Process of Persuasion
Good Listener
His thoughts were slow,
His words were few,
And never made to glisten,
But he was a joy
Wherever he went
You should have heard him listen.
Listening is an essential part of communication, and it is different from hearing. Being a good and patient listener helps you not only solve many problems at work or home, but also to see the world through the eyes of others, thereby opening your understanding and enhancing your capacity for empathy. Besides which, you learn a lot from listening. As deceptively simple as listening to and acknowledging other people may seem, doing it well, particularly when disagreements arise, takes sincere effort and lots of practice.
Steps for active listening:
Ø Place yourself in the other person’s shoes
Ø Remove all distractions
Ø Practice the empathetic sounding back technique
Ø Do not interrupt with what you feel or think about the topic being discussed
Ø Ask meaningful and empowering questions
Ø Wait for the person to open up
Ø Use body gestures and facial expressions to express your interest and to unearth what is left unsaid
Ø Be patient and respect pauses
Ø Try to reassure the speaker that all is well
Ø Accept that everyone has a unique thought process and ways to express himself/herself
Ø Just because someone is speaking to you, do not presume that they are asking you for your input
Ø Most information is not remembered because we are thinking of our response to the speaker and therefore missed what was said
Attention Please!!!
It is very necessary to grab the attention of the listener when you want to communicate or pass on a particular message. Keeping the audience’s attention or interest is probably the bedrock of any successful conversion or meeting. No attention means no communication and no communication will lead to no result. It is difficult to maintain the attention level of the audience. There may be many gains and falls, etc. In order to avoid these, one should have some ways to grab the attention of the audience again. Some of the ways to win more attention are as follows:
Ø Change the seating (if possible)
Ø Avoid breaks
Ø Say what you are going to say
Methods of persuasion:
The three main methods of persuading the audience are:
1. Using evidence and logic skillfully
a. Presenting evidences is one of the most crucial points while persuading. There are four principal ways of persuading evidence, which are as follows:
i. Assertion + Evidence + Source
ii. Assertion + Evidence
iii. Assertion + Evidence + Source + Qualification of source
iv. Assertion + Firsthand experience
b. Presenting logical reasoning to the audience is also of great importance. Following are the four patterns of reasoning:
i. Deductive (from general to specific)
ii. Inductive ( starting from proven facts)
iii. Analogical (explain, comparison)
iv. Causal (establishing relationship between cause and effect)
Unfortunately, not all reasoning is logical reasoning. Some speakers, knowingly and unknowingly use various types of fallacious reasoning.
2. Establishing credibility:
A speaker’s credibility results from trustworthiness, competency, dynamism and objectivity
3. Appealing to listener’s physiological needs:
According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the listener’s concern is the safety needs. So the successful approach for any speaker is to indentify the safety needs of its audience and make the approach.
Becoming a persuader
Some of the common tactics to become a persuader are as follows:
· Knowing the audience
· Demographic and audience analysis
· Forms of organization
· Forms of proof
· Building your credibility
· Wording your message
· Delivering your message
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