Ask for More by Alexandra Carter

Author:Alexandra Carter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2020-05-05T00:00:00+00:00

Looking Through the Window

In the Window part of the book, you’re going to ask five important, open, game-changing questions of someone else, and write down the answers. But never fear: I’m not sending you in unprepared. The following five tips will help you use this part of the book to get the most out of any negotiation.

TIP ONE: LAND THE PLANE. People sometimes get nervous to ask open questions, since they feel, and are indeed, quite different from the usual types of questions we ask. Perhaps you’re nervous to ask a question to which you don’t yet know the answer. Or maybe you’re intimidated by the thought of the silence waiting for you at the end.

But have courage. Land the plane. Meaning, you ask the question and… that’s it.

So often people will ask a great question and then do the verbal equivalent of keeping the plane in the air while circling the airport, like, “Tell me about your kids… I have a couple of my own. How old are they?” You’ve just turned an open question (“Tell me about your kids”) into a closed one that at most will get you a word or two answer (“How old are they?”). Don’t wreck an open question by adding a ton of extra words, such as: “So, Sarah, what are your thoughts on our offer? You asked why the base is lower than a few of our competitors, but I think you’ll see that our compensation structure allows for a lot of growth, and then there’s our corporate culture… Have you seen our professional development programs?” If you were Sarah, would you even remember the original, open question? Doubtful. In this book, I want to teach you to steer decisively. When you ask these Window questions, don’t add more; pose each question and wait. Land the plane.

TIP TWO: ENJOY THE SILENCE. Silence can be uncomfortable. So it can be scary to ask an open question, only to be met with a few seconds of silence in response. Lots of people jump back in to fill that silence with a narrow question, or worse, a judgment. It takes bravery to ask a question like the ones you’re going to read in this Window section. You’re asking big, open questions. Give the other person, whether they are sitting in front of you or talking to you over the phone, time to consider their answer. For the listener, silence can be a gift.

An exercise I teach in my negotiation workshops requires people to pair off, with one person speaking for three minutes, and the other listening silently. Many people cannot stay silent for three minutes. Often, they don’t even know they are talking, they just do it out of habit! One executive, realizing he had failed to stay silent for a mere 180 seconds, responded by literally clapping both his hands over his mouth in embarrassment. “I know I talk over people,” he said. “But I never realized how bad it was. This stops now.” For the rest of the three-day workshop, I saw him sitting in silence when people spoke to him.

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