Persuading someone by loving what they love

Zhao was about to send one of its princes to Qi as a hostage, and the dowager queen refused to let him go. Any minister who mentioned it would get his face wet.

Zuo Shi told the queen: I'm too old to do much. I came to beg a favour for my youngest son, who's a poor thing. Could he take a position as a palace guard?

The queen said: have you not been feeding him? How old is he?

He said: fifteen. It's young, but I'd like to give him something before I die.

The queen was delighted. Men favour their sons too then, she said.

Then he went to it. He said that of all her children she loves the youngest most, and she denied it, and he asked whether she'd agree that the further down the family a child sits, the more the parent owes it a future. He planned out a position and a purpose for the boy, in Qi, with an escort, and she agreed to it.

The story's whole machinery is that he started inside her affection and only then did the thing he came for.

Nobody is persuaded by arguments against what they love. You don't meet someone's resistance with a better position. You start where they actually are, and walk towards the request from there.

If you've been trying to change a person's mind for months and getting nowhere, the first question isn't what's wrong with the argument. It's whether you have ever taken their side out loud.

MOJOWAY's intake begins from what a client actually wants, even when that's not the tidy version. Change starts from the real position, not the correct one.