This might be obvious to you but most people have pride.
Most people have an ego and the reality is that you are very rarely going to advance your cause through
criticism, argumentation, and complaining.
For example, Abraham Lincoln who is widely considered now to be America's greatest statesman was as a
young man a very outspoken critic of many things.
Like a lot of us when he was younger he had a lot of opinions and he wanted to share them with everyone.
And there was a politician in his region called James Shields.
And in 1842 Abraham Lincoln published this scathing letter of James Shields saying he was corrupt and
all this stuff.
And of course James Shields was very offended.
And so what he did is he challenged Abraham Lincoln to a duel.
And Abraham Lincoln because of the time honored rules required that he accept the dual challenge and
Abraham Lincoln had to prepare to duel with this man and was literally going to the duel.
When their friends intervened and said You guys cannot kill each other.
But Abraham Lincoln learned a really powerful lesson at that point and that lesson is that you rarely
advance your cause by calling somebody out and criticizing people especially in public.
So here's the scenario where I want you to think how you would react.
So let's say that Sandra is in charge of launching a new social media campaign for team that you're
on and you happen to believe that the channel that she has chosen is not the right channel.
For example let's say she said we're going to launch this channel on Instagram and you think you know
what I really think that that's better to launch on Twitter and you have data to support what you think
is right.
OK.
How would you propose this to Sandra?
How would you tell her that she's going down the wrong path?
OK so here's how I would tell Sandra.
First of all I wouldn't tell Sandra.
I would ask the right questions.
One thing that we teach in our advanced management training course is that people tend to think like
this.
They see some data, they process that data to try to turn it into information, and then they form their
belief.
So for what you can be thinking about there is:
What's your data?
Why did you interpret that data to mean this?
Those are the better areas to focus your questions rather than challenging Sandra's belief.
So for example you can ask questions like why do you think that's the best channel.
What data proves that you think that, what data supports your claim?
Why did you interpret the data to mean that?
Do you think that it would be better if we went to this other channel?
Why not? Those type of things.
Those questions are much more effective way to advance your cause than criticism, condemnation, or complaining.