NLP Hypnotic Language: How To Effectively Use Tag Questions

Tag questions, regardless of their simplicity and frequency of use, are very useful tools for influence as they help you to make certain that your listeners are open to receptive to your ideas . A tag question is simply a negative question hooked on to the end of a sentence. A few examples of tag questions are – Isn’t it? Can’t you? Haven’t you.

 To understand the importance of tag questions in developing a more responsive listener just stick one at the end of a sentence and observe how the listener will immediately nod or shake their head (which ever is appropriate) without even know what they’re agreeing to most of the time, aren’t they?

You may be reading these thinking ‘well I use these all the time but I’m not some all mighty master of influence’. This may be true but this article is going to show you how to use them at the most appropriate times.

World famous speakers like John Grinder have spoken of this need to get people into a ‘yes’ set – a receptive frame of mind. An efficient way of doing this is to offer the listener three statements, observations or questions that must be true. Once the client has observed the factual nature of these statements they will start to feel a deeper level of trust towards you and they will have developed into the habit of agreeing with you. Tag questions, in conjunction with other techniques, are wonderful ways of eliciting this state.

To demonstrate 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 see the importance of using tag questions now, don’t you?

To effectively deliver a tag question you must use a lowering command tone as you would an embedded command at the end of the sentence rather than a rising question. Milton H. Erickson, the pioneer of indirect hypnosis and one of the greatest hypnotherapist of all time used tag questions with a command tone regularly as a way of ensuring that his patients were open to his commands. He would often say things like ‘and you can…focus more…can’t you?’ (Notice the use of embedded commands in bold in conjunction with the tag questions). while watching his videos one will often see the subject nodding passively without any resistance.

You can also used tag questions as reinforcement for post hypnotic suggestions. For example, it is more powerful to say ‘and you will find more confidence…wont you? than ‘and you will find more confidence.’

As you can see tag questions can be an incredibly powerful linguistic tool to help you along the way to persuasion mastery. Strangely enough many people overlook their importance and use more ‘complex’ language patterns when in reality these can have someone agreeing sooner than another technique, can’t they?

Jimmy McIntyre is the author of http://everydayhypnoticlanguage.blogspot.com/. This is a blog that offers the reader practical everyday examples of hypnotic language patterns. Stop by and offer some language patterns that have been effective for you.

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