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Would you rather? Have all the questions? Or, have all the answers? Sounds witty and profound doesn’t it?
It’s really not. It’s actually even a fallacy. A fallacy of choices, aka false dilemma. You may have read or heard it called a false dichotomy. In layman’s terms?… the either-or fallacy.
Would you rather? Have all the questions? Or, have all the answers?
What’s that you say? Well, when I pose the question this way, it only presents two options. So, while you’re trying to figure out which one I want you to say (possibly so you can say the opposite and present your argument that way,) I’m chuckling to myself that you have allowed me to box you in.
Chuckling, because you should recognize this tactic as soon as it leaves my mouth. Even if you don’t know all of the technical terms, you should feel it as something that limits you, or corrals you.
On the other hand, all people desire this some of the time. Even I want this, sometimes. When I talk to an expert, I want them to narrow the choices down for me and based on the information they have gathered, give me what they feel are the best two choices, then hand it off to me to decide. I don’t want a million options. Just give me two.
And, the person you’re persuading does, also. So, do your homework, then do it for your customer, then give them two choices.
Don’t worry, if they want more, they’ll indicate this to you, some how. A look, a sound, a movement, or a blatant question of “what else are my options.” Then, don’t do like some people and give a bold extreme option to move away from and make the first two look good in comparison, give them what you now think they would need, want or would like to hear.
Here’s an interesting side note. Doing a Compfight.com search of “middle ground” for Flickr.com photos to use for this post results in almost only pictures of military maneuvers. Hmmmm…
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You’re either part of the solution or part of the problem. -Eldridge Cleaver
Over time it’s going to be important for nations to know they will be held accountable for inactivity,” he said. “You’re either with us or against us in the fight against terror. -George W. Bush
OK, OK, one from both sides of the fence, just to be “fair.”
The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of moral crisis preserve their neutrality. -John F. Kennedy
Single channel communication can sink your ship, if you don’t know how to send clear signals. Don’t Let Your Communication Skills Sink Your Ship by Tom Vander Well reminded me of this lesson. Thanks.
Here’s the actual lesson.
Just like when someone is blind, the other senses pitch in to help when communication is limited to certain channels, e.g. lack of visual senses leans on auditory senses. In the process, they become more developed and more sensitive. So, it’s not just more overtime they’re putting in.
Similarly, when you are persuading on the phone, the other person’s auditory senses heighten and amplify your auditory messages.
So, all the submodalities of sound, including your voice, volume, intonation, pitch, pace, speed, rhythm, resonance and alliteration, amongst many other qualities, take on whole new meaning.
The length of your sentences. The timing of your breaths. The number of words.
All of these qualities and much much more are taken into account when your brain is searching for meaning and coming up with what ever is there and putting it all together in a formula outside of but including the actual words you’re using to create the meaning you are attempting to create so that the number of messages being sent multiply by quatum leaps which is why it’s even more important to have your purpose in mind clear as a bell before you even open your mouth and say, “This makes sense on some level.”
So, the next time someone like Jimi Hendrix in a Purple Haze says, “Excuse me while I kiss the sky,” you get it.
It’s one or the other. And, if you work for a sales organization, chances are you’ve heard this before. “Either I work for you or you work for me.”
I have heard this more times than I can count. If you’re not in sales, I’m curious whether or not you have.
Notice, it’s the Greek rhetorical figure anadiplosis that makes it catchy. That’s where the last word of the first thought is the same as the first word for the next thought.
“Either I work for you or you work for me.”
This mantra leverages the concept of freedom.Dan Pink in Drive, calls it autonomy.
It’s dreamy to think about your boss working for you. Gopher this, gopher that. “What can I get you?” “How can I help you do your job?” Right?
The other end of the stick is definitely motivating, as well. Not a new concept. Nope. Not a good concept in and of itself, either. But, none the less, effective.
Personally, I always loved to hear this from sales managers. I have even used this as a qualification during job interviews. They either respond with a twitch or a twinkle.
Go with the twinkle…
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And I particularly like the whole thing of being boss. Boss and employee… It’s the slave quality that I find very alluring. -Hugh Grant < impetus for qualifiying during the interview!
Manage by objectives. Tell people exactly what you want them to do and then get out of their way. -Brian Tracy
Manage by exception. Only require reporting when there is a deviation from the plan. -Brian Tracy
Reinforce what you want to see repeated. What gets rewarded gets done. -Brian Tracy
Too “motivational” for you? Let’s listen to Jack Welch, then.
Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be. -Jack Welch
I was afraid of the internet… because I couldn’t type. -Jack Welch < That's funny. Look at me making fun of Jack Welch!
If you pick the right people and give them the opportunity to spread their wings and put compensation as a carrier behind it you almost don't have to manage them. -Jack WelchDan Pink in Drive, for more clarification and specifics
The essence of competitiveness is liberated when we make people believe that what they think and do is important – and then get out of their way while they do it. -Jack Welch
Don’t fight it, write it… into the plans. The architectural plans, that is.
Hat’s off to Panera Bread (hey, I’m not the only one who likes them.) For years, people have been trying to buy tasty great food. Only to be blocked, redirected and morally challenged. Morally challenged?
Challenged by social responsibility, might be more accurate, I guess. (Deciding not to walk through landscaped barricades vs. taking the long walk around on the sidewalk.)
For further clarification (and “metaphor-cation”), instead of landscaping with small plants to direct traffic, they are cementing the path that their customers are beating to their door.
Have you ever beat your head against the wall over and over and over, again, expecting a different result? Who hasn’t? Resistance comes in many forms.
Panera has chosen to take a different path. Literally. They have enough insight and emotional intelligence to go with the flow and embrace it, vs. trying to redirect it. Or, possibly, they took Katie’s advice,
Now, “don’t fight it, write it” is a sales mantra meaning, don’t put up any walls to getting the deal done. Get out of the way. Don’t bring up distractions. Don’t be the block. Instead, get it done. Write it up. Produce, produce, produce.
By having loads of prospects in the hopper, you will not care nearly as much whether or not you sell the prospect in front of you.
I have a friend that is one of the best sales persons I have ever seen in action. He was in residential door-to-door sales, and he would knock doors to beat hell. He didn’t quite manage that, but none-the-less, I remember he used to say, “there’s a ‘yes’ behind every ‘no’.”
“There’s a ‘yes’ behind every ‘no’.”
I remember the specific state of mind this gave him. He was absolutely unfazed by rejection. He never complained, never fantasized about a no hitter, nothing.
What if you are not in door-to-door sales where there’s literally a house behind every house? Do the same…mentally. Retail? B2B? Whatever.
I know what you’re saying. “That’s just not possible,” “It’s just not true,” “Maybe for you.” OK, so you’re right…but he sold loads of stuff.
OK, so maybe it’s just a false belief. So be it! Hey, it it works, use it. Find what works and use it. Belief, technique, whatever.
Keep knocking on doors, so there’s more coming in the door.
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95% of this game is half mental. -Yogi Berra #yogiism #malapropism #acyrologia
You can find a willing customer faster than you can make one. -Jade Handy
In my untitled post this week, I made the bold assertion in passing that “computers will never completely replace humans.” You can quote me on that. I did.
…not for everyday business trips on well-known airlines to familiar cities. Those excursions are indeed simpler for me to book myself. But the next time I’m headed to an unfamiliar place where choosing the wrong hotel (or the wrong airline, or restaurant, or transportation, or part of town) can mean the difference between a memorable experience and a disaster, I’m likely to seek professional help. Sure, the Web is a terrific way to filter information, but there’s a whole lot more to filter these days, and I just don’t have the time or inclination to do it.
People as the filter. I like it. Constantly filtering information that comes into our world. Filtering for facts that make sense, communication we understand, faces we recognize, and gut reactions.
These types of things make you the Linchpin, the go-to guy, the non-bot.
Welcome back to Friday Shout Out. On Fridays, I highlight some of the Web and Social Media Messages I enjoyed giving a hoot about. Whether I retweeted them, starred them in Google Reader or used them as a resource in a blog post, you can now follow those I re-sourced, re-purposed, and referenced.
First, from this site.
I’m going to blow the top off of this thing right now. In my untitled post on August 3, I, almost as an afterthought, referenced a real find. A best-kept secret, if you will. John R Schafer, aka Jack Schafer, is a former FBI special agent. If you read and internalized his 15 posts from 2010, you’d be better-equiped to recognize language patterns than 99% of the world’s population. That’s not a scientific percentage, but it’s accurate none-the-less.
What’s the benefit to learning these types of things? Would you be reading this if you didn’t have some idea of where, when and with whom you’d like you know more about why they are saying what they are saying?
In Wednesday’s post, La Résistance, I introduced the concept of people having a locus of control outside of themselves. Thanks to the Busy Fool blog for that. I could have just as easily used other posts of his.
