What should be said instead of “fool himself!” Or 4 stories about the power of one question
We are preparing with a colleague slavapankratov a new program for working with people, and decided to add to it a separate large module about the ability to ask questions. Why exactly about this - there are several stories on this topic, how we discovered for ourselves the ability to ask the right questions.
And today, the first series is about a question that allows you not only to redirect a person’s dissatisfaction in a constructive way, but also can serve as the beginning of many years of cooperation between people who initially did not like each other very much.
It all began back in 2007, when I decided to do my first training. From this activity, by the way, then the book “Secrets of managing programmers” was born (laid out for free here in this package of books , requires registration), but this is not the case now. Rather, not quite about that.
In 2007, I accidentally got into training how to do trainings. Honestly, I used to treat such activities as selling air, but I thrust my skepticism into a special skeptic tape holder, and just started doing what the presenter said. Understandably, trying to apply common sense.
')
It is said to make the announcement of the training program - you do. Said, to recruit 50 people for free online training - you recruit. They say not to pay attention to criticism - sigh, drink brandy, try not to pay. They say to hold a 2-week online training - come on, do not hesitate to spend. So they write a book - no question. This is how discs with courses are made - everything is clear.
In general, in the end, after 3 months, I was the author of the training with the herbalife name “As a programmer’s manager, double the salary, make a career and start living”, recorded with the audio course, the text of the book, the first live training and the big question of what to do with it farther.
Then they said that the audio course should be put on sale. I honestly posted it on my page. In the first three months, two buyers arrived. Such a powerful stream of clients called into question the existence of the entire training business. That was rather annoying - because a lot of work was done in the first 3 months, and the main thing was the feeling that the movement was going.
And suddenly, about a miracle, I came across a page, the author of which claimed that he had a mailing list for 100,000 IT specialists. One hundred thousand! IT! Professionals!
The most careful estimations showed that if we manage to come to an agreement, a golden rain will fall on us, we will buy new cars and, perhaps, even a little will remain.
I immediately wrote a powerful letter to the author of the newsletter “they say you have a bride, I have a bridegroom, let's sell my course through your newsletter”, enlisted a desire to try, wrote a letter, the author sent this letter to his newsletter, after which minutes of pleasant waiting began.
After a short time, it became clear that there would be no rain. Not that the gold, even silver will not. And it seems that nothing will happen. In short, 5 sales happened. After that, the author of the list sent me a letter in the spirit: “Well, I thought that nothing would come of it” and left for us to meet in a year.
The author of the mailing was a colleague slavapankratov , who at that time heroically led Kiev Yandex and led the it4business.ru portal, to which the mailing belonged.
Over the next year, I managed to write dozens of articles, speak at a couple of conferences, conduct three paid training sessions, mistakenly take this as a good sign and leave Intel to spend the first four months in free swimming during the 2008 crisis. And most importantly - during this time, I translated my website, made in plain HTML on WordPress. For me, it was such a qualitative leap that I didn’t even begin to change the standard WordPress design (white with blue), because it was at times better than plain HTML that I myself had created.
As it turned out later, a colleague slavapankratov periodically monitored the activities of his unsuccessful companion, and even read my articles. But since the design of WordPress slightly nauseated him, a colleague subscribed to RSS, and read articles through an RSS reader. Until he broke at me.
Apparently, at that moment he was in a bad mood, or in Kiev the weather was not very good, or the day did not set. I don’t know what was there, but I received a letter of approximately the following content:
My first reaction was to explain that the pier itself is a fool. But a person who teaches communications and people management cannot answer like that. As you know, parenting by example is not the best way to bring up. This is the only way.
