Every one of us is faced with the challenge of persuading others to go along with our ideas, proposals, needs or simply our wishes each day. Both at work and at home, we would like others to agree with us more. Yet with all the good intentions and efforts, we do not always manage to get through to people.
Often, we might seem arrogant or intrusive, triggering the exact opposite reaction, i.e. refusal and aversion in our interlocutor or even ending up in conflict. Since we care to get our message through, we often insist by saying and doing more of the same, but just continue going round in circles, decreasing our persuasive powers.
Since ancient times, Epicurus affirmed that “one should not violate nature but persuade it”, believing that the most useful and powerful skill one can possess in life is the ability to persuade others.
Extensive research into human success at work and at home shows that when intelligent and capable people fail, it is often traced to a lack of persuasive communication skills. We are often experts in sabotaging ourselves and our plans without knowing it.
Persuasion is a science. It has often been referred to as an art but this is a very limiting perspective.
Robert Cialdini, one of the highest exponents of persuasive communication, believes that even people who consider themselves persuasion lightweights can become capable persuaders by understanding and mastering the pragmatics of human communication and the psychology of persuasion. As the masters of communication, Watzlawick, Weakland and Beavis denote “we cannot not communicate”, we often say things without saying them (para-verbal and non-verbal communication), starting our persuasive communication on the wrong foot.
Common logic leads us to believe that if our message is right, and we put effort to reasonably explain our thoughts to our interlocutor, the latter should not resist it. This is not always the case, often even if our proposal is ultra-valid, our expectations to persuade still fail.
Humans are not only rational beings but they have emotions which are often underestimated. We can only persuade our interlocutor if we touch the right cords. Even though persuasive communication starts from the sender, its focus needs to be the other person.
We often invest in the content of the message but we fail to invest in the relationship. Communication will be most convincing when we build the message around the other person rather than ourselves and our “truths”. Persuasive communication is highly effective if it is allocated in the form of an interactive dialogue, not a bombarding one-way process.
The use of the dialogue as a rhetorical device to promote change is no new invention: it holds its roots in the history of civilisation. The etymological meaning of the word dialogue, “dia-logos” is a discourse between two.
As Von Foester (1993) explains it is the exchange or encounter of intelligence, since it refers to an act of communication through which a new knowledge is acquired and coming to discover together something more than that which one could ever discover alone. It is not by chance that the dialogue is the most effective written and oral expository form used in scientific, religious and philosophical dissertations both in Western and Eastern cultures. Great minds, such as Protogoras, Galileo Galilei and St Thomas Aquinas, despite fierce opposition, managed to spread their radical, revolutionary ideas and convince others of their validity.
By reviewing the history of mankind, Paul Watzlawick and his colleagues (1974) have come to reveal specific axioms of human communication, which Prof. Giorgio Nardone and his collaborators (2007) have then further elaborated to form a sophisticated communication instrument, the strategic dialogue which entails effective tips and manoeuvres that can help even lightweight communicators change their approach and boost their powers of persuasion.
Whether you are a manager, a lawyer, an accountant, a healthcare worker, a policy-maker, a salesperson, a teacher or a parent, seminars on persuasive strategic communication are designed to help you become a master persuader.
Based on the study of the pragmatics of human communication, social influence and the principals of strategic rhetoric, this seminar provides an action-oriented, easy-to-follow, two-day programme which hands to its participants effective strategic communication notions and techniques which can be operated in a number of different contexts, from the workplace to personal interaction.
A two-day seminar, to be held on January 19 and February 2 at the Phoenicia Hotel, Floriana, between 5 and 8 p.m, is specially designed to help you polish your communication skills, while further equipping you with powerful, persuasive, strategic communication techniques that can trigger change in all spheres of life.
Through an effective strategic dialogue, your desired goal becomes a sort of co-joined discovery, which the interlocutor comes to accept and implement more willingly and easily. For more information visit www.wdmalta.com or e-mail jfenech@wdmagro.com.
Dr Portelli is a strategic coach and an official collaborator and trainer at the Centro di Terapia Strategica of Arezzo, Italy.