■ 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?The implication of any well-designed calibrated question
is that you want what the other guy wants but you need his
intelligence to overcome the problem. This really appeals to
very aggressive or egotistical counterparts.
You’ve not only implicitly asked for help—triggering
goodwill and less defensiveness—but you’ve engineered a
situation in which your formerly recalcitrant counterpart is
now using his mental and emotional resources to overcome
your challenges. It is the first step in your counterpart
internalizing your way—and the obstacles in it—as his own.
And that guides the other party toward designing a solution.
Your solution.
Think back to how the doctor used calibrated questions
to get his patient to stay. As his story showed, the key to
getting people to see things your way is not to confront
them on their ideas (“You can’t leave”) but to acknowledge
their ideas openly (“I understand why you’re pissed off”)
and then guide them toward solving the problem (“What do