In spite of a leader’s attempt to manage his/her power and authority through the nurturing of his/her followers, s/he realizes that from time to time his/her followers will be too frightened to tell the truth.

Second only to the poster What Did You Say? is the power of Presumptive Questions to bring about a truthful response from the follower.

Essentially the presumptive question is where the leader gets the follower to lie to him/her twice in the same question.  As in the case of this poster, when a mother asks, “When you cleaned your room, did you find that toy you were missing?”; she is putting her child in a position of probably needing to lie both about the cleaning of his/her room and about the finding of the toy.  Most of us just aren’t that accomplished as liars to get both done in the same answer so the truth is more forthcoming.

An example from business would be a sales manager asking one of his/her reps, “When you asked the buyer about his decision making process, what did he tell you?”  The presumption of course is that he asked about the decision making process.  The rep now would have to lie about inquiring regarding the process and the details of the buyer’s answer.  This would oftentimes be too daunting of a task for even the most hardened among us.  A leader knows then to wisely use presumptive questions to maintain the gaining of truth from his/her followers.

Categories: Influence

Tags: influence