By making your counterparts articulate implementation in their own words, you will convince them that the final solution is their idea. And that’s crucial. People always make more effort to implement a solution when they think it’s theirs. Two key questions you can ask to push your counterpart to think they are defining success their way: How will we know we’re on track? How will we address things if we find we’re off track? When they answer, you summarize their answers until you get a “That’s right.” Then you’ll know that they’ve bought in. –Never split the difference, p.169 Continue reading Ask a calibrated question to force your counterpart to consider and explain how a deal will be implemented.

Here are some great standbys: What about this is important to you? How can I help to make this better for us? How would you like me to proceed? What is it that brought us into this situation? How can we solve this problem? What’s the objective? / What are we trying to accomplish here? How am I supposed to do that? –Never split the difference, p.154 Continue reading Calibrated questions should start with “what” or “how”

The questions should make it look like you’re asking for help. Ex: You need new clothes. Instead of telling the salesclerk what you “need”, you can describe what you’re looking for and ask for suggestions. Then, once you’ve picked out what you want, instead of hitting them with a hard offer (and falling into confrontation), you can just say the price is a bit more tham you budgeted and ask for help with one of the greatest-of-all-time calibrated questions: “How am I supposed to do that?” The critical part of this approach is that you really are asking for help … Continue reading Calibrated questions are the best way to transform confrontational showdowns into joint problem-solving sessions.