5 points of persuasion.

Dan Gregory @DanGregoryCo

We are all engaged in a quest for influence. 

Whether we’re a leader trying to inspire our team, a businessperson trying to pitch a product or service, or a parent trying to sell bedtime and broccoli, our capacity to persuade and engage is key to our success.

So, how might we increase our powers of persuasion? Here are five points to consider:

1. Identity

Every decision we make is filtered through our sense of identity - who we think we are and who we want to project to the world that we are. What’s more, we are motivated by identity congruence. Challenge my identity, and we’re going to have problems.

What makes identity so powerful is that it is intrinsically motivating and self-correcting. If you’re Australian, Danish, American or Chinese, you don’t need to constantly remind yourself how to be Australian, Danish, American or Chinese. Your behaviours and beliefs are internalised.

What can complicate this, and where conflict can arise, is the fact that there are two important components to identity - personal and social. In different contexts, one will exert primacy over the other. There are some personal lines that you may not cross, but in a social context you are more likely to behave in a way considered consistent within the tribe you inhabit.

If you want to increase your influence and be more persuasive, spend less time telling me about your ideas or products and more time explaining who you help me to be.

2. Values

One of the factors that influences identity is our values. 

All of us have a values hierarchy, often unconsciously, where values are ranked by their perceived importance. If you are able to align your value with my values, I buy in.

In other words, don’t tell me about products and features or try to “sell” me a new idea, demonstrate how your idea is aligned to what I already care about.

3. Ease

In 2014, my business partner, Kieran Flanagan and I, wrote a book called “Selfish Scared & Stupid.” It was about the fact that our survival brain has priority over all of our initial decision making. That means, we’re programmed to mitigate risk, to look for self-interest and bias towards ease and simplicity.

This is a critical understanding for behaviour design. Consider an automated savings plan where a percentage of your salary is deducted from your pay cheque and deposited into an account you have limited access to before you even see it. The reduction of friction in the process and the ease that automation provides makes success much more likely.

In the same way, in trying to be more persuasive, too many of us make ourselves difficult to agree with, either through pressure or a lack of empathy. 

To win more hearts and minds, make yourself the easy option to agree with. Which leads us to point number four.

4. Agreement

A friend of mine once observed that, “When you agree with someone, they think you’re a genius.” There is more than a grain of truth in that statement. 

When you find agreement early in a conversation or you communicate points where agreement can be found, you access what Robert Cialdini would refer to as the principle of “Reciprocity.” You create a social imbalance where people tend to feel like they now have to find something to agree with in what you’re saying.

Agreement on one side encourages agreement by all.

5. Purpose

So, what are you saying? And why?

Your purpose should draw on all of the above and be more defined by what you contribute to the people you serve and associate with, but it must also be characterised by the change you seek to make in the world (or at least, your corner of the world).

Is it inspiring? Do people want it? Is it articulated in terms of the value it provides?

The more your purpose affirms what your community can agree to, aligns with their values, helps them be who they want to be and is easy to buy into, the more persuasive your communications become.

Dan Gregory is an author, speaker, trainer and social commentator. Dan is obsessed with studying human behaviour and speaks on Persuasive Communication & Leadership applied to Purpose, Persuasion & Performance Dan helps leaders, teams and other smart people to be “people smart”: 

#Purpose - Culture & Leadership

#Persuasion - Communication, Sales & Branding

#Performance - Self-Leadership & Behaviour Design

Find out how Dan can help you and your team increase their influence and be more persuasive though his Keynote Presentations & Training Workshops. Contact [email protected] or visit www.TheImpossibleInstitute.com