How to Have a Good Day: Harness the Power of Behavioral Science to Transform Your Working Life pdfdrive com

create options.
• Ask people to help you come up with options for ways to respond or move
forward.
• If you can’t do that, at least give them some options to choose between, so
there’s a decision they can call their own.
Perhaps a decision has already been made—by you or others—and you’re
having to deliver the news. “We’re having a reorganization and our reporting
lines are changing,” you say, knowing this is the third restructuring in three
years and everyone’s weary. But giving people choices can still provide some of
the autonomy that their brains crave—which will help you to stop them from
checking out completely.
And you don’t have to use this technique only when you’re delivering tough
messages. It’s a good general rule to follow where you want people to feel
engaged in anything you’re doing.
For example, I use this approach in every workshop I run for large groups of
clients. I’m on the hook to teach a certain amount of material, and the objectives
of the session are fairly fixed. But my work isn’t a success unless clients love the
ideas enough to use them in their everyday lives—and for that, it’s important

---

they feel ownership of what I’m teaching. Since I’m never in a position to throw
the whole agenda open, what can I do? I give my clients choices—plenty of
them. For example, if I’ve done some analysis to inform the session, I put the
results in front of them and ask them to tell me what strikes them as most
important—and reprioritize my material accordingly. If a discussion is getting
heated, I give them options: do they want to carry on talking, or do they want to
“agree to disagree” and move on? If we’re running over time, I ask them
whether they would like to skip some content, take a shorter lunch break, or
finish later in the day. And so on. I need to roll with whatever they choose, but
it’s worth it. I know that what I teach will be more highly valued if it feels like
their
workshop, not mine.