Persuasion
According to Google, “The best definition of leadership is the process of influencing and guiding a group toward a shared vision or common goal, focusing on inspiring people, fostering growth, and achieving results, not just holding a title.” Persuasion plays a major role in leading people, especially in the current era where autocratic leadership has largely become antiquated.
I grew up with a single mom who spent most of her career in various roles that involved sales commissions. As a child, I understood that if she didn't receive commissions, we wouldn’t have money or food and the importance of persuasion was something very much respected in our home. At dinner each night, she would share stories of how she would overcome objections and sometimes closed on a sale. The wins were celebrated and the art of persuasion was constantly being discussed. This has heavily influenced my leadership style and I have naturally gravitated towards a servant leadership approach where I would try to help people and persuade them in order to help lead them.
I believe in servant leadership styles (a type of democratic leadership) and I don’t believe in autocratic leadership. Not being an autocratic leader necessitates skills of persuasion. Starting and running medical schools is an area where skills of persuasion are used every day, such as the following non-exhaustive list:
Developing training sites for medical students
Convincing Boards and other leaders on the necessity of various budgetary expenditures to advance the mission
Recruiting faculty, staff, and students
Assisting medical students with residency placement
Persuading various employees to adopt to a new thought or process in order to advance the organization
Creating engagement and trust from faculty, staff, students, and community members on a new curriculum
Here are my recommended considerations for advancing your persuasion skills:
Develop Trust: The most important lesson that I have learned over the years is that all relationships start with trust. If someone doesn’t have trust or loses trust, the likelihood that you will persuade them on anything is unlikely. Having integrity (doing what you say you are going to do), being honest and transparent, communicating well, and having credibility (credentials, position, online presence, etc.) are important in advancing trust for any leader.
Be Authentic: Authenticity is becoming more and more important. People develop relationships with the individuals when they understand who they are. It is also important that one’s authenticity is honest with who they are.
Learn “limbic hijacking”: My favorite book on persuasion is “Pitch Anything” and is written from the perspective of venture capitalists who spend a portion of their lives pitching ideas and business. The idea is that when you are trying to create change in behavior or decision making, it is important to understand that people make decisions based upon emotions. More often than not, these decisions do not involve higher cortical thinking. In alignment with this, there is a common saying that “people don’t remember what you said, but they do remember how you made them feel.” Indeed, our emotions are typically driven by this emotional response and trying when someone with logic is often quite difficult, but when they develop feelings of familiarity, comfort, or happiness, they are more likely to respond affirmatively. Alternatively, they also make decisions to avoid unpleasant feelings (e.g. threats). I tend to favor the positive pathway. Methods for positive persuasion include the following: using humor, sharing stories, keeping cognitive load minimal, brief encounters, and focusing on the most positive aspects (avoiding the law of averaging).
Share What you Want: In sales, folks often quote the ABCs from Death of a Salesman (Always Be Closing). There is some logic to this. People are good natured in general and have a tendency to want to help people. If you tell the other person what you want or need, they are more likely to help you get to a successful outcome. In academia, this is often a skill that I have to encourage people to develop - asking for what they want. In general, if you don’t ask for something, you likely won’t get it.
Learn the Law of Averaging: I have interviewed thousands of people for various positions (employment, medical school, residency, etc.). One thing that many people need coaching on is to learn the law of averaging. When folks are asked about their accomplishments, they have a tendency to give a long list of those things with some of those being impressive and other accomplishments being mediocre. They would be better off with saying just the impressive and memorable accomplishments and leaving off the mediocre ones - the listener has a tendency to average those. The same thing is true with CV/resume/biography writing.
Have Flexibility & Be Outcome Oriented: People come to me all of the time wanting or needing something. As a servant leader, I want to get them to a positive solution. However, sometimes people are inflexible with their requests and want exactly what they had in mind and are sometimes inflexible with reasonable solutions that would satisfy their need. Sometimes this can lead to the person not getting what they want. One billionaire that I have had many business meetings with is masterful at having extreme flexibility in his requests and will pivot on the spot based upon signals from the other person. I have no doubt that this is one of the reasons why he has been so incredibly successful.
Frictionless Transactions: Expectations of people nowadays is for transactions to be as frictionless as possible. Businesses have learned this and when we are at retail stores, shopping online, and at restaurants, the transactions are nearly frictionless. It is important for all of us to learn to make all of our interpersonal transactions as easy as possible and to avoid as many obstacles as possible.
Stop Talking when You have Made the Sale: Abraham Lincoln is often quoted as to stop arguing once you have won the argument. I believe that this is true for persuasion as well - once you have persuaded the person to do it, they have resolved to move forward and your job is to make the transaction as frictionless as possible. If you keep talking, it is possible that they may change their mind or lose momentum in their conviction. I remember shopping for a clothing article one time and I was ready to buy, but the retail salesperson kept talking and I decided to move on without buying the item that I was ready to buy - I later regretted not buying it, and I know that if the salesperson had moved me quickly to the purchase, I would have walked out of the store with the item and would have been happy with my purchase.
Excellent Follow-Up is Important: I have interacted with a number of persuasive and charismatic folks over the years. Many times, they are also not great with the follow up and it often causes them to lose the outcome they were going for. I remember a story from my mom where a commissioned salesperson who worked for her had the ability to sell every customer, but he would lose them because he didn’t do the simple follow up. He was a high-emotion person and loved the human interaction, but was bored with the paperwork that was required to close the sales and would procrastinate doing it and the prospects would move on.
Using the word “Reasonable”: There is evidence that if you are trying to persuade someone, asking them if what you want sounds “reasonable” is much more likely to get an affirmative response.
I have trained a lot of folks over the years and I often remind my trainees that, “with great power comes great responsibility" (an age-old saying that was popularized in the Spider-Man franchise). Indeed, I share these with you, the reader, to do good and to advance the world in a positive way and improve the lives of others - my hope for all of my trainees.
