Persuasive Evidence

Last time we spoke about the various structures of persuasive presentations. These structures described how you may want to present your perspective and the ‘evidence’ or ‘backing’ that supports it. Long time readers of this newsletter have heard me speak of Advocacy vs. Inquiry as the primary methods of business communication before. Advocacy is the style in which the participants pick a perspective and maintain it throughout the evaluation. This is how trials are conducted; each side may have different perspectives regarding the degree of guilt of the defendant, and they argue those sides by presenting evidence. There are strict rules for conducting advocacy (precisely why it is usually unsuitable for work) and many of those rules extend to the introduction of evidence.

What constitutes persuasive evidence in a collaborative work environment? Let’s talk about that:
There are three types of evidence: Objective Evidence, Social Consensus, and the speaker’s Credibility are types of evidence.

Good objective evidence is not necessarily tangible, but it is verifiable. Certainly well-prepared statistics, photographs and video, interviews or testimony all serve as objective evidence.

Social Consensus are things like common knowledge, things that we are willing to stipulate as true without further discussion, and any agreements that were previously reached using an acceptable method.

When presenting evidence it is necessary to do it in a way that is most accessible by those listening. 75% of people understand things better if presented visually, so graphs are good. Keep things simple; fight the desire to complicate a chart by showing too much (or different types) of information on it. Use simple numbers (round them off). Strive to make the perspective seem simple and clear, without oversimplifying. You would know if you oversimplified if your counterparts aren’t sure how the proposal fits with the issue at hand. When it comes to being authentic, simple, and direct consider things deeply - remember that what is said is not as important as what is heard and remembered.

If the speaker is credible, their evidence is more persuasive. Seems simple enough, but what makes us credible? I say it here again because I can’t say ENOUGH how important your own credibility is to your communication: Competence, Trustworthiness, Good Will, Dynamism (speakers that move and appear to possess energy and enthusiasm are more persuasive than those that aren’t), Eyewitness access to information, Background and Training, a good track record for being right.

The idea of how access to information is acquired is an important one. Does the persuader have primary access (eyewitness, for example) evidence? Is the source of the evidence reliable? Is the access secondary (hearsay or worse)? Many “conspiracy theories” gain a startling amount of traction with NO evidence!

When we are considering opinions as evidence (which we frequently do in business) we need to consider the source. Is the source of the opinion an expert? Are they a layperson? Make sure your expert is qualified as an expert in the subject at hand. A marketing expert’s opinion on advertising deserves more weight than their design opinions (unless that is another area of expertise).

Finally, different kinds of evidence carry different weight based on how they are developed and by whom. A rule of thumb regarding the relative weight of evidence that is accepted in many circles is as follows:
1. Assertion (in my opinion…)
2. Common Knowledge or Stipulation
3. Lay Opinion (if a reasoned conclusion)
4. Expert Opinion or Consensus of Lay Opinion
5. An Empirical Study or Consensus of Expert Opinion
6. Consensus of Studies

Note that an opinion that is not a “reasoned conclusion” is listed as an assertion – a kind of “trust me” statement. Next is common knowledge precisely because we only SOMETIMES correctly identify certain knowledge as common. Frequently, what we think is common knowledge is not held by other people in our organization. A lay opinion for which there is a demonstrated logical basis is at number three. From there, it becomes a matter of experts, well prepared studies, and consensus that raises the probability that the evidence is correct. This knowledge will give you a great advantage in preparing and critiquing persuasive perspectives.

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Preparation

Over the past month I wrote a series on the elements of persuasion. A brief recap:

1) The persuader’s credibility and reputation gives them standing, making them a voice worth listening to.
2) The persuader’s ability to show a mutual purpose and benefit to the person being persuaded and thereby giving a basis for the parties to agree to become interdependent and work together in each other’s interest.
3) The persuader’s ability to create an “emotional acceptance” of the content of the perspective being presented. That is, presenting a perspective that is ‘likeable’ OR presenting alternatives that are somehow more ‘unpleasant’, leaving the persuader’s perspective as the most desirable course of action in achieving the mutual purpose. Cialdini’s six laws of persuasion help show how to attach an emotional element.

