Page 115 - Becoming a Successful Manager

106 ESTABLISHING A SOLID DEPARTMENTAL FOUNDATION

As further illustration, the following scene was played out
recently in a department store:
A woman and her young daughter, probably eight or nine years old,
were shopping for a dress for the child. The mother gestured to a rack of
dresses and asked, “Which dress do you want?”
The little girl smiled and pointed to her choice. “This one.”
“Oh, that wouldn’t look good on you,” said the mother. “The color
and style are all wrong for you.”
“But I like it. I think it’s nice.”
The mother picked up another dress. “How about this one?”
“I don’t like that one. I like the one I picked out.”
In the end, the little girl was in tears, her mother was angry with
her, and no dress was purchased that day.
What went wrong? The mother asked the wrong question.
She asked her daughter to make a selection from a wide variety
of choices. The mother established a broad, unrestricted range
despite the fact that she had already imposed certain limitations
herself regarding color and style. She asked a question, and she
prompted the child to make a selection. When the child complied,
the mother rejected her decision.
There probably would have been little turmoil if the mother
had established a different sequence of events. Since she knew
what her acceptable range of choices included, she could have
selected three or four dresses that met her criteria and then asked,
“Which one of these pretty dresses would you like?”
Whichever of those dresses the little girl picked would have been
acceptable to the mother, and the daughter would have been happy
with her choice. It was her decision, after all. The mother also would
have been happy because she had provided guidance and direc-
tion. It would have been one of those win-win situations rather than
a disaster, because the framing of the question often dictates the
outcome.