Guiding Decisions in the Direction you Wish

During my years in being an IT consultant, I have developed somewhat of an art to guide clients (and sometimes team members) come to the conclusions that I would like them to have, but in a way where they think that it either sprang from their own head or that we developed the idea together, as a team.

Some portions of this art has developed from my readings of Dale Carnegie's book "How to Win Friends & Influence People".

One of the short lists that come from this book is this:

12 ways to win people to your way of thinking

• The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.


• Show respect for the other person’s opinions. Never say, “You’re wrong.”


• If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.


• Begin in a friendly way.


• Get the other person saying “yes, yes” immediately.


• Let the other person do a great deal of the talking.


• Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers.


• Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view.


• Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires.


• Appeal to the nobler motives.


• Dramatize your ideas.


• Throw down a challenge.

The one of these that I have utilized the most and with greatest success is the idea of "Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers." While this is not overly difficult to accomplish, it does take a little bit of preparation from your part. Not only do you need to know what conclusion you wish to have, but you also must think about logic steps that you can use to lead the other person to this conclusion.

In order to lead the other person, you can use a couple of the other items in the list to help: "Try honestly to see things from the other person's point of view" and "Let the other person do a great deal of the talking." By using the point of view idea in your preparation of the discussion, you will hopefully be able to identify the question or concerns that the other person may derive during your discussion. Knowing where they may have issues, will help you either guide around the issues or enable you to alleviate the issue. By allowing the other other person to do most of the talking, but interjecting your own ideas to help guide the conversation, you allow the other person to connect the dots logically, working out a solution for themselves.

A key aspect to all of this is that you must let go of the fact that once you have guided the other party to the conclusion, that it will no longer ever be considered your idea. This is sometimes hard for people to do - give up credit for a really great idea. But in the consultant world, the final result, and the clients feelings about the entire engagement, is much more important than who gets credit for the idea.