What is the most effective psychological “trick”you use? I think it's called the “hairy arms” trick.
When I'm about to hand in the first versionof a piece of work, I will leave a small but noticeable error that's easy to fix.
It's always the error that my boss noticesand suggests changing, which means that he/she feels involved in the process but also doesn'tnitpick for something arbitrary to criticize.
I wish I knew about this trick when I hadto write short medical segments for the local news.
If I showed my editor something that I feltwas perfect he would make me move sentences around for an hour and end up almost exactlywhere we started.
Predictability means safe.
I’m a school teacher with a high numberof students with trauma.
Major issues while getting my routines established, but they’re now super warm to me because I’m reliably predictable.
I have two outfits that I alternate, a mon/wed/friand a tue/thurs.
Same greeting at the start of class, samestart to every class etc.
Have very transparent discipline too, theyknow exactly what gets a detention and what doesn’tIf they can predict what will happen, they feel safe because they’re in control ofchoosing their outcome for the day.
Children, and people, like feeling in control.
Recently, my fianceé's cousin told us abouthow she doesn't give her children the option of whether or not to have veggies.
She gives them the option of how much theyget.
Usually something like, “Would you like 1helping of green beans, or 2?”.
Of course, they happily choose 1 (sometimes2.
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weird kids haha) and they do it with a big smile on their face like they just gotaway with something lol.
Talk softer so people either de-escalate orpay more attention.
This.
There is a 16 year age gap between myselfand my youngest sister.
When she got to the tantrum age, I would sitnear her and start talking quietly.
If she wanted to hear me, she had to stopthrowing a tantrum.
Saved my teenaged sanity.
This works every time.
I honestly started doing it after watchingMeryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada.
You can obliterate people without raisingyour voice.
And the effect is much more significant becausethere is no aggression in tone or body language.
Just words.
Words spoken softly but with brutal straightforwardness.
Remember people's names.
Greet them by it when you see them, even ifthat's the only time this week you might.
People really like it when someone remembersthem.
It's easy credit.
I do this with customer service reps.
I write down their name so it’s in frontof me when I need it.
I use their name at the pivotal point in thecall.
“Tony, that’s great, thank you.
One last thing.
Would it be possible to lower the monthlyrate as well?”.
I had a neighbor in an apartment buildingI'd chatted to once and exchanged names, then saw her from time to time.
Every time she'd say “Hi “name”, sometimesthat was all, sometimes we'd talk a tiny bit.
I'd forgotten her name after the first meeting, and it was way too long to admit I didn't know her name.
Point is, every time she said my name I dieda little inside.
So some people may like it, or you may bekilling them.
Fair warning.
Fake it till you make it can really trickyourself into doing something you didnt want to do.
For example, I really don't feel like startingon my report, let me just pretend that I'm interested in doing it, look over the dataand act like I was getting any information out of them.
And then next thing I know I was balls deepinto my report.
My wife utilizes this technique in bed.
We're still waiting on the make it part.
I literally gave my classmates treats so thatthey would stop being bullies.
It actually worked.
Edit: gave them a treat every time they didsomething nice.
I even did a survey for a class exercise tosee what everyone's favourite lollie was.
I genuinely liked giving things, but I wasjust told I was “buying friends”.
In my school you just couldn't win no matterwhat.
Like the old trick, someone whistles.
If you look for who whistled you were highon yourself, and if you didn't, you were a prude.
“I’m not nervous, I’m excited” – nervekiller every time!!! To add to this, the body gets exactly thesame signals from the brain with stress and excitement; high heart rate and blood pressure, bit of adrenaline, put into a state of ‘high alert’.
The difference is whether your brain goesthis will be good for me or bad for me.
I’m going to try this.
This actually works.
Heard about it a year ago and have been regularlyusing it when anxiety starts to creep in when im about to meet clients.
Fear is excitment without the breath.
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I wouldn't call it a trick, but empathizingwith someone goes a long way.
