In my last post, I said that it’s sometimes necessary to have uncomfortable conversations with clients in order to keep the change initiative on track toward realization. But how much uneasiness is enough? How much is too much?

The level of discomfort our clients may feel at any one time can range from fairly low to extremely high and even potentially dysfunctional. The graphic below illustrates the discomfort range a client might experience during a conversation. It can be used to gauge not only where a person is now but what level of distress a practitioner might want to deliberately generate in order to break through whatever has been keeping a client from recognizing and dealing with an important change-related issue.

As awkward as it is, there are some circumstances when change practitioners should intentionally create uneasiness in their clients to help foster realization. Deliberate movement from left to right on the Discomfort Continuum is accomplished by applying greater degrees of explicitness and intensity in the conversation. (I will describe both terms in more detail in the next post.)

The zero point represents a relatively neutral emotional state. As explicitness and/or intensity increase, the strength of the client’s discomfort—and the corresponding tendency to fight or flee—continues to rise. People at the zero level don’t experience much agitation or strain in an exchange. Below this point, their attention isn’t even on the conversation. They have little to no investment in what is being said. Above zero, they become engaged and actively participate. The client’s level of involvement rises as they move to the right on the continuum.

While in the range of 1 to 5, a practitioner can increase explicitness and intensity without generating much uneasiness. Starting at 5, clients begin to feel noticeable discomfort as their emotions become stronger. When a practitioner takes a client to this level, he or she is clearly probing beyond the person’s “safety threshold.” (This is the place where the person normally lets people know they’ve gone far enough and should stop pursuing what has become difficult to discuss.) The expectation is that when clients signal that their safety threshold has been reached, the practitioner is to pull back. When this doesn’t happen and the practitioner continues on, the person may react with some degree of fear, anger, insecurity, regret, sadness, etc. Although provoking these kinds of feelings is not the primary goal, they are typically associated with people addressing struggles that they’ve been avoiding, so it is not unusual for them to surface.

Between 5 and 10 on the continuum, although people are uncomfortable, they are usually able to participate in conversations that can yield useful outcomes. That is, the downside of the client’s discomfort can more often than not be justified. This is because it is possible for the client to break through to recognize and take action on the critical issues jeopardizing initiative realization.

At 10, the discomfort usually starts to generate dysfunctional levels of emotion. Above this range, further increases in emotion simply increase the level of defensiveness and entrenchment and generally doesn’t yield further positive results.

Over the years, I’ve come to rely on this continuum as a way to help determine where my clients are emotionally, should I feel it’s necessary to press harder on an issue than I know they are comfortable with. For me, there is a “sweet spot” where the client’s discomfort level is in the range of 4.5 to 5.5. I find that, most of the time, this is where the most solid progress is made. This zone comes with tension, but it offers the prospect of unusually rich dialogue, insight, and results.

Of course, there are times when I want to soften the conversation, moving the client’s discomfort level below the sweet spot. This series, however, is about those situations when it’s in the client’s best interest to sharpen the conversation (i.e., be more emphatic about the points I’m trying to get across). This is when I intentionally move a client up the continuum—sometimes to as high as 7 or 8. I rarely take a client all the way to 10, but it has happened. From my experience, this might take place only two or three times in an entire consulting career. Nonetheless, it’s important to be able and willing to go there if that is what is called for to be fully in service to a client. In fact, that is the basic message of this series of postings. As professional change facilitators, our role isn’t to ensure clients are comfortable; it’s to help them realize their change aspirations…sometimes despite their discomfort.

Next, I’ll talk about how to determine where someone is on the continuum and how to use explicitness and intensity to the client’s advantage.

Go to the beginning of the series