Our career progression largely depends on how influential we can be. Team meetings, staff meetings, presentations and job interviews all require us to be persuasive at times. It is important to be able to ‘sell ourselves’: to communicate our ideas and showcase our expertise.
But being persuasive is (arguably) more challenging now than at any time in the past. Many of us may be suffering from what I like to refer to as ‘persuasion fatigue’. We have all been the subject of sophisticated marketing campaigns. We have been cold called, upsold to, pitched to and generally sold to by people with the aim of persuading us to their point of view.
Yes, persuasion is an industry – it is called the advertising industry. The number of persuasive messages that people are exposed to has increased exponentially over the last 20 years. Persuasion strategies are more sophisticated than ever, marketers are even using emotional appeals, such as fear, joy and love to persuade. As a result people are generally more weary and wary of efforts to manipulate or influence them.
Ever noticed how guarded people often are when they sense someone is trying to influence them?
People have a variety of guards that they put up when they feel the approach is too pushy. Here are some of the more common guards people have:
- This may be good but I don’t have time for this right now (cognitive miser).
- I don’t really care about this – boring (emotional miser).
- I’ve heard it all before – I know what you are going to say (closed minded).
- I’m not sure you know what you are talking about (lack of credibility perception).
- Do you really have my interests in mind? / Do you really care about me? (rapport blocker)
- Hurry up and make your point because I’ve got something better/more important to say (self-interest).
When you consider how many guarded responses there are, it is all the more important for individuals to be skilled in their efforts to persuade others.
Can we define ‘best practice’ in persuasive communication?
Because we are all persuaded in different ways it is difficult to define best practice in persuasive communication. However, we move closer to best practice when we ‘flex’ our persuasive communication style by building our skills in the competency areas in which we are weakest/least developed.
Are persuasive people born or made?
Persuasive people ARE born rather than made in the sense that some people are just naturally more driven to persuade than others, something I like to I refer to as a ‘predisposition to persuade’. Of course this doesn’t necessarily mean that they will actually be more persuasive, just they are more inclined to take any opportunity to persuade others.
Some people may be (naturally) more persuasive because they are charismatic, intelligent, confident, articulate or opportunistic. But this doesn’t mean that most people cannot develop more persuasive communication skills.
Can anyone really be persuasive?
Yes, ANYONE can be persuasive.
Even if we don’t see ourselves as charismatic, there are more communication behaviours that anyone can learn to increase their persuasiveness. The first step is recognising that most of us naturally look to persuade others in the same way that we are persuaded and that there is a need to develop skills that will enable us to persuade others that fall into a different persuasion style.
Through my research I have identified the key competencies of persuasive communication. I have developed a psychometric test called the Persuasion Reality Check that makes it easy for people to identify in which competencies they are most well developed and those they are least well developed.
The four competencies to master in order to be persuasive in business include:
- Establishing credibility
- Providing evidence
- Building rapport
- Delivering the message
To become more persuasive, it’s important to work on becoming better at those competencies in which you are less well developed.
Once we understand our strengths and weaknesses when it comes to persuading at work, we can work toward flexing our persuasive communication style so that we appeal to all people – not just those people who are persuaded in the same way we are. In this way we will be extending our ‘persuasion reach’ or ‘sphere of influence’.