Christine Kane’s How to Have Unwavering Faith in your Own Ideas is a great post. I hope she doesn’t think my first line, “Keep it to yourself,” was intended for her. I was meant for the ambiguity of whether it applied to her or the focus of my personal examples. BTW, there isn’t just on. “My friend” is several. I like the dichotomy and a push-pull there with how I played the title with that and then referenced a great post. I like to do this in my writings.
Now, on to my Google Reader Shared Items.
Several books I have been reading lately reference the outsourcing of jobs and the need to stay ahead of the curve by becoming indespensible. Linchpin, Drive and others are ahead of the curve on this. Not that they are the first, but they are promoting new perspectives on it. Selling Power’s recent, Are You at Risk of Being Replaced by Technology? should be both a wake up call and a path to positioning yourself for change. (another push-pull trend for today)
I wished I had Building Org Cultures Though Storytelling as a reference when I wrote Changing Stories. “Changing,” btw, is not a verb, but an adjective. I’m going to build a post out of this soon. Why? Because, “Stories build pride in the workplace and can be a useful way of reinforcing the values the company stands for. When you hear stories that people share about the leaders, their quirks, their triumphs and responses to various scenarios, you build a bond with employees that is hard to match.”
Google Reader Starred, but not previously Shared (’cause I was going build an article around them)
Change Your Tune…Tone by jrotman caught my attention because of it’s promise to show how to ”Change your tone, change your tack, change your message.” And, it does.
La Résistance happens.While it’s true that all people are different, there are similarities. We all think in a finite number of ways and thus speak in a finite number of patterns. We just don’t know how many. But, there are quite a few that we do know. But, you may not know all of the known patterns. Join the club.
If you find you are not getting your message through to your audience, celebrate! This is where the opportunity is.
Give me a list of of messages where you hear your audience resisting. And I’ll show you a finite list of patterns threaded through them. e.g. courtesy of Lisa Braithwaite’s Hitting a brick wall with resistant clients.
“We have to brand every slide with our logo, in case a client or someone from another company uses one of our slides out of context.”
“We have to brand every slide with our logo because the audience doesn’t know our company very well.”
“We have to do slides full of text and bullets because our clients don’t take our presentations seriously without it.”
“We have to do slides full of text and bullets because we have no time to do a report as well as slides.” (To which I reply, “Waah waah waah. Nobody has time. That’s not an excuse.”)
“We have to give our slides as handouts, because the conference requires it.”
“We have to make our slides fit this format because we give it to another department afterward who won’t understand if we change it.”
OK, now, having read through and found the common thread, you’ll notice an emerging pattern. 1. 6 of the 6 have to do with something causing another something to happen. 2. 6 of 6 have to do with a locus of controloutside of themselves. 3. 5 of the 6 have to do with negative consequences of doing PowerPoint properly (applies equally to skills other than PowerPoint)
It’s easy to say, “all objections involve these three objections.” But they don’t.
It’s easy to say, “How does just knowing this help me?” It doesn’t - and notice what I’m doing here. I’m inoculating. I have done this before and it works. If you know what the objections are, then inoculate them. If you’re fortunate enough to speak to their group before speaking to them individually, weave the inoculations throughout your speech.
Inoculating is like sending a costume party invite. There’s a lot of pressure to be there with them and do something different, even if you’re not accustomed to it.
In the case of the PowerPoint, bring these objections up, but never without a corresponding rebuttal ( in story whenever possible) focused around causing things to happen, proactively, that take advantage of known best practices that get them the end result faster and easier. And, be sure to include the negative consequences of continuing to not do PowerPoint, properly.
Ever noticed it doesn’t matter where the mouse is, the button selected still responds?
How is it that it doesn’t matter where the mouse cursor is?
It’s because it doesn’t appear in the code. The code doesn’t say, “no matter where, execute, anyway.” The code would literally have to contain every possible negative in order for it to work, if contingencies like this were necessary.
Instead, it only considers it if it is present.
This is one of the reasons computers will never completely replace humans. Humans sort for what’s there, but also for what’s not there.
Example. Thank you. A person says it a certain way. But how could they have said it. How do they say it to others and in other situations? Now we’re talking about tracking for patterns & tracking for change/difference.
You experience this when you are really going at it with someone and trying to get answer to your question. When doing this, you’re usually like a pitbull not letting go until you have what you want. Along the way, you’re constantly sorting for what’s being said and comparing it to what’s not being said, right?
