Persuasion is a facilitator for getting work done. It helps to achieve an outcome you can't possibly get without the power of influencing others.
MBA courses, leadership books and executive development programmes talk about how important persuasion is but they rarely teach it as a practical art. Most organisations, even if they talk about persuasion, focus on sales and numbers. Managers need more fundamental advice and clarity on how to persuade.
Once I suggested a workshop on persuasion to a heavy-engineering manufacturing company. The HR head politely said, “What will they do with persuasion? They don't meet customers.” My logic was, “Do they deal with another fellow human being? They would need it then.”
Robert Cialdini, author of “Influence at work”, says, “Persuasion is an umbrella term of influence.” In business, persuasion is a process aimed at changing a person's or a group's attitude or behaviour toward some event, idea, object, or other person, by using written, spoken words or visual tools to convey information, feelings, or reasoning, or a combination of these.
So let us see how can you use persuasion for people in different situations.
Use non-threatening language: Suppose you are gearing up to face a colleague with whom you've worked closely for years. The challenge is his anger and hostile attitude about your promotion over him. Now the relationship between you both is not so cordial. But the workplace remains the same and hence the need of working together too.
You expect more than a little resistance. Is there anything you could say at the start of your meeting to reduce your co-worker's reluctance to cooperate with you and make him see the same vision?
Do not ever begin the conversation with, “Now anyways you have to cooperate with me. Hardly any options left for you. So why not behave better.” Threatening language at the workplace is one big reason for resignations. Starting it with a tone of helplessness is even worse. “See, now that you have to work with me and same here, whether we like it or not... so let's finish whatever is given here.” The language of persuasion has to sound like being with the person on the same platform but decisive and authoritative, not overpowering.
The sentence should sound like, “We have been colleagues for so many years. If we can sit together and find out the most effective way to work on this project? Coffee in my office at 3 pm? Bring your suggestions along and let's rock it.” The “we” approach with a hint of mild appreciative tone is the key.
Get people to open up: We've all been in these traps. Our subordinates, bosses or vendors just “don't understand us.” They somehow don't “get it” and refuse to even hear us out on what we think are perfectly reasonable requests or even complaints.
We end up hugely frustrated, get annoyed and angry but it's them who are the offended party. Pretty quickly, the situation goes from bad to worse. It could result in the loss of a valued employee or a trusted vendor or friction with your manager.
Influencing someone is not argumentative but mostly people resort to that as they do not have entire facts about why the other person is not agreeing. Get people to talk and be a good listener. At times, the logic on the other side might help. You need to at least listen peacefully and not with an intent to defend your position. It helps people to open up, and then, reasoning is plausible.
However, sometimes people are just against progress because it demands them to be out of comfort zone. But even to know that difference, one needs to let go of being judgemental and be open to hearing everyone out.
Persuasion demands patience and it comes from building value-oriented relationships. Focus on the other person's positive attributes to begin the process and always remember, each coin has two sides.
The writer is strategic advisor and premium educator with Harvard Business Publishing