Doesn't Hurt to Ask Page 2

  Now what? Where does someone who loves to persuade turn when the courtroom is no longer an option? Maybe an even bigger jury pool? Maybe politics? Maybe Congress?

  Maybe not.

  Oddly enough, I did leave Congress with a higher opinion of mankind than when I left the courtroom, but I left nevertheless. I left the courtroom because the questions were better than the answers. I left Congress because the questions never matter in politics. Almost everyone in Washington, DC, already has his or her mind made up.

  Even outside of Washington, DC, almost everyone has his or her mind made up on the issues. Politics is nonstop. Every day is a miniature Election Day. More and more facets of life seem to have political undertones. NFL games are politicized. Music and movie award shows involve politics. Hurricanes and viruses have political undertones. Even at our own kitchen tables, politics is lurking, trying to insert itself.

  I do not recall a single person’s mind ever being changed during a committee or floor debate during the eight years I was in Congress. Persuasion requires an open mind, and you cannot move someone who is unwilling to move. You cannot persuade someone who is unwilling to be persuaded. Jurors are, by definition, willing to be persuaded. Members of Congress, at least in the modern political environment, either cannot be persuaded or cannot admit they were.

  After eight years of Congress, I became convinced the questions were irrelevant, because there was little opportunity to persuade anyone other than myself. It was wildly inefficient but surprisingly informative. While I was in Congress, strangely, I became more open to being persuaded. It wasn’t floor speeches or committee hearings. It was being exposed to smart, credible people, with fact-centric arguments who were making an effort to be heard, understood, and willing to hear and understand me in the process.

  My time in DC led me to understand that people are arriving to the table with different sets of experiences and that everyone’s opinions are filtered through the lens of those experiences. Whether I agree or disagree doesn’t matter. Everyone deserves to have a seat at the table and if everyone arrives to the table with the same tools and knowledge to successfully persuade, arguments turn to dialogue, and dialogue turns to earnest questions, and questions turn to real and meaningful influence.

  It was on the marbled floors of the Capitol that I realized persuasion is not about winning arguments—it’s about effectively and efficiently advocating for what it is you believe to be true. Persuasion is a far more subtle methodology whereby, when the person is asked the right set of questions, they will arrive at the point you are trying to make of their own accord. Persuasion is about understanding what people believe and why they believe it and using that to either debunk or confirm their position. Persuasion is subtle, incremental, and deliberate. It has the potential to be life changing.

  WANT TO START?

  In July 1986, I was at the beach with my childhood best friend, Keith Cox, and his family. It was the summer after I graduated from college and I had no idea what I was going to do next—a history major with no direction and no motivation. My lack of a plan for the rest of my life was exceeded only by a lack of a desire to have a plan for the rest of my life. As the family and I sat out on the porch one morning, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, Keith’s mother asked me to stay with her while she finished her cup of coffee. Everyone else had left for the beach.

  “What are you going to do next, honey?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, Mrs. Cox, maybe go to Las Cruces, New Mexico, and do construction work with a college buddy.” We sat and talked and she gently asked me question after question after question. So. Many. Questions. But all of them out of the love a mom has for her son’s best friend and a kid she had known most of his life. She did not try to talk me into anything. She was not a psychiatrist or a lawyer. She was a stay-at-home mom who cared enough to ask the right questions in the right order.

  What she accomplished in those thirty minutes changed my life. She took me from doing construction in Las Cruces, New Mexico, to going to law school. By listening, caring, asking the right follow-up questions, and having her objective in sight before she ever asked me to stay behind that morning, she managed to conquer my self-doubt and appeal to a source of pride at the same time. She said, “Surprise the skeptics, Trey, and do something amazing in life. Just know it will not surprise me because I’ve seen it in you since you were a child. It will be our secret. Just go surprise everyone else!”

  Getting someone to do something they were not planning on doing. Convincing someone to buy into something they never knew they were looking for. That is persuasion. Someone else’s mom took me from building houses half a country away to studying torts and constitutional law in South Carolina. It took her thirty minutes. Armed with compassion, a predetermined outcome in mind, and the right questions, she persuaded me to do more than just go to school for three more years. She didn’t care whether I went to law school or not. What she cared about was me; and that I left for the beach that morning persuaded to have higher expectations for myself than what I woke up with that morning.

  You may never find yourself in front of a jury in a criminal prosecution arguing for a particular verdict, or offering yourself for elected office in a political campaign. You simply want to be heard. You just want to be understood. You want to effectively communicate what you believe, why you believe it, and why perhaps others should adopt your position as well. Maybe you will never be in a highly charged debate for a seat in the United States Senate. Maybe it will be something much more important than that—like convincing a child to aspire higher, expect more, compete harder. Maybe you just want to be able to effectively express your position to a co-worker, a family member, or a spouse. Maybe you want to speak up but are not sure you are well enough equipped to engage in the banter at your place of business, worship center, or class reunion.

