ABSTRACT
Identifying issues is really about engaging with the clients and listening carefully to what is on their minds and what they think is important to them and what is going on in their organization. From the client’s initial presentation of the issues on his or her mind, people try to reduce the issue into a dilemma of action. This tension is a driving force that will fuel the individual’s change of thinking and change of behaviour. Just as nature abhors a vacuum, people abhor the feeling of being trapped within a cognitive or behavioural conflict. Once the issues have been construed as two-sided dilemmas, it becomes easier to speculate about the underlying values that support the dilemma. The positions now give meaning to the individual’s behaviour or speech, and the positions also create a relationship between the position identified and all the other possible positions on the continuum.
