Ten Questions to Get the Audience to 'Yes'
Stewart Bewley
The language of the entourage is judgement and shame. They crowd around you, giving you impossible goals to measure up to. You have to be able to say 'no' to them so you can influence your audience and move them towards a 'yes' to you and your proposals. Here are ten questions you can ask after every meeting, or at least at the end of each day. It takes five minutes and in the long run will save you a huge amount of time. The first five are all about you, your body and your voice, the final five are all about the other.
- Did I plant my feet on the floor as I began?
(That helps to create a strong start) - Did I keep planting my feet to ground myself?
(This keeps you fully present) - Was my camera angle correct?
(15 degrees above my head) - Did I breathe?
(If you breathe consciously it sends a message to your body 'I am here') - Did I speak in short sentences?
Last June I spent a week in Seattle with Microsoft and one of the secrets I told to 2,000 new hires about influencing your audience was this: speak in short sentences! It is so simple. It requires you to constantly assess yourself.
Steve Covey describes people as an onion, an onion they need to unpeel themselves. So we need to listen well to help them do that. The more they unpeel the easier it is to get to the heart of them and not their entourage. They will feel connected. We need to give our audiences air to speak, and that starts with giving them air in our own heads, not just outwardly. If we ask unhelpful questions, if we probe them, interrupt them and finish their sentences for them, we are not letting them unpeel. The only long-term effective way to listen well is to playback the answer they have given. 99% of the time, after you have played back what they said, they will carry on speaking, revealing something else, unpeeling another layer. Ask yourself the following questions and these will help you let them unpeel, give them air and be a better listener.
- Did I allow time for them to finish their sentence?
- Did I playback/re-cap at least once?
- What was the one thing they said that stuck to me?
- At the end did I summarise what the meeting was about?
- Did I speak more or less?
(The rule according to SPIN selling is 80% listen, 20% talk)
Very few people are going to coach you to a higher standard of listening and speaking but they will expect you to do it. I hope these ten questions help you to create good reflective habits of your own and your own questions. I would love to hear what your questions are – so let me know. They will get you to a whole new level of listening, speaking and influencing!
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