NLP At Work : The Difference That Makes the Difference in Business

This kind of question reconnects the speaker with their
thinking about the source of their problems. It also gives you
specific information, rather than leaving you to guess or mind-
read who is implied by the statement.

If someone says “She ignored me,” you could guess what is
meant and you would probably be wrong. The question to ask
is, “How exactly did she ignore you?” Your aim in asking this
question is to find out exactly what behavior the speaker
experienced to lead them to conclude that “she ignored them.”
The speaker is evaluating the behavior in a way that may not
be true. In this case, “ignored” is a vague action.
The question “How did she ignore you?” or “How
specifically did he/she/they do that?” challenges the way you
and others interpret and evaluate actions. Appraisal action
plans seem to spawn vague actions:

❏ Fred needs to improve his time management skills.
❏ Jane will build on her experience as a sales executive.
❏ We are going to develop Harry's ability to delegate.

Such statements are often “copouts,” a way of avoiding
thinking about how exactly the manager and the jobholder will
bring these changes about. Not surprisingly, many of the
suggested changes don't happen. When challenged, the next
most popular copout statement is “We are going to send
him/her on a course!”

Comparative words include more, less, better, worse, fewer,
well, badly—anything that suggests an evaluation against
some yardstick. The difficulty in understanding what is meant
by these occurs when the yardstick is omitted:

PRECISION QUESTIONS 95

VAGUE ACTIONS

Vague verbs are often

“copouts”

COMPARISONS

People don't let you make
decisions.
Customers make life very
difficult.
He said.

Which people exactly?

Which customers are you referring

to?

Who said?