26 Influencing and Persuading

Although you may be happy once you've formed your conclusions, you're not done yet—because you're not forming conclusions in a vacuum. Your boss may have to approve them, your reports need to understand them, and your peers are on the team helping you implement them. Not everyone will agree with your conclusion—and if that's the case, you may have to influence and persuade those who disagree.

The difference between influence and persuasion is whose conclusion is debated and to what degree things change. Influence is changing others' conclusions. It's their issue to resolve; you're communicating some of your premise items, such as your observations, to modify their premise and subsequent conclusions indirectly. Persuasion is directly causing someone to adopt or concur with your conclusion, which may at times be very different from his or her initial thinking.

Here's an example of a common headscratcher middle managers face: how can they influence senior management more? If you were one such middle manager, you'd first want to get clear on what influence means in this situation. Usually, it's to get senior managers to change something per your suggestion. You have influenced them if some of your ideas are incorporated in their ultimate conclusion.

Persuasion typically comes about when people use the word get: “How do I get them to agree with the way I want to do it?” or “How do I get them to do this task?” or “How do I get them to buy my product?” You have successfully persuaded someone if he or she agrees with you, adopts your conclusion, and does what you ask.

Influencing is generally more subtle than persuasion. Let's say you want to influence a coworker. You should expose him or her to new observations, experiences, and facts—not to change your coworker's mind directly, but as additional information you think he or she will find useful when forming his or her conclusion. If some of your components are then considered in his or her premise, you've done your job. His or her conclusion changes, because it must be consistent with the new premise components you introduced. You influenced your coworker's conclusion. For instance, let's say you're in sales, and you notice that Cheryl, a new sales associate, was preparing a pitch to an important customer about your new product. Her presentation started by introducing the exciting details of the new product. Having a lot of experience, you might wander over and say, “Hi, Cheryl. I used to be on that account. When I wanted to introduce a new product to them, what always worked for me was a conversation about the existing product first. This got them to talk about how much they liked it and got them in a great mood. Then I'd say, ‘If you liked that, look what else I have to show you.’ It worked every time.” Cheryl listens to you explain your experience, which was an observation for her. You referenced that you used to be on that account (another observation for her), which gives credibility to your comments. With these observations, Cheryl modifies her presentation to lead with a short discussion of the benefits the customer is reaping from the current products. You've influenced her.

Persuasion is a more direct method of comparing premises, looking at the weighting behind premise elements, and moving someone from his or her conclusion to yours or another one. It is about attempting to sway a person's mind, changing a solution by convincing someone there's a better one out there. For example, your coworker says, “I think we need to test this with 10 of our customers,” and you say, “I think we need to test this with at least 50.” You present your premise components, one of which might be your experience in past tests with fewer versus more customers. After a brief discussion, your peer agrees that your experiences and observations are stronger than his or hers, and you have persuaded your peer to adopt your conclusion.

Whether it's influence or persuasion, the focus is to alter someone's conclusions—and the technique for both is very similar.

Using the Premise to Influence

We know that people use premises to form conclusions, so if you want to influence their conclusions, they need premise components to support the conclusion you want them to have. For example, let's say you want management to acknowledge employee accomplishments more. You might leave management an article about employees being much more engaged when management acknowledges their accomplishments. This observation strengthens the executive's premise for the headscratcher about how to motivate employees. Alternatively, perhaps you can have a casual conversation with the executive about employee morale and provide several examples of how acknowledging accomplishments makes a difference. Add applicable facts, observations, and experiences to the premise of the person making the conclusion. If these components are credible and consistent with his or her other premise items, they will influence him or her. If the new evidence is credible but not consistent with his or her premise components, he or she will at least pause to understand why.

In both cases, you influenced.

Using the Premise to Persuade

We're a little more active when persuading. If you want to change people's minds (their conclusions), you first need to understand the premises used to form their conclusions. If they feel firm about their conclusion, it's because they have (or think they have) a strong premise supporting it. There's only one way to change someone's mind: to weaken the premise that established the conclusion. This will cause doubt that the conclusion is a good one. Nobody wants to go down the road he or she thinks will lead to nowhere, so if you weaken one's premise, he or she will be open to another. If you can show your premise is strong, he or she will have confidence in your conclusion—and will change his or her mind.

To weaken a premise, you must show how some facts are untrue, identify experiences contrary to what forms the premise, mention observations that question existing and weighted observations, and discover ways to invalidate assumptions.

Let's say you are in marketing, and you concluded to raise the price of one of your products. You inform the sales vice president (VP), who reacts by saying, “We'll be the highest priced product out there and won't be competitive, and customers won't buy it (assumption). Don't do it (conclusion).” Now is the time to start a premise conversation.

You ask, “Why do you think that because we're the highest priced, customers won't buy our product?” (That's an assumption the sales VP was making.)

The sales VP says, “At my past company, when we raised prices, we lost many of our customers” (experience).

You say, “Of course we'll probably lose a few, but our customer surveys indicate that they buy our product because of its unique functionality, and although price is a factor, it's way down the list of importance” (counterobservation). “Also, you sold a commodity product that was extremely price sensitive, whereas our product is unique, yes?” (counterobservation).

