The Less You Speak….

There is a saying –The more you tell, the less you sell.

Whether with my kids or my superiors or colleagues and teammates, whenever I get into an unconscious tendency to tell, talk or preach more, the less persuasive and effective I am.

In the face of challenging situations, our instinct is to react. 

If someone challenges us, we immediately try to defend our position without pausing to understand the question properly. Similarly, if we find someone disagreeing with our point of view, we straightaway jump into spouting our point of view, trying to out-speak the other person- as if speaking more and speaking louder would somehow make our position better. 

A better alternative is always to take a pause and frame your response in the form of open-ended questions. 

“Why do you feel things are not going the right way?” Or “Can you elaborate on why you want me to do this differently?”

Open-ended questions force the other person to speak more, and you, in turn, get to formulate your response better.

Speaking less: This is one area where I have more work to do to get better.