How to Coach Yourself and Others Influencing, Inter Personal and Leadership Skills | Page 117

10. Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy
1. Cognitive dissonance
Get insight into the balance between thinking (knowledge), feelings (emotions) and
behavior (actions): Try to find out whether the thinking (knowledge), the feelings and
the behavior of your partner on your proposed action are compatible with each other.
A situation in which these elements do not correspond to each other is an extremely
unpleasant experience, known as cognitive dissonance. This produces a feeling of
discomfort leading to an alteration in one of the attitudes, beliefs or behaviors to reduce
the discomfort and restore balance etc.
A person who is experiencing cognitive dissonance, will always change one of the
elements involved, in order to restore balance.
For instance: A colleague has announced that he has been invited to an important
meeting and that he looks forward to participating. Yet, he has not attended the
meeting. If you then return to the subject, he may indicate that the meeting was not as
important as he had thought before.
Understanding of the imbalance between the elements can be useful in the approach of
the other party. At times, providing the necessary information will suffice to restore the
balance.
In general, if one of the elements is outweighing the other elements, balance can be
restored as follows:
1.
1.
2.
3.

If a person is overloaded by Internal Processes (Thinking):
Get his attention
Ask questions
Keep silent (use the power of Silence)

2. If a person is overloaded by External Behavior (Action):
1. Reformulate the content
2. Ask a closed question
3. If a person is overloaded by emotions (Feeling):
1. Active Listening
2. Reflect the emotion (happy, angry, afraid, sad, etc…)