Organ decision

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STORIES: FUEL YOUR MIND

THOUGHTS WORTHY OF KEEPING

WORDS TO TURN A

CONVERSATION AROUND AND THOSE TO AVOID

CHOOSE YOUR

WORDS CAREFULLY

AND YOU CAN GET

SOMEONE TO

CHANGE THEIR MIND

OR SEE YOU IN A

NEW LIGHT. The Guardian: Rosie Ifould

It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it – isn’t it? According to language analysts, we may have this wrong. ‘‘We are pushed and pulled around

by language far more than we realise,” says Elizabeth Stokoe, professor of social interaction at Loughborough University. Stokoe and her

colleagues have analysed thousands of hours of recorded conversations, from customer services to mediation hotlines and police crisis negotiation.

They discovered that certain words or phrases have the power to change the course of a conversation.

Some of these words are surprising and go against what we’ve been taught to believe. (For example, in a study of conversations between doctors

and patients, evidence showed that doctors who listed “options” rather than recommended “best-interest” solutions, got a better response, despite

the suggestion from hospital guidelines to talk about the best interests of the patient.) But, from conversation analysts such as Stokoe to FBI

negotiators and communication coaches, we’re learning which words are likely to placate or persuade us. Here are some of the biggest dos and

don’ts.

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Reading: 7 Minutes FUEL YOUR MIND STORIES by POCKET

F O O D F O R T H O U G H T

DO USE: WILLING

One of the first words Stokoe came across that

seemed to have a magical effect on people was

“willing”. “It started with looking at mediation

telephone calls,” she explains – that is, calls to

or from a mediation centre, where the aim was

to persuade people to engage with mediation to

resolve their conflicts. “When they’re in a

dispute, people usually want a lawyer or the

police. They don’t really want mediation, so

they’re quite resistant.”

Stokoe found that people who had already

responded negatively when asked if they

would like to attend mediation seemed to

change their minds when the mediator used the

phrase, “Would you be willing to come for a

meeting?” “As soon as the word ‘willing’ was

uttered, people would say: ‘Oh, yes, definitely’

– they would actually interrupt the sentence to

agree.” Stokoe found it had the same effect in

different settings: with business-to-business

cold callers; with doctors trying to persuade

people to go to a weight-loss class. She also

looked at phrases such as “Would you like to”

and “Would you be interested in”. “Sometimes

they worked, but ‘willing’ was the one that got

people to agree more rapidly and with more

enthusiasm.”

What to say Deploy it when you’ve already

been met with some resistance: “I know it’s

not your first choice, but would you be willing

to meet on Friday?”

DO USE: SPEAK

The word “talk” seems to make a lot of people

resistant to conversation. “We observed this

when looking at interactions between police

negotiators and suicidal persons in crisis,”

Stokoe says. Negotiators who used phrases

such as, “I’m here to talk” met with more

resistance. “Persons in crisis would often

respond with something like: ‘I don’t want to

talk, what’s the point in talking?’”

When the verb was “speak”, however, persons

in crisis were more likely to open up the

conversation or offer new information.

Why the difference? Stokoe suspects it’s

because the cultural idioms associated with

“talk” cast a negative shadow. “‘You’re all

talk; talk is cheap; you talk the talk, but don’t

walk the walk’: we seem to think that people

who want to talk don’t place much value on

what we’re saying.”

There was a similar difference in the

effectiveness of the word “sort”, as opposed to

“help”. “Let’s sort it” feels much more direct

and active. “There’s no point in trying to fake a

softly-softly relationship with someone in

crisis. Better to be practical and direct.”

What to say If you really want someone to

engage with you, use, “Can I speak to you

about this?”, rather than “Can we talk?”

DO USE: HELLO

“‘Hello’ is a really important word that can

change the course of a conversation,” Stokoe

says. “It’s about how you respond to people

who are what we call ‘first movers’ – people

who say something really critical, apropos of

nothing.” It might be the work colleague who

steams up to your desk with a complaint or the

neighbour who launches into a rant about

parking as you’re putting out the bins. “What

do you do with that person? Rather than

respond in the same manner, saying something

nice, such as a very bright ‘Hello!’, derails and

socialises that other person a little bit.”

What to say Use it when you want to resist

getting into a confrontation. “You have to be

careful not to sound too passive-aggressive,”

Stokoe says, “but just one friendly word in a

bright tone can delete the challenge of the

conversation.”

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Reading: 7 Minutes FUEL YOUR MIND STORIES by POCKET

F O O D F O R T H O U G H T

DON’T USE: YES, BUT

If you’re stuck in a circular argument and

you’re convinced that you’re the reasonable

one, try listening out for how often you both

use the phrase “Yes, but”.

“We all know the phrase ‘Yes, but’ really

means ‘No, and here’s why you’re wrong’,”

says Rob Kendall, author of Workstorming. A

conversation expert, Kendall sits in on other

people’s meetings as an observer. The phrase

“Yes, but” is one of the classic warning signs

that you’re in an unwinnable conversation, he

says. “If you hear it three or more times in one

discussion, it’s a sign that you’re going

nowhere.”

What to say Kendall advises shifting the

conversation by asking the other person

“What’s needed here?” or, even better, “What

do you need?” “It takes you from what I call

‘blamestorming’ to a solution-focused

outcome.”

DON’T USE: HOW ARE

YOU?

Stokoe uses her research to work with groups

on improving their communication, including

groups of business-to-business cold callers.

“One of the main messages of that work was to

tell people to stop building rapport,” she says.

“Salespeople are trained to do small talk at the

beginning of calls, but we were able to show

with our research that it doesn’t work.

“Not only is there no evidence of reciprocal

rapport-building, but also you’re more likely to

irritate the other person and extend the length

of that call.”

It’s not so much that the “How are you?” is

rude, but rather that it’s false. In real life, no

one asks “How are you today?” in that cold-

call way, if they know the person and

genuinely want an answer to the question. We

would rather they got to the point.

What to say The next time you have to speak

to someone you don’t know, don’t be overly

friendly. Stick to being polite.

DON’T USE: JUST

In 2015, Ellen Leanse, a former Google

executive, wrote a LinkedIn blog about the

way men and women use the word “just”’. In

the blog, which went viral, she claimed that

women use it far more often than men. “It hit

me that there was something about the word I

didn’t like. It was a ‘permission’ word – a

warm-up to a request, an apology for

interrupting, a shy knock on the door before

asking: ‘Can I get something I need from

you?’”

Leanse asked her co-workers to have a

moratorium on the word “just”, banning it from

their communication. She claimed the

difference in how confident people felt was

noticeable after a few weeks. Her evidence

wasn’t scientific, but, even so, “just” is one of

those words that has a habit of creeping into

our emails and spoken conversations. Fine if

you’re trying to be placatory, but if you want to

have more authority, lose the “just”.

What to say Try your own experiment over

the next week. Read your emails back before

you send them and count the number of times

that “I just wanted to” or “Could I just” appear.

Edit them out and see the difference in tone.