fight to stay the same even when the members are suffering. You are the only person in the room who is not part of that stability. We must remain outside the system to change it. If you become sympathetic to the client’s excuses, you have become part of the problem. I once worked with a young man who claimed he could not find a job because the economy was bad. I agreed with him and told him that he should probably move back into his parents’ attic and never come out. He was shocked by my lack of empathy. His shock was the catalyst for him to go out and prove me wrong. We do not provide comfort. We provide the necessary friction that makes the current situation unbearable.

You must watch for the subtle ways a client tries to get you to do the work for them. If they ask you what they should do, you must refuse to answer. We ask them what they have already tried and why it failed. I once had a client who asked me for advice on every minor decision in her life. I told her that I would only give her advice if she paid me five hundred dollars for every suggestion I made. She stopped asking for advice and started making her own decisions. Her motivation to be independent was weaker than her motivation to keep her money. You must find what the client values more than their symptom.

The practitioner who knows how to assess motivation is the one who can distinguish between a request for change and a request for validation. We do not validate the status quo. You are there to disrupt the equilibrium that allows the problem to exist. When a client finally takes a step that they previously claimed was impossible, you do not celebrate with them. You treat it as an expected outcome of the work. I once had a client who finally confronted a bully at work. He expected me to be proud of him. I simply asked him what he was going to do next. This kept the momentum moving forward and prevented him from resting on his laurels. Motivation is not a feeling that the client has. Motivation is a description of how the system is currently moving.

Every interaction in the room is a negotiation for who will define the reality of the situation. If you allow the client to define the reality, no change will occur. You must be the one to set the terms of the engagement. I once had a family tell me they could only meet at nine on a Sunday morning. I agreed, but only if they met me at a local park and we conducted the session while walking in the rain. They showed up. Their willingness to endure discomfort told me everything I needed to know about their readiness for a breakthrough. We do not look for words of commitment. We look for the physical act of compliance. The client who follows a difficult directive is a client who is ready for a resolution. The stability of the system is the only force you are truly fighting.