Questions are one of the most powerful forms of verbal communication that a person has at their disposal. When you are in situations where you want or need to persuade someone, the saying really is true “you get more flies with sugar”. Well, in the delivery section of your communication tool box, questions really are the proverbial “sugar”. Gentle, tactful and skillful persuasion via questioning is MUCH more effective than anything other method available to you.
What about flattery you ask? What we are speaking about in this post is structure and form, not content. Flattery is content… But since you asked, flattery is nice in small and judicious doses, however too much places you into a weak and unappealing category to the other party. Brown nosing, sucking up, pathetic… what ever you would like to call it, it is traditionally not amenable to establishing a strong, egalitarian relationship between two parties. As such, this greatly limits the scope of flattery’s power. In any relationship, it is IMPERATIVE to have an equal footing with your partner as with out it you will not achieve your personal goals.
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So how come you can’t push the proverbial string? Tomorrow we will talk a bit about freedom and personal validation to demonstrate what happens mentally when humans are presented with directionally “toward” communications and why questions help you to avoid this. To learn more about questions and other forms of effective communication, please peruse my blog, The Communication Expert Blog or try me on Skype.
