A logical mindset and good reasoning skills will help you to form convincing persuasive arguments. Interpersonal skills are based on your ability to conduct positive interactions and maintain meaningful relationships with other people. If you are not comfortable with instigating conversations or engaging in workplace rapport, you may find persuasion a challenge. Part of being persuasive is being genuine, natural and at least a little charismatic.
People are more likely to agree with someone they like, so improving your interpersonal relationships is one of the best ways to become more skilled in persuasion. Read more: Interpersonal Skills: Definitions and Examples. Negotiation is often a crucial part of successful persuasion.
In many cases, the person you are persuading will be unwilling to cooperate unless they believe they are benefiting from the deal. You may need to be able to facilitate a compromise to persuade them to participate. To do this, you will have to understand their needs, find a way to meet those needs and negotiate an arrangement that pleases both sides. Negotiation skills take practice but can be a significant asset when you are trying to persuade a stubborn coworker or client.
Successfully implementing your persuasion skills will require time, energy and practice. Here are some tips on how to persuade others effectively:. Building trust is one of the most important elements of persuasive conversations. If you are asking someone else to take a risk or step outside their comfort zone, it is imperative that they trust you and your judgment. To build trust, you will need to maintain a good reputation in your workplace and be willing to serve.
If you show yourself to be selfless and willing to help, others are likely to return the favor. Part of staging a successful persuasive conversation is picking the right time and place. You will want to choose a location where your listener feels comfortable and at ease. This could be in your office, in the staff room, at a nearby coffee shop or even in your home.
You will also want to pick a time when they are not stressed or rushed, such as at the start of the week or during a long lunch break. As you are beginning a persuasive conversation or presentation, it is important that you find common ground between yourself and your listeners.
Focus on your shared problems or mutual goals. If you can find something that you agree on from the start, your listener will be more open to your other ideas.
When persuading someone, you will need to present indisputable data that shows how agreeing with you will benefit them. For example, if you are selling a car, you could persuade the customer by showing them graphs with detailed safety information. To appeal to their emotions, you could talk to the same customer about how much fun it would be to drive their kids in the car during family road trips—and if the kids aren't having fun, at least they're in a safe vehicle.
There are several steps you can take to become a more successful persuader:. The first step in persuading more effectively is improving your people skills. Focus on building trust and rapport with your coworkers, clients and friends. Even if you never have to use your persuasive skills on these particular people, strengthening your relationships with them will help you practice your interpersonal and emotional intelligence skills.
You can also seek out opportunities to build new professional relationships and widen your network. But in reality, good persuasion is all about helping people. There are a lot of reasons why being persuasive is an important professional development skill in business life, as well as personal.
Most importantly, persuasion helps people take actions that will actually be in their benefit, despite the mental roadblocks they might have that prevent them from doing so. The same goes with vendors, business partners and investors.
No matter what situations we encounter in life, persuasion usually plays a role in the outcome. You might be trying to convince a toddler to brush their teeth, prodding a friend to go to dinner at a certain restaurant you love, or getting your repairman to come to your home at your preferred time of day.
Persuasion in the context of business takes play everyday as well. Advertising is a form of persuasion by attempting to influence customers to visit your store or use your services. Persuasion is also key to any negotiation, and for businesses this can mean convincing vendors to provide better pricing or services.
Think of persuasion simply as an extension of effective communication. By skillfully describing the benefits and logic of something in order to gain an agreement or build consensus, great persuaders can create a win-win for everyone.
You might be convincing others how a certain proposal makes sense, and the different ways it benefits other parties. Part of business persuasion is showing stakeholders how a project or business will generate returns, or explaining to employees why a new process or approach will benefit them in the long run.
Unfortunately, the negative stigma is that persuasion is seen as manipulative or even dishonest. People are likely to process information using the central route is when they feel that they will be held accountable for the information after the fact. With accountability, there is the perception that someone, or a group of people, will be watching to see if the receiver remembers the information later on. Personal responsibility is when people feel that they are going to be held responsible, without a clear external accounting, for the evaluation of a message or the outcome of a message, they are more likely to critically think through the message using the central route.
Research has shown that if only one or two students are asked to evaluate any one speaker at a time, the quality of the evaluations for that speaker will be better than if everyone in the class is asked to evaluate every speaker. When people feel that their evaluation is important, they take more responsibility and therefore are more critical of the message delivered.
We can think about how persuasion is part of our daily lives. It is beneficial to think about how our relationship to persuasion can affect us. If you are skilled at understanding when you are being persuaded, why, and how, you will be more informed and skilled as a consumer and in your relationships with others. Search for:. Department of Communication, Indiana State University.
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