Another example? Yesterday, I wrote about noticing what’s not there. “And, of course, compare it to what’s not there. Meaning, notice what could have been said and wasn’t.” Read this article for more specific examples.
“Listen between the lines for what’s said, what’s not said, and what can’t be said.”
—From Dianna Booher in From Contact to Contract #epistrophe
We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out. -Winston Churchill #contrast
Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment. -Benjamin Franklin #petitioprincipii
When something happens never, then does, I usually perk up and notice. Only-child syndrome is one of those. However, I’m not talking about it only in the context of an only-child, but we’ll start there.
Ever talk to someone who only has one child about how that child relates to other children?
One set of parents will say, “Little Johnny is an only-child, so, of course, he is going to engage with other children whenever he gets around them.”
Another set of parents will say, “Little Jenny is an only-child, so, of course, she is going to be shy around other children whenever she gets around them.”
Now, this is paraphrasing and simplifying and unfairly categorizing, of course, but that’s an important step in the process of pattern recognition and reverse engineering.
This only-child syndrome that I’m talking about doesn’t just happen with only-child parents, of course. It happens with all kinds of on/off patterns (as opposed to rheostatic-types where the condition is a gradation of the extremities.)
You might recognize this having occurred when someone talks about poker tells, birth order or even someone’s upbringing and the type of person they are. e.g. “Miles grew up with a silver spoon, so, of course, he’s going to demand a higher standard of living for himself.” VS. ”Miles grew up with a silver spoon, so, of course, he’s not going to know how to develop higher standard of living for himself.”
How about sports? “Amy has always been active, so, of course, she’s going to continue the habit when she’s older.” VS. “Amy has always been active, so, of course, she’s going to burn out on the habit when she’s older.”
And on and on.
The overall point being, notice how people organize their experience, give reasons for things, and influence behavior using it.
And, of course, compare it to what’s not there. Meaning, notice what could have been said and wasn’t. This is where you develop pattern recognition. Because there is something driving the decision, and in that context, it can help predict future decisions and behavior.
Most of us recognize these things, naturally, but of course, there are always those who don’t.
As far as which is controlling which, does the pattern control the behavior, or are there really reasons for things, well, that’s one for the chicken and the egg to decide.
Posted on 28th July 2010 by Jade Handy in Persuasion
If you didn’t watch the premiere last night, get with the program. This show rocks! If you love language, you’ll love paying attention to the language and language shifts of both Tony and the participants.
Tony may make this look easy and he may sound too conversational about it, but be rest assured every response he’s getting is calculated and methodical. After all, this is his craft.
In my previous post regarding the Mast Bothers, I said, “this is their craft and asked “what is yours?” Maybe I’ll make this a series on my blog that I write about often. But I digress.
Here are some clips from last night.
and something that wasn’t shown last night…
Are you one of those people who say, “yeah, but what happened to their lives after the show?” Then click here to see follow up clips and the whole show.
Want to read more? The Huffington Post has lots of excellent stuff specific to the show, including Huffington Post Senior Editor Willow Bay interviewing Tony!
A close friend of mine was one of the top wine sellers for the Olive Garden Restaurants. One day, I asked him how he did it.
Not surprisingly, he said people would ask him, “what would be a good wine for this meal?” He didn’t go off on a big rant to try to make himself the expert with all the answers, but he did have some suggestions.
You know what he told them? He’d start off by saying, “you know what makes a good wine?”
“No. What?” they would say.
“If you like it.”
Obviously, that wasn’t the specific suggestion they were looking for, but he found that that wasn’t the first thing they needed to hear.
Customers, he found, need to be open to suggestion, first.
Finally, the chance I had been waiting for for years. How many times have you spoken a play on words with someone’s name? e.g. Someone saying to me, “Are you handy?” nyuk, nyuk, nyuk. I do this all the time to other people.
I walked into a paint store the other day. I asked,
“How’s your day going? Colorful.”
He looked at me. I looked and him. I then asked him if he gets this all the time. Unbelievably, he said, “no.” I then asked him if he uses this response to that question. He said, “no.”
You have got to be kidding me! Paint store. Colorful. I don’t know if it was that he didn’t know he could use colors to describe his day, or he didn’t know he could have fun with his work environment, or what.
For me, it’s kind of like synesthesia in one form or another. That’s where a thought in one representational system (the five senses: visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory, gustatory, and who knows, maybe even the sixth!) is directly linked up in the brain to something in another representational system.
