Individuology
 

July 13, 2010

Intelligent Questions

Much of the media when talking about a reporters questions to an interviewee are heavily focused on whether the Questions were ‘Tough’ or ‘Easy’ questions. Who cares? This, to me, reflects their overwhelming underlying concern with the Gotcha Question! If you can get an interviewee to say something they didn’t want to say – you’ve achieved some kind of feeble power victory. Although both men & women reporters use this vocabulary, it seems to me overly heavy on testosterone.

I’d like to propose, just for the refreshing variety of it, an ‘Intelligent Question’. One which might elicit an answer we never anticipated. Instead of asking for a repeat of their standard stump speech, something unexpected…

Examples:
Intelligent Questions:
What is your strategic goal here?
What would you like to have happen here?
Have these proposed solutions ever worked in the past?
What, if anything, is different about today’s circumstances?
How could we move beyond these differences?

Stupid questions:
Of course, there will always be the really, really, really Stupid questions like: “What magazines do you read”?

What are your favorite Intelligent Questions?

Bob

P.S. This concern has, to my mind, neutralized talk show hosts like Chris Wallace. Early on I really enjoyed him. But now I totally avoid him, as he turns almost every question into a Gotcha question, designed to enhance his popularity, but totally ignore the audience’s desire for new knowledge. He compounds it with his ‘lightening rounds’, a format he created to make sure a respondents response can only be trivial…

Filed under: Individuology — Bob Gorman @ 3:45 pm
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July 4, 2010

from Lull Words to Warning Flags…

In most conversations, we are usually fairly alert. When we hear something that doesn’t make sense to us, we challenge it: “Is this true?”, “Could it even possibly be true?” Now verbal manipulators, whose goal is not to inform you but to persuade you, don’t want you questioning their statements. They want you to swallow them hook, line, & sinker. One technique they use is what I’ll call ‘Lull’ words. These are designed to lull us into a partial sleep, where we simply accept rather than challenge what we hear. Hypnotists call it a state of high suggestibility.

To defend against these Lull words, we can create new personal meanings for them, namely Warning Flags! Then they will work in our favor. Every time we hear the lull word our warning flag goes up and so instead of being highly suggestible, we become highly critical. Now, the more the verbal bully uses the word, and they will use it over & over, their influence over us gets smaller & smaller.

Example #1:
In my last blog entry Solid floor boards… I mentioned the Lull word ‘Clear’. Normally when we hear the word ‘Clear’ we expect something will be – Clear, so our guard goes down, and we become more suggestible. Then the following confusing statement or outright lie goes, unchallenged, right into our subconscious.
But with a little practice, when we hear ‘Clear’ or any of it’s variants like ‘very clear’ or ‘fully & completely clear’ our critical faculties are sharpened, and the verbal bully is defeated by his own techniques!

Example #2:
Obviously…
My favorite user/abuser of this word is Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. He uses it in virtually every White House briefing session. Initially, my brain reacted Oh, what’s coming is obvious, so I can relax, let down my critical guard, and maybe even take a brief nap. Then as I noticed how frequently he uses it, often a clue, I decided to look into the matter more thoroughly. He uses it almost always as the start of a reply to a question from a member of the White House Press Corps. At the level of information, there’s almost never any information, just a complete dodge of the question. At a more emotional level, he seems to be saying something like: ‘Since the answer to your question is obvious to everyone in the world but you, you must be really stupid to ask such a foolish question’. A total bully put-down. Fortunately, I don’t work there, or I might come back with “NO, it’s NOT obvious; if it were, I wouldn’t have asked the question!”

To better understand these subtle verbal attacks & develop defenses against them, transcripts are most helpful. You can read the actual words without the undertones, overtones, and subtle emphasis of live speech. You can even count how often a particular word is used, where it’s used, etc. Fortunately for you, Press Briefings by Press Secretary Robert Gibbs are available at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings. More & more of today’s online media provide transcripts of speeches, interviews, debates etc. so you can get lots of practice.

Are you aware of other Lull words?

Bob
God gave us grapes;
Entrepreneurs gave us wine.

Filed under: Individuology — Bob Gorman @ 10:42 am
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July 2, 2010

Solid floor boards…

In 1991 I was stopping for a traffic light. When I took my foot off the brake petal to rest it on the floor – it went thru, right down to the pavement! At this point, the car was 27 years old, and I had pushed it beyond all reasonable limits. So, I finally agreed to sell it to my local service station, who handled used cars as a side business. I sold it, figuring it would be scrapped for parts, and I moved on to a newer car.

About a month later, while driving home past a small used car lot, I noticed that my old car was there on the lot right up front. Surprised but always curious, I stopped and went up to the dealer. I told him I was looking for a reliable used car. As we walked out to the lot, I expressed an interest in the grey Volvo in the front line (formally mine). He immediately announced that it has a solid floor plate! Now why of the hundreds of features he might have mentioned, did he mention the strength of the floor board? He knew it had a hole in the floor plate.

Enter Psychology 101.
I would later learn over the years that this was not unique, but a frequent expression of guilt when lying. When people know that what they are about to say is false, they often, subconsciously, telegraph to us that they are about to lie. I say subconsciously because if they realized they were doing it they would stop immediately.

Let’s look at some more recent examples:
Let me make it clear…
. followed by an attempt to confuse.
Let me make it very clear…
. . followed by an attempt to confuse, and a blatant lie.
Let me make it fully & completely clear…
. . . followed by a HUGE lie.

Have you ever seen or heard this?

Bob

Filed under: Individuology — Bob Gorman @ 12:41 pm
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