counterpart when it occurs, and they embrace what you’ve
said. To them, it’s a subtle epiphany.
TRIGGER A “THAT’S RIGHT!” WITH A SUMMARY
After four months of negotiations, Sabaya still refused to
budge. I decided it was time to hit the reset switch.
Benjie had gotten so good at extending the
conversations that you could tell that there were times that
Sabaya must have paced back and forth for an hour before
calling Benjie, trying to figure out how to get what he
wanted. He would call in and say, “Tell me yes or no! Just
yes or no!”
We had to get Sabaya off this war damages nonsense.
No matter what type of questioning, logic, or reasoning we
tried with him, he wouldn’t release it. Threats against
Schilling came and went. We talked him down each time.
I decided that in order to break through this phase we
needed to reposition Sabaya with his own words in a way
that would dissolve barriers. We needed to get him to say,
“That’s right.” At the time, I didn’t know for sure what kind
of breakthrough it was going to give us. I just knew we
needed to trust the process.
I wrote a two-page document that instructed Benjie to
change course. We were going to use nearly every tactic in
the active listening arsenal:
- Effective Pauses: Silence is powerful. We told
Benjie to use it for emphasis, to encourage