Therefore, having breathed a little, I gave birth to the following formulation:
Whether a colleague slavapankratov understood that it would be longer to explain to me than to do it myself ... I decided to just help. His version, which became embarrassing that for no reason ran into a virtually stranger whose articles he likes. But then the dialogue turned out like this:
Honestly, there was nothing extra-secret on the site, especially since I had his backups. Therefore, I was not afraid at all for his safety :)
We docked with slavapankratov on Skype, he screwed some designs, we chose the best one. This design still hangs on my website. But the main thing is that we have the first joint successful experience. And this is one of the milestones, after which a group of people becomes a team.
But - the main thing BUT this article. All this happened due to the fact that one of the parties, at a key moment, instead of swearing, said:
OK, WHAT DO WE DO?
And this is the very question that unfolds dissatisfaction in a constructive. You can say: oh well ... Well, we have another story.
The story of real life. In 2012, we decided to hold distributed conferences. The idea was very simple - people gather in groups in different cities. In one of these cities, the speaker speaks, and people listen to him at local venues. And then after the report, they are already actively communicating with the local community.
This idea eventually resulted in a mega-project with distributed conferences and seminars (to which more than 10,000 people came to us from ~ 100 cities), we got hold of studios for HD broadcasts in Kiev and St. Petersburg, from scratch wrote per-minute scripts of dozens of seminars and etc. But the first version was, to put it mildly. far from perfect.
The poor quality of the broadcast, the lack of video in normal quality, the unreadiness of some speakers - in general, there were enough problems. At some point, a fellow at our conference from Donetsk knocked at a slavapankratov colleague on Skype. And immediately began to tell how much $% ^ # we do our conferences. What is this complete * &% $, and especially the translation, which is generally% $ ^ #.
It was that rare day when slavapankratov was in a good-natured mood. Therefore, instead of feedback in the style of: “All the best, goodbye,” he unexpectedly issued:
An hour and a half later, a person brought to phoned a list of 30 points. Explanatory items, how to improve our project. If you think about it, it sounds really unreal. A man from the outside, for free, spent an hour and a half of his time, energy and brain, in order to make our business project better!
And it all ended with the fact that we offered him a job, and a colleague of puzzlew became the technical director of Stratoplan, where in the 2 years of his work he managed to inflict a lot of irreparable benefits to all of us.
And again, the same question solved everything: OK, HOW DO I NEED?
Of course, not every time we ask this question, everything ends in cooperation and a longfamily life together. Here, for example, was the following story:
The story of real life. In 2012, we decided to make certificates to listeners of our online programs. Are we an adult training center? We must have certificates! Especially since we promised them ... But since at that timethere was a mess in the Stratoplane, a complete adhocracy reigned with which we are still fighting, then we approached issuing certificates approximately six months after they were promised.
As a result, we bought such a merry design: spilled milk on a yellow background. (The spouse did not miss the opportunity to sharply clarify whether this was exactly milk.) They put our operations director Natasha, who hammered in the names of hundreds of customers, and sent out certificates to everyone! Hooray, the task is completed, the stone from the soul. It was not there.
We work with IT public. And that means what? That's right, it means, you should always be ready to receive your portion of criticism. In response to our cheerful certificates, we received several letters of approximately the following content:
Damn it, it was pretty annoying to hear that! After all, we honestly did this task, we spent a lot of time on it. And after that, get a negative review in person - I want to explain who the fool is here, to be honest ...
But here it is worth noting that if five people wrote this, then another fifty people thought the same thing, but did not write. And as psychologists tell us, something good will tell 3-5 to their acquaintances, and something bad 7-12. This means that there is a problem - I do not want to upset fifty of my clients at all.
A little exhaling, we wrote this answer:
You will not believe - in response, we received almost SPECIFICATIONS (we work with IT specialists):
It turned out to be very convenient. We just gave this specification to the designer. The one, a little rustling, issued a layout. We sent this layout for approval by the author of the specification. Having received its approval, they redid the certificates for everyone. And sent them again. We received many thanks from those who did not write anything like: “Oh, this is much better - not what you sent last time.”
Since then, we have been living with this design certificate. Later, @puff-w wrote a certificate generator in order not to fill them in manually - in general, everything worked out. Thanks to the same, timely asked question: “OK, and HOW NEED?”
