Chapter Eight

Win ‘em over – Convince effectively

To be effective, even the best analysis can’t just rely on its own merits. It must also be expressed in a way that will convince key stakeholders. In this chapter, we shift our attention from reaching solid conclusions to exploring how to synthesise these conclusions into a compelling message.

DEVELOP A COMPELLING MESSAGE

In an ideal world, we all would be perfectly rational. Then, all it would take would be for you to present your recommendations, explain how you reached them, and to then demonstrate the solidity of your analysis. Your audience would be awed by your professionalism and would support your recommendations.

The reality is that people value different things, so they won’t all favour the same solution. In addition, there are hidden agendas behind projects, turf battles, and faulty logic at play. And, as human beings, we are not just guided by our pre-frontal cortex driven rational thinking, but also strongly influenced by our deeply ingrained emotional responses (remember System 1 and System 2 thinking from the Introduction?). All this to say, no matter how brilliant a piece of analysis might be, if all it stands on is its intrinsic validity, it’s probably not very compelling. In short, there’s often a difference between being right and being effective. And the latter calls for being persuasive.

Persuading others isn’t a new sport, and the Classics bring in some resources. Aristotelian persuasion, in particular, relies on three pillars: logos, ethos, and pathos.1

Appeal to logos/logic

Using valid reasoning and high-quality evidence, logos – or logic – aims at reaching valid conclusions. The earlier chapters of the book show how you can sharpen your logos using FrED. However, we have not paid much attention yet to the other two pillars, ethos and pathos.

Appeal to ethos/ethics

An appeal to ethos consists of creating trustworthiness and sympathy with your audience to increase the likelihood that they accept your arguments.2

• •Create trustworthiness. Beyond using valid reasoning and high-quality evidence, you can demonstrate trustworthiness by skilfully bringing up your expertise. Instead of assuming that your recommendations are self-evident, you might want to explain why you’re qualified to make them. You hear such appeals to ethos in statements like ‘trust me, I’m a doctor’ or ‘we, at Harvard, . . . ’ You also hear them anytime a speaker is introduced: ‘she is a professor at Prestigious University’, ‘he has been a senior partner for 25 years at Amazing Consultancy’, or the ultimate appeal to ethos and display of laziness: ‘a man who needs no introduction’ (that one only works with people who do not need any introduction indeed). Note that such appeals to trustworthiness require time to build. Just as you can’t develop expertise overnight. Similarly, it takes a track record of being trustworthy before you can make the argument: ‘as I have repeatedly shown in similar situations, you can trust me.’
• •Generate sympathy. Uncover similarities and offer genuine praise. People prefer to say yes to the people they like. So, be likable! Sorry, what we mean is, be even more likable than you already are, dear reader. Where does that start? Well, look your best and dress appropriately, for one. As our colleague Phil Rosenzweig exposed, the halo effect is a tendency that we have to allow our overall impression to influence our thinking.3 Other ways to generate sympathy include making the audience feel that you are concerned about them, that you understand them, and that you have their interests at heart.

Appeal to pathos/emotions

Using pathos, you appeal to the emotions.4 Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt uses the metaphor of an elephant and a rider to highlight the importance of emotions, where the elephant represents our emotional side and the miniscule rider at the top the rational, analytical side.5 Although the rider can provide direction to the elephant, it is ultimately the elephant that moves and sustains momentum. Similarly, our decisions rely on rational evaluations and on our ancient, deeply embedded emotionally driven thinking and feeling mechanisms.6 This reality isn’t necessarily bad, as research shows that feelings and emotions experienced during decision making can have a positive effect on the overall decision performance.7

Social scientists have identified various approaches that can help you appeal to the emotions of an audience:

• •Tap into appropriate feelings: After Apple pushed Nokia out of its leading position in the smartphone market in the late 2000s, former Nokia CEO Stephen Elop had to communicate drastic measures to his organisation. Instead of just showing analytical charts, he used a metaphor to emphasise Nokia’s dramatic situation: ‘We too, are standing on a “burning platform”, and we must decide how we are going to change our behavior. Over the past few months, I’ve shared with you what I’ve heard from our shareholders, operators, developers, suppliers and from you. Today, I’m going to share what I’ve learned and what I have come to believe. I have learned that we are standing on a burning platform. And, we have more than one explosion — we have multiple points of scorching heat that are fueling a blazing fire. . . ’8 Now, it is debatable whether Elop’s choice of metaphor was appropriate to produce the change needed to help Nokia build a more successful future. But the point is that any rational message you convey also impacts how your audience feels, which, in turn, impacts how they react, no matter whether you actively address this dimension or not. Instead of leaving it up to the audience to react however they may, think of the emotional response you want to create. Is it anger, fear, joy, excitement, trust, . . . ? And once you have identified what it should be, craft your message accordingly. Tell a story, use an analogy or work on your delivery to elicit that emotional response.
• •Generate a need for reciprocation. Give to receive. As individuals, we subscribe to a norm that dictates us to repay in kind what we’ve received, which explains why marketers offer free samples or why people make gifts and favours during negotiations. The need for reciprocating also gets us to make concessions, so that if we reject a large ask, we might accept to make a smaller effort.9
• •Use social validation (or peer power). Although we tend to pride ourselves on being independent, in reality what our peers do strongly influences us. We’ve already addressed this behaviour in the Introduction, calling it anchoring and labelling it a bug (or bias). But that bug can be turned into a feature: If you can get a critical mass of people to behave how you’d like, their behaviour will influence others. As you get ready to communicate your proposal, identify who you need to engage when to create that momentum of support. Peter Block’s trust-agreement matrix can help you categorise your stakeholders to determine how to approach them.10 In the matrix, trust refers to the quality of the relationship you have with each stakeholder, which might be the result of previous interactions. Agreement refers to whether you and your stakeholders agree on the specific issue at hand. Tailor your communication to your stakeholders’ positions in the matrix. For instance, you might first want to reach out to your allies who share your vision and who you have a trusted relationship with, both to get their support and feedback. Then, you might turn to the opponents, with whom you share a trusted relationship, to get critical feedback before moving on to the low-trust stakeholders.
• •Leverage consistency. Get stakeholders to commit to your recommendations actively, publicly and voluntarily. People want to be and appear consistent across actions, statements, and beliefs. So, if we can get people to commit their support early, it’s a lot easier to actually secure it down the line. Concretely, you should have one-on-one conversations with key stakeholders ahead of submitting your recommendations to them as a group.
• •Create scarcity or a shrinking window. Whether we recognise it or not, we tend to find opportunities that are in short supply more desirable than plentiful ones.11 That propensity to avoid scarcity closely relates to our built-in preference to avoid losses, which manifests itself with us preferring to take a sure thing over a gamble, even when the gamble has a higher expected payoff.12 So what? Well, in practical terms, you may want to formulate your recommendations so that stakeholders feel that following them would help them avert losses.

MEET THEM WHERE THEY ARE AND SHOW THEM WHERE YOU’RE GOING

Don’t wait for your presentation to your stakeholders to find out that some are opposed to your ideas. Instead, time permitting, engage them individually to gauge their level of support (or opposition) and better understand what resonates with them.

A question we often hear at this stage is, should you tell your audience where you’re going first or should you let them get to their own conclusions? Well, let’s find out. Read the following paragraph.

A newspaper is better than a magazine. A seashore is a better place than the street. At first it is better to run than to walk. You may have to try several times. It takes some skill but it’s easy to learn. Even young children can enjoy it. Once successful, complications are minimal. Birds seldom get too close. Rain, however, soaks in very fast. Too many people doing the same thing can also cause problems. One needs lots of room. If there are no complications, it can be very peaceful. A rock will serve as an anchor. If things break loose from it, however, you will not get a second chance.

You’re probably intrigued. What if we told you first that what we’re thinking of is making and flying a kite; would you read it differently?16

The point is that if you don’t tell your audience upfront where you are going, they will only be able to follow you for a bit before getting lost in the details. Then, once they understand your overall point, they need to revisit all previous points to check whether they agree. If, on the other hand, you tell them where you are going first, they can more effectively integrate new information as it comes.

On the other hand, suspense and tension can be powerful tools to create engagement with your audience.17 For instance, raising a question at the beginning of your presentation and getting your listeners to think about why it matters, and what potential answers might be, can create a strong hook, building interest and curiosity for what comes later.

Dedicating all your efforts on the analysis to just wing the engagement part is not the best use of your limited resources. However, there is no one right way to set up your communication. It depends on factors such as the type of presentation, the audience, and your timeframe. The key point is to engage deliberately, which requires you thinking through these questions