If you can explain their perspective backto them in a way that actually proves you understand it, you have a much better chanceof getting them to listen to your perspective.
My line of work mostly deals with frustratedcustomers, and I pride myself on being able to empathize and relate to them – it's givenme a huge edge over my less empathic colleagues, and also means I deal with a lot less grief.
I think a lot of the time people just wantto be heard and understood & it builds their trust in you & makes everything else easy.
I scored a 3 out of 80 on an empathy testso I don't think this will work for me.
Yep.
I've attended a lot of workshops where oneof the ground rules is “Seek first to understand, and then be understood.
” Silence.
It's so powerful.
If I want to find out more about what someoneis really thinking or feeling- instead of nodding along or using some verbal filler, I just don't say or do anything.
It's amazing how people respond.
So often as people we interrupt each otherbefore things reach a deeper level.
Plus, some people find silence uncomfortableand need to fill it.
I've found out so much this way.
More effective if you nod slightly or shiftyour weight forward a touch and freeze right as you start the silence.
You’re starting a body language affirmationand then stop halfway through it when they stop talking.
Huge psychological pressure on top of thesilence that they need to continue; had a journalist show me and use it on me.
So hard to not overshare.
I worked in recruiting for years and thisworks like a dream.
You can find out so much about a person byjust letting them talk.
I get what I call 'verbal vomit' when someoneasks me a question and doesn't say anything in response after I answer.
I can hear the words coming out and mentallyI'm like “stop, just stop talking, please for the love of God bite your lip and shutup” and they just look at me deadpan and I keep blathering.
Ugh.
I hate it.
“Help me to understand” (Or some variationthereof.
) I work in an office and while I hate 99% ofthe dumb corporate buzzword kool-aid that gets passed around, I honestly feel like thatphrase has a lot of merit.
On a daily basis I'm having to collaborateon projects, pick up where someone left off, and in some cases fix an problem another co-workercaused.
It's really easy to start treating differencesin procedure or simple human error as malicious or lazy when you're neck deep in it for 40+hours a week.
“Why did you do it this way?” or “what's thepoint of this?” may be more direct, but I found it puts the other party on the defensiveand they spend more time trying to avoid making me upset than actually reaching a resolution.
Asking them to collaborate and help me tounderstand how a decision was made or why a process was done the way it was is muchmore collaborative and productive.
As an added bonus I sometimes get a good insightinto an unexpected solution that I wouldn't have thought of and my co-workers don't seeme as a growling ogre they can't come to for help.
Dealing with kids is all about distractions.
If a kid is fussy, describe the area of aninvisible device that you installed that prevents fussiness.
Go into detail about how you installed allthe latest features and specify the edges and corners.
confusion will occupy a kid's attention.
Doesn't want to eat — that's a challengerace — focus on the competition, not the food.
“I'm bored” — ask them if chopping off theirtoes will help with boredom.
Incentives are how you sell the product.
Stole this from a friend, seems to work betterwith boys.
Any minor injury to a limb, guess we'll haveto chop it off and replace it with “insert cool limb”.
Sore arm, let's get some bear paws you'llbe super strong.
Sore feet, replace that with kangaroo feetyou'll be able to jump crazy high.
Sore neck imagine if we can replace that agiraffe neck.
Ladies and gentlemen! A personal favorite of mine is the speak softlymethod (patent pending) If you end up in an argument and the otherparty is yelling, tone down your own volume slowly.
Dont speak too softly too fast or you'll beseen as weak, dont be too loud for too long or your back to where you started, just lowerthe tone of conversation down to an acceptable level.
Maintain a calm and collected demeanor andin no time at all your yelling match will have turned into a more or less amicable debatewhere you can resolve the issue.
(P.
S.
If you want to grab someone's attention viaemail, comment, etc, paragraphs are key.
No one likes reading long blocks of text.
Keep it short to begin and then people willbe hooked so you can make the paragraphs a little longer.
).
