Elicitation – Part 1

Any leader, strategist or even parent should develop the skill of elicitation.

Elicitation is a strategic communication technique used to gather information, needs, or requirements from individuals or groups who may be hesitant, unaware of specific details, or unable to articulate them clearly.

This is particularly useful and important in strategic planning sessions.

Contrary to popular belief, the role of a strategy facilitator is not necessarily to provide you with answers to your organisational challenges.

Rather, it is primarily to manage the collective conversation in a way that enables people to freely divulge and express viewpoints that may be useful to coming to solutions.

Elicitation is not for the purpose of manipulation.

In my experience, experienced or skilled professionals mostly know what the causes or solutions to problems are, but they are not always aware they are already aware of the causes or solutions.

Elicitation reframes direct questions as casual statements or opinions, which encourages people to freely share or correct details.

One could use a few techniques.

The first is the correction statement. This is when you make a presumptive or slightly inaccurate statement on purpose.

Human nature often compels the other person to correct the statement, which inadvertently reveals the correct facts or opinions.

For instance, instead of asking “What is your monthly expenditure on overtime?”, which is very direct and possibly interrogatory, I would say “I assume a large department such as yours spends more than N$100 000 per month on overtime”.

Naturally and normally, someone would correct a misstatement with factual data or, at the very least, dispelling the inaccuracy which paves the way for clarity and solution seeking.

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