“No man is an island” Jean-Jacques Rousseau rightly stated. We are, by necessity, involved in persuading and negotiating with others at some level and in various aspects of our lives. Negotiation is a basic means of bringing others, being it your boss, colleagues, client, husband, wife and even your own children, to go along with your idea, proposal or even request.
Strategic dialogue has become a very powerful tool of persuasion- Claudette Portelli
Despite frequently engaging in negotiation, many people’s repertoire of skills for negotiating and persuasion is often unexamined and never exercised correctly to obtain the desired results. Out of habit and possibly through a lack of knowledge about the power of communication, we continue to impose our position, often entering in conflict with the other side.
When we insist on our position as being the “absolute truth”, we often end up in a tug of war, where, in order for one party to be satisfied with the outcome, the party must be dissatisfied. One party must “give up” their position to reach a conclusion and often neither our interlocutor nor ourselves are ready to do so. Moreover, even when one of the parties eventually gives up, either out of frustration or lack of argumentation, this does not necessary imply that we will have their full collaboration.
In their book, ‘Getting to Yes’, Roger Fisher and William Ury define negotiation as “a back-and-forth communication designed to reach agreement when you and the other side have some interests that are shared and others that are opposed.”
An effective negotiation is when actually both parties arrive to believe that the decision taken was the best possible option. In other words, for negotiating to be effective, it should be a sort of dialogue, where various possible options are considered and the agreed solution is perceived by both parties as a sort of joint discovery. Thus the dialogue is undoubtedly a key concept in collaborative problem solving in all spheres of life.
The dialogue has always resulted to be an effective persuasive process, since it does not impose but lead interlocutor to put into doubt their previous assumptions and to start considering the new point of view suggested by the other. This reduces resistance to change, since the interlocutors feels that they are the main protagonist of the new proposed thesis. Throughout history, great thinkers and leaders have used “the dialogue” as their main persuasive expedient to spread their ideas and convince others of their value: Protagoras to St Thomas of Aquinas, from Galileo to Einstein, from Gandhi to Ronald Reagan.
Developed from the Axioms of Human Communication and the study of the influential powers of great persuaders, the ‘Strategic Dialogue’ (Nardone, Salvini, 2005) is the most elegant, effective and evolved persuasive technique that transforms a simple dialogue into an authentic medium of change.
By amalgamating some winning communication strategies, strategic dialogue has become a very powerful tool of persuasion both in one-to-one rapport and organisational contexts. Through the use of change-oriented questions, seemingly one-down strategies, reframing paraphrasing, the use of analogical language and other strategies, each one of us, through rigorous training, can bring the other party to be freed from a rigid position and actually feel the need to change. Through a series of easy-to-learn strategies, interlocutors can be brought to lower their resistances and welcome the presented suggestions more openly. Since the interlocutor feels part of the proposed joint discovery, change becomes inevitable.
As Marcel Proust maintained: “The only real voyage of discovery does not consist in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes”.
Since interlocutors feel that they owe the decision, they starts to actively act upon it.
Strategic dialogue, with its various persuasive elements creates a “win-win” rather than “win-lose’”situation for all parties. It is a process that has the potential to create greater satisfaction with agreements and build positive collaborative relationships, which are the key elements for good living at home, work and also during leisure-time.
W&D is holding a seminar on strategic dialogue at the Phoenicia Hotel, Floriana on Wednesday. This pragmatic four hour seminar will hand over specific persuasive techniques which can be easily acquired, practised and eventually mastered, practically by everyone, even by those who consider themselves persuasion lightweights.
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Dr Portelli is a strategic coach and trainer at W&D’s Business Advisory Unit.