In closing on persuasion, I will begin a discussion of the last element – content. The content of your perspective consist of several parts:

1) The way you structure your presentation of your perspective (this week)
2) Your conclusions and justification (next week)
3) The benefits provided by your perspective (in two weeks)
4) The WAY you say things (in three weeks)

Structure - Learn a few ways to describe perspectives, and you are well on your way to being MUCH more persuasive than you are today. Experiment with these structures:

Problem and solution – Describe a problem, and then its solution. Sounds simple, but to be much more successful that you currently are, remember to help the listener make a negative emotional connection with the material. One way is to remind them of how difficult this problem makes it for them to succeed. Another is to explain what the consequences of doing nothing are. There are many other examples of making the listener ‘feel real dislike’ for the problem, too many to list. Next, describe the solution. Be realistic and truthful – you always want to maintain and protect your credibility. Help the listener ‘like’ the solution. Be vivid in your description and help the listener see themselves as not only benefitting from the solution, but benefitting by being part of its successful implementation. Their help on the team will be invaluable and you should help them imagine how grateful everyone will be. This is a good structure when the listener has not already developed an opinion.

Present both sides – In a case where there is already a controversy, it is useful present both sides. Present the opponent’s side first. You want to make sure that at the end of that part of the presentation, you have their agreement that you have presented their perspective accurately and that you have described the evidence they have to justify their perspective (statistics, facts, etc). This is key in establishing your credibility, showing your understanding of the issue, and will help them be more receptive to listening to the other perspective. When presenting the other perspective, concentrate on challenging their justifications – the facts are not as they think, or the evidence is either inaccurate or somehow suspect. Please refer to the blog posts from November 2008 for a more info on this activity. I will cover it in detail next week (conclusions and justifications). Obviously, this structure assumes that the discussion is taking place after competing perspectives have been developed.

Cause and Effect – Describe the problem, its cause, and any contributing factors. Describe how your solution fixes the problem by mitigating or removing the causes and contributors. This structure is useful when all parties agree that the best outcome is to return to some status quo and you are merely trying to agree on the means to do so, rather than changing the status quo.

Call to Action – Use this structure when most people tend to support your perspective. Start by describing a pressing common need, and describe how your perspective will satisfy that need. Make it clear how we ALL experience the need – this is a galvanizing description of a mutual purpose. You are describing what we are changing from AND why we MUST. Next, provide a clear and positive vision of the future state. After we implement this perspective, we will have tangible benefits. I will cover describing benefits in two weeks. Close this presentation with specific actions to be taken, and who will take them. Be grateful for their support.

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Persuasion and Emotion

In the last few weeks, the topic has been persuasion and how to be more persuasive. We have identified a few of the prime factors as:

• Credibility – The elements by which we project trustworthiness


• Mutual Purpose – Describing the common ground and shared benefits of a perspective


• Laws of Persuasion – Robert Cialdini’s six “laws” that form a strategic persuasion checklist

This week, we’ll be talking about the importance of “Connecting Emotionally” with our counterpart.

Emotions play a huge role in the decision making process. This role is made more important because many of us view the best decision making as done in a “purely logical” fashion. Most business decisions are a mix of logic and emotion, which is why we can all look at the same set of facts and derive different solutions. We have different preferences due to our personal beliefs and values, which influence our emotions.

In fact, according to research first done by Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, our decision making capability is significantly impaired if we do not use emotions. He studied people who had received brain injuries that had affected them in just one way – they damaged the part of the brain where emotions are generated. In all other respects, his subjects seemed normal - they simply could no longer feel emotions.

His remarkable finding was that their ability to make decisions was seriously disrupted. They could logically describe what they should be doing, but in practice had GREAT difficulty making decisions about when to set an appointment, where to live, what to eat, etc. It seemed that those decisions that have pros and cons on both sides are ultimately sorted out by preferences, which are emotionally grounded.

The nature of business decisions are that that typically the set of facts from which we work are incomplete and they frequently have pros and cons on both sides. Therefore we NEED to understand how emotion affects decisions if we are to be persuasive.

