The Critical Keys to Being More Persuasive
Stephen McGarvey is the author of the upcoming book, Ignite a Shift; Engaging Minds, Guiding Emotions and Driving Behavior.
Life often requires persuasion to get needs and goals met. Sometimes being persuasive seems simple and easy. Yet other times it proves to be difficult and a dead end. There is a whole lot more to this practice and skill and conducting it successfully than immediately comes to mind.
A new book (to be released in July, 2022 by Morgan James Publishing) wants to help readers learn precisely how persuasion works and how to develop reliable skills for all our relationships.
The author is Stephen McGarvey, an authority on unconscious communication, persuasion, and influence, the founder of Solutions In Mind and his book’s title is Ignite a Shift; Engaging Minds, Guiding Emotions and Driving Behavior.
The book promises that readers will discover the importance of rapport as the foundation for persuasion and influence and learn communication and memory techniques and the impact of language on engaging and guiding others.
The book uses examples, stories, visuals and end-of-chapter exercises, complex psychological principles. It paints a clear picture on how to spark a change in our personal and professional lives.
Learn how to recognize, regulate, and control thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, which is the first step towards influencing others
Achieve superior results by better understanding someone else’s thinking, right down to the foundation of their beliefs and values
Understand how to use strategic questions to uncover the valuable information needed as they engage and guide toward specific outcomes
Improve communication and conflict resolution with others
Discover the key foundational elements of effectively persuading and influencing
Everything you need to know about unconscious communication, positive persuasion and influencing with integrity
A Communication Intelligence Conversation
with Stephen McGarvey
“Persuasion” sounds so abstract to many, I suspect. How can we talk about it in a way that connects with our minds in a more powerful way?
Persuasion and influence are almost synonymous to some extent. When I talk about persuasion, I'm talking about influencing or changing thoughts, beliefs, perspectives, emotions and behaviors.
In life we always want to persuade someone, usually toward a specific direction — persuading our kids to pick up their laundry or our spouse to go on a vacation of our choice, for example. Many people find it challenging to get someone else to behave or think in a way that aligns with our own goals.
An issue with persuasion and influence develops when people's motives are selfish. Instead, persuade with integrity, which means your goal as a persuader should also improve the other person's life.
A noble way of approaching the use of the skill and behavior. How does a person start to understand how to do it in this manner?
The secret to persuading is to first understand an individual's model of the world, their beliefs and values and what's relevant to them and why. When I talk about a person's model of the world, I'm talking about seeing the world through their eyes, hearing the environment through their ears, walking in their shoes, and so on.
Effective persuaders can enter into another person's version of reality and understand how their mind filters information.
Once we understand how the person's mind filters information, we can then more effectively influence or persuade them in a particular direction by creating links and connections to what is of relevance to them.
Are there difficulties involved in this process?
A challenge people often have is that they want to persuade others at a very foundational level – based on their own perspective rather than first understanding what is relevant to the other person.
Once you understand how to uncover what is relevant to someone, you have a better chance of persuading them. Ignite a Shift gives readers the techniques to do this.
What was the motivating drive to write this book and what lasting benefits do you want to leave readers with after they read the book and apply what they learn and how will they be better after the experience of investing time with you, the book and application of principles?
I've been speaking and consulting for over twenty years, and year after year I was asked by audiences and clients, “when are you going to write a book?”
This book was written to leave readers with a deeper understanding of how their minds work and how their unconscious thought patterns influence their emotional state, which drives their behavior.
My goal is to equip people with a greater understanding of how they can take charge of their thoughts and be more effective at interacting and communicating with others.
One of the biggest rewards for me is when people come back to a training and tell me that what they've learned has changed the way they communicate with their kids, or that their relationship with their significant other has improved. These skills translate to all aspects of life. Professionally, readers will be stronger leaders, understand how to market in a more meaningful way, and sell in a way that better fulfills people's needs.
