Do You Begin Every Sentence with No, But or However?
Marshall Goldsmith
My latest project: MarshallGoldsmith.ai Ask me any question. Everything I know is available for free! | Thinkers50 Hall of Fame | #1 Executive Coach | #1 Leadership Thought Leader | #1 NYT Bestselling Author
An easy habit for people who like to win to fall into, and a surefire shortcut for killing conversations, is to start a sentence with “no,” “but,” or “however”. It doesn’t matter how friendly your tone is or how honey sweet you say these words, the message to your recipient is “You are wrong.” It’s not “Let’s discuss,” “I’d love to hear what you think,” it’s unequivocally, “You are wrong and I am right.” If your conversation companion is also of the winner variety, you have a potential battle on your hands, and there is nothing more that can happen that is productive. watch video
Are you interested in a little test to see how competitive your co-workers are? Try this. For one week, keep a scorecard of how many times each person uses “no,” “but,” or “however” to start a sentence. You will be shocked at how commonly used these words are. And, if you drill a little deeper, you’ll see patterns emerge. Some people use these words to gain power. And, you’ll see how much people resent it, consciously or not, and how it stifles rather than opens up discussions.
I use this technique with my clients. Practically without even thinking, I keep count of their use of these three little words. It’s such an important indicator! If the numbers pile up in an initial meeting with a client, I’ll interrupt him or her and say, “We’ve been talking for almost an hour now, and do you realize that you have responded 17 times with either no, but, or however?” This is the moment when a serious talk about changing behavior begins.
If this is your interpersonal challenge, you can do this little test for yourself just as easily as you can to gauge your co-workers. Stop trying to defend your position and start monitoring how many times you begin remarks with “no,” “but,” or “however.” Pay close attention to when you use these words in sentences. For example, “That’s true, however…” (Meaning: You don’t really think it’s true at all.) Another oldie but goodie is “Yes, but…” (Meaning: Prepare to be contradicted.)
Along with self-monitoring your behavior, you can also easily monetize the solution to this annoying behavior to help yourself stop. Ask a friend or colleague to charge you money every time you say, “no,” “but,” or “however.” Once you appreciate how guilty you’ve been, maybe then you’ll begin to change your “winning” ways!
Triggers is a #1 New York Times and Wall Street Journal best-seller! Order it at Amazon. See The Marshall Goldsmith Thinkers50 Video Blog for more of this video series.
Photo: happystock/Shutterstock
Agent at University of Illinois at Chicago
3 年People on TV cable news start the sentence with no, when they don't actually mean that.
Real Estate Acquisition & Asset Management
4 年Daniel sidi
Entrepreneur, 4E Negotiation Praxis Research, Facilitation, Coaching and Design ~ A.I.-Powered Co-Venturing Concourse Platform ~ Active Inference Agent-Based Modeling for SMART City Intelligence
4 年Wolfgang Goebl
Entrepreneur Empowerment Guide. Founder of Master My Power, LLC
5 年Noticed this for quite some time and finally decided to look into the psychology of it.
Office Administrator at Driscoll Ag - Agent Representative / Administrator Driscoll Douglas East Rural Real Estate
6 年I have a new colleague. I've worked with him in the past and for all purposes he's not a bad guy. He does however use no/but/however very frequently,in fact it's nearly every time I speak to him and especially if you're female. I'm trying to find a way to respond to it without becoming totally confrontational. I'm going nuts and it's been less than two weeks!