Achieving Credibility, Buy-in & Support for Your Plans

We hope you will attend because…

Ø  Persuasive communication is vital every time a leader needs the acceptance, trust or support of others – whether they are reports, superiors, peers, customers, suppliers, regulators or the public.

Ø  Executives communicate every day to generate cooperation for many purposes, initiate projects and changes, to get information, manage groups, craft offers and agreements, promote innovation and more.

Ø  Persuasion is an old art, but few people master it; most rely only on intuition and informal experience.

Strategies of Persuasion & Executive Influence is based on recent advances in the science of human performance and provides leaders with principles and methods that can greatly enhance the ability to communicate and persuade. It teaches both the art and science of effective persuasion.

The program teaches participants how to communicate, persuade and influence others systematically, strategically and effectively. The program will cover all of the key elements that will help you to become an expert.

1)       Communication, Persuasion and Influence - Nature, Uses and Limitations: Communicating means providing cues, signals, gestures, arguments, numbers, graphs, pictures or any other “antecedent information” to guide or motivate someone to do something that will supposedly produce more rewards or less trouble for the performer and/or for the communicator. Signals from leaders are good for getting any performance started, but because antecedent information is cheaper than actually providing the promised “payoffs,” leaders often over-communicate, making pep-talks, promises and threats too frequently, and failing to deliver.  The program will teach you how to combine communications that start people performing with effective reward systems that will maintain and improve effort.

2)       Modes of Communication: There are several: Informing leaves “what to do” up to the recipient; asserting says what should be done; commanding is based on supposed authority or consequences; and persuading involves deliberate use of knowledge about human nature and/or the recipient’s experience and culture. The program will teach you how to use each mode in the appropriate situation and to the best effect.

3)       Principles of Persuasion, a.k.a. Persuasion Biases: Studies show that most executives rely too heavily on assertion – simply telling people what should be done – what they really need is to make a persuasive case to overcome inertia and resistance to change. Much of the new science of communication is about how to appeal to “predispositions to be persuaded” that are part of human nature. Most of these innate biases – e.g. commitment, likeability, exclusivity, authority, reciprocation, and social proof -- are simple, intuitive, and work largely at the unconscious level, but when requests appeal to one or more of them in real-life field experiments, communicators typically get 75% to 400% more cooperation or compliance! And, appealing to human nature is only the beginning: At the program you will learn how to use information on the interests, experiences, and culture of those you want to influence to craft persuasion efforts that are effective on many levels.

4)       The Ethics of Effective Influence: Building Trust, Reputation and Resistance to Manipulation. Just as there are pitfalls that make communication ineffective, there also ethical pitfalls that can do much damage to one’s reputation and interests. Several factors make persuasion particularly subject to deceptive abuse: Inspiring messages are generally cheaper than the benefits that they promise; they seem to offer a quick fix to performance problems, are over-used; and most persuasion principles influence people unconsciously. The program will teach you how to combine effectiveness and ethics and enhance trust and reputation.

5)       Analysing Communication and Persuasion Situations: Research shows that most people think first and foremost about what they want others to do, thereby neglecting the other major factors in persuasion: a) the audience; b) the best agent of influence or messenger (which may be someone other than you!); c) the context(s) in which persuasion is undertaken; d) the message itself; and e) the synergy or mutual support among the four factors that make them into a single compelling case. There is both science and art in understanding these factors and how to use them.

6)       Planning, implementing and Troubleshooting Persuasion Campaigns: We use case studies and simulations on how to combine all of the elements of persuasive communication and influence into strategies that address specific goals. Simulations draw upon real-life situations in business, governmental and non-profit organisations. Participants will learn by directly experiencing the stages and steps involved in the planning and implementation, as well as how to “trouble-shoot” problems that may arise. Over the two-day period, participants are encouraged to consider persuasion campaigns that they may want to implement in their own organisations.

The program gives participants ample opportunities to practice communication and persuasion skills, to learn to use, analyse and plan campaigns, and to consider how to apply the lessons to meet their own leadership challenges. We will consider specific uses of communication and persuasion that support the other four essential leadership skills (i.e. in decision-making in teams, as part of performance maximization processes, in building a more innovation-friendly culture, and in persuading others to provide and manage information) and in complex “multi-process processes” like negotiation and in organisational change. Finally the program provides guidance to help participants initiate work on individualised persuasion skill development plans that they can put into practice on the job and in their careers more generally.