I love that a talking point is “Learn how to recognize, regulate, and control thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, which is the first step towards influencing others.” Can you succinctly elaborate?
We typically want to influence behavior and we attempt to do that by logically convincing others to do what we want them to do. In order to be more effective at influencing behavior we need to understand what drives that behavior. We also need to understand that emotion triggers behavior, and that our emotional state is the result of a cognitive process, which is typically outside of our conscious awareness.
I call this concept the Think ➔ Feel ➔ Do Process for Influence.
In this context, learning to recognize, regulate, and control our own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors is critical and necessary before we can begin to influence others.
We’ve been talking about this comment here, “Achieve superior results by better understanding someone else’s thinking, right down to the foundation of their beliefs and values.” How can this specifically be achieved, the achievement of superior results?
There are two ways to achieve this. The first is to actively listen to how the person communicates, which tells us what is meaningful to them and why. The second is to ask appropriate questions.
It's important to know what questions to ask in order to clarify their communication and get a deeper understanding of their model of the world.
Strategic questions: how do you determine what those questions are and how do you effectively ask them?
That's a great question, and my answer is predominantly based on the Meta Model, which comes from the work of Virginia Stair. As a family therapist, Virginia focused on recognizing what information was deleted, distorted, and generalized in a person's mind. She then asked clarifying questions to recover deleted information, to find exceptions to what was generalized and to reframe the way the person thought about things.
By actively listening to how an individual communicates, we can hear what has been deleted, distorted and generalized in their mind and this gives us insight into the best questions to ask them in order to gain deeper insights into how they are thinking.
That is very educational and interesting, Stephen. Would you be able to provide and example to help people better understand?
If someone frowns at me, I may avoid them, thinking they're upset with me. In fact, it is the meaning I attach to their look rather than the look itself that triggers my emotional reaction which drives my behavior.
In reality, that person may be frowning at someone next to me, instead of at me. Or they may have a toothache. Or they may be unaware that they frowned in the first place. In this case, asking questions to gain deeper insights into how they are thinking is absolutely crucial.
So we often err then, more than we believe, in translating what we’re observing and feeling?
The mistake that often occurs is that we make assumptions. We assume we're talking about the same thing or thinking the same way, and we can be wrong.
Asking clarifying questions will give you a deeper understanding of someone's thought process. Recognize where the details are missing so you can ask questions to get the information you need in order to gain a greater level of understanding about what a person is thinking.
Where most communication breaks down and most conflict occurs is in mismatched models of the world, mismatched ways of thinking about things, and mismatched methods of processing information.
Excellent insight and that last part about communication breakdown and conflict, well, wow. Insightful. The book says readers will: “Discover the key foundational elements of effectively persuading and influencing.” We’ve talked about this but is there anything else you might like to add?
Another important element is being able to intentionally establish and maintain rapport, which involves giving the other person the experience of being understood, rather than simply telling them that you understand.
Some of the foundational elements of rapport include matching and mirroring physicality, listening to predicates, which indicate how someone is thinking, and watching eye patterns, which indicate whether they are accessing visual, auditory, or kinesthetic information.
You say that ‘motivation’ is a big piece of the puzzle in communicating persuasively too. How so?
Different people are motivated in different ways, and what motivates one person may vary greatly from what motivates another. Understanding various motivational traits allows you to communicate in a way that pushes a person's motivational buttons, so to speak.
Any final ideas or comments you’d like to express about persuasion and Ignite a Shift; Engaging Minds, Guiding Emotions and Driving Behavior?
It's important to note that there's no magic equation for persuasion or influence.
The purpose of the book is to teach the intricacies of these foundational elements. There are always multiple factors and dynamics that change from person to person. We're each as unique as our fingerprints, and it's an adventure to take the time to understand how someone else thinks, runs their brain and experiences the world.
The more we understand someone, the better able we are to effectively communicate in a way that is most relevant to them.
