Persuasion

Part of communication is listening. We tend to think that if we can hear we are listening. Listening takes constant mental growth, fitness, sleep, good health and general awareness about the world around us. Nobody I know is really looking for more work and responsibility. Instead, what many of us want is less work and more fun, less responsibility and some sort of relaxing plateau.

The corollary that goes along with those wishes is that people and organizations will follow “our rules and expectations” in dealing with us and our community. That not only won’t happen it can’t happen. So the responsibility for our success falls on our shoulders. When we think, “They shouldn’t have done that,” “They had no right to say that,” we should be reminded that our success is our responsibility and it’s going to take our full attention.

We need to ask ourselves simple questions all the time which will aid us to put communication into our system with a real chance that we can succeed. Questions such as: 1) why are they talking to me? 2) why are they talking to me now? 3) why are they saying what they are? 4) what do they hope to accomplish? 5) who am I? 6) who do they think I am? 7) who are they? 8) who do they think they are, etc. These questions and others like them will help you to think about communications you are involved with. The review of communications in light of these questions will only take a second once you’ve become accustomed to thinking critically. But it will take practice getting there.

When you begin to practice these methods you will become increasingly able to use persuasive communications no matter what their origins. We all use persuasion in order to achieve even the simplest of goals. We constantly have others practicing their persuasive communication on us. It pays us to learn as much as possible about persuasion.