An excerpt from Brian
Tracy's Speak to Win:
Persuading Others
The key to success in a
meeting is for you to be persuasive. It lets you affect the direction of the
discussion and influence the final decisions and conclusions with your
input.
To be persuasive in a
meeting, the meeting participants must like you. To be liked, you must be
likeable. People must willingly support you and approve of your ideas and
your positions. The key to increasing your influence and persuading
others to support and agree with you is simple: Make others feel important.
There are six things
("the six As") you can practice to make
others feel more valuable in a meeting or any other social or business
situation. They are essential if you want to speak to win.
1. Acceptance.
One of the deepest human needs is to be unconditionally accepted by
others. You express your acceptance of others by looking directly at them
and smiling, both when they come in and when they say something or contribute
to the meeting. This makes the individual feel valuable and
important. It raised his or her self-esteem and improves his or her
self-image. It also causes the person, at a subconscious level, to want
to support you in the things you suggest or say.
2. Appreciation.
Any time that you express appreciation to other people for anything that
they have done or said, you raise their self-esteem and increase your
likeability in their eyes. The easiest way to express appreciation is
simply to say thank you for anything the person does or says that is helpful or
constructive. You can thank people for arriving on time. You can
thank people for contributing a piece of information. You can thank people
for making a comment and for assisting or correcting you.
Whenever you thank someone
for anything, you encourage that person to repeat the behavior and to make even
more valuable contributions. When a person is thanked, he feels more
valuable, respected, and important. The words thank you are powerful in building your likeability and ensuring that
others cooperate with you and support your positions.
3. Admiration.
Abraham Lincoln once said, "Everyone likes a compliment." When
you compliment people on anything that they do or say, or on any of their
possessions, they feel more valuable and important, and they like you more as a
result.
Continually look for ways
to compliment people. You can admire a person's briefcase, purse, or
pen. You can admire an item of his clothing or appearance. If he
presents a piece of information, you can compliment him on how excellent it
looks or sounds. Even looking at a person, smiling, and
nodding in complimentary way can cause him to feel more valuable and important
and like you and support you when you propose something later.
4. Approval.
You may have heard the saying "Babies cry for it and grown men die for
it." People need approval from others, especially people whom they
look up to and respect. Every time you give praise and approval of any
kind to anyone for any reason, you raise that person's self-esteem, improve her
self-image, and make her feel better about herself and about you.
The keys to giving approval
are to make it both immediate and specific. When someone contributes
something of value or presents a piece of helpful information to the group,
immediately praise the information by saying something like, "this is very
good work." Be specific, like "These figures are very impressive.
They look great."
The more that you praise
and approve the work and contributions of other people, the more and better
contributions they will make, and the more they will like you and support your
ideas and points of view later.
5. Attention.
People always pay attention to people and things that they most
value. As the saying goes, life is the study of attention. Whenever
you pay close attention to another person, he or she feels more valuable and
important. They key to paying attention is to listen closely when another
person speaks and not to interrupt. Look at the person directly and hang
on every word. Nod, smile, and agree as if what the other person is
saying is extraordinarily important and insightful.
When others feel that they
are being closely listened to, their self-esteem goes up. Their brains
release endorphins, and they feel happier and more positive about themselves
and their work. They associate you with this good feeling, and your
influence over them goes up tremendously.
6. Agreement.
The final A that you can practice in any meeting with any number of people
is to be generally agreeable with others. You can be agreeable even if
you disagree with someone's point of view.
When someone says something
or makes a point that you don't agree with, instead of challenging him (which
puts him on the defensive and makes him angry) say something like, " That is an interesting point. I had not thought
of that before. It clashes a bit with my own idea, but I would like to
understand it better."
If you must disagree, use
what is called "Third-Party Disagreement." Instead of saying,
"I disagree with you," you can say, "That is
an interesting point. How would you answer the question that another
person might ask if he or she were to challenge this point by saying such and
such a thing?"
In other words, put your
disagreement into the mouth of a nonexistent third party. Ask the person
to defend his point of view to a person who is not present. This takes
the pressure off of the individual and it enables him to defend his point of
view without having to feel defensive or under attack by anyone in that
particular meeting.
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