Words to Turn a Conversation Around
It's not what you say, but it's how you say it – isn't it? According to a language expert, we may have this wrong. “We are pushed and pulled around by language far more than we 1,” says Elizabeth Stoke, professor of social interaction at Loughborough University. Stoke and her colleagues have 2 thousands of hours of recorded conversations, from customer services to mediation(调解) hotlines and police crisis 3. They discovered that certain words or phrases have the power to change the course of a conversation.
Some of these words are surprising, and 4 what we've been taught to believe. For example, in a study of conversations between doctors and patients, evidence showed that doctors who 5 options rather than recommended best solutions, got a better response, despite the suggestion from hospital guidelines to talk about the best interests of the patient. But, from conversation experts such as Stoke to FBI negotiators and communication coaches, we're learning which words are likely to 6 or persuade us.
Stoke found that people who had already responded 7 when asked if they would like to attend mediation seemed to change their minds when the mediator used the phrase. “Would you be willing to come for a meeting?” “As soon as the word 'willing' was used, people would say: 'Oh, yes, definitely'—they would actually 8 the sentence to agree.” Stoke found it had the same effect in different settings: with business-to-business cold callers; with doctors trying to 9 people to go to a weight-loss class. She also looked at phrases such as “Would you like to” and “Would you be interested in”. “Sometimes they 10, but 'willing' was the one that got people to agree more rapidly and with more enthusiasm.”
“'Hello' is a really important word that can change the 11 of a conversation,” Stoke says. “It's about how you respond to people who are what we call 'first movers' – people who say something really 12,” “It might be the work colleagues who are extremely angry to your desk with a complaint or the neighbor who 13 rude words about parking as you're putting out the bins.” “What do you do with that person? Rather than respond in the same manner, saying something nice, such as a very bright 'Hello!', socializes that other person a little bit.” Use it when you want to resist getting into a 14. “You have to be careful not to sound too passive-aggressive,” Stoke says, “but just one friendly word in a bright tone can delete the 15 of the conversation.”
