How to master persuasive communication

Persuasive communication is a skill that you’re probably better at than you think. It can be hard to know how to get into people’s heads and win support or change behaviour, especially at work. But anyone who’s ever fed a fussy toddler or persuaded friends to do something already knows that all you need is a package of simple skills rooted in the basics of psychology.    

It’s a mistake to think that only charismatic and eloquent personalities have what it takes to persuade people. Success in persuasive communication is based on an understanding of emotional intelligence (EI). The trick is to develop a clear idea and believe in it when selling it to other people.

So what EI skills do you need? We took a look at various strategies, particularly those supported by science. Here are some that persuaded us.

Understanding persuasive communication

Persuasive communication is any message aimed at securing a specific response. Communication can include everything from emailing an influential individual, to persuading a group of people to do something difficult, to targeting a section of the national population in a marketing campaign.

Using a toolkit of techniques designed to appeal to reason and/or emotions, the aim of persuasive communication is to shape, shift, or strengthen the way that people feel about something.

In the workplace, persuasive communication refers to virtually all messaging. That’s because, typically, communication at work tends to skip small talk and focus on getting things done. To achieve a desired objective, workplace messaging may target:

• Cognition – your audience’s understanding of facts leading to beliefs and interpretation.
• Attitude – people’s emotional response, based on judgements including biases and assumptions.
• Behaviour – people’s actions that may or may not be informed by careful reasoning and analysis.

Core principles of persuasion

Persuasive communication is about meeting the audience halfway. It relies on two things: a clear idea to sell to your audience, and acknowledgement that they can choose whether or not to buy into it. To genuinely persuade people, you need to appeal to them and seek to win them over. Your success is in their hands.

The first writers to explain how to do this were the Ancient Greeks. Aristotle’s work on rhetoric provided a framework for understanding the elements of persuasion, which for him were:

• Ethos (credibility)
• Logos (structure)
• Pathos (emotional appeal)

In the early 20^th century, these ideas inspired research into how the persuasive power of messaging can shape propaganda and public opinion. This work influenced the 1953 book Communication and Persuasion, by Yale psychologists Carl I. Hovland, Irving L. Janis, and Harold H. Kelley, who developed what was called the Yale attitude change approach.

The Yale approach has three parts, which can be boiled down to ‘who said what to whom’. In other words, in order to persuade people, you need to think about:

• the source of the communication – the credibility and trustworthiness of the speaker.
• the nature of the communication – people are influenced by how the message is shaped.
• the nature of the audience – how receptive is the audience to new or difficult information?

In the 1980s, social psychologists Richard Petty and John Cacioppo developed a model based on the idea that people react differently to information. Some are more willing and able than others to scrutinize an argument.

For Petty and Cacioppo, individuals hear a message and “elaborate” (ie, consider) its basic information through mental processes that might be largely objective or else prone to bias and assumption. The outcome of these personal processes changes attitudes and consequently behaviour.

This is the elaboration likelihood model. As a general theory of attitude change, it inspired thoughts on how best to shape effective messaging. The theory suggests that some people are more likely to evaluate a message itself. Others may focus more on the bigger context – such as who’s speaking.

Essential persuasive communication techniques

In 2001, psychologist Robert B. Cialdini published an influential article in the Harvard Business Review listing fundamental principles behind essential persuasive communication techniques.

For Cialdini, persuasion works by appealing to a narrow group of deeply rooted human drives and needs. It operates in predictable ways because it is governed by basic principles, which can be taught, learned, and applied.

Building on earlier theories, such as the work of Petty and Cacioppo, Cialdini developed six principles that he believes “bring scientific rigor to the business of securing consensus, cutting deals, and winning concessions.” These principles are

1. Similarity sells

People are more likely to follow someone who is similar to them than someone who is not. Wise managers enlist others to help them make their case.

2. Build rapport

People are more willing to co-operate with those who are not only like them but who favour them, too. So it’s worth investing time and effort to uncover real similarities and offer genuine praise.

3. Develop reciprocity

Experiments confirm the intuitive truth that people tend to treat you the way you treat them. Employees who feel recognised and rewarded are more likely to offer the same in return

4. Encourage commitment

Individuals are more likely to keep promises that they make voluntarily, so it’s important to encourage participation and commitment. And get commitments in writing – people live up to what they write down, it makes the choice more conscious

5. Demonstrate authority

Studies show that people really do defer to experts. So before they attempt to exert influence, leaders and managers should take pains to establish their own expertise and not assume that it’s self-evident

6. Recognise scarcity

The rarer a commodity, the more it’s in demand. It follows, then, that exclusive information is more persuasive than widely available data.

Common pitfalls to avoid in persuasive communication

Attempts at persuasive communication go wrong when basic truths are ignored. When someone becomes so attached to an idea, self-belief can overrun the need to meet the audience halfway. If people feel as if they’re being pushed into accepting something, they are unlikely to be persuaded.

Coercion, or even bullying, gains nothing more than fearful compliance and acquiescence. This is not deep-seated persuasion, it’s short-lived and ineffective.

This is one side of an idea that in philosophy has been called by (Jean-Paul Sartre ) ‘bad faith’. It’s a concept that describes the pitfalls of relying on weakness. Weak leaders may try to coerce people into accepting something. It’s just as weak to tell others that you’ll face trouble of some kind if they don’t go along with what you need them to do. This does little for your credibility. Better to rely on the strength of the argument than the weakness of your position.

Practical exercises to improve persuasive skills

Common pitfalls can be avoided by learning to improve your skills in persuasion, for example through training sessions, whether in-person or online. At Working Voices, our influence and persuasion training course includes practical exercises – such as practising presence to foster trust, thinking about aims and objectives, and learning to focus on ‘what’s in it for them.’

In the past, companies favoured rigid centralised control, especially when people worked in the same building as their manager, five days a week. Today, hybrid workplaces and global teams have blurred the lines of authority and teamwork. In this new environment, formal power structures have less influence than they once did. This means that skills in persuasion are not a ‘nice-to-have’ anymore; they now play an increasingly essential role.