The hardest part of leadership Part 2 – Being Persuasive

You’ve come up with a great idea for a new _________(fill in the blank). Now you need to convince everyone to support it.

However, you haven’t had much success with this in the past. So, how can you get everyone to support your idea?

Work today gets done in an environment where people don’t just ask: “What should I do?” but “Why should I do it?”

The ability to persuade is the doorway towards being influential with those around you – especially if you are a leader who wants to create behavioural change in your team.

Many people misunderstand persuasion, and more still underutilize it. The reason? Persuasion is widely perceived as a skill reserved for selling products and closing deals. It is also commonly seen as just another form of manipulation – devious and to be avoided.

When you hear the word persuasion, what do you think people are doing?

Most people think it is a process something like the following:

• First, you strongly state your position and passionately
• Second, you outline the supporting arguments, followed by a highly assertive, data-based exposition. Almost daring someone to disagree with you fool proof’ logic
• Finally, you enter the deal-making stage and work toward a “close.” In other words, you use logic, persistence, personal enthusiasm and a little bit of pushiness to get others to buy a good idea.

The reality is that following this process is one sure fire way to fail at persuasion.

Rather we should see effective persuasion as a negotiating and learning process through which a persuader leads colleagues to a problem’s shared solution. Persuasion does indeed involve moving people to a position they don’t currently hold, but not by begging, brow beating or cajoling. Instead, it involves careful preparation, the proper framing of arguments, the presentation of vivid supporting evidence, and the effort to find the correct emotional match with your audience.

The process of being persuasive involves phases of discovery, preparation, and dialogue. Getting ready to persuade colleagues can take weeks or months of planning as you learn about your audience and the position you intend to argue. Before they even start to talk, effective persuaders have considered their positions from every angle.

Dialogue happens before and during the persuasion process. Before the process begins, effective persuaders use dialogue to learn more about their audience’s opinions, concerns, and perspectives. During the process, dialogue continues to be a form of learning, but it is also the beginning of the negotiation stage. You invite people to discuss, even debate, the merits of your position, and then to offer honest feedback and suggest alternative solutions. That may sound like a slow way to achieve your goal, but effective persuasion is about testing and revising ideas in concert with your colleagues’ concerns and needs. In fact, the best persuaders not only listen to others but also incorporate their perspectives into a shared solution. Persuasion, in other words, often involves – indeed, demands – compromise.

Perhaps that is why the most effective persuaders seem to share a common trait: they are open-minded, never dogmatic. They enter the persuasion process prepared to adjust their viewpoints and incorporate others’ ideas.

When colleagues see that a persuader is eager to hear their views and willing to make changes in response to their needs and concerns, they respond very positively. They trust the persuader more and listen more attentively. They don’t fear being bowled over or manipulated. They see the persuader as flexible and are thus more willing to make sacrifices themselves. Because that is such a powerful dynamic, good persuaders often enter the persuasion process with judicious compromises already prepared.

According to an article by Jay A Conger in Harvard Business Review, 1998, there are four distinct and essential steps to being appropriately persuasive.

Four Essential Steps

1. Effective persuaders establish credibility 

2. Frame their goals in a way that identifies common ground with those they in- tend to persuade 

3. Reinforce their positions using vivid language and compelling evidence 

1. Connect emotionally with their audience.

1. EFFECTIVE PERSUADERS ESTABLISH CREDIBILITY

What people ask as soon as they hear something new or different is: “Can I trust the source of this information.” “Can we trust this individual’s perspectives and opinions?”

Credibility is the first hurdle persuaders must overcome.

The reality is, to allow yourself to be persuaded is risky, because it involves risking your own reputation and any new initiative demands a commitment of time and resources.

Yet even though persuaders must have high credibility, research strongly suggests that most managers overestimate their own credibility.

In the workplace, credibility grows out of two sources: expertise and relationships. People are considered to have high levels of expertise if they have a history of sound judgment or have proven themselves knowledgeable and well informed about their proposals.

On the relationship side, people with high credibility have demonstrated – again, usually over time – that they can be trusted to listen and to work in the best interests of others. They have also consistently shown strong emotional character and integrity; that is, they are not known for mood extremes or inconsistent performance. Indeed, people who are known to be honest, steady, and reliable have an edge when going into any persuasion situation. 

2. FRAME THEIR GOALS IN A WAY THAT IDENTIFIES COMMON GROUND

Even if your credibility is high, your position must still appeal strongly to the people you are trying to persuade. After all, few people will jump on board a train that will bring them to ruin or even mild discomfort. Effective persuaders must be adept at describing their positions in terms that reveal the advantages to those listening or the organisation overall. As any parent can tell you, the fastest way to get a child to come along willingly on a trip to the grocery store is to point out that there are lollipops by the cash register. That is not deception. It is just a persuasive way of framing the benefits of taking such a journey. In work situations, persuasive framing is obviously more complex, but the underlying principle is the same. It is a process of identifying shared benefits.

At the heart of framing is a solid understanding of your audience. Even before starting to persuade, the best persuaders closely study the issues that matter to their colleagues. They use conversations, meetings, and other forms of dialogue to collect essential information. They are good at listening. They test their ideas with trusted confidants, and they ask questions of the people they will later be persuading. Those steps help them think through the arguments, the evidence, and the perspectives they will present. Oftentimes, this process causes them to alter or compromise their own plans before they even start persuading. It is through this thoughtful, inquisitive approach they develop frames that appeal to their audience. 

3. REINFORCE THEIR POSITIONS USING VIVID LANGUAGE AND COMPELLING EVIDENCE

With credibility established and a common frame identified, persuasion becomes a matter of presenting evidence. Ordinary evidence, however, won’t do. The most effective persuaders use language in a particular way. They supplement numerical data with examples, stories, metaphors, and analogies to make their positions come alive. That use of language paints a vivid word picture and, in doing so, lends a compelling and tangible quality to the persuader’s point of view. 

4. CONNECT EMOTIONALLY WITH THEIR AUDIENCE.

Good persuaders are aware of the primacy of emotions and are responsive to them in two important ways.

First, they show their own emotional commitment to the position they are advocating. Such expression is a delicate matter. If you act too emotional, people may doubt your clear headedness. But you must also show that your commitment to a goal is not just in your mind but in your heart and gut as well. Without this demonstration of feeling, people may wonder if you actually believe in the position you’re championing.

Perhaps more important, however, is that effective persuaders have a strong and accurate sense of their audience’s emotional state, and they adjust the tone of their arguments accordingly. Sometimes that means coming on strong, with forceful points. Other times, a whisper may be all that is required. The idea is that whatever your position, you match your emotional fervour to your audience’s ability to receive the message.

As one of the most effective executives commented, “The most valuable lesson I’ve learned about persuasion over the years is that there’s just as much strategy in how you present your position as in the position itself. In fact, I’d say the strategy of presentation is the more critical.”