You may look at these and think ‘well I say that stuff all the time but I’m not some all mighty persuasion beast’ (well maybe without the ‘beast’). This may be true but this article is going to show you how to use them at the most appropriate times. To understand the power of tag questions in creating a more responsive listener just slip one at the end of a sentence and watch how the listener will instantly nod or shake their head (which ever is appropriate). They are literally agreeing with your statement without actually know what they're agreeing to most of the time, aren’t they?
World class communicators like Richard Bandler have spoken constantly of this need to get people into a ‘yes’ set – an open frame of mind. A very efficient way of doing this is to present the listener with three statements, observations or questions that must be true. Once the client has observed the factual nature of these statements they will begin to feel greater trust towards you and they will have entered into the habit of agreeing with you. Tag questions, in conjunction with other techniques, are wonderful ways of eliciting this state.
As an example of this, a therapist could say 'you came to see me because you had a problem with X (1st true observation), you had this problem for X months (2nd true observation) and now that we have spoken a little you feel confident we can work together to solve this problem, don’t you? (3rd observation).
Useful Tip: To help move a problem into the past the therapist could have said ‘you had this problem for X months, didn’t you?’ This is much more effective than saying ‘you’ve had this problem for X months, haven’t you?’ or even worse ‘you’re having this problem, aren’t you?’.
You can see the importance of using tag questions now, can't you?
The only way to effectively deliver a tag question is with a lowering command tone rather than a rising question tone (see here for command tones). Milton H. Erickson, the father of indirect hypnosis and comfortably the greatest hypnotherapist of all time used tag questions with a command tone constantly as a way of ensuring that his patients were compliant with his commands. He would say things like ‘and you can…go into trance…can’t you?’ (Notice the use of embedded commands in bold in conjunction with the tag questions. It’s a very effective combination of language patterns). If you watch any of his videos you’ll see the subject nodding away without any form of resistance.
Erickson also used tag questions as support for the compliance of post hypnotic suggestions. For example, it could be more powerful to say 'and you will feel more relaxed when dealing with stress, wont you?' than 'and you will feel more relaxed when dealing with stress'.
So as you read this post you probably considered the powerful ways in which tag questions help to persuade, didn't you? And now you're considering how you can add these tools to you linguistic armoury, aren't you? and after you've master these bad boys you'll be a far more adept communicator, wont you?
Well if you do take the wise step and...begin using tag questions...more effectively then you can check back here where there'll be everyday examples for you to play with.
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