Concept
The Yes-Yes Technique
The Yes-Yes Technique is Dale Carnegie's rule of opening a conversation with points the other person can honestly agree with, so that it moves through a run of “yes” answers and does not start from a “no” that pride will later defend.
Carnegie's advice in How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936) is simple to state: when you talk with someone you disagree with, do not begin with the point that divides you. Begin with the things you both accept, and keep returning to them, until the other person has said “yes” several times. For the reason he cited Professor Harry Overstreet: a “no” is hard to take back, because once someone has said it, their pride asks them to stay consistent with it, even when they later suspect they were wrong. A run of yeses does the opposite. It sets the conversation moving towards agreement and makes the final step feel like a continuation rather than a reversal. Carnegie connected the method to Socrates, who asked questions his listeners could only agree with and led them, one admission at a time, to a conclusion they would have rejected at the start. The technique has a clear limit. The yeses must be real common ground, not a chain of leading questions built as a trap; people notice when they are being steered, and the trust it costs outlasts the agreement it wins.
A real-life example
In Bursa, Kerem, the IT lead at a textile company, needs the finance director, Nurten Hanım, to approve a new accounting system she has turned down twice. This time he does not open with the system. He asks whether they both want month-end closing to take fewer days. Yes. Whether fewer manual entries would mean fewer errors. Yes. Whether last quarter's corrections cost her team two weekends. Yes. Only then does he propose a one-month trial in a single department. She agrees to the trial and sets its start date herself.
How to use it
- 1Before the conversation, write down three things the other person already agrees with that bear on your request.
- 2Open with those points as plain questions, wait for each answer, and treat any hesitation as information rather than an obstacle.
- 3Leave the point of disagreement until last, and put it as the next step from what you have just agreed.