So leading questions are… let’s say my partner Olga was listening to this conversation, and she would say to me something like, Todd, do you think it really was a good idea for you to talk as much as you did on that podcast? Now, we all know what she’s saying. It ain’t a question, man. It’s a point of view, barely disguised as a question. But this is what people do all all the time. When they’re worried about how somebody is going to respond to what they say, they frame it in the form of a phony question. Because if I come out and say what I think, well, it’s going to piss the person off. They’re going to get defensive insert reason Let me make it their idea. Well, one, we’re not so easily fooled anymore. The days of how to win friends and influence people, you say my name a few times, and now I’m going to buy the car. I mean, those long past, man. But also, two, what we see from the research is that when people use leading questions as an attempt to avoid upsetting people, it guarantees people are going to get upset.
Because people don’t like being controlled and steered. They start thinking, If you have a view, why don’t you just tell it to me? That’s a leading question. The point is, if you’re going to ask a question, ask a real question. If you’ve got something to say, then say it. But don’t confuse the two things and mix them up. Keep them pure. That’s leading questions, something to avoid. Watch out for doing it. Don’t you think? If I would have thought that, I would have said it. Another one is jumping to action. Is watch out for this. If you find yourself early in a conversation saying, I think we need to. You’re suggesting a solve for a problem that more likely than not has not been discussed, and even if it has been discussed, there’s no agreement there’s a And people don’t take action to problems that they don’t agree actually exist. One of the conflict avoidance mechanisms or the control mechanisms that people use is they start talking about solutions before anybody has agreed on what the problem to be solved is. That’s a classic one. And that creates a ton of rework because if people don’t agree, then no matter how good your idea is, nobody’s going to take action on it.
Then you’re going to have to have numerous Groundhog Day conversations talking about the same bloody thing over and over again and wondering why you’re not getting a good result. This is classic. Here. And then the third one is piling, which is what I’m doing right now. Making numerous points, one on top of another, it’s the shock and all strategy. The more I throw at you, the more likely I am to win the argument. And it just doesn’t work. Usually, you got to feed in aspects of the truth as you see it one snackable bite at a time. Because otherwise, then people won’t pay attention to the one thing. You end up distracting them by giving them too many things to pay attention to.
