8 Powerful Tips to Improve Your Persuasion: How to Lead More in Social Situations

Persuasion isn’t just for businessmen and politicians, it’s something we all find ourselves doing on a daily basis.

In its simplest form, persuasion is just communication that is intended to change someone’s thoughts, feelings, or behaviors. This could be a parent trying to persuade a child to eat their vegetables, or a teacher persuading a student to study more, or a friend persuading a friend to apply to a job.

Persuasion is the opposite of threatening someone or using force. It’s an attempt to change someone by using facts, logic, and reason presented in a way that appeals to the specific person you are trying to persuade.

Everyone who wants to know how to influence other people in a peaceful way needs to learn the tools of persuasion. This article covers 8 powerful and absolutely necessary tips you need to keep in mind whenever you are trying to persuade someone.

Focus on their values

Our values are ultimately what guide our behavior. And it’s a lot easier to persuade someone by focusing on their values, rather than trying to persuade them by focusing on your values.

For example, if someone doesn’t value watching sports very much, then it wouldn’t make sense to try to persuade someone by saying, “If you do this for me, I’ll give you these tickets to a football game.” The person doesn’t like sports, so why would that change their mind?

Whenever you persuade anyone, you need to start from their perspective, not yours. Persuasion is about walking someone from Point A (where they are) to Point B (where you want them to go). But you have to begin at where they are.

Start by listening to their thoughts, beliefs, and opinions – and ask questions when you don’t understand something. Then try to imagine these thoughts, beliefs, and opinions as if they were your own.

Remember, everyone has different things that make them “tick.” What really matters to you may not matter to someone else. In persuasion, you need to look through the eyes of the other person.

Speak their language

Persuasion is most effective when you speak the language of the person you’re talking to.

Pay attention to particular words and phrases people use – especially ones they repeat a lot – and then you use those exact same words and phrases when you’re trying to make your own points (this is sometimes known as the echo effect).

This is helpful because many words have a personal meaning attached to them, so by adopting those words in your own vocabulary you can touch on that same level of meaning and connotation.

And if you’re uncertain about what a person means by a particular word or phrase, you should ask them to clarify. A lot of conflict in any communication comes from a lack of mutual understanding about what a word means.

Make sure you’re not only adopting the words people use, but how they use them. This will improve both clarity in what you’re saying, and also the power behind your persuasion.

Say their name

A person’s name is the single most powerful word you can use. Nothing grabs our attention more than our names being said – it’s a part of everyone’s unique, personal identity.

Have you ever found yourself just thinking someone said your name, when they didn’t? That’s how sensitive we can be to our names being said.

In persuasion, saying a person’s name is incredibly important for many reasons.

First, it grabs the person’s focus and attention every time you say it. This is especially useful to use if you’re about to saying something really important – something you really want the person to hear and process.

Second, it creates feelings of friendliness and likability toward you. People usually like hearing their name be said, and it makes us feel more connected to the person saying it.

There’s a balance between how often you should say someone’s name. If you say it too often, it’ll come off fake or suspicious.

However, in general it’s a good idea to sprinkle a person’s name throughout the conversation – especially the beginning and end of the interaction, as well as specific moments when you really want the person to listen.

Use facts and statistics (in the right doses)

In persuasion, the more facts and statistics you have, the more likely it is that you will appear right to others.

People are more likely to side with the person who can cite studies, polls, and statistics to back up what they say, rather than the person who just expects you to take everything at face value.

Using facts and statistics makes you more authoritative and knowledgeable in what you’re talking about. And in today’s information age, it’s really not hard to do your research and find hard evidence to support you.

Try your best to find the most reliable and acceptable sources, especially keeping in mind the person or audience you are trying to persuade. If you do this, people will have little reason to criticize where you got your information.

Also, give people an opportunity to double check where you got your information. Most people won’t do it, but it’ll still make you appear honest and transparent about what you’re saying.

Create emotions

Many times emotions are even more persuasive than facts.

It’s unlikely you’ll change someone’s mind solely through facts, logic, and reason. People like to believe their choices are based only on the evidence, but at the end of the day we tend to follow our gut a lot of the time.

In persuasion, it’s helpful to create emotions that support your message. Ask yourself, “What emotions would someone need to feel persuaded?”

Then think of ways you can create these emotions by:

• Sharing a personal story about you or someone you know.
• Asking someone to share their personal experience with something.
• Creating a hypothetical scenario. (“What would it be like if you…”)
• Use metaphors to communicate your message in a different way.
• Playing music or videos that elicit emotions (such as during a presentation or lecture).

The type of emotion you want to create will depend on what you’re trying to communicate.

For example, someone who wants to persuade you to donate to the needy may want to create feelings of sympathy and compassion. Or someone who wants to persuade you to go to a movie may want to create feelings of excitement and joy.

Facts get people thinking, but emotions are what motivate people to take action. Without creating some type of emotional experience, it’s unlikely that your persuasion will be effective.

Be consistent and honest

Consistency is the backbone of building trust and a positive reputation.

If you do hypocritical things or contradict yourself a lot, people are going to have a hard time believing what you say and taking you seriously.

Not being consistent in your message means that you may not even believe what you’re saying, and that you just say whatever feels right in the moment to win people over.

We find this rule play out a lot in politics. If a politician is always swaying with the popular opinion, people find him to be dishonest and manipulative.

If you find yourself being inconsistent, you have two main choices: 1. Admit you made a mistake and apologize, or 2. Explain that you’ve changed your opinion and why.

We’re human – we make mistakes and we change our mind sometimes – so it’s better to be honest about this rather than have your inconsistencies go unexplained. People will respect you more because of it.

Demonstrate social proof

Another big component of persuasion is social proof. People are more likely to conform to a certain belief or behavior if other people do it too, especially people that are similar to them.

Part of this is due to an evolutionary drive to not deviate from our tribe or community. Much of our society is built on shared attitudes, so to go against the crowd could be dangerous.

This is known in psychology as the bandwagon effect – the basic idea is that if we see a lot of people following a certain trend, we’ll join that trend too – “monkey see, monkey do.”

You can find this effect in many different domains of life. In fashion, if a lot of people start wearing a certain style, other people will often copy it. In technology, if other people are buying a certain new product, other people will begin buying it too.

You can use social proof in your persuasion by giving examples of other people who have already “joined your side.” This will add extra social pressure for a person to be persuaded by what you’re saying, because they will get the impression that a lot of other people are doing it too.

Be willing to let it go

At the end of the day, you have to realize that you can’t persuade everyone. Often times, if you can’t change someone’s mind, it’s better to just let it go instead of continuing to try to persuade them.

You look more confident in yourself if you can let something go, rather than looking desperate because you feel the need for everyone to agree with you – other people will see it as a sign of weakness and insecurity.

It’s paradoxical, but the less you seek people’s approval, the more often you’ll usually get it. The same is true for persuasion: the best way to change people’s minds is often when deep-down you don’t really care if you do or not.

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