Do you know how to help someone make a plan?

Instead of giving an order or making a demand, help someone think through the steps they need to take to do something. These may be different from your steps. They might involve addressing obstacles only the person you are ordering around, ahem, I mean, helping, that’s what we call it, helping– the person you are helping might have obstacles no one else has.

Like me, you have to get me away from the computer before I can make some coffee, and I’m going to have to wash the dishes too because the coffeepot is dirty. If you don’t let me add those things to the plan, I will just feel like I can’t make coffee. Because I can’t, the coffeepot is dirty and I am busy. And that is that for your demand.

But if you learn all the steps I need to take, you can make a plan that’s good for me, and I will make the coffee.

And then as you are planning you might learn that there are other, better ideas– ideas to add to your plan or to change it completely. And that is better.