Persuasion Communication

What is Persuasion?
What do advertisements and debate club have in common?
They're both examples of persuasive techniques at work.
Persuasion basically means trying to influence the way someone thinks or behaves. There are all
kinds of different ways to persuade someone to do something. The ad is using an appeal to emotion.
It's associating the soda with being happy, so it's trying to persuade you to buy the soda so you'll be
happy like the people in the ad. The students at the debate club are doing something different.
Instead of appealing to emotion, they're trying to persuade each other with logical arguments that
use facts and evidence.
Being persuasive isn't the same thing as being right. The implied claim in the soda ad is that drinking
the soda will give you a lot of friends and make you happy. That's objectively not true. But that kind
of advertising can be very persuasive, and a lot of people are influenced by it. In this lesson, you'll
look at theories of persuasion and how they work.

The Rational Model

The rational model of persuasion is based on the idea that people behave in predictable ways
based on their beliefs and values. Beliefs and values are based on what the person knows about the
world. So for example, if someone knows that wearing a seatbelt saves lives and if he or she values
their own life, they probably believe that they should wear a seatbelt. Based on their beliefs and
values, they will probably behave in a rational way and wear their seatbelt in the car.
The rational model can get pretty complicated. For example, most of us believe that a salad is
healthier than pizza, but lots and lots of people every day go into restaurants and order pizza instead
of salads. What gives? One possible answer is that those people have conflicting values and beliefs.
They might believe that salad is healthier, but they might also believe that pizza is more delicious.
They might value health, but they might also value pleasure.
A person with complicated beliefs and values might sometimes order a salad and sometimes order a
pizza. When it comes to the important things in life, a lot of us have complicated and conflicting
beliefs and values, and we don't necessarily act in simple ways. So the rational model of persuasion
can be complicated. But it's still a useful tool for understanding why people think and act the way
they do and what you can do to change their mind or change their behavior - or both.
In the rational model, people's behavior is based on their beliefs and values. Their beliefs and values
are based on what they know (or think they know!) about the world. So if you want to change their
behavior, you'd have to change their beliefs and/or values.
If the person's beliefs are based on an incorrect fact, you can persuade them to change their beliefs
by showing them the truth. For example, say a person thinks that Highway X is under construction.
Because she believes that construction will cause her serious delays and because she values her
time, she won't take Highway X. But if you can prove to her that the construction on Highway X got
finished last week, you can change her behavior.
Simple, right? Just give the person the correct facts. Voila, persuasion accomplished!
 When Facts Aren't Enough
The rational persuasion model can get complicated. You might give someone the facts, but they
might not believe you because they think there's a conspiracy to hide the truth and only they can see
reality. Or sometimes, there are conflicting facts about a particular situation. For example, some
studies show that fish oil supplements help prevent heart disease, and other studies show that they
don't help.
Or here's another scenario when just providing the facts doesn't help: what happens when two
reasonable people have two different beliefs or values about the same set of facts?

Telling the person in green that pandas are endangered won't change his mind at all. He already
knows! If you want him to change his behavior and support the WWF, you'd have to address his
beliefs and values.
First, respectfully acknowledge the belief and find something in common. Calling someone stupid
isn't very persuasive. Most people will just get defensive and stop listening to you. Try to find
common ground. Acknowledging the belief and trying to find common ground this way is
called stimulation.

4 Strategies-

Most business people see persuasion as a straightforward process. They think it comprises:

 a strong statement of your position

 an outline of the supporting arguments, followed by a highly assertive, data-based
explanation
 entering into discussion with others and obtaining their ready agreement
In other words, you use logic, persistence and personal enthusiasm to get others to buy a
good idea. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong! This doesn’t work.
 Effective workplace persuasion was studied closely by Professor Jay Conger, Professor of
Organizational Behavior at the University of Southern California. Over a 12-year period he
reviewed the characteristics of successful business leaders and change agents, and studied
the academic literature on persuasion and rhetoric. Conger summarized his research in
a 1998 Harvard Business Review article, “The Necessary Art of Persuasion.” Although more
than 20 years have gone by since then, his conclusions are timeless.
Conger’s interest focused on persuasion as a process rather than as a single event, ie one
presentation. He formed definite conclusions about the necessary qualities of effective
persuasion:

“Effective persuasion becomes a negotiating and learning process through which a

persuader leads colleagues to a problem’s shared solution.” It is a difficult and time-
consuming process.

Four necessary steps in effective persuasion

Conger’s research indicated that effective persuasion comprises four distinct and necessary
steps:

1. Establish your credibility

In the workplace, credibility comes from 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. They have
demonstrated over time that they can be trusted to listen and to work in the best interests of
others.
2. Frame your goals in a way that identifies common ground with those you intend to
persuade.
It is a process of identifying shared benefits in which it is critical to identify your objective’s
tangible benefits to the people you are trying to persuade. If no shared advantages are
readily apparent, it is better to adjust your position until you find a shared advantag. 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 contacts and question the people
they will later be persuading. Often 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 your positions using vivid language and compelling evidence.
Persuasive people supplement data with examples, stories, metaphors and analogies to
make their positions come alive. Vivid word pictures lend a compelling and tangible quality
to the persuader’s point of view.
4. Connect emotionally with your audience.
Although we like to think decision-makers use reason to make their decisions, we will
always find emotions at play if we scratch below the surface. Good persuaders are aware of
the primacy of emotions and are responsive to them in two important ways. Firstly, they
show their own emotional commitment to the position they are advocating (without
overdoing it, which would be counter-productive). Secondly, they have a strong and
accurate sense of their audience’s emotional state, and they adjust their tone and the
intensity of their arguments accordingly.
 Avoid the four big errors of persuasion
From his painstaking research, Conger concluded that the big four mistakes in major
persuasion projects are:

1. Attempting to make your case with an up-front hard sell.

Setting out a strong position at the outset actually gives potential opponents something to
grab on to and to fight against. It’s far better not to give opponents a clear target at the start.
2. Resisting compromise.
Too many people see compromise as surrender, but compromise is essential to
constructive persuasion. Before people buy into a proposal they want to see that the
persuader is flexible enough to respond to their concerns. Compromises can often lead to
better, more sustainable, shared solutions.
3. Thinking the secret of persuasion lies in presenting great arguments.
Great arguments matter, but they are only one component. Other factors matter just as
much, such as the persuader’s credibility and their ability to create a mutually beneficial
position for themselves and their audience (win:win), to connect on the right emotional level
and to communicate through vivid language that makes arguments come alive.
4. Assuming persuasion is a one-time effort.
Persuasion is a process, not an event. Shared solutions are rarely reached on the first try.
More often than not, persuasion involves listening to people, testing a position, developing a
new position that reflects input from the group, more testing incorporating compromises,
and then trying again. If this sounds like a slow and difficult process, that’s because it is. But
the results are worth the effort.