  I want to help you become a better advocate and become better at advancing what you believe through the art of asking the right questions, at the right time, in the right order, and in the right form—regardless, in some instances, of whether you know the answer to your own questions or not. Persuasion is in part an affirmative duty to prove, but it is also in part proving your point through the art of questioning.

  You want to start?

  You must at the outset answer the most fundamental question of all. It is my favorite question to ask because it’s self-directed. I asked it of police officers and lay witnesses as a prosecutor. I asked it of myself before every congressional hearing. I currently ask it of myself before any speech, whether it is to a roomful of attorneys or my wife’s first-grade students.

  What do you want to accomplish?

  And the first cousins to that question follow closely behind:

  What is your objective?

  How do you measure success at the end of the interaction?

  Who is your jury?

  How hard will it be to prove it?

  Whether you are trying to convince a jury to convict a defendant of a potentially capital crime or convince your teenager to clean up his or her room, before you begin your interaction—before you ever open your mouth—these are the questions to ask yourself. Admittedly, convincing the teenager to clean his or her room is the tougher case, but it is also the one you are much more likely to see on a daily basis.

  There are times when what you want is less affirmative. Sometimes you desire to move your listener to your side of the ideological spectrum. Maybe it’s not about your teenager cleaning his room, but about convincing him to make certain choices regarding his college major. Rather than seeking to make a point (“Vote for my beliefs because they’re right!”) or prove a proposition (“You know, son, English majors are way more likely to be adaptable candidates in the job force”), you have to move them gently to a specific objective in mind. Maybe it’s not to win a vote for your candidate, but rather for th
at person to not vote for their candidate. There were times in Congress when my objective was not to get someone to vote with me (because I knew that was never going to happen), but rather my objective was to get them to vote for a lesser form of what they wanted or take a coffee break and miss the committee vote altogether (kidding…kind of). For my son, Watson, it was less about my wanting him to study English and more about his not studying his first choice: political science. Since no teenager—or anyone for that matter—likes being told directly what to do, asking questions becomes the subtlest and most effective way to persuade. He wanted political science. I wanted English. He chose philosophy in the end, so I think I won.

  Regardless of whom you are talking to and regardless of who your jury is, you must have full command of your objective before you open your mouth.

  Are you trying to begin a relationship, repair one, enhance one, or end one?

  Are you trying to pacify or infuriate?

  Is your objective consensus or conflict?

  If your objective is to fracture a relationship, infuriate an audience, ratify a deeply held albeit wrong conviction in others, this book will not offer you much aid. For most of my interactions with other individuals or groups, the objective is to either gently move the listener to a new position or gain a renewed enthusiasm for an old one.

  So how do you persuade? What works? What does not work?

  We are going to explore in this book how to persuade, why it is the most worthwhile skill set to adopt, and all the tools you can equip yourself with to become persuasive on the issues that matter in your life and with the people who matter in your life.

  In Part 1, we’ll focus on the self-directed questions and we’ll lay the groundwork on the essentials: Why questions? What is persuasion really? I’ll help you land on your objective, know your jury, and establish your burden of proof as well as walk you through what does and doesn’t work when it comes to being a good communicator.

  Once you know those factors you can begin the act of persuasion. In Part 2, the self-directed questions pivot and become directed at the persuadee. Here we’ll focus on specific types of questions you can use as well as tools to help formulate your questions. There are times the questions are earnest—really trying to get information. Sometimes you want to pose questions strategically to get the answer you want, and other times, the answer doesn’t really matter and it is instead to elicit a reaction—to debunk and impeach your “jury.”

  Part 3 shows you how to put the art of persuasion into action in your day-to-day life. While I may be a cynic, much of persuasion is about idealism. It’s about open-minded people who can have meaningful dialogue about what it is they truly care about. About people on both sides of the aisle who really listen and are open to being persuaded.

  Of course, when we are impassioned by certain things we believe in, we can feel called to proselytize on their behalf and we pull out all the calculated stops to do so. But persuasion is doing this in a constructive way. The art of asking the right question, in the right form, and at the right time is an essential arrow in your quiver of communication. In fact, the ability to ask the right questions, listen to the response, and follow up in a systematic way is essential if you want to move the hearts and minds of those you are speaking to.

  And that should be our objective in persuasion: striving to communicate and to move those with whom we are interacting. To move someone from a yes to a no. To move someone to a maybe. To move someone to see our side. To move someone to get a new angle and new perspective. To move them to feel what you feel, to see what you see, to think what you think. Move them to do what’s worthy, what’s good, and what’s right. Move them to hire you, to give you a chance, to give you more responsibility. Move someone to take a chance on your idea. Move someone to invest as much in what you are trying to do as you have invested.

