September 4, 2007PowerPhrase: I want a widget that lists for five pesos

Filed under: The PowerPhrase of the Week by merylrunion |

Kendra is an abstract thinker and Brian is very concrete. That created a lot of confusion when they tried to divide their assets. Kendra wanted to devise a system to appropriate their assets. Brian wanted to dive in with what to do with the individual items. So when Kendra said, “let’s say the file cabinet is worth $500″ to provide an example, Brian immediately latched on to the example and wanted to dispute whether it was really worth $500 or not.

Kendra had a stroke of genius. She said,

Okay, let’s do this: if I’m just using something as an example, I’ll call it a widget. Then you’ll know I’m speaking in principle, not about the item itself.

That’s what she did – but she took it one step further. She said,

Let’s say I want a widget that lists for five Pesos.

Since neither of them use widgets or Pesos, it was clear to Brian that she was speaking in principle, and he stopped being distracted by the examples.

Update:

I provide another example of this principle when I refer to the “Stars Political Party” and the “Stripes Political Party” in a post here. I did it to keep the focus on communication and avoid a debate about who does what.