With me and with this situation of paint store and emotional description. Feel – paint store – color – colorful. I guess you have to be open to and/or constantly searching for crossover, similarity, metaphor, etc.
All I know is, all my attempts through all of these years of trying to catch someone off guard with a play on words has paid off. Maybe he is afraid to label himself or has chromophobia, the extreme fear of colors…
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The successful use of metaphor is a matter of perceiving similarities. -Aristotle, Poetics (4th Century B.C.)
For those of you not familiar, loss leaders may sound like your company’s leader or the Pittsburgh Pirates, but it’s not.
A loss leader is when Wal-Mart lures you into the store to save $2.00 on something you didn’t need in the first place and you soon discover you lost $4.00 in gas driving there!
It’s not that, either. It’s them “losing money” on an advertised special on the hope that you’ll shop further and over-pay on everything else in the store.
This is what they, and others like them, mean when they justify with “we’ll make it up in volume.”
Another meaning of “we’ll make it up in volume” is a used car salesman using it to hood-wink you into thinking the price is so cheap, but they’re willing to sell it at that price to you just to have you drive around with their name advertised on the car’s trunk’s dealer sticker.
Hopefully, people are too smart to think someone is selling something at a loss and are making it up in volume like that. Do the math. They are baiting you for a bigger catch.
Attorneys do this with initial phone calls. But, if you understand how to position the conversation towards dangling a carrot or saving them time, you can gain substantial decision-making information.
Buying drinks at the bar for a lady is the same thing. More loss than lead, though. Don’t bother.
My loss leader is my blog posts and RSS feed. Like most of your favorite bloggers, I recommend you do the same with your business. Put it out there and see what happens.
Seth Godin has touched on this. Chris Brogan’s Blogs as Loss Leaders yesterday, July 20, 2010, was a real idea generator. To quote Chris, “What’s your plan for value? Where are your loss leaders? How do you use them to bring business forward?”
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Out of context quote remix:
“…the demand for buffets have become even greater… The quality of food at buffets today is every bit as good, if not better, than most midlevel casual restaurants… [buffets are] not the loss leader they used to be. -Jeff DiVito
Though Seth Godin doesn’t come out and say it, under promise and over deliver is the understanding he wants you to conclude. It’s a critical skill. For anyone.
He’s saying the underpromise part is tricky ’cause you risk not getting attention or not being believable, even worse. This is where experience and skill come in.
You have to track responses to your messages and then adjust accordingly until you can get it right. There’s just no shortcut to perfecting this other than trial and error and getting your knuckles bloody along the way.
The trap for most is the short-term gain of getting attention by pushing the limit on the over promise side. Most people I’ve seen riding this edge sell tons, but spend tons of time after the sale explaining and making excuses. Don’t be that guy. They live by the mantra, “it’s easier to beg forgiveness, then ask for permission.” Permission doesn’t fit perfectly, but it works for them.
One way that’s better is to challenge yourself to see how much fluff you can leave out and still get your foot in the door. Then, sell like hell what you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, your company can deliver.
When it’s time to deliver, make sure you do. Then, find ways to exceed their expectations so they perceive it as exceeding their expectations. The bar on this is much easier to adjust and much easier to pole vault over.
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Formula for success: under promise and over deliver. -Tom Peters #contrast
Test fast, fail fast, adjust fast. -Tom Peters #epistrophe #antistrophe #epiphora (that was #rhyme) (here’s #alliteration) #epistrophe #epiphora #antistrophe
The first step in exceeding your customer’s expectations is to know those expectations. -Roy H. Williams
In an earlier post, I said in passing, “Like it or not, you have to train people how to treat you. Part of this is feeding them the labels you want them to use when thinking or talking about you.
This post has some of that, but more so, it has to do with choosing what and whom you decide to associate yourself with. But not so much in the social circle way, more so in the thinking of thinking-of-that-makes-me-think-of-you-automatically way.
Probably, most know the thing about your income being an average of your 5 best friends or people you associate with. Separate in meaning from th meaning of this post, this “labeling yourself” has to do with consciously choosing.
I recommend choosing wisely.
I have heard people talk about themselves in negative light. I heard the other day people will put you on the pedestal you put yourself on, but they will tear you down viciously if you don’t live up to your label. So, keep this in mind.
I think this is behind the fear that people have of speaking highly of themselves. This, and if someone challenges them on their self-proclaimed label, they won’t have the confidence or rhetorical skill set to defend themselves.