First, the way we feel can distort our view. For example, when one is in a bad mood, one is more likely to recall negative events (Bower, 1981) and overestimate the likelihood of unfortunate occurrences (Johnson and Tversky, 1983). When one is in a good mood, we are more likely to remember positive events (Bower, 1982) and be more optimistic about their future occurrence (Wright and Bower, 1992). The implication of these findings is that if one solicits recollection or probability estimates from a person, the response is likely to be distorted by the current emotional state. It is important then to collect responses from multiple people and to compare them with any data on hand. If there are differences between the general finding and a specific finding, discuss it with the respondent. I have found that MANY times, they will modify their response to bring it more in to line with the general finding. This is consistent with Cialdini’s findings as well.

Second, we strongly consider what emotions we will feel after the decision is made as we evaluate our preferences. For instance, when faced with buying a car we may be trapped between a fast, sexy car or a plain (but very safe) car. We are trapped because the one car appeals ot our sense of adventure and the second to sense of responsibility (to our family perhaps). A primary driver of this decision will be “How will I FEEL about myself?” after I choose either car. It is important that we help people see that future state as desirable and comfortable for them if we wish to persuade them there.

We need to realize that just because WE know this, it doesn’t mean that others do. They have their own preferences in decision making and (according to Cialdini) we want to be seen as “on the same page”. This thinking also relates back to my newsletters on “THE SCORE”, but bears repeating in the context of persuasion.

• Be aware that you’re communicating both CONTENT and FEELINGS and both are important.


• Be calm and reasonable. It is not imperative that you reach a decision in one conversation.


• Be brief and concise; not clipped and rushed, but respectful of your counterparts’ time. Don’t ramble.


• Be intellectually critical and objective; not impersonal and unfriendly.


• Accept decisions that may not be based on facts. Present feelings and emotions as additional facts to be weighed in a decision.


• Listen. Demonstrate empathy by listening to their perspective and the impact on them. Let them talk.


• Discuss the areas in which you agree. They can help you understand the areas in which you disagree.


• Describe how the idea will affect people and what people’s reaction would be.

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Persuasion, part 3

In this series on persuasion, we have so far covered that:
1 - Credibility is king. Build your credibility by:
-Establishing a track record for being knowledgeable in key areas and well-informed.
-Being diligent in developing supporting information for your position.
-Being open to discussing alternative perspectives.
-Being able to present your perspective in an easy-to-follow way.

2- In order to persuade someone, you need to articulate the benefit extended to them by adopting your perspective. Be able to articulate a concrete mutual objective and be able to demonstrate that your perspective is sufficient to achieve it. BE OPEN to modifying it as good ideas are presented by other parties. The idea is NOT to implement your idea without modification – the idea is to achieve an objective. The mutual objective you choose should be as concrete as possible and still be MUTUAL.

This week, I will talk a little about Robert Cialdini’s 6 laws of persuasion.

Reciprocation - When relationships are out of balance (like when one party does a favor for another), the parties tend to restore the balance to a neutral point. This is expressed many different ways, but I think you get it. If you do me a favor, I will re-pay it if I can; if you concede a few points to me in a negotiation, I’ll do the same – maybe in this negotiation, maybe in another.

Commitment and Consistency – When a person makes a commitment in some formal way (i.e., verbally, in writing, in public) they are more likely to honor that commitment. People don’t like to be seen as inconsistent, so by pointing out inconsistency (“you said you would, but now you are saying you won’t!?”) we can sometimes persuade someone to re-think a change of heart.

Social Proof – Social proof is doing something because someone else is. People will do things that they see other people are doing. If people are doing it already, then it seems less risky – just because someone else is.

Authority - People will tend to obey authority figures. This includes everything from accepting the word of someone without question because they work in management to taking endorsements from celebrities as meaningful. It doesn’t mean they are automatically right or wrong; it just means the claims need to be weighed on their own merit.

Liking - People are easily persuaded by other people that they like. They also tend to be persuaded by people that they would like to BE like.

Scarcity – People are more likely to do something if they feel that some factor out of their control may prevent them from being able to do it later. For instance, if there is a deadline to decide which option to take, people will rush to pick an option rather that considering whether they want to participate at all. If people believe that “supplies are limited” they will hurry to order something (even something they don’t really need) rather than lose the choice of having it all together when the supplies are gone.