  Now let’s get moving.

  PART 1

  WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW BEFORE YOU OPEN YOUR MOUTH

  CHAPTER 1

  THERE IS SUCH A THING AS A STUPID QUESTION

  WHAT COLOR WAS THE BLUE BAG?

  Murder cases are somber events. One life has already been lost. Another person is on trial facing the real prospect of life in prison without the possibility of parole—or even more solemn—the possibility of receiving the death penalty. So, as you can imagine, there is no place for humor in any criminal trial. And yet, in my first death penalty trial I had the whole room in tears of laughter. Whoever said “There is no such thing as a stupid question” was not sitting in the Spartanburg County Courthouse in the fall of 2001.

  In this case, a convenience store clerk was robbed and killed over a meaninglessly small amount of money. The clerk was a hardworking, good, and decent man who overcame a lot in life and who would have given the suspect the money had he just asked for it.

  In most of these cases, there are but two witnesses and one (the victim) is dead, so you are reliant on the defendant’s affirmative statements, confessions, or false exculpatory statements in addition to forensics or whatever physical evidence you may have. But in this case, there was another witness. He was sitting off to the side playing a video poker game when the robbery and shooting took place.

  Whenever you have an additional witness, you want to meet with them ahead of time to get a sense of what they are going to say and how to prepare for it. In this case, I met with this witness many times. He was vitally important—singularly important in fact—and while he was likely to be nervous testifying in a death penalty trial, he was earnest and credible.

  The time came for him to take the stand. It’s important to set the scene for the jury: the dimensions of the store, where this witness was sitting relative to the cash register and the clerk, his opportunity to observe, the absence of drugs or alcohol impacting his ability to perceive, and every other question you can anticipate the jury might have.

  “Was anything between you and the front door of the store?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Was anything obstructing your view?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Were the lights on?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Was the room smoky or cloudy?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Were you under the influence of alcohol?

  “No, sir.”

  “Pardon the personal nature of the question, but were you under the influence of any drugs prescribed or otherwise?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Did you notice the suspect when he walked through the front door?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Was anyone else present in the store when the suspect walked in?”

  “Just me and the clerk.”

  “Did you take your eyes off the suspect when he walked in?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Did you have a clear view of the suspect?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What happened next?”

  “Well, the man walked to the clerk at the counter and pulled out a gun.”

  “Could you see the gun?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Can you describe the gun for the jury?”

  “Yes, sir. It was black and looked like a pistol, not a revolver.”

  This witness was doing great. He was under control. Clear. Precise. But, apparently, I could not stand prosperity because I had to keep going.

  “Sir, I notice you are not wearing glasses. Were you wearing glasses that night?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Is your vision good?”

  “Yes, sir. I have perfect vision in my right eye.”

  What did he just say? Umm, Mr. Witness, you are not a Cyclops! You have two eyes, I thought to myself.

  What have I gotten myself into? How do I extricate myself from t
his? What in the world do I ask or say next? Do I let it go and hope the jury didn’t hear him? Or hope the jury doesn’t recall that all humans have two eyes? You have to do something, idiot Trey, you can’t just leave it hanging like that.

  “Of course you do, Mr. Witness, of course you do,” was all I could come up with.

  “And your left eye…is…?”

  (Painful silence.)

  “It’s fake, sir.”

  “Well, of course it is, Mr. Witness. It’s prosthetic.”

  “No, sir…it’s fake,” he said.

  I have one eyewitness and am just now learning—along with everyone else—that he is a one-eyed witness.

  I was rattled. I was wishing I was literally anywhere else in the world. Château d’If? Sign me up. Anywhere else other than in that courtroom having not asked this witness about his eye(s) before we got to court.

  It can’t get any worse than this, right? Except it always can, and in this case, it did.

  “What happened next?” I asked.

  “Well, the suspect had a blue bag in his hand.”

  “Okay, what color was the blue bag?”

  Laughter exploded throughout the courtroom and that one eye was looking at me like I had lost my mind.

  Maybe he didn’t hear me so I repeated the question again. “Sir, what color was the blue bag?”

  More laughter.

  What is going on? Why are people laughing in a death penalty trial? Before I could ask the dumbest question in the history of the English-speaking world a third time, the judge took mercy and said, “Mr. District Attorney, I think the jury knows what color the blue bag was now! You can move on.”

  Questions can be affirmative. Questions can be a genuine desire for more information. Questions can be corroborative. You already know the answer, but someone else in your “jury” does not, so you use questions to impart information to others, rather than yourself. Questions can be impeaching or undercutting. Questions can be defensive. They can allow you to regroup, deflect, redirect someone’s attention so you can live to fight another moment or another day.