He’s not listening. I’ll try again.
I was on a call with a friend, but he wasn’t listening. I would say something and he would take a full minute to respond within “yeah.” or something similar.
It was obvious that his mind was elsewhere.
From the conversation that we did have, I was able to determine that he was preparing for a debate tournament —while we were “talking”.
It’s a perfect example of getting someone’s stated agreement, but only later realizing they were not able to do what they agreed to.
There are a few techniques for preventing and addressing situations like this.
The first is using no-oriented questions.
Instead of “Is now a good time to talk?”, I could ask: “Is now a bad time to talk?”
I’m looking for a no.
I started using this technique with my friends to great effect. I don’t always get what I want, but I’m more clear about when it’s better to find another day.
I had texted a friend about calling and hadn’t heard back in a couple months. I tried using a no-oriented question to revive the conversation, “Would anything prevent you from talking Thursday evening?”
He responded (which he hadn’t done before), and told me he couldn’t do that time, but suggested an alternate day that worked.
Why did this work?
It’s suggesting a specific time using a no-oriented question.
If you pick up the phone and the first thing you hear is, “Do you like water?”, you rightly smell a trap.
They’re trying to get you to say yes — either to copy your voice for a scam, or so they can try to sell you something.
We’re rightly cautious about what we say “yes” to as a rule. But if I ask someone to say no, their guard tends to come down.
And if they are a people pleaser, they’re less likely to say “no” out of pure politeness as opposed to the “yes”es they hand out freely.
Next time you have a request of someone, trying framing it as a no-oriented question:
Would you mind if…
Would you be opposed to…
Is there anything preventing us from…
Would it be ridiculous if… (Don’t overuse this one, save it for when it matters)
Josh