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Persuasion - Mutual Purpose

Last time, we covered a primary component of persuasion and that is Credibility. It is hard to take someone seriously unless they are credible. Once you pass the credibility test, there is still more to do if you want your counterpart to deeply and seriously consider your perspective. This week we will talk about Creating a Mutual Purpose.

It seems obvious to say, but it is very important that you and your counterpart have a CLEAR understanding of what you hope to accomplish with your proposed perspectives. If you aren’t, it is typical that you will “imagine” what each other’s purposes are and if you get it wrong, you will likely be unable to be persuasive (or persuaded) because you will be suspicious of each other’s motives. The best way to address that is to explicitly state what your purpose is.

It is a fact of life that if you are both interested in achieving the SAME result, then you are more likely to work together than if you are out to accomplish different (or even opposite) outcomes. Let’s look at an example.

The company you at which you work is seeking to increase profits. You manage the Operations Group and your two counterparts (in this example) manage the Sales Group and the Engineering group. When the discussion turns to ways to achieve this, the Sales guy might say “We can only sell more products if we can cut the cost. Operations needs to make it cheaper.” You, the Operations guy, say “We have made just about all the improvements we can. If you want to make it significantly cheaper, we need a new design.” The Engineering guy might say “The sales guys need to be more creative in finding new markets for our existing products”.

There is a mutual purpose at the beginning of the scenario – to increase profits. This is pretty general, though, and doesn't provide much direction. We want our purpose to be as SPECIFIC AS POSSIBLE and still remain mutually supported. Each of the parties, however, has announced individual agendas that simplistically put the responsibility on other groups. These are TOO specific and in framing them in this way, have set themselves up to be suspicious and wary rather than open and excited in this activity. Let’s see how we can drive the process to keep things focused on mutual benefit at the optimum level of resolution.

When Sales says “operations needs to make it cheaper”, we can ask a question (refer to other newsletters about the Inquiry method) to clarify this like: “So what you are saying is we need to find a way to reduce the cost for each product sold?” Note that this is NOT the same as “operations making it cheaper”. There are MANY ways to reduce the cost per product. What if we were able to reach more customers per sales person? That would reduce the cost too. Our mutual purpose is now to reduce cost per product sold, and each of the three organizations can contribute to that.

When Engineering says “sales needs to find new markets” we can again clarify this to say “So what you are saying is that we need to sell more product?” Note that this is NOT the same as “sales finding new markets”. There are MANY ways to sell more products. What if we were to design in new features that our customer’s liked more? Or we were willing to hold stock for our customers in exchange for a slightly higher price, or for high volume customers? Those would increase our sales too. Our mutual purpose is now to increase sales, and each of the three organizations can contribute to that.

If your counterpart sees that you are working hard to find ways to accomplish the SAME GOAL AS THEY ARE, they are for more likely to work with you than if they feel you are working on something that doesn’t achieve the same goal or is even working against you. It is critical that you keep in tune so that all parties understand the MUTUAL PURPOSE.
When framing a mutual purpose, focus on a) things that you counterpart will gain that they currently lack and b) things that your counterpart can avoid losing. The second of these is especially powerful. People are far more persuaded to do things that prevent them from losing what they already have than to obtain new things that they don’t yet have.

Having a CLEAR MUTUAL PURPOSE upon which all parties agree, and weighing proposals based on how well they support that purpose makes persuasion much easier.

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Persuasion

I recently wrote a newspaper article in which I made the point that the most important factor in being persuasive is your personal credibility. Those of you subscribing to this newsletter for a while know that I speak of the importance of credibility often and I will just recap it here. Over the next few newsletters I will discuss the OTHER components of persuasion.

Credibility is about two things - THE PERSON (you or someone you are listening to) and THE MESSAGE. As a skilled persuader, you need to be able to separate the two and offer them for analysis so that they are easy to understand and accept. As a listener, you need to be able to decompose your counterpart’s perspective into these two categories and analyze them as to their clarity and weight.

