2019 HPRCT Conference

You may not even know you are doing it.   Language is tricky and influence can happen in an instant. Literally, one word can make a difference.   Find that difficult to believe?   Join me for this 50 minute presentation on four ways you may be influencing your clients, interviewees, co-workers, subordinates, and peers.   I like to run a high energy, interactive presentation. If sitting back for a “point and click” is your preference, this may not be the presentation for you. Please bring your attention, your curiosity, and perhaps even a willingness to share examples from your own life.   An interviewer’s language cannot determine an interviewee’s response, but it is likely to influence their response. While interviewees are not bound to follow a question, the nature of language, social convention, the context of the interview and certain ‘cognitive biases’ add to the likelihood that an interviewee will (consciously or otherwise) restrict themselves to answering within semantic frames and presuppositions set by the question.   It is often assumed that leading questions are obvious and easy to avoid. On the contrary, learning is more subtle and prevalent than is usually imagined, and because of this, leading questions and statements are often used unwittingly.   The first step in having some choice over the use of leading or non-leading questions, is to understand the four most common types of leading.  Knowing when you are influencing others is a high-level calibration. It is not about reading people and noting their responses, it is much more subtle and happy to say, easier than that.   You don’t even need to have good people skills to know the difference. Now isn’t that a relief?  Based on a linguistic model and steeped in cognitive science Clean Language, its principles and simple questioning structure, can help you avoid unintentional influence on others.    To ask really good questions - questions that are powerful, useful, and appropriate, and NOT leading - you need a minimum of two things:   The ability to listen accurately Know the four most common ways of leading  Empirical research shows that even a single word (especially a metaphor) or presupposition can materially ‘lead the witness’.    Objectives  The presentation will provide background information and practical activities for participants to learn: (1) where clean language comes from, (2) four most common ways of ‘leading’ (3) how to use the most useful classically clean questions.  You will:  Learn the difference between Open/Closed, and leading questions.   The four most common ways of leading and how to avoid them in the future.   Experience Clean Questions in action as Facilitating Cleanly is modeled by the presenter and see how one can use this methodology live with an interactive group.  
Be given a simple questioning model that you can begin using right away - helping you avoid unintentional influence in four easy questions.