{"id":466,"date":"2014-01-25T10:12:23","date_gmt":"2014-01-25T10:12:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unk.com\/blog\/?p=466"},"modified":"2024-04-12T05:13:09","modified_gmt":"2024-04-12T11:13:09","slug":"psychology-techniques-to-get-your-client-to-really-follow-your-advice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unk.com\/blog\/psychology-techniques-to-get-your-client-to-really-follow-your-advice\/","title":{"rendered":"3 Psychology Techniques That Get Your Client To REALLY Follow Your Advice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sometimes what a client needs is pretty obvious. Anyone can see it. And as you&#8217;re not shackled by the old idea that &#8216;therapy must never be directive&#8217;, you come straight out with your wonderful suggestion, re-frame or clearly &#8216;spot on&#8217; (to you) piece of sage advice.<\/p>\n<p>And what happens?<\/p>\n<p>They nod politely. &#8220;Yeah, yeah, I&#8217;ll try that&#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>But you know they won&#8217;t.\u00a0And you sense you&#8217;ve blown it.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>What has happened?<\/p>\n<p>What you&#8217;ve said to them &#8211; even though it may be exactly what they need &#8211; doesn&#8217;t <i>feel valuable<\/i> to them. Direct advice giving tends to diminish the <i>perceived value<\/i> of that advice. What do I mean?<\/p>\n<h3>Prefer to watch instead?<\/h3>\n<div class=\"video-container\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/WMJtjLwYqcM?si=M3W9usnKDWh4xHC4&amp;rel=0\" title=\"Watch 3 Psychology Techniques That Get Your Client To REALLY Follow Your Advice\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<h3>Take my advice (but only if it&#8217;s worth something!)<\/h3>\n<p>We value stuff that:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>is <i>rare<\/i> (who would value a diamond if they grew on trees?)<\/li>\n<li>we&#8217;ve had to <i>work<\/i> for (the more effort we&#8217;ve put in, the higher the value)<\/li>\n<li>is obviously <i>highly valued by others<\/i> (social effect).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Psychotherapy involves both learning and teaching. The client both teaches and &#8211; ideally &#8211; learns from their therapist. You may know exactly what your client needs, but how do you deliver that advice so that it&#8217;s deemed valuable enough to act upon? Even diamonds can be mistaken for common stones.<\/p>\n<h2>3 psychology techniques that will increase the influence of your suggestions<\/h2>\n<h3>1. Dress up the advice<\/h3>\n<p>Rather than a direct piece of advice:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>&#8220;My advice to you, young man, is that you should stop doing that&#8221;<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Develop a formulation such as:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>&#8220;Later on<\/i> [make them wait for it]<i>, I&#8217;d like to share an idea with you to see what you think. It&#8217;s a bit unusual<\/i> [implies rarity] <i>and it might not make sense to you at first&#8230;&#8221;<\/i> [implies they will have to work a bit for it]<\/blockquote>\n<h3>2. Tell them how valuable others consider your suggestion to be<\/h3>\n<p>People are more ready to try something that others have tried (and found successful) before them. You can use examples like:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>&#8220;Four of my clients in the past few months have done what I&#8217;m asking you to do, and later told me that they thought it was the best thing they ever did!&#8221;<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p><i>&#8220;So many people have now successfully used this approach that it has almost become a standard way to tackle this issue&#8221;<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h3>3. Use metaphor<\/h3>\n<p>Metaphor allows you to give advice without seeming to give advice &#8211; thus rendering your advice both more palatable and more valuable to your client. The listener has to &#8216;work for it&#8217; through making the link themselves, in their own mind. And that makes it more effective than if you just tell them outright.<\/p>\n<p>I once worked with a man who was still eaten up with resentment over being laid off work years before. I didn&#8217;t tell him to <i>&#8220;Forget about it! It was a long time ago!&#8221;<\/i> (direct advice, and clearly what he needed to do). While he was in trance, and without mentioning lay-offs, work, redundancy, or anything directly related like that, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.unk.com\/blog\/story-therapy-why-it-works\/\">I told him a story<\/a> of a man who&#8217;d been forced to carry a heavy burden for a long time, and then discovered that he could put the burden down and <i>&#8220;leave it far behind&#8221;<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You may know exactly what your client needs, but how do you deliver that advice so it gets acted upon?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1916,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","filesize_raw":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[32],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>3 Psychology Techniques That Get Your Client To REALLY Follow Your Advice<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"You may know exactly what your client needs, but how do you deliver that advice so it gets followed? 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