Chapter 14 Suggestions are easier to correct than orders

The most basic way to make it easy for people to correct mistakes is to suggest, because the method of suggestion can well maintain a person's dignity, give the other party a sense of self-respect, and prompt him to cooperate with himself instead of confrontation.I've found that "suggestions" tend to work better than "commands".Using "suggestion" will not only not hurt the self-esteem of the other party, but also make him willing to correct his mistakes and accept you. Many years ago, I had the honor of having dinner with Miss Ida Tarbell, a well-known American biographer.I said I was writing this book you're reading, and we started talking about how to convince people.Miss Ida Tarbell told me that when she was writing a biography of Owen Young, she interviewed a person who worked with Owen Young for three years.The man said that he had never heard Yang order anything to his colleagues, and he always used the attitude of "suggestion".Owen Young didn't say "do" or "don't do it", nor did he say "don't do this" or "don't do that", he always said "you can think about...", "you think...".He often said after dictating a letter: "If this sentence is written like this, what do you think?".When he was dictating documents and asked his secretary to record them, he often asked, "Maybe it's better to write this way." He always trusted his assistants and let them do it.He never criticized them or interfered with them, but let them learn from their mistakes.

The suggested method will make it easy for the person to correct the defect, and also maintain the dignity of the person.Give them a sense of self-respect, acceptance of you, and willingness to work with you. Dan Santarelli, a teacher in Pennsylvania, told us about such a thing: Once, a student parked the car in the wrong place, thus blocking the passage of others.A tutor saw it, and when the students were in class, he rushed into the classroom and said rudely: "Whose car is blocking the driveway?" Remove it, or I'll have it dragged away." Yes, the student was wrong, the car was parked where it shouldn't be.But from that day on, the whole class, including the student, was dissatisfied with the tutor, and the tutor's life became difficult because of this.

The instructor could have done otherwise.He could well ask, "Excuse me, whose car is blocking the passage?" Then suggest that the student move the car away so that other cars can get in and out.I think that student will definitely be happy to do this, and the students will naturally not be dissatisfied with him. From this it can be seen that a disrespectful order can only lead to long-lasting grievances, even if the order can be used to correct the obvious mistakes of others. Ewan Mike is the owner of a small factory in Johannesburg, South Africa, which specializes in precision machine parts.Once he received a large order, but the order required Mr. Mike to confirm whether it could be delivered on schedule.Since the factory's production capacity is small and the work schedule has already been arranged, he is not sure about producing such a large batch of goods in a short period of time, but he still accepts the order.

Mike didn't push the workers to rush to work on this order.He just called all the workers together and told everyone the details of the matter.He then asked the workers the following questions. "How can we complete this shipment?" "Anyone else have an alternative?" "Is there any way to reasonably allocate our working hours and work procedures?" The workers expressed their suggestions one after another and insisted on taking the order.They think it's their own business, so they are very positive.In the end, they drove out the shipment as scheduled.

Therefore, in many cases, we don’t want to order someone to do something. The smarter way is to ask others for help in the tone of “please” and “suggestion”, which is more conducive to obtaining the approval of the other party.