Reflections

Persuasion and Influence

“The object of oratory is not truth but persuasion." – Thomas Babington Macaulay

1. I have always wondered what causes a person to say ‘yes’ to another person. What are the techniques which if used
effectively will bring about such a compliance? I have wondered why is it that my request stated in a certain way gets
rejected while stated in another way gets accepted by the same person. At other times, I feel I have fallen for the false
propaganda done by the advertisers and end up owning things that I never needed. I firmly believe that the best
defense against manipulation, propaganda is a fundamental knowledge of how persuasion and influence work. In this
class, we learnt in depth about the art of Persuasion and Influence.
2. Influence tries to bring behavioral, thinking and attitudinal changes in a person while persuasion is more targeted
towards making a person do something even though he/she may not be fully convinced to do it. Persuasion is more
long term whereas influence is more short-term objective. Persuasion is more explicit while influence could be
subtler. If a person tries to influence someone, she will try to give a perception that it was a win-win situation for both.
From a long-term influence perspective, Simon Sinek proposed the Golden circle of Why, How and What. According
to him, while designing an ad, one must focus on the Why first, i.e. why a company does what it does, what is the core
vision behind it. Then show how easy it is to use their products. And finally show what they make. This has a far
greater influence than if we do it the other way.
3. Another theory is the ‘Theory of Inoculation’, give small doses of what you want others to believe in and one day they
will start believing you. You do not try to convince the person on a day or a moment. You will follow a policy of
fogging. You can use phrases like ‘perhaps we can meet tomorrow’ to move out of the situation and try again later.
There are 5 W and 1 H philosophy behind persuasion. 5 W stand for Who, What, Why, When and Where and 1 H
stands for How. If one is not able to persuade means may be the when and where are not appropriate. In such situation
try to follow the policy of fogging. If you are trying to persuade a man in power, change your move from persuasion
to influence.
4. A negotiation could be of two types – Distributive and Integrative. Distributive negotiation tries to bring the major
benefits to the person who is trying to persuade while an integrative negotiation tries to highlight a common goal for
both the parties.
5. For influencing, who are the people we are trying to influence, we should try to interact with them and try to find out
if they are Introvert, Sensing, Judging or Authoritative. Then we should find out the frame which we should use to
communicate to the person. If a person is Introvert, the form of interaction will be Procedural. Where as if the person
is extrovert the form of interaction will be Socio Economic and Task Oriented.
6. Robert Cialdini gave 6 weapons of influence – Reciprocation (The Old Give and Take.. and Take), Commitment and
Consistency (Hobgoblins of the Mind), Social Proofs (Truth are Us), Liking (The Friendly Thief), Authority (Directed
Deference), Scarcity (The Rule of the Few). Different techniques work for different types of people. For example, the
language we speak in with the students is not the same as the language we speak in with the laborers.
7. Similarly, there are techniques to protect your face in the event of a face threatening act. Some people take
Authoritative Posture to protect themselves from the face threatening act of others.
8. In an organization, it is mostly transaction-oriented communication. If we do good to others, other may do good to us.
Thus, it is important to be nice with others in an organization. If we want to reach to the top, we should not burn the
bridges. We should try to build liking of ourselves among others. In an organization, try to find out the pulse of the
person and what is it that moves her.
9. In an information laden age, we build short cuts to arrive at a decision. Our friends and family, the common man
become our trust buddies, the natural evidence around us instills trust that something is good. We are ready to get
influenced when we meet them, hear from them or see them. If, however, we see someone exploiting our shortcuts to
influence us, we should immediately reject them. Some examples could be building fake queues in front of a
restaurant, using doctors in a non-medicinal product etc. If our shortcuts start getting exploited, we will be left with
nothing to trust and will get overwhelmed quite easily even while making simple decisions.

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