The Little Red Book of Wisdom by Mark DeMoss

Author:Mark DeMoss
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2011-03-07T00:00:00+00:00

FOUR POWERFUL PHRASES

I teach my children that words have powers. “Stupid” and “shut up,” for instance, close doors. “Please” and “thank you” open them. As my children grow up and move into the world, I’ll also teach them a few phrases that, in my experience, can unbolt shut doors, leave open doors ajar, and cut passages where none existed. For example:

“IN MY OPINION . . .”

My field is public relations, and my role is to dispense counsel, but the advice I give often comes down to opinion, and I tell my clients that. I wish we heard those three words more often from our leaders, but I hope you always hear them from me.

Does saying “in my opinion” show weakness? On the contrary, in my opinion, those three words signal strength—for what I’m about to say, I take full responsibility. That shows confidence, and listeners take their cues from the signals we send. In fact, the more certain I am about something, the more likely I am to preface or conclude my words with “in my opinion.”

“WHAT DO YOU THINK?”

In the greatest business textbook ever written, one proverb says, “Where there is no counsel, the people fall; but in the multitude of counselors there is safety” (Proverbs 11:14 NKJV). The best counsel givers, in other words, are counsel seekers.

As president of a small, twenty-plus-employee PR firm, my judgment and decisions are colored by the counsel of relevant people—employees, friends, industry peers, my wife—and sometimes counselors less obviously relevant. Only arrogance would overlook advice because of a person’s job title.

In years of work with more than a hundred organizations, I have often seen leaders make major decrees or decisions without the benefit of much more than a counsel of one. Certainly a leader is free to override advice—ultimately he or she is left with final judgment— but to form that judgment without seeking information, news, and opinions, and without listening to the dissenting side . . . well, the wisdom of one is not as wise as it could be.

“LET ME ASK YOU A QUESTION”

“The stupidity of people comes from having an answer to everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything.” In an interview on his writing, award-winning Czechoslovakian author Milan Kundera parted the curtain on his technique and offered a tip to everyone who wants the full story: he asks questions. The writer continued, “It seems to me that all over the world people nowadays prefer to judge rather than to understand, to answer rather than to ask, so that the voice of the novel can hardly be heard over the noisy foolishness of human certainties.”

Someone else put it this way: knowledge has right answers; wisdom has right questions. So let me ask you something: do you employ the power of a question?

Humanly speaking, it is almost impossible to disregard a good question. Just the phrase “Let me ask you . . .” arrests attention. Try it in your next meeting. Used wisely (only

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