After we repeatedly discovered this question in life, we had a chance to hear about him as a psychological aikido technique as presented by our negotiation expert Dima Kotkin (his video about opposition to pressure was remembered by many habrovans).
The story of real life. At the time of history, Dima worked in the election headquarters of one candidate for governor of St. Petersburg (which candidate won the election). It so happened that the phones of the entire election headquarters were in the public domain. Obviously, there was a leak from the company of the cellular operator.
Dimin chief gave him a task like this:
Dima prepared for the conversation, developed a plan, screwed himself up to fight. Dials a number - on the other side the building manager of the building of clients picks up the phone:
At this moment, Dima says - he felt that there was no longer any desire to fight and beat out discounts. He had already listened attentively, accepted his advice, showed him his respect - sort of like embarrassing to run into now.
Instead of a conclusion. As you understand, the question “Ok. What to do? ”Is not a silver bullet. And surely it does not always work. In our practice, it worked, when it was time to take a pause, to think, to understand why a person was unhappy, and then the question itself taxied into a constructive.
If you had situations when it was possible to switch the discussion by this question - write, we will receive additional confirmation + we will fill up our collection of cases and stories.
If not, then when the next time a person comes to you who is unhappy with something, try asking this question. Perhaps with this person you will then be connected by a successful joint future.
PS In the next article, we think to continue the topic of questions.
And today, the first series is about a question that allows you not only to redirect a person’s dissatisfaction in a constructive way, but also can serve as the beginning of many years of cooperation between people who initially did not like each other very much.
It all began back in 2007, when I decided to do my first training. From this activity, by the way, then the book “Secrets of managing programmers” was born (laid out for free here in this package of books , requires registration), but this is not the case now. Rather, not quite about that.
In 2007, I accidentally got into training how to do trainings. Honestly, I used to treat such activities as selling air, but I thrust my skepticism into a special skeptic tape holder, and just started doing what the presenter said. Understandably, trying to apply common sense.
')
It is said to make the announcement of the training program - you do. Said, to recruit 50 people for free online training - you recruit. They say not to pay attention to criticism - sigh, drink brandy, try not to pay. They say to hold a 2-week online training - come on, do not hesitate to spend. So they write a book - no question. This is how discs with courses are made - everything is clear.
In general, in the end, after 3 months, I was the author of the training with the herbalife name “As a programmer’s manager, double the salary, make a career and start living”, recorded with the audio course, the text of the book, the first live training and the big question of what to do with it farther.
Then they said that the audio course should be put on sale. I honestly posted it on my page. In the first three months, two buyers arrived. Such a powerful stream of clients called into question the existence of the entire training business. That was rather annoying - because a lot of work was done in the first 3 months, and the main thing was the feeling that the movement was going.
And suddenly, about a miracle, I came across a page, the author of which claimed that he had a mailing list for 100,000 IT specialists. One hundred thousand! IT! Professionals!
The most careful estimations showed that if we manage to come to an agreement, a golden rain will fall on us, we will buy new cars and, perhaps, even a little will remain.
I immediately wrote a powerful letter to the author of the newsletter “they say you have a bride, I have a bridegroom, let's sell my course through your newsletter”, enlisted a desire to try, wrote a letter, the author sent this letter to his newsletter, after which minutes of pleasant waiting began.
After a short time, it became clear that there would be no rain. Not that the gold, even silver will not. And it seems that nothing will happen. In short, 5 sales happened. After that, the author of the list sent me a letter in the spirit: “Well, I thought that nothing would come of it” and left for us to meet in a year.
The author of the mailing was a colleague slavapankratov , who at that time heroically led Kiev Yandex and led the it4business.ru portal, to which the mailing belonged.
