Persuasion : How to influence and win over people?

6 min readApr 27, 2022

Persuasion is a process by which a person’s attitudes or behaviour are, without duress, influenced by communications from other people.

Simply stated, Persuasion is simply influencing other people’s thoughts and actions in such a way that you are able to achieve the goals you set out for yourself and typically, for the good of both parties.

As a Business analyst, I find myself in these situations where I would need to convince my stakeholders. While this was something I had been doing for a decent duration of time with success, what triggered me to go deeper into this and understand this in a more structured way was the Business Lead Development Program(BLDP) at Thoughtworks.

While I consider Persuasion as a skill which comes inherently but learning about below principles / techniques can bring in structure.

I learned about 6 Principles of Persuasion in BLDP program which I am going to reflect upon below and furthermore I would also talk about Monroe’s motivated sequence.

Cialdini’s 6 Principles of Persuasion

Robert Cialdini explored factors that affect decision making in his book “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion”. Cialdini identified 6 principles that affect decision making.

These principles were first identified in the context of purchasing and consumption decisions. But these principles are generic enough so as to apply them in any stream of work / life when it comes to influencing and persuading.

While these 6 principles can be understood through the illustration below, I would go over one example for each of the principles to understand how they can be applied simply in one’s day to day work.

Image Credit : www.silentpartnersoftware.com

For simplification, I would be using stakeholder and Product Owner (PO) interchangeably to illustrate examples for each of the principles below.

Reciprocity

Simply stated by its meaning , Reciprocity is to behave or feel towards somebody in the same way as he/she behaves or feels towards you.

Consider, you had an important meeting scheduled with your PO. Just prior to the appointment time, PO stated inability to join the meeting and proposed a new slot. You agreed to the proposed slot, though you had to change your own schedule. This happened more than once with PO being aware of the same.

Eventually PO would also look to return the favor as he would feel obligated.

2. Scarcity

Scarcity, in marketing terms ,is to reduce the availability or creating a sense of scarcity of your product so as to generate more excitement and interest regarding the product.

You would have seen that happen with Redmi products when it was exclusively sold through an e-commerce platform in India at a particular slot and inventory would finish within a few seconds. It generated quite a buzz for the brand.

Similarly in your role, you may increase your influence ability by showing how scarce your availability is. People who would want your time would feel this scarcity and would like to utilise your time to the fullest to get the outcomes they would want. However , this influence would be possible only with people who have the power to affect those decisions.

3. Authority

We see people with authority in our day to day lives in different fields.

Authoritative people are knowledgeable, experts in their field which bring in the credibility we associate with them.

You can see this in case when dealing with your PO. A PO who knows the business processes well, understands what and why certain product features are being built would always have more authority and influence than the one who simply comes in and asks certain features to be built without having any context for the same.

4. Liking

People tend to agree with those people whom they like rather than those whom they don’t like. So one of the easiest ways to influence people is to become likeable.

Stating my own example, this would not happen automatically. You would need to know your stakeholders well, their needs and wishes, their pain points etc. As their needs are fulfilled and you become reliable, you naturally become likeable.

5. Commitment and Consistency

People like to be consistent with their identity or sense of self image.

Consider you appreciate a person in your team for excellence in a particular task they performed. Now that person would want to maintain those standards and even do better than that in future. Taking this in other way around, not being appreciative of work performed by people could individually lead them to fizzle out and you can see the downturn in their performance.

6. Consensus ( Social Proof)

Simply put, people want to be part of the majority, not the minority.

Consider a situation where you are dealing with multiple stakeholders. They need to get to a consensus. If some stakeholders already showed affirmation with a decision, it would inspire other stakeholders also to either agree or be more considerate even if they are going to dissent. Eventually it could be more easier to convince dissenting stakeholders as well as bulk of them have already reached consensus.

Monroe’s motivated sequence

Monroe’s motivated sequence is executed in a 5 stage process.

I would illustrate this with a simple example.

Consider different stakeholders are meeting to address a delivery problem with the project which is missing deadlines consistently.

First thing would be to bring their entire focus into the discussion at hand. This does not necessarily have to be the topic for today’s discussion. It can be a joke, icebreaker or visual aid which would help people refresh and get engaged into the session.
Once people are engaged, it’s paramount to illustrate the problem in hand. This can be illustrated through a visual presentation or with facts and numbers which people can connect with. This would help them understand why they are meeting today and how important it is for them to get an outcome.
By now, people have understood the problem. You now need to show them a path to a solution to that problem. This would promptly bring in different solutions from your engaged audience and change the mood of the audience from a downwards to an upwards trend.
It’s imperative to show the audience the solution in a visualised form. As we know visualisation stays much longer with the human mind than a plan talk. This would further elevate the positive mood in the audience which initiated with Solution Stage.
Finally is the crunch part. Now your audience knows the problem and has seen the solution, in order to resolve the problem. This shall prompt them to action. This is where you need to exert your influence so that they own up to those actions and you would have a fruitful outcome.

Bringing home the point

In my view, applying either of Cialdini’s 6 Principles and Monroe’s motivated sequence can help exert influence and create a positive impact.

Though I also would like to state that much of this would happen organically once you develop an understanding of these or for some of you, you may already be doing this without even knowing these principles in this form. However, as I said at the beginning, you can go through these to bring in a structure to your thought process.

In the end, I would leave with you some powerful quotes on Persuasion and Influence to mull over.

“Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion.”

~ Aristotle

“If you’re trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language.”

~ David Ogilvy

“If you wish to win a man over to your ideas, first make him your friend.”

~ Abraham Lincoln

References

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