Business and Personal Development

I’ve been teaching Chinese managers who use English as a second language advanced techniques in persuasion, speeches and negotiations for over half a decade now. Although these skillsets can be taught separately, I have found over the years how much more closely interdependent these skills are. I will demonstrate in just a moment the key elements in persuasion and speeches, which you may or may not be familiar with already, and further how to fit all these separate elements into a framework that works extremely well in speeches with a few examples from famous speeches.

First, why do I focus so much on persuasion and not influence? After all, influence is a powerful tool that we can use to get people to follow our lead. However, influence if not used correctly can also have a negative impact on the people you are leading. Influence is also a very direct form of leadership that a lot of people may not be comfortable with.

The main purpose of persuasion is to give people a direction so that they can then make their own decisions in a matter. Empowering others to their own right to make a decision allows them to create more trust in you (good for negotiation), and if they are persuaded by what you have said, they feel best when they make their own decision to follow the direction you suggest, not because you told them to, but because they’re doing it out of their own free will. In other words, I can still ”influence” others, but I use an indirect approach, one that I believe is at least 20% more effective than the direct one.

Now let me introduce some basic elements of persuasion. Continue Reading »