Question on fear and worries

[Amanda Fenton]

From the email list January 2013...

Hello all,

I am involved in a project to monitor the impact of public health related policy change here in municipals in The Netherlands. One of the elements is harvesting stories. I wonder, what in your experience can be effective calling questions when one wants to discover people's worries on what happens to their support structure after the policy changes? Love to hear your insights, Thanks!

Niels

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Hi Niels, 

If I am understanding correctly the current reality of the need, you want to find effective ways to make the possible fears of change rise to the surface. Is that correct? If so, I guess it really depends on the level of depth you need to go and the set-up and the timing, among many other things. 

Will you have all these people in the same room to explore that? Or do you have the chance/time to interview them personally? 

If you had them all in the same room and find a way to explore their fears (I am just going with that assumption), then it would be good to know for how long they have been working in the same room as a group, what are the power structures etc. 

I am saying this because in my experience in a teaching/coaching setting to talk about fears really takes a big amount of trust: among one another, and in the process and facilitators. If that is in place, I might consider to call with two questions 
- What is the best thing that could happen when [....] is in place/ has changed? 
- What is the worst thing that could happen when [...] will change? 

And it can be in whatever format serves the purpose (circle, world cafe's etc. And/or go for exploratory interviews one-to-one if you can't get the group in the same room). It will be important in my view to find ways to "speak out" deeply held values and assumptions from all the perspectives, so harvesting might need to value both the big picture and one's specific scenario, too. 

Consider that it may be possible to give more considerate advice knowing a bit more background info. 

Hope this helps. 
best, 

Marco. 

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Hello Niels,
  I too will assume this conversation is happening in a group setting.In
either case i might ask: "What have you specifically valued (most) about
the policies that have been in place so far? Can you share some ways the
policies we had supported your life or well-being?" -
   That can establish a commonly "heard" set of what's worked,whats been
appreciated, what is valued.
  I think that can make it easier to name the fears in specific rather
than general ways and get the narratives you might find most useful. i
find that being specific about fears makes them easier to work with than
generalizing. And sometimes naming specifics allows positive pro-active
responses to emerge.
  Questions in this realm might include 1 or more of these:
   " are you concerned about losing valued support as the policies change?
What changes are you concerned will have the most impact on your life
and well-being and how? - or in what ways?"
    Best of luck to you and the people of the Netherlands. There is
certainly alot of change happening everywhere and i am glad you will
be investigating its impacts.

Rose Gordon

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I wonder if there are positive ways of phrasing the question that allude to fear but don't use the word "fear". Especially where there are issues of trust (as Marco suggests) the word fear can shut people down.

I've found the following progression of questions to be quite effective in bringing up fears, while placing a  positive focus on people's courage and resilience (and therefore allowing them to not feel as threatened about being specific about what they're afraid of):
- Share a story of a time in which courage has been required of you in the past.
- Where do you anticipate courage will be required of you in the future?

I had the people share their stories first in small circles and then in the larger circle. If you'd like more detail, I'd be happy to share it.

I wish you well.

Heather Plett

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 I like these questions Heather. I tend to not assume fear, but find its
usually ok to talk about concerns, past challenges and the way they were
met! I  use questions similar to these in resiliency retreats i
faciliate. i guess the questions all depend on what you need to know
Niels!

Rose

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Hello All, 

First of all, Thank you for the very helpful answers. When writing down my question to you I know it lacked context, but I decided that I didn't want to constrain your open mind too much. :-) 

A bit more context: 

- In most cases people will be unkown to each other, so trust and power structures will definitely be a challenge here. (Yes, we are talking about groups)

- Participants will have diverse disabilities, physical and intellectual. This put pressure on the group formation and the accessibility of questioning. In my own experience I can add to that, that doing it too much 'special because of the disability' will cause a shut up. It's more important to have adequate support in place. 

- Municipals are the payer here; they actually want a scalable monitor, which results in the request for a online extension for story collection, which causes new challenges because people don't tend to talk very easily about troubles when it's form based. (Sensemaker, Cognitive Edge)

For now, a big thank you and talk to you later,

Niels

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It is good to hear these. Thank you.

I'm finding myself hosting with less dressing these days. Very straight forward. I find my presence is fundamental to support the many questions I might choose.

I love the leaning into the fear. The fear of fear, so to speak, that I see is that it will hijack what most want to be a positive and encouraging experience. Enough grounding to hold human beings in this essential journey - now that's the ticket.

Please tell a bit of the story of what you fear. Tell a story also of where you find courage. What would it take to lean into your fear in support of this project?

Greetings from Utah. Thank you for inspiring these thoughts in me.

Tenneson

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I agree with Tenneson that we need to lean into our fears as they become those self limiting thoughts that can hijack just about anything in life. The simpler we keep things for people when we are working with them the greater the chance of them sustaining the changes once leave for other projects. 

Sharon