One way to cause forward motion is to help people see that they were right all along.
“The person you were hoping to hire, that’s me.”
“The car you were hoping to buy, it’s here.”
The other way to do it is to try to persuade someone that what they thought they wanted is incorrect. That can cause real change–it’s leadership, not simply fulfilling an established need.
But to do that, we need to find something in the other person’s set of desires and beliefs that doesn’t have to change. “You’ve always wanted to do the right thing, and you thought the right thing was X, but now I’m hoping you’ll see it’s Y. You weren’t wrong, you simply didn’t have all the information…”