THE PERSON
- Does the persuader have a track record for being knowledgeable and well-informed? Make sure that if you are trying to persuade someone, you make it easy for them to feel at ease with your track record. Let them know in a humble manner of your credentials, your familiarity, your history, and your access to the information that supports what you are saying.
-Is the persuader sincere? By sincere, I mean that they have put in the required diligence to arrive at their position. If they have not put in what seems like a reasonable effort, it is unlikely that the effort is deserving of much weight.
- Is the persuader open to discussing other possible perspectives? A person that is not open to being persuaded is easily cast as “argumentative” or “closed-minded” and is NOT considered as persuasive as one that openly listens to other perspectives and then can still supply facts that support their point of view. Secondly, someone that is closed-off to other’s viewpoints but can’t refute them is often viewed as having a “personal agenda” and therefore NOT supportive of a mutual goal.

Consider a statement something like this:

“I have been working with a really great team on this project for a number of months. We feel that this analysis is as complete and accurate as we can provide and feel confident in our conclusion. We were fortunate to have access to critical information that allowed us to develop such a complete analysis. I know that the work the team has done and our willingness to stand behind it will reflect well on all of our reputations.”

The statement speaks to confidence, but not to the degree of skill with which the work was done. I might ask “How was the analysis performed? Is that how it is typically done? What has been your success in the past using that method? Who on the team has done this work before? Were there a lot of unique issues on this project, or was it more ‘run-of-the-mill’? What was special about the information you needed and how did you get access?” These kinds of questions probe at the “knowledge-ability” and diligence of the speaker. How these are answered reflects a great deal on the persuasiveness of the speaker.

THE MESSAGE
- Is there sufficient evidence to support the message presented?

In order to determine sufficiency, consider the following:
*Is it easy to follow the reasoning, step by step, or does it seem convoluted or overly complex? Even the reasoning for complicated technical issues can be reduced to simple steps in most cases.
*Is there enough evidence and is it from reputable sources? Evidence is most persuasive if it is gathered firsthand, has some expert backing, and can be independently verified.

Consider that you are proposing a new customer service process, for instance. It is persuasive if you can point to a simple experiment that you conducted to prove it out in principle and get a few endorsements regarding the results from some people that are known for having expertise in customer service.

Credibility is one of four components of persuasiveness. Next time, we’ll talk about another – Demonstrating Common Ground

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Excerpt from High Performance Communication workshop guide

The Workshop guide that goes along with the Public Workshop starting on July 10 is all new and really very good. It captures the important aspects from each of the subjects taught throughout the 3 day course in Outline form, as Summaries, and as full text which will be forever useful as a reference.

In the section on relationships, I explain the details of the perspective we need to adopt in order to develop really great relationships. Then, just before I give instruction on all the skills required to create amazing business relationships, I summarize the perspective we adopt towards our collaborators as follows:

In summary, our perspective in collaborating within our workgroup is:
The people with whom we collaborate are capable people with ideas about things that deserve to be heard. We are eager to understand their perspective fully. We believe that they want to hear our perspective as well and are willing to consider it if we present it in a factual manner, with a minimum of interpretation. We believe that the interpretation of the facts is best done collaboratively.

We recognize that blame is generally far less important than understanding the contribution system that leads up to a given outcome. Some systems MAY have a single point of failure with no other contributing factors, but these are rare and usually so simple that they don’t warrant much discussion. We know that other's will feel less defensive if we all can express our contribution to an outcome.

We know that the differences in our perspectives comes as a natural result of our diversity and that this is the great strength of our workgroup – that our diversity allows us to blend the best parts of our different perspectives and develop solutions that are better than any one of us would have developed alone. We have learned how to draw upon those differences and get the information out into the open and we practice it regularly.

We recognize that how we feel about ourselves and how others feel about themselves can come into question as we collaborate and we will practice methods to keep us open to all options and not “close off” into bifurcated (either/ or) thinking. We recognize that some of the ideas we hold about ourselves and others can be wrong, and that we can reconsider them at anytime using the tools we have learned.

We know that relationships are important to doing good work and that all relationships (and good decisions) have an emotional component. If feelings become an issue, we recognize that we will talk about them just as we would any other part of a problem.

We recognize that all of this takes training and practice in the methods that underlie these outcomes.

The book goes on to describe a collection of tools that make ALL of our business relationships as deep and powerful as the VERY BEST TEAMS you have been on.
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