Knowing how to not “paint oneself into a corner” – giving yourself no options is a skill that a leader seeks to acquire.

Most of the time the leader avoids painting himself/herself in the corner by asking more questions than they make statements. A good rule of thumb is that a leader needs to be asking questions 70% of the time and making statements only 30% of the time when engaging with his/her followers.

There are three types of questions that are particularly helpful:

When asked a question by a follower, the “why’ question from the leader seeks to uncover the motivation for the question before s/he answers the question. We are so conditioned to answer a question when asked that we can oftentimes forget how wise it might be to ask “Why did that question come up at this time?” before answering. It can prevent the leader from stepping into some unforeseen quicksand.

A negative question such as “I don’t suppose you’d like to purchase this?” enables the leader to answer “I didn’t think so” to a “no” response or “I thought you might be ready” to a “yes” response. The leader never goes into a corner with a negative question.

Finally never doing anything without knowing what happens next keeps the leader out of a corner. When asked to commit to a course of action, the leader wisely asks “If I choose to commit, what happens next?” or “If I choose not to commit, what happens next?” helps clarify the future and keeps the leader out of a corner.

Posters in this series that support this theme are the posters What Happens Next and Give Advice By Asking Questions.

Categories: Negotiating

Tags: negotiation