Are you in agreement with me that today and every day of our lives, we will be targets of advertisers, fundraisers, salespeople, marketers, medias, politicians, and who want to move us in their path? If Yes – Do You Want to Know How? Very simple – because they are good at it, they have learned how to put all well-established Communication and Influence techniques, emotional tugs & tricks, etc. inside their appeals. Do you think there is nothing you can do about it, right?!
‘You are not born a Winner, a Loser, a Follower, and to be Played. You are born a CHOOSER.”
Wrong!!!!! Get over it, will ya? – I am not really a well-known public Communicator, an Influencer, and a Control Freak. BUT I can show you the right way to be and do all that? You can choose if you want to be a top-notch communicator, influencer and have the upper hand in every situation.
Your Professional Success & Personal Happiness Depends On Getting Others To Say “YES” To YOU.
When you have something meaningful to say, say it ‘Face-2-Face’. It makes such a difference. Plus you may even get to experience a smile of appreciation from whom ever you are caring to converse to.
Lower your voice while reintroducing the crucial point.
Stop focusing so attentively on the message, because optimal ‘Persuasion’ is achieved through ‘Pre-suasion’. What does it mean? The practice of arranging for people to agree with a message before they know what’s in it. It may seem like some sort of magic, right? Not really – it is NOT. It is all about psychology. It is all about the psychology behind what ‘Pre-suader’ say or do instantly prior to a persuasive communication to elevate its effect – I will talk about this more in my upcoming ‘Effective People & Communication Skills’ Workshop where you will be introduced to the concept of how pre-suasion operates, as well as to improve that understanding with a better awareness of pre-suasion, build ability to harness its power to boost your own persuasive success and prevent that power when it’s used on you in an unwelcome way.
Before you enter into any discussion, you need to know at what price you’ll walk away from it. Before you start, ask yourself: ‘At what point will I walk away from this? Where aren’t this good discussion / negotiation / deal anymore? Where do I draw the line in the sand that I won't cross?’ When you set all values in advance. It will turn you into a much more effective communicator & negotiator.
Simple Doesn’t Mean Easy, but HARD – Albert Einstein said, “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.” His theory of relativity was obviously not a simple concept but he was able to simplify it so even people who were not scientists could understand it and some of its implications. The same could be said of persuasion. You may say, can something so plain really be the key to working out better outcomes? The answer is YES – you don’t need to be a fancy well-dressed, well-versed with language, too cleaver, persuasive tricks or complex strategies to be a great communicator and negotiator. Just know at which point you’ll walk away. Trust me, you will find soon that while this is easy in theory it’s hard to practice, manage your emotion into any given discussion / negotiation in which you are involved. Fears of losing out will whisper into your ear, insecurities will weaken your resolve and doubts will try to break you. The hardest person you’ll never communicate / negotiate with is NOT some smooth politician or CEO – it is YOU! There's an "anxious little teenager area" in your brain that's really good at inspiring you to make stupid choices, and the higher the ventures, the louder and more forceful it will become. So all you need to learn is to knowing the why behind your behavior and another person’s. However, knowing and doing are two different things! E.g. you know how to live a healthy life style. At the core it entails eating less, eating better, and exercising more. Easy to know, harder to do.
When it comes to implementing persuasion ethically and correctly it’s harder than you might think. It’s not the knowing that counts, it’s the doing. There are lots of people who “know” things but they’re no better off than those who don’t “know” things If they don’t put their knowledge to use. I will help you gain the knowledge then get to the business of doing it.
Win-Win or What? Know the price at which you are willing to walk away – if you don’t that then it will end up getting into accepting lousy terms/conditions/situation just to close the deal/negotiation, at the sometime don’t try to get everything you can out of a conversation/deal/negotiation – aim for a 100% win-win but remember nothing in life is really absolutely balanced and the scale is always tipped in one direction – and you want it to be yours.
Read Goal – avoid one-time deal, head for a long-lasting and profitable relationship.
Don’t make exceptions and don’t cross the line you drew in the sand.
So how do you rate your communication and persuasive skills on a scale of 10-100%?
