miraculously solve everything else.
DO AN ACCUSATION AUDIT
On the first day of negotiating class each semester, I march
the group through an introductory exercise called “sixty
seconds or she dies.” I play a hostage-taker and a student
has to convince me to release my hostage within a minute.
It’s an icebreaker that shows me the level of my students,
and it reveals to them how much they need to learn. (Here’s
a little secret: the hostage never gets out.)
Sometimes students jump right in, but finding takers is
usually hard because it means coming to the front of the
class and competing with the guy who holds all the cards. If
I just ask for a volunteer, my students sit on their hands and
look away. You’ve been there. You can almost feel your
back muscles tense as you think, Oh please, don’t call on
me.
So I don’t ask. Instead, I say, “In case you’re worried
about volunteering to role-play with me in front of the class,
I want to tell you in advance . . . it’s going to be horrible.”
After the laughter dies down, I then say, “And those of
you who do volunteer will probably get more out of this
than anyone else.”
I always end up with more volunteers than I need.
Now, look at what I did: I prefaced the conversation by
labeling my audience’s fears; how much worse can
something be than “horrible”? I defuse them and wait,
letting it sink in and thereby making the unreasonable seem