The sales VP says, “That's a good point.”

You continue, “We are the leader, with a 60 percent market share (fact), and our value proposition isn't low price, but functionality (observation). We are the market leader because we solve the customers' needs better than anyone (assumption), and that's where our value is (observation). As a result, we can, and might even be expected, to be a little higher priced (assumption). Do you agree?” (You ask for agreement with your conclusion about raising the price.)

The sales VP says, “I do.” In this conversation you were able to weaken the sales VP's premise by presenting credible observations that countered his assumption and experience. At the same time, you reinforced your assumptions with credible observations, facts, and experiences that the sales VP agreed with. You persuaded him. Nice job.

Maybe You Need to Be Persuaded?

Weakening the premise of another while strengthening yours will result in him or her losing confidence in their idea while gaining confidence in yours; you are persuading them and they will agree with your conclusion. Now consider reversing the process. Critical thinking isn't about winning debates or highlighting your ideas alone; it's about all ideas. It's not about your solution; it's about finding the best solution. In fact, it might be that your assumptions are invalid. As a problem solver, your job isn't to be the one who comes up with the idea about how to solve a problem; your job is to ensure that the problem is solved. If a solution you read in a book will work, even though it's not your idea, wouldn't you use it?

Don't be attached to your ideas to the detriment of considering others. Start conversations by considering multiple conclusions. The task is to figure out which one is most applicable and will do the best job. Know that if your premise is proven to be weak, you too will be happy to change your mind. After all, you should be open to what you're asking someone else to consider. Also, you'll think, “Thank goodness we had this conversation, because my way would not have achieved the results I anticipated.”

Getting Started with Influencing and Persuading

Whatever you call it—influencing, persuading, buying in, convincing, or simply changing people's minds—the strategy is to evaluate the premise that supports the conclusions that we reach. Only then can you understand the basis of a conclusion and work to change it.

The following are some instances in which you can do so:

• When your conclusion about how to accomplish something differs from someone else's: Is the other person using inconsistent or dubious premise components? Can you provide any new observations or experiences that will be contrary to the ones currently used? Can you invalidate an assumption by showing in what circumstances that assumption would not be true? For example, you and your work associate just landed at San Francisco International Airport.

  Your associate says, “Let's take a taxi from the airport to the city (conclusion).”

  You say, “Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART)—the train—is easy, and it's a lot cheaper and faster (assumption). Let's take the train (conclusion).”

  Your associate says, “They are on strike.” Bam! He just invalidated your assumption about BART being easy and faster.

  Your conclusion is no longer supported, and you say, “Taxi it is!” (Note: This actually happened to me!)

• When you have an idea you want your boss to endorse: There's nothing worse than when your boss asks you, “How did you arrive at that idea?” and you respond, “I just think it's a good idea.” When you offer your solutions, be prepared to cite the assumptions you've made, and present the facts, observations, and experiences you used to arrive at those assumptions. Then show how you validated them. For example:

  “Boss, I think we should extend our product warranty from 12 months to 18 months,” you say.

  “How did you reach that conclusion?” your boss asks.

  “Well, in analyzing the data of thousands of purchases, only a handful of our products failed between the twelfth and eighteenth month (observation). So, one assumption I'm making is that very few customers have a problem with our products in that time frame; therefore, the cost to us is negligible. I'm also assuming that our customers will value our quality higher if we have an extended warranty. I validated the second assumption by way of a customer survey about how customers evaluate products. One factor high on the list was quality. When asked how they evaluated that, one of the top responses was how long the warranty is. Here's the data.”

  Your boss says, “Nice job; you've persuaded me.”

• When you're part of a conversation, and you're listening to others debate their points: At this time, ask a few questions, such as what assumptions are being made and why. You might interject, “Have you seen this report?” (observation). That triggers a conversation, and from that, the merit of one premise might overshadow the merit of another, and agreement will follow—and then you'll have influenced.
• When you're presenting (defending or suggesting a conclusion or asking for approval): You can approach this in one of two ways: (1) start with the conclusion and then dive into the assumptions you made and why, or (2) start with facts, observations, and experiences and then show how these led to your assumptions, how you validated those assumptions, and therefore, why your conclusion is what it is.

You'll notice that I didn't discuss beliefs in this chapter. Although beliefs influence your premise, they're a tough place to start a conversation. Either people will agree with your belief or disagree; there is little in between. If they strongly disagree with it, your premise will be diluted, and they won't view your conclusion as a good one. If they agree with it, they still might discount it—because they might feel beliefs are personal and not for business, and therefore do not add to your premise's strength. However, if you know your boss is always seeking to do the right thing, then you might slip into a conversation with him or her, “Oh, by the way, this is also the right thing to do!” That's a home run, and you'll easily close the deal if the rest of the premise holds up.

When you turn to the next chapter, you'll be entering a world of conclusions that go beyond those that you can form with the critical thinking methods we have so far presented. We call this innovation.