If you rate less than 60%, don’t worry. Most of us are unaware of effective communication & pre-suasion in ads, marketing, CEO / BOSS lines of speech or lecture and many other things …. My article was meant to introduce you to the concept, so you can be more alert to it in the future what you need to learn, know and become skillful to survive in this complex world of communication.
If you rate between 60% and 85%, you have a good initial grasp of effective communication & pre-suasion and how it works but you need mastering how to DO.
If you rate above 85%, you’re a rare effective communication & pre-suasion expert. Count me impressed.
Need to Note: Regardless, how you rate yourself, sometimes in communication & negotiation, we are forced to deal not only with the issues on the table but also with professional concerns about status. Strong communication, interpersonal, and social skills are recognized throughout the world as drivers of enhanced customer relationships, improved collaboration & productivity, and increased engagement and teamwork. With that in mind, communication and effectiveness skills training has become a core business value throughout the world—across cultures, economies, and strategies for growth. Besides; If Life is a dream, having positive and refreshing thoughts will make it better. Hence, feeling depressed, weak, loser, being always follower, etc. will make the dream even bitterer. Why not register & turn in my upcoming ‘Communication workshop’, try seeing life as a dream and make it as exciting as possibly can by helping yourself LEARN TO HEAR ‘YES’ OFTEN. It will help you not only to be a great communicator but also how to stand on firm ground even with parties more powerful and well-versed in advanced negotiation techniques.
Until then stay tuned
Dr. Ben Hamilton
Agile Interim Executive Professional | Coach | Mentor
Dr. Ben Hamilton has over 35 years’ of international experience, visionary, dynamic, goal / profit oriented agile Senior-level Business Strategist | IT professional | Entrepreneur | Out of the box pragmatic thinker, polyglot, trained, certified corporate hands-on coach & trainer experienced as CEO, COO, VP Business Development, Agile Business | People transformation and Innovator for fortune 100 companies like ANZ, IBM, GE and Amadeus with over decades that includes years of experience across areas of International Business Performance | Excellence, Strategic Management, Innovation | Knowledge Management, CRM, ERP, Software Development Integration & Sociability (SDLC), Enterprise BPM, Business Development, BI, BPO, ISMS, ITSM, Service Delivery | Operations, PMO, Project |Program | Product Management, Vendor | Supplier Management, Incident | Change Management, People | Process Management, Training and Education.
He demonstrated excellence in Humanize Leadership, People and Project Management with solid strategic planning, clear-cut scoping, executing, validating, controlling, monitoring, delivering high value product / service that match customer’s quality requirements (PMP, Agile, Six Sigma, Lean Startup, NLP, ISO 9001, ISMS ISO/IEC 27001:2013 Certified) conform to time, budget constraints, based on existing barriers / resources, align with the overall vision, mission, objective of the initiative by utilizing agile mind-set approach to drive continuous creativity, maximizing efficiencies / productivity, delivery, improvement, revenue growth, reaching beyond customer satisfaction and exceed the needs of the marketplace in IT, Banking, Financial Services, Telecommunications, Airlines, hotel industries and associated markets. In addition, avoids scope-creep by balancing business | tech-side and customer needs with realistic professional commitment and common sense while leading projects to successful completion that exceeds expectation. Does all that better than others because of his 48 countries life / business experience complemented with a true network and collaboration experience where he had opportunities to “Learn & Earn” from top life and business experts real days lessons.
Laurels and Awards
2012 Excellence Awards for Outstanding Performance (Presented by President | CEO of Amadeus Corporate)
2011 Best Innovation & Quality Excellence for Management Style (Presented by President of Amadeus Asia)
2005 Leadership Award for Excellence Program Management & Demonstrating high values (Presented by President | CEO of GE Corporate)
2000 DWS Business Solution Consultant of the Year for Professionalism, Work quality, Reliability and Client Relations
1999 Best Overall Achievement for Software Quality & Software Engineering Project [IBM-GSA]
1998 Outstanding Achievement for Customer, Process & Information – IT Services [IBM & Telstra]