134 Part II: Winning Friends and Influencing People
group to work with: he needed to be in the same environment where
the exercise had been demonstrated and to conduct it in exactly the way
he’d been shown.
You can find out which of the two preferences a person has in a given con-
text by asking, ‘Why did you choose this job?’, ‘Why did you choose to come
to this party?’, or ‘Why did you choose your particular car?’
Options people may give you a list of their values that were satisfied by
choosing the job, attending the party, or buying the car. You may hear their
reasons for making the choice and the possibilities that the choice opens up
for them.
Procedures people launch into a story or list the steps that got them the job,
how they got to the party, or chose the car. For instance:
My Ford Puma was seven years old and I needed to change it. I bought car
magazines for a few months and studied the pros and cons of comparative
makes but in the end it was knowing that I’d only need to have the car
serviced every 16,000 kilometres that made me decide on this make.
✓ You may hear someone with a mainly options meta program use words
and phrases such as ‘play it by ear’, ‘bend the rules’, ‘possibilities’, ‘let’s
play with this’, and ‘try this other ways’.
✓ You may hear someone mainly at the procedures end of the scale using
expressions such as ‘follow the steps’, ‘obey the rules’, ‘step by step’,
and words like ‘first’, ‘second (and so on)’, and ‘finally’.
Delving Into the Internal/External
If you trust your judgement when making decisions or knowing that
you’ve done a good job, you operate at the internal end of the scale for this
meta program.
If you need feedback from other people to know how well you’ve done, you
probably have more of an external preference.
The crux of this meta program is whether the location for motivating your-
self, judging your actions, and making decisions lies within you or with
other people.
Children have an external frame of reference, which develops as they absorb
the conscious and unconscious teachings of their parents and teachers.
Maturity, however, usually shifts this reference point to becoming a more
internal one, as you gain greater understanding of yourself and therefore
trust your judgements and decisions more.
