Tuesday, October 31, 2023
A long, long time ago my son was crying about something. Off-handedly I told him, “Stop it, crying never helps.”
He stopped and thought for a minute. “What does help?” he asked.
And that’s been one of my key coaching and consulting tenets ever since: Don’t tell people what they should stop doing, tell them what they need to
start doing.
Instead of “Stop cutting off people in mid-sentence,” tell them, “Take the extra time to hear someone’s full opinion so that you can evaluate their thinking and future developmental needs. You can’t do that with half a sentence.”