Speaker 1: What makes a great question, Well, it depends on what
Speaker 1: you're trying to figure out. Are you interviewing someone for
Speaker 1: a job, are you asking someone on a date, or
Speaker 1: are you trying to learn something?
Speaker 2: Whatever it is, you probably have an answer or a
Speaker 2: solution or a direction in mind when you ask a question,
Speaker 2: and that's fine, but it's not always the path to
Speaker 2: the best outcome. Zoe Chance is.
Speaker 1: The author of Influence Is Your Superpower and a professor
Speaker 1: at the Yale School of Management, and one of the
Speaker 1: most popular influencing strategies Zoe teachers to her students is.
Speaker 2: Called the magic question.
Speaker 1: So what is the magic question? And how can it
Speaker 1: become your superpower for being a better influencer.
Speaker 2: My name is doctor amanthe Immer.
Speaker 1: I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder of Behave Real
Speaker 1: Science Consultancy Inventium, and this is how I work a
Speaker 1: show about how to help you do your best work.
Speaker 1: On today's My Favorite Tip episode, we go back to
Speaker 1: an interview from the past and I pick out my
Speaker 1: favorite tip from the interview. In today's show, I speak
Speaker 1: with Zoe Chance about the magic question?
Speaker 3: Can I metha? Can I just share a story that
Speaker 3: will take a couple of minutes. Of course, yes, the
Speaker 3: magic question sinks in a little better with a story
Speaker 3: and from an influenced perspective. We can remember things better
Speaker 3: when we have something concrete to visualize, So this will
Speaker 3: help listeners remember the magic question. And this is a
Speaker 3: story that an American feminist named Gloria Steinem told when
Speaker 3: she came to my hometown of New Haven, Connecticut a
Speaker 3: little while ago. She was and she told it for
Speaker 3: a different reason, but it illustrates very well. She was
Speaker 3: working on the problem of sex trafficking. She was speaking,
Speaker 3: she was writing, she was traveling the world, and she
Speaker 3: had gone to a sex trafficking conference in Zambia. After
Speaker 3: the conference, she goes to visit some women in a
Speaker 3: village that's in the middle of nowhere, near a big
Speaker 3: game preserve. And three of the young women from that
Speaker 3: village had been lost to sex trafficking the previous year.
Speaker 3: And Gloria Steinem is sitting down with this group of
Speaker 3: women on a tarp in the middle of a barren field,
Speaker 3: and she asks them the magic question. She says, what
Speaker 3: would it take or what would it have taken for
Speaker 3: those three young women not to have left the village?
Speaker 3: In that way, and they told her an electric fence,
Speaker 3: an electric fence. They said, when the corn reaches a
Speaker 3: certain height, the elephants come and they eat it and
Speaker 3: they trample it, and we have nothing to eat, We
Speaker 3: have nothing to sell at the market. We don't have
Speaker 3: any money to send our kids to school. So these
Speaker 3: young women and their families were desperate. Glorias Steinem says, listen,
Speaker 3: if I send you the money, will you clear the
Speaker 3: field and build the fence. These women say yes. So
Speaker 3: Gloria s Dynham goes back home, she raises a few
Speaker 3: thousand dollars. She sends the money to these women in
Speaker 3: the village, and the way she tells it, she comes
Speaker 3: back a few years later and they have a bumper
Speaker 3: crop of corn, and since they put up the fence,
Speaker 3: no young women have been lost to sex trafficking from
Speaker 3: that village. It also happens that the women in that
Speaker 3: village had ended up collaborating with the women in the
Speaker 3: village next door, and they have now created and as
Speaker 3: far as I know, it's still going on. There's a
Speaker 3: chicken collective and a tailoring operation and their group is
Speaker 3: called Waka Simba. It means strong women So the magic
Speaker 3: question is just what would it take? And it's magic
Speaker 3: for multiple reasons. First of all, it's respectful, and so
Speaker 3: that means it's comfortable on the other side and comfortable
Speaker 3: for you too. You are acknowledging that you're not the
Speaker 3: expert here. They're the expert on their situation and their obstacles.
Speaker 3: It second is magic because it often gives you a
Speaker 3: roadmap to success that's actually so much easier than you
Speaker 3: would have expected, or maybe than you would have even
Speaker 3: been willing to do. And third, it's magic because if
Speaker 3: that person or those people in this case have told
Speaker 3: you what it will take, then they have implicitly committed
Speaker 3: to supporting that outcome. And the way that I interpret
Speaker 3: this story, it's not that the electric fence magically prevented
Speaker 3: sex trafficking, but the women who had said this is
Speaker 3: what it would take would make sure that none of
Speaker 3: their friends, neighbors daughters, neighbor's daughters are going to be
Speaker 3: sex trafficked now they have the fence. So the magic
Speaker 3: question you can work with almost any situation and any person,
Speaker 3: even if you've used it before, even if you've talked
Speaker 3: them the magic question, and then the laugh at you like,
Speaker 3: you know. I'll use it with my daughter. She'll use
Speaker 3: it with me and I'll be like, oh, ripley the
Speaker 3: magic question again and she's like, I know. But then
Speaker 3: they give you an answer.
Speaker 1: I hope you're feeling a bit inspired to use the
Speaker 1: magic question in your life this week. I know that
Speaker 1: since interviewing Zoe many months ago now, I've used it
Speaker 1: quite a bit in my own life, and I must
Speaker 1: say I find it particularly useful with my eight year
Speaker 1: old daughter when she really doesn't want to do something,
Speaker 1: because with the magic question, what would it take? We
Speaker 1: can often find a way through. If you're looking for
Speaker 1: more tips to improve the way that you work, I
Speaker 1: write a short fortnightly newsletter that contains three cool things
Speaker 1: that I've discovered that helped me work better, ranging from
Speaker 1: software and gadgets that I'm loving through the interesting research findings.
Speaker 1: You can sign up for that at Howiwork dot co.
Speaker 1: That's how I Work dot co. How I Work is
Speaker 1: produced by Inventium with production support from Dead Set Studios,
Speaker 1: and thank you to match Nimba, who does the audio
Speaker 1: mix for every episode and makes everything sound so much
Speaker 1: better than it would have otherwise.
Speaker 2: See you next time.