Why Your Good Advice Might Be Backfiring
Navigating conversations around personal change can often feel like an uphill battle. Whether you are a clinician, counselor, coach, or leader, you have likely encountered moments where offering solid advice was met with pushback.
When people feel pressured or backed into a corner, their natural instinct is to dig in their heels or push back. In helping professions, this friction stalls progress, exhausts the practitioner, and strains trust.
The good news? This friction usually isn’t bad intent—it’s often a reaction to how the conversation is structured.
The “Fixing Reflex”
Most helping professionals enter their fields out of a fixing reflex.
However, when you tell someone what they should do before they are ready, it triggers natural psychological pushback. If an individual is on the fence about change, taking the side of change often forces them to argue for keeping things the same.
From Control to Partnership
Lowering friction starts with shifting the dynamic from directing to partnering. When clients feel safe, heard, and respected as autonomous decision-makers, they no longer need to spend energy defending their habits.
What is OARS?
Motivational interviewing techniques rely on a core set of person-centered communication skills known as OARS:
- Open-Ended Questions
- Affirmations
- Reflective Listening
- Summaries
While real skill takes practice, understanding these four elements is the first step toward smoother dialogue. Over the next three posts, we will explore how each piece of OARS skills helps open up conversation.
Want a quick reference for your desk?
Download our free OARS cheat sheet pdf for a handy look at descriptions of each OAR and examples.
Initial draft outline and post structure generated with the assistance of Gemini (Google), then reviewed, revised, and expanded by CCMI.