Learning to be Persuasive

Learning to be Persuasive

I remember an experience that I had while I was in the military. We were in the desert and looking for a certain location. I was an Artillery Forward Observer and we were en route to a command meeting. We had a grid location but we had to find it. While I debated with the intelligence officer on how to get to the location my sergeant made a comment from the back seat of our vehicle. He actually told us the correct turn to make but we basically blew him off. He didn’t say another word until we ended up lost. While we continued to debate to figure out the right direction he told us once again which way to go. When we got there I asked him why he didn’t say anything sooner so that we didn’t have to ride around lost for so long. His reply to me was, “I told you earlier which way to go but you ignored me.” It was then that I realized that if I had listened to him the first time I would have been OK. It dawned on me that he did tell us and we just didn’t listen. I began to listen to what he had to say from that day forward and he never had to compete with me in order to get me to listen. He purposely used that situation to teach me a valuable lesson and it worked.

Sometimes we just can’t get people to listen to what we have to say. We can learn to be persuasive by overwhelming others or by allowing life’s hard lessons to get them to listen. Sometimes we may find ourselves in a situation where we just don’t have time to allow the situation to develop to the point of taking care of itself. Sometimes we have to jumpstart things with a little positive or negative reinforcement whichever is needed. In an emergency diplomacy may have to wait. Sometimes you just have to do what you have to do.

The first thing that we need to remember is that people naturally resist being pushed in a direction that they don’t want to. If we can persuade people to take certain actions because they want to we will be far more effective than the leader who wants to be a nasty little dictator. Yes the dictator will get results but they will be limited by their process.

Prejudgment and criticism will only serve to shut the ears of the people who you want to persuade. They must believe that their own best interest is at heart before they will wholeheartedly commit to a thing. Fear of termination will cause them to do the bare minimum but you want them to give their all. When people feel attacked or threatened they will automatically go into a defensive mode. Once they get into a defensive mindset there is absolutely nothing that you can do to persuade or convince them to do what you want other than by the threat of force or other negative consequences.

I always felt as a leader that I didn’t want to have to constantly harass or push subordinates to get them to do what I needed them to do. Let me make one thing clear before I go into my little diatribe. Some people won’t do anything unless you force them to. The technique that I am about to explain just won’t work for them. They will only respond to force. The other eighty percent will respond to positive reinforcement.

It all starts with your attitude. People don’t respect being manipulated. The fast talker may fool some of the people most of the time but the fast talker will become ineffective over a period of time.

Make people buy into your program by showing them some personal benefit. People are more inclined to go along with you when you make them feel that they are an actual part of the process. The leader has to walk a fine line when allowing his or her followers to have input into decisions. If you can walk that line you will have followers who are much more motivated to serve the cause. The Good Life