Kahane’s “Solving Tough Problems” is recommended reading by a few management/consultant groups I’ve talked to. On pg. 129-130, Kahane offers ten suggestions for opening up, the beginning step for solving tough problems (below is direct quote):

1. Pay attention to your state of being and to how you are talking and listening. Notice your own assumptions, reactions, contractions, anxieties, prejudices, and projections.

2. Speak up. Notice and say what you are thinking, feeling, and wanting.

3. Remember that you don’t know the truth about anything. When you think that you are absolutely certain about the way things are, add “in my opinion” to your sentence. Don’t take yourself too seriously.

4. Engage with and listen to others who have a stake in the system. Seek out people who have different, even opposing, perspectives from yours. Stretch beyond your comfort zone.

5. Reflect on your own role in the system. Examine how what you are doing or not doing is contributing to things being the way they are.

6. Listen with empathy. Look at the system through the eyes of the other. Imagine yourself in the shoes of the other.

7. Listen to what is being said not just by yourself and others but through all of you. Listen to what is emerging in the system as a whole. Listen with your heart. Speak from your heart.

8. Stop talking. Camp out beside the questions and let answers come to you.

9. Relax and be fully present. Open up your mind and heart and will. Open yourself up to being touched and transformed.

10. Try out these suggestions and notice what happens. Sense what shifts in your relationships with others, with yourself, and with the world. Keep on practicing.