Childlike Positivity

Someone with extensive experience dealing with special needs children was telling me the other day how you should frame a request in a way that doesn’t tell somebody to do something.

As most of us will acknowledge, issuing a military-style command can miserably miss the desired results. Screaming “you’re naughty, don’t do that again!” fails to stem the unwanted behaviour in a similar fashion to yelled instruction, whether to prospect or colleague.

Apparently, two simple ways to start off sentences can avoid this type of disaster:

I like it when …

It’d be nice if …

When I was first introduced to these, it was in the context of not slamming a car door shut (!) and immediately their power in the cauldron of a sales meeting struck me.

It’d be nice if we had verified figures for that …

I like it when we have all the facts to forecast this …

The list is pretty endless.

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