Insider’s Guide To The Art Of Persuasion

Ok, you are going to a meeting. You’re going to present your idea, the one that will SOLVE the problem. You’ve been working, thinking, planning and this is the answer. You go to the meeting, and lo, an idea that you KNOW won’t work, that you’ve tested and thrown out, is suggested and suddenly, the group is embracing the very thing you hoped to avoid. What did you do wrong? Why didn’t you persuade your group to see it your way, the right way?

A committee meeting is convened, there is an agenda. But the group meanders along, with no more direction than a leaf on a stream, in fact less, because at least the leaf is generally heading downstream. Why can’t you get the committee back on course? Why does it head away from solving the problem and get distracted?

This book has a wealth of ideas about generating the power of persuasion, from building trust, working on the generality that most people have more in common than they do differences, but that we tend to focus on the differences, which cause conflict. There are chapters that illustrate motivations (reward, esteem, challenge, purpose), chapters that teach you how to listen (even when it’s a lousy idea you are hearing) and chapters about how to build and support your authority. There are chapters on how to present, how to use humor.

An important chapter deals with how to derail someone that is opposing you and how to control misbehavior. And how to build and support your authority–which even though you may have by designation, you still have to win (a real must-read for a new supervisor who walks into an existing group of people they must manage.)

There is a wealth of information in this book.
Rating: 5 / 5