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Mastering the Art of Persuasion

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During interviews for our research into ‘how we’ll work in the future’, the need to have influencing skills and the ability to build trust is coming up time and time again. Key drivers of this are flatter organization structures, remote working, virtual teams and the need to collaborate across continents and time-zones.
Influencing skills can be used for

  • convincing someone of your ideas,
  • getting support for a project,
  • selling a product or service,
  • negotiating a contract
  • or simply asking for a promotion or an upgrade at an airport or a hotel!

The following 10 skills are the basis for mastering the art of persuasion:

1. Have a well-formed outcome. 
An outcome is more than an objective. Your outcome for your communication with another person should satisfy the well-formed conditions. Otherwise, it will not produce your desired results. It should be ecological and come from a positive ‘win-win’ intention. Without a well-formed outcome people may get the sense that you’re trying to manipulate them.
 
2. Build and maintain rapport. 
With the recent discovery of mirror neurons, neuroscientists have proven that we are naturally inclined towards being in rapport with other people. Deep rapport is the basis of trust. However, rapport is not a thing, it’s a process. Getting rapport can be quite easy. However, when someone wants to disagree with you they will break rapport. Being able to gain, maintain and regain rapport becomes a pre-requisite for any communication. It is essential when you want to influence another person in any context.

3. Develop sensory acuity. 
Noticing what’s going on and making fine distinctions during communication is the basis of your ability to gain, maintain and regain rapport. Without sensory acuity your ability to influence is left completely to chance. Advanced sensory acuity allows you to calibrate another person’s state or mood and this is very important for knowing what to say or do next. During any interaction, Master Communicators are easily able to notice such things as: changes in skin tone or color, breathing patterns, specific gestures, posture, changes in voice tone, timbre, tempo, what representational system another person is using, eye patterns that indicate how someone is processing internally, and much more…

4. Be flexible with your response. 
Sensory acuity will give you valuable feedback on the effectiveness of your communication. Flexibility will enable you to achieve your outcome. It is said that only a fool will carry on doing something that is not working and expect a different result! Applying Ashby’s law of requisite variety, the person with the greatest flexibility of behavior will have the most influence in any situation.

5. Recognize Meta Programs conversationally. 
Meta Programs are based on the work of Carl Jung.  We have deep filters that demonstrate our preferences for getting things done and self-motivation. It’s useful to be aware of Meta Programs.  When people with opposite Meta Programs interact there is potential for conflict. There are 20 Meta Programs. If you’re familiar with the MBTI profiling tool then you’ll recognize 4 of these. However, you’ll be missing the other 16 distinctions. If you want to influence another person it is important to be aware of their Meta Program preferences.

6. Identify values conversationally. 
Our behavior is heavily influenced by our values. Put simply these are deep-seated criteria that are important to us. Our values provide up-front motivation and post-event evaluation. Mis-matching another person’s values breaks rapport, and can destroy trust and lead to conflict. When personal values are not satisfied this creates a dramatic drop in motivation and performance. It will also be a major cause of resistance to change.

7. Identify decision-making strategies. 
We have personal strategies for doing everything in our lives. Most of these are outside of our conscious awareness. If you want to influence another person you will want to know how they make their best decisions. You’ll also need to be aware of both their convincer and their re-assurance strategies.

8. Use perceptual positions. 
Being able to take different perspectives on a situation is a valuable pre-requisite to any communication or negotiation. There are 4 perceptual positions: 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th position. Each position allows you to gain a unique perspective on a situation.  They also increase your flexibility.

9. Use frames. 
All behavior takes place in a context and we can say that all meaning is therefore context dependent. A context essentially provides a frame around any event or situation. Having the ability to pre-frame and re-frame is both a way to deal with objections and to open up more possibilities in any communication.

10. Develop questioning & listening skills. 
Questions are like spotlights because they shed light on things that another person may not yet be aware of. Asking questions enables us to elicit important information about other people such as their Meta Program preferences, Decision-making strategies and Values. Knowing which question to ask to get the response you require is as much art as it is science. To know what question to ask you must listen very carefully to how another person represents their world. A well-timed and appropriate question can transform a conversation.

Applying these skills
Although these skills can be used formally in sales or negotiations they are also essential to building strong teams, whether in the Board Room or on the shop floor. When all team members share these skills they are able to unlock increased levels of creativity and productivity. They improve understanding and respect amongst team members and having these skills means people can disagree in a constructive, rather than destructive, way to produce generative results. In short, they lead to increased levels of performance!

 

*This article was featured in our newsletter “Performance Matters”, March 2013
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