Persuasion

The Recipe for Great Communication contains 5 ingredients: Clarity, Brevity, Context, Impact, and Value. But depending on your audience’s “taste” — that is, depending on what kind of information your audience needs — those ingredients may vary in proportion. So, how do we know how much of each ingredient to use when we prepare for meetings […]

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” – Mike Tyson People love to plan. Everyone has a plan. You can’t do anything in today’s world without a plan. But having a plan is only part of the equation… and I would say it is the easy part. The harder part of […]

Have you ever listened to that person who says something like “um” over and over and over? After a while, all you hear are the “ums.” How about the person who says “like,” or “you know?” Hard to listen to that after a while. How about the person who qualifies everything they say with a […]

Earlier this morning, I was thinking about the way I coach clients. My colleagues and I always preach the important of message AND delivery. Message matters, first and foremost. But the way in which the message is delivered has a huge impact on the way the message is received. And then on my drive into […]

We have written recently about the political divide in our country and how ineffective so many of us are in our communication on political topics. No one listens, everyone judges, and everyone believes that they are morally right in their beliefs. We are all living in our own echo chambers, where we distance ourselves from […]

Several of my coaching conversations have been focused on the same thing of late… when I am speaking to my boss, how do I stay out of the weeds? I get stuck in the deep detail, and he/she gets frustrated with me. Sound familiar? “Too much detail” is a constant issue in the 21st century […]

The world I grew up in and the world my young son is growing up in are vastly different. And I’m not even that old! But when I was a kid, there was no cable TV, no internet, no streaming content… We had five channels, and you watched what was on, commercials and all, and […]

I’m working with an executive right now who has an interesting and engaging leadership style. He likes to collaborate, he likes dialogue, he wants to hear what people have to say. He allows lots of input, and seems to detest strict hierarchy. I like this style, actually, because it is similar to my own. But […]

Years ago, before the age of the internet, when you got sick, you went to the doctor, she told you what was wrong, and what to do about it. The doctor had all (or most of) the information, so her job was to distribute that information to you so you could decide how to proceed. […]

Do you find it easy to persuade people? That’s a broad question, with an answer that is likely to be some version of, “Sometimes.” Whether someone is easily persuaded depends on a lot. The size of the ask, the environment and situation you’re in, the kind of person you’re trying to persuade, and other variables […]