The third possibility is I’m wrong on all counts. Although, the reality of the reason matters not.
What still rings true is the need to create labels for yourself, or someone else will.
The Iowa State Fair is coming up, and this will be a smorgasbord of labels and the cream of the crop (to use an Iowa corn idiom.) Over a million people will be labeling themselves one way or another through their words, shirts, and behaviors.
I can think of no other place where the full range labels co-exist in full public display.
What labels are you creating for yourself?
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We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates. -Denis Diderot #alliteration
It’s better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you’ll drift in that direction. -Warren Buffett
The timing on this was serendipitous and coincidental as I was just reading in The Story Factor, by Annette Simmons, “As a storyteller you are a vital force in molding the culture of your organization, community, and family.” And, I would add any individual. She goes on to write, “We are defined by the stories we tell. … This is a big responsibility. Are you telling stories of hope and success or repeating victim stories? … Every time you tell a story, you breathe life into it. Most important are the stories you tell yourself.”
Simmons went on to say “…new stories began to build a new culture.” Since individuals are cultures, leverage this.
Back in January I wrote “What Are Your Metaphors Saying About You?“ That was before reading The Story Factoror Ghosh’s post. The bigger question is what do you want your metaphors to be saying about you? You can choose, you know?
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‘If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. Don’t complain.’ — Maya Angelou
You’ve heard this before. I’m not sure it’s origin, but it’s not any time in the recent past. You’ve heard that compliments should be given with specifics. Specifics, as they are referred to here are more broadly defined as “reasons.”
Thinking of this compliments-with-specifics this expanded way helps map over to other such uses. Uses such as Robert Cialdini’s study of saying “because” in addition to a request increases it’s compliance.
Let’s bridge this to persuasion, and specifically, being mindful of the use of Features-Advantage-Benefit. Shorthand, this is WIIFM stuff. The customer’s mindset of “What’s In It For Me.”
Basically, saying a feature without the contingent benefit is like renting out canoes without the paddles to go with them (“them” being the canoes and the customers.) ‘Cause WHO’S GOING TO BUY IT?! That’d be like business without charging for your product or service. What would be the point?
In other words, “thanks” doesn’t cut it. “Thank you for thanking me” cuts right to the core of the what is effective when complimenting someone because it employs the advice of complimenting specific acts.
“Don’t bite the hand that feeds” doesn’t apply here. Why? Human nature applies discretion, I guess.
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Where’s the beef? -Wendy’s commercial #thaumasmus
Don’t sell the steak, sell the sizzle. -Elmer Wheeler #alloiosis
“You know what they say, ‘You don’t sell the steak, you sell the sizzle.’”
- Kramer in The Bizzaro Jerry #a fortiori
Welcome to Smart Start À La Carte. This is your à la carte path to linguistic excellence. Each edition includes an impressive array of ways to make an impression. Some are simple specific spoon-fed examples that you can slide into your daily dialog. Some are a description or definition of a pattern, concept or category of persuasive communication with an example, of course.
“When”| When you want a person to be in the moment you’re talking about, but only they know when that is, there’s not a more direct way linguistically to get them there. Push yourself to build “when” into your language more often.
Most people use “when” when they are asking a question, but the really suave use “when” when they don’t want to tell someone directly to think about something. Why? Resistance, that’s why. Any time you can get someone to come to their own conclusion, they’ll be more conducive to doing it.
e.g. “When you want a person to be in the moment…” Since I know the types of moments I want you to be thinking about and I don’t know when, specifically, those moments are for you, but I know you know, I use “when” to get you to go there on your own.
BTW, using “when,” also presupposes you have these situations, instead of asking you whether or not you have them. Some people, not you, of course, will say “no.” So “when” is also a great way to get a “yes” response by bypassing a possibility of “no.” Much more direct, isn’t it.
So, be direct in a non-direct way.
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Greek Figure of Speech | hypophora: Is their a better way to inoculate? Perhaps, but that question presupposes that hypohora is in the the list of ways to inoculate.
I doubt you consciously know this is called hypophora, anthypophora, or inoculation when you say it naturally, but it works all the same.
Looking back through my posts, apparently I do this quite a bit. And, I’ll continue to, because it’s a great way to communicate conversationally, especially, when you can’t ask questions in realtime while reading my posts.
Would you rather? Have all the questions? Or, have all the answers? Sounds witty and profound doesn’t it?
By Julia Manzerova Julia Manzerova on Flickr.com
, calls it autonomy.
, the 
