Video: How to Get People to Open Up

April 02, 2018  /  By Jason Everett

Share this:



Do you have some quiet people on your team? Do you wish they would open up and participate more?

Today I’m going to show you how to get the quietest person on your team to open up.

This is brought to you by Meevo 2 – The Millennium System’s International Salon and Spa software customized for your world, simply better.

We have all had somebody on our team that we have a hard time getting to open up and really reveal what’s going on.

You might say,

“Hey, do you have anything thoughts?”

and they say,

“Hmm”.

You might ask them a lot of questions and their answer is always,

“Whatever you think.”, or “Sure.”

They just give you these one word answers.

By the way, if you happen to have a teenager at home you probably know this all too much. You ask questions like,

“What did you do today?”

“What did you have for lunch today?”

“What do you want to do later?”

and they say,

“Nothing.”

You try to get that person to open up and no matter what you do they are just clam shell shut.

Here is a tip that I would like to give you. Think about the difference between open ended questions and closed ended questions.

Closed Ended Questions: Can be answered with only a “Yes” or a “No”.

Open Ended Questions: Can be answered with pretty much anything.

But did you know that there are certain words that start open and closed ended questions?

Here are a couple examples.

Open Ended Question Starters:

  • How
  • Who
  • What
  • Where
  • When
  • Why

Closed Ended Question Starters:

  • Is
  • Are
  • Can
  • Should
  • Could
  • Would
  • To

So if you want to move the conversations, you want to ask things like:

– “What did you do last weekend?”

– “How long are you planning to be here?”

As opposed to saying:

“Can you get this today?”

The problem is that a lot of times people say,

“Can you do this for me?”

That quiet person on your team says,

“Okay” or “Sure”

and they end the conversation.

So use open ended questions to get them to open up and come out of their shell even further.

If you would like help remembering the difference between open and closed ended questions, I created a poster for you that you can actually download and print out right there in your salon and keep it on the wall to help you remember the difference between open ended questions and close ended questions, and the type of words that start them.

CLICK HERE to download your copy today!

Jason Everett

About Our Guest Blogger

Jason Everett, High Performance Salon

Jason’s infectious high energy and drive to make everyone he meets the best possible version of themselves, has landed him on center stage in the Salon Edu-tainment scene. Jason is one of the founders of the High Performance Salon Academy which specializes in taking salons that are already successful and cranking up their success to an 11! Their non-traditional and unconventional approach to learning uses the latest in technology and social media strategies to quickly train and equip the most attention-strained owners, leaders and service providers on how to rapidly implement what they learn.

You May Also Like:

Education at your fingertips

Subscribe to our monthly Meevo Inspo newsletter and be the first to know when our latest content has been added.