Transcript
If we understand more about how our brains work, we’ll be better equipped to anticipate how readers are likely to react to what we have to say.
Knowing how to influence in your communications at work is really important because it’s all about presenting your ideas effectively. It’s making sure your good ideas get the attention they deserve. It applies whether it’s external persuasion, formal proposals, pitches, or presenting your ideas clearly in the room, taking your audience with you.
What is the reason? What’s the story behind this business case? Why this change in methodology now? It’s pulling your readers with you.
What’s going to resonate with them? It’s so easy to get stuck in our own little world. I think we often think that readers are more informed or indeed more interested in what we have to say than they really are. There’s a lot of noise we have to compete with. So it’s about cutting through all the other stuff that people have going on and telling them a story that they want to hear. And there’s a specific point here. Drawing insights, telling a story, telling the story of your facts and your data, make it more memorable, make it more persuasive. And even a tiny story – how we get from here to there – is more engaging than a list of facts.
It’s a good skill for the person using the persuasive techniques and the people in the room. Because for the individual, a lot of it comes down to improved confidence, whether that’s confidence in your thinking or confidence in your writing. Good persuasion skills, that’s what inspires confidence in your audience. Presenting your ideas clearly, pulling them through your logic. Basically, seeing that they know what you’re talking about, they have confidence in you. And that’s a loop. You take that confidence, you absorb it, you’re then able to carry your readers with you or your listeners with you to get what you want.
There are a number of things that can make influencing at work such a challenge. I think two maybe stand out. First, we’re busy. We skim read before we settle down to read anything. We do that more than ever now. So you don’t have long to get your reader to look at your finely crafted argument. Most readers are thinking, what is this thing? Why have I got it? Do I need to spend precious moments of my life going through this? And second, our priorities as persuaders may not be the same as our readers’ priorities. So times are tough, budgets are tight. How do we inspire in our readers the need to act? How do we tap into what they’re thinking and what they’re feeling?
Some of the ways people go wrong, what mistakes people make when they’re trying to influence, many of them are related to not thinking about the audience. That’s either leaping straight in with what needs to change before establishing the overall context. The danger of that is they’re not ready to hear what it is you have to say. But I think possibly the converse is more usual. Screeds and screeds of detailed and often tedious background that discourages them from ever getting to your point.
What we need to be aware of most is we need to consider the position of our colleagues, our stakeholders when we’re trying to influence: where are they on this topic now? And also to be open, to be honest, to be straightforward, to be human. I think that’s more important now than it’s ever been. You’ve used Copilot to construct a beautiful argument, but is the voice right? Is the message specific enough for this audience right now? Is it pitched at the right level? You need to have integrity in your argument too. Is it a story that you are happy telling your readers? Is the journey you’re taking them on one that you actually believe in? And I think structure can really help here, which is organising your ideas in a way that draws your reader through.
And from a thinking point of view, establishing the need for what it is you’re trying to get through from your reader’s perspective is absolutely crucial.
People don’t want to feel they’re manipulated. So when you’re trying to influence someone, when you’re trying to persuade, you’ve got to believe in your argument. You’ve got to give enough evidence that what you think should happen is the best thing to do. But your readers really need to feel it for themselves. We don’t generally do things because we’re told to. We do things because we perceive there’s a need to do them.
So having integrity of argument from that point of view is really important.
If we understand more about how our brains work, we’ll be better equipped to anticipate how readers are likely to react to what we have to say.
What’s going to be easy for them to absorb? What’s going to encourage them to act? Understanding what’s going to make them switch off and shift focus elsewhere. That’s more important now than it’s ever been.
We use the science of influence all the time, whether we’re aware of it or not. It can be helpful to put a name to some of the techniques. The fluency heuristic, for example, where if something’s easy to process, we assume it must be right. Or the Dunning-Kruger effect, which in broad brush terms says the less we know about something, the more we tend to overestimate how much we know. Copilot can revert to this in its worst moments. The Dunning-Kruger effect has a flip side. Experts tend to underestimate their knowledge because they have a much better idea than anyone else how much they don’t know.
And that’s where overload of information comes in.
Mental overload is a particular risk when you’re trying to persuade people who aren’t as knowledgeable about something as you are. It doesn’t matter what area you’re working in. If you know more than your reader does, you’re effectively an expert.
To follow what I’m telling you about my subject, you’ll need to try to remember each fact while I give you another, and you’re layering them. And that’s what leads to overload. I slash my chances of getting a yes from you because I’ve given you far too much to process.
Reducing our readers’ cognitive load, the sheer amount they have to wade through, is a quick win on the persuasion front. Neuroscientists have run studies that show you can’t continually feed the brain information. We can’t handle it. We shut down. It’s a kind of circuit breaker.
We do it all the time. We stuff our PowerPoint slides full of data. We expect too much of our readers often. And that all too often comes from the perspective of not having thought about where they are. What do they need right now? How can I tell a story that’s going to draw them through.
There’s also the affect heuristic. ‘Affect’ is the technical term for mood.
Stress and anxiety, for instance, create this tunnel vision. We lose perspective of the bigger picture. If we think we’re right about something, stress makes us look for information we think confirms we’re right. On a practical level, acknowledge this. If you’re in a hole, stop digging.
And if a decision maker is angry, deal with the anger first and then try to influence them.
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