What is Persuasion?
Persuasion is the act of getting a sentient being other than yourself to adopt a particular belief or pursue a particular action.
Here are a couple techniques of top performers that you can use in your own workplace interactions to be more persuasive and influential by Monday morning:
Be the first to give
Studies show that people who have done something for us first persuade us more. We’re more likely to help work colleagues with their projects if they have helped us with ours. Requests that are personalized are most persuasive of all.
Listen First
Listening and knowing the receiving audience is a must-perform research. And note that not only the words that are exchanged but also the body language says a lot about how you finally get persuasion and influence to work. Show patience and empathy towards what others have to say and change your persuasion style accordingly.
Create a Connection
Look for common ground to help establish emotional bonds and shared objectives.
Make them laugh
If you want to be more persuasive, work on your sense of humor.
Credibility matters – a lot
The person or audience receiving the communication must believe you. This trust can depend on the communicator’s qualifications, and on his past performance.
Emotions
Stories are much easier to remember, more entertaining and have higher impact on people. Most people are moved by their emotions rather than their rational part. Nothing has more impact than personal anecdotes to persuade. What have you experienced and what are the results. They can be external stories as well but make sure you’ll tell them with the same enthusiasm and passion as the personal stories.
Ask questions about other people’s goals
When you ignore the other people’s agendas, the result is resistance and lack of engagement.
To keep the other person’s attention, you have to be familiar with what is important to them. What do they want? What do they value? Why should they care about your side of the argument?
Don’t Sound Desperate
One powerful way on how to be more persuasive is to act like you don’t have to work too hard at persuading your target, be happy and cheerful with your approach.
Use the positive labeling technique
“You did a fantastic job with this—I’m sure you’ll do even better next time.” One of the most powerful principles of persuasion rests on a person’s need to remain consistent with his past actions.
Visualization
Visualization means that you can create a picture for the listener of what the situation will look like once they have been persuaded to accept your position or agree to your decision.
Be Real
Last, you need to make sure your benefit exchange is credible and honest. People need to believe in what you communicate. Ask someone who is respected to back you up. Or show other people gaining the promised benefit. Or tell a good story that is a true example of the benefit in action. You want to persuade by keeping your promises.
Politeness
People do things for two reasons, because they want to and because they have to. When you treat people with kindness, courtesy and respect, you make them want to do things for you.
Learning how to be more persuasive can be quite tricky. However, as long as you have a basic understanding of your target person or audience, you won’t have a problem persuading people
What tips can you share on how to influence and persuade managers, employees or co–workers at your workplace? If you know other useful techniques, please share them with us in the comment section.