Over the next year, I managed to write dozens of articles, speak at a couple of conferences, conduct three paid training sessions, mistakenly take this as a good sign and leave Intel to spend the first four months in free swimming during the 2008 crisis. And most importantly - during this time, I translated my website, made in plain HTML on WordPress. For me, it was such a qualitative leap that I didn’t even begin to change the standard WordPress design (white with blue), because it was at times better than plain HTML that I myself had created.
As it turned out later, a colleague slavapankratov periodically monitored the activities of his unsuccessful companion, and even read my articles. But since the design of WordPress slightly nauseated him, a colleague subscribed to RSS, and read articles through an RSS reader. Until he broke at me.
Apparently, at that moment he was in a bad mood, or in Kiev the weather was not very good, or the day did not set. I don’t know what was there, but I received a letter of approximately the following content:
Alexander, they like your articles, but why do you have such a ugly site? Also RSS broke. I don’t really understand how an IT person who ...
My first reaction was to explain that the pier itself is a fool. But a person who teaches communications and people management cannot answer like that. As you know, parenting by example is not the best way to bring up. This is the only way.
Therefore, having breathed a little, I gave birth to the following formulation:
Honestly, I just do not know how to change the design and that with RSS. [It should be noted that it was true.] How can I fix this and put another design?
Whether a colleague slavapankratov understood that it would be longer to explain to me than to do it myself ... I decided to just help. His version, which became embarrassing that for no reason ran into a virtually stranger whose articles he likes. But then the dialogue turned out like this:
- Let's dock in Skype, I'll screw you a couple of designs, and you see if it is or not?
- No problem. Here is the access to the FTP site. In ... Skype will be convenient to call?
- Agreed!
Honestly, there was nothing extra-secret on the site, especially since I had his backups. Therefore, I was not afraid at all for his safety :)
We docked with slavapankratov on Skype, he screwed some designs, we chose the best one. This design still hangs on my website. But the main thing is that we have the first joint successful experience. And this is one of the milestones, after which a group of people becomes a team.
But - the main thing BUT this article. All this happened due to the fact that one of the parties, at a key moment, instead of swearing, said:
OK, WHAT DO WE DO?
And this is the very question that unfolds dissatisfaction in a constructive. You can say: oh well ... Well, we have another story.
The story of real life. In 2012, we decided to hold distributed conferences. The idea was very simple - people gather in groups in different cities. In one of these cities, the speaker speaks, and people listen to him at local venues. And then after the report, they are already actively communicating with the local community.
This idea eventually resulted in a mega-project with distributed conferences and seminars (to which more than 10,000 people came to us from ~ 100 cities), we got hold of studios for HD broadcasts in Kiev and St. Petersburg, from scratch wrote per-minute scripts of dozens of seminars and etc. But the first version was, to put it mildly. far from perfect.
The poor quality of the broadcast, the lack of video in normal quality, the unreadiness of some speakers - in general, there were enough problems. At some point, a fellow at our conference from Donetsk knocked at a slavapankratov colleague on Skype. And immediately began to tell how much $% ^ # we do our conferences. What is this complete * &% $, and especially the translation, which is generally% $ ^ #.
It was that rare day when slavapankratov was in a good-natured mood. Therefore, instead of feedback in the style of: “All the best, goodbye,” he unexpectedly issued:
- Listen, can you make a list, what should we fix? And we'll call you later, and you will tell.
- Uh, give me an hour and a half.
- Agreed.
An hour and a half later, a person brought to phoned a list of 30 points. Explanatory items, how to improve our project. If you think about it, it sounds really unreal. A man from the outside, for free, spent an hour and a half of his time, energy and brain, in order to make our business project better!
And it all ended with the fact that we offered him a job, and a colleague of puzzlew became the technical director of Stratoplan, where in the 2 years of his work he managed to inflict a lot of irreparable benefits to all of us.
And again, the same question solved everything: OK, HOW DO I NEED?
Of course, not every time we ask this question, everything ends in cooperation and a long
The story of real life. In 2012, we decided to make certificates to listeners of our online programs. Are we an adult training center? We must have certificates! Especially since we promised them ... But since at that time
As a result, we bought such a merry design: spilled milk on a yellow background. (The spouse did not miss the opportunity to sharply clarify whether this was exactly milk.) They put our operations director Natasha, who hammered in the names of hundreds of customers, and sent out certificates to everyone! Hooray, the task is completed, the stone from the soul. It was not there.
We work with IT public. And that means what? That's right, it means, you should always be ready to receive your portion of criticism. In response to our cheerful certificates, we received several letters of approximately the following content:
What is it? .. I am ashamed to show this certificate to my employer. :( And you worked on it for half a year? I am disappointed - our student wrote to us.
Damn it, it was pretty annoying to hear that! After all, we honestly did this task, we spent a lot of time on it. And after that, get a negative review in person - I want to explain who the fool is here, to be honest ...
But here it is worth noting that if five people wrote this, then another fifty people thought the same thing, but did not write. And as psychologists tell us, something good will tell 3-5 to their acquaintances, and something bad 7-12. This means that there is a problem - I do not want to upset fifty of my clients at all.
A little exhaling, we wrote this answer:
Good day! Obviously, with this certificate we did not meet your expectations. [This is a pretty obvious thought.]
Please tell me which certificate would you like to receive?
You will not believe - in response, we received almost SPECIFICATIONS (we work with IT specialists):
- The certificate must be serious
- In English
- With course name
- With the number of hours listened
- With captions
- With a stamp
It turned out to be very convenient. We just gave this specification to the designer. The one, a little rustling, issued a layout. We sent this layout for approval by the author of the specification. Having received its approval, they redid the certificates for everyone. And sent them again. We received many thanks from those who did not write anything like: “Oh, this is much better - not what you sent last time.”
Since then, we have been living with this design certificate. Later, @puff-w wrote a certificate generator in order not to fill them in manually - in general, everything worked out. Thanks to the same, timely asked question: “OK, and HOW NEED?”
After we repeatedly discovered this question in life, we had a chance to hear about him as a psychological aikido technique as presented by our negotiation expert Dima Kotkin (his video about opposition to pressure was remembered by many habrovans).
The story of real life. At the time of history, Dima worked in the election headquarters of one candidate for governor of St. Petersburg (which candidate won the election). It so happened that the phones of the entire election headquarters were in the public domain. Obviously, there was a leak from the company of the cellular operator.
Dimin chief gave him a task like this:
“So the phones have already flowed away.” But this is not good of them. Therefore, call the operator, let them give us some discount or will somehow compensate for it.
Dima prepared for the conversation, developed a plan, screwed himself up to fight. Dials a number - on the other side the building manager of the building of clients picks up the phone:
- Good day
- Kind! From you leaked the phone numbers of our headquarters
- Yes, we have already conducted an investigation and found the culprit - this is our employee Maria Ivanova. Now we think how to punish her. That's how you think - how do we punish her?
- ... Well, I do not know, maybe, to fine her?
- Fine - this is an idea, yes. Or maybe dismiss her - what do you think?
- No, well, why fire something right away? She may not specifically ...
- Do you think not to dismiss? I think so too. Then we fine. Thank you for calling.
- ...
At this moment, Dima says - he felt that there was no longer any desire to fight and beat out discounts. He had already listened attentively, accepted his advice, showed him his respect - sort of like embarrassing to run into now.
Instead of a conclusion. As you understand, the question “Ok. What to do? ”Is not a silver bullet. And surely it does not always work. In our practice, it worked, when it was time to take a pause, to think, to understand why a person was unhappy, and then the question itself taxied into a constructive.
If you had situations when it was possible to switch the discussion by this question - write, we will receive additional confirmation + we will fill up our collection of cases and stories.
If not, then when the next time a person comes to you who is unhappy with something, try asking this question. Perhaps with this person you will then be connected by a successful joint future.
PS In the next article, we think to continue the topic of questions.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/249057/
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