Just A Thought:
Everything will be all right in the end. If it is not all right, it is not yet the end.
Paulo Coelho
How to Get Someone to Do Something They Don’t Want to Do With Just 2 Questions
Nagging is the worst persuasion technique
Repeating your argument in the hopes that it will eventually stick sounds reasonable. But psychological research suggests even clever or polite nagging nearly always backfires. As psychologist Scott Wetzler explained to The Wall Street Journal, “We have a perception that we won’t get what we want from the other person, so we feel we need to keep asking in order to get it.” Instead of persuading people, he says, repeated requests cause them to feel bullied and demeaned. Most people react by digging their heels in further.
A better way to get people to do things they don’t want to do
If you really want someone to change, what you want is to somehow convince them that the new behaviour you’re after was actually their own idea. That way they don’t get miffed from resentment and are more invested in the new way of doing things.
Both BJ Fogg, director of the Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford, and author Laura Vanderkam have suggested crafty tricks to accomplish just that. This latest technique for getting people to do things they don’t want to do is both incredibly simple and incredibly promising.
Ask two simple questions
Pink uses the classic example of a parent trying to convince their teenager to clean their room to illustrate the approach. Instead of storming around with a garbage bag threatening to throw out all their stuff, Pink recommends you start by asking a simple question:
“On a scale of one to 10, where one means I’m not ready at all and 10 means I’m ready to do it right now, how ready are you to clean your room?”
It’s highly likely, Pink claims, that the person will give a low number. But — and this is crucial — not zero. Rather than nagging or lecturing, you then hit them with the second question:
“Why didn’t you pick a lower number?”
Maybe at this point your teen will say something like, “Well, if I had my room cleaner, I’d be able to get to school on time faster and maybe see my friends a little bit more,” Pink suggests. This is persuasion gold. Because what you’ve just done is essentially trick the other person into articulating their own motivation for doing whatever you want them to do. And that is what psychology tells us is necessary for real behaviour change. “We don’t trust information that’s pushed at us nearly as much as we trust what comes out of our own mouth,” Pink explains. “You can hand someone 10 great reasons. One reason they generate themselves will outweigh all of them.”
Where could you use Pink’s simple persuasion trick?
Will this two-question trick to get people to do what they don’t want to do work in every situation? Of course not. If a person is deeply, fundamentally opposed to what you’resuggesting, it won’t work. They don’t have their own rationale for taking the action for you to help them unearth. You can’t nudge people to do things they really, really don’t want to do. These questions also require a level of comfort and equality between the two people doing the talking. I highly doubt an intern would get a great reception if she tried this on the CEO, or a student who tried it on their professor. So some common sense about power dynamics and social vibes is required.