I just listened to a great, short MP3 from the Influence book by the folks at Vital Smarts, who wrote Crucial Conversations. It’s best to hear it directly if this link will work. I got it in return for completing a survey so it might just be for me, so here’s the gist of the idea:
If you tell people the conclusions that you have derived from an experience you have a much reduced chance of influencing them. Rather, tell them a story that begins at the beginning of your experience and allows them to travel with you to the end so that all of you arrive at the conclusion together. Makes sense to me, that backing down the Ladder of Inference again. But we get in such a hurry to solve problems that we just want to cut to the chase and get to the problem solving. If we cut to the chase, we leave everyone out of the solution space and then have to impose a solution on the group. The most that they can do is to improve our solution, which if arrived at too quickly, rarely addresses the right problem.
What can I do to remember this process in the heat of the need to solve problems?
Let me know if the MP3 doesn’t work and I’ll try to find another source.
The Thinkubator 
The link worked. Thanks! What a clever way to present things. We just have to slow down and tell our story!!
It’s the slow down part that we all seem to have so much trouble with, me included. I was going to present an example of telling a story to get all of the people into the pool but I didn’t want to take the time to write the whole thing down.
Love it and the link worked!