Effective leaders know that persuasion is a core aspect of communication that is required to build strong relationships and performance in business.
Persuasion in business is more than just getting other people to be open to opinions and beliefs. Leaders often have to convince their people to follow new initiatives, implement difficult changes, or get their buy-in for long-term strategic directions.
Before starting, it is important to say that persuasion skills can be learnt just like any others, and they are a key part of being able to influence others to achieve your goals and objectives.
Having said that, be aware that persuasion doesn’t necessarily need tactics that change people’s minds. But you as a leader can learn how to meet people where they’re at.
So, Here are five tips that you could use to improve your persuasion skills as a leader.
1. Understand your people
As a leader, you should be working to understand your people.
You can do that by building relationships and establishing a common ground to openly share and express ideas and opinions.
In addition, you can also ask thoughtful questions to understand your people’ interests.
Then you must show them how your plan fits with their values, interests and desires.
To deliver a more mutually beneficial outcome you may need to modify your original plan to include some concessions.
In fact, people are much more likely to be persuaded by your plan if the plan will help them accomplish their own goals.
Remember, during the implementation of your plan, make sure that you can see what your people will gain from it.
Keep track of these gains and share them frequently so that people know what the benefits are of supporting your plan.
2. Connect with your people
To persuade people to follow your ideas it is useful to acknowledge their hopes, and fears.
You need to consider what else is going on in the organization or in an individual’s specific situation in order to identify times when people will be more approachable and receptive to new ideas.
Once you have done that, you can establish a connection with them in order to show your intellectual and emotional engagement as a leader.
By asking questions and encouraging feedback you will be able to evaluate people’s emotional response to your ideas.
It requires you to be emotionally intelligent, in the sense that you must be able to change according to the emotional state of your people.
To put it simply, you must match their sensitivity to further gain their trust, and loyalty afterwards.
Having said that, remember that while interpersonal liking and positive emotions may help you as a leader open a conversation, they tend to be ineffective in influencing people to achieve your goals and objectives.
So, to improve your chance to influence others, combine emotions with rational and logical arguments.
3. Be trustworthy
For people to follow you they need to trust you. It is as simple as that.
Effective leaders know they need to create a reputation of being true to their word if they want people to follow them.
For example, when you say that you will do something for someone, then do it. In fact, people rely on a promise and keeping it is the quality of a trustworthy leader.
Be aware that the amount of information shared within an organization is related to the level of trust between a leader and the people they are trying to influence.
For example, in situations where it is important to build trust, sharing more information soon can lead to a higher degree of trust, but, in case there is a high degree of mistrust in the process, too much information provided too early can be counterproductive.
So, in this case you need to address first the reasons for mistrust, and then provide information gradually as the situation improves.
Keep in mind, leaders must show integrity and be widely trusted before asking others to follow them and take risks along with them.
4. Use clear and compelling language
Having strong communication skills is crucial for leaders who want to improve their persuasion skills and increase their influence.
To be effective in persuading people you need to choose your words carefully and pay attention to how people react in order to adapt your language accordingly.
Persuasion is based on presenting evidence. So, a strong presentation requires accuracy, completeness, and clarity. In addition, it must address worries, doubts and attract people’s interests.
For this reason, it is important for you to be prepared with relevant data to support your ideas. Think of all the potential questions you could be asked and map out your answers.
Allow your passion to emerge during the conversation to keep people engaged while using compelling language and your critical thinking skills to provide clear and specific answers.
Remember, using facts along with the appropriate emotion can help you connect to other people on an intellectual and emotional level by increasing at the same time your chance to persuade them.
5. Know when to use your power
Great leaders are aware of their power and use it knowingly.
In fact, they know that there is no sense wasting time arguing facts.
Whereas, pushy leaders put people on the defensive.
So, in general it’s the person who rarely argues that eventually gets consideration when they strongly promote an idea, especially when they do it with power and determination.
So, you should be willing to sacrifice when it helps the overall cause. For example, in case someone asks for items you know he already had. Instead of arguing the point, you can just resend the items and save your energy for issues which really matter.
The message here is simple, choose being successful over being right.
Moreover, remember that profound ideas require time and deep consideration to take root. So next time you want to persuade someone of something truly important, share your ideas and walk away.
If they come back, it means that you were probably successful in persuading them.
So, these are the five tips to improve your persuasion skills as a leader.
As a recap, we can say that your vision as a leader becomes worthless when you do not exert the power to realize them. Persuasion is that power.
To be successful you need to be aware that the art of persuasion is not about learning tactics but it’s about communicating effectively to convince others to share your point of view and you can do that only by understanding what others want and need.
