It is important to realize that agreement tactics are very useful in persuading people through the art of conversational hypnosis; this is mainly because they bypass the critical factor and get the person to start to see things your way.
If the critical factor is not bypassed or put to sleep then the resistance of your subject will be in place and your suggestions will not make it through. Once you use the agreement tactics to get past the critical factor it will open the doors of suggestion. You will be able to present information, ideas, thoughts and suggestions to your subject that will seem completely plausible to them in their altered state of mind.
The first of the 4 Agreement Tactics is Plausibility, which is stated as when a person is in the habit of agreeing with you then the next statement doesn’t have to be one they would find as true as your last statements. Plausibility works on a sliding scale depending on the depth of trance a person is experiencing.
The second Agreement Tactic is the Agreement Habit. The Agreement Habit is based on ‘going first’. This is to immerse yourself in an idea before you invite your subject in so the experience is real for them. This is important for the Agreement Habit as it is to get someone in the habit of agreeing with you. You cannot do this fully if they do not believe you agree with the thoughts you are presenting to them yourself.
The third and fourth Agreement Tactics are brought to us by a master hypnotist Milton Erickson as he used these often in his hypnosis. The ‘Yes Set’ and Piggy Backing of Suggestion were among Erickson’s favored techniques.
The third of the Agreement Tactics, which is the ‘Yes Set’, is very useful in getting agreement from your subjects. In a ‘Yes Set’ you will begin with statements that are true so you are activating the part of the brain that enjoys agreeing. Once you have gotten a person to start to agree with you it is likely that they will continue.
The ‘Yes Set’ can be demonstrated in three different ways.
The first way to use a ‘yes set’ is to repeat what the person is saying to you. This is exactly as it sounds: use what the person has said to you by repeating it back to them so they agree that that is what they said or meant. This is accomplishing the goal of the ‘yes set’ by activating the agreement part of the brain.
The second way to put a ‘Yes Set’ into action is to state the obvious facts. Use in your conversation statements that are verifiable facts. If there is no question that what you are saying is a fact then you will again activate the yes neurology in the subject’s brain causing agreement.
The third and final way to produce a ‘Yes Set’ is to make truisms. Truisms are sayings that a culture has conditioned its inhabitants to believe as unmistakably true. The statements are a way that people view the world or a part of the world. These statements will largely be found true by almost all people you speak to.
The three different types of ‘Yes Sets’ are used very often in conversational hypnosis. This is partly because they are ideas that you can work into a conversation, they cause agreement and they can be manipulated to fit almost any context you may be working with your subject in.
The fourth Agreement Tactic is the Piggy Back Principal. This is the idea of attaching suggestions to other statements or ideas that are already going out to your listener. This is a very popular and successful way to get suggestions into the minds of your subjects.
This is done by first getting your listener into agreement with you; this can be done through compliments, yes sets, following along with their thoughts and repeating back. Your goal here is to create an environment they are willing to accept, and then you add a suggestion to it. Compliment them on the great job they have been doing and then add how they can improve on it.
This works because as humans we are always willing to accept praise and agreement. And the fact is if you are accepting one part of the statement you must be accepting the whole statement on some unconscious level. Now that they have unknowingly accepted your suggestion they will at some point bring it into their behaviors, thoughts or actions.
The best part about this agreement tactic is the more you do it the stronger and more powerful your suggestion becomes. You can piggy back as many facts and suggestions as you want as long as you keep the meanings clear so as not to confuse your subject.
You can also piggy back suggestions onto yes sets. This is done simply by stating a single or series of verifiable facts and then adding a suggestion on to the end of the last statement. An example of this would be, “When you get out of the car, lock the doors.” This works because you will inevitably get out of the car at some point and because the mind accepts this as true you will be more likely to now lock the doors as well.
The third way you can piggy back suggestions is to present feedback to your subject that will have them accept it; this should be done in a smooth and elegant manner of speaking. This utilizes positive reinforcement by first creating a yes set, then adding a compliment and then attaching a suggestion to the end.
This way of piggy backing is successful because we all enjoy and accept compliments. Compliments in this sample are somewhat of a sugar coating for the suggestion; you cannot accept the compliment without also accepting the suggestion. Compliments also tend to extract positive behaviors from us and make us more agreeable and accepting anyway.
The Agreement Tactics of the Yes Set and Piggy Backing Suggestions are very important and useful in psychological persuasion. They were among the top choices of the master hypnotist Milton Erickson. He brought us the perfected art of these two Agreement Tactics and used them often in his hypnosis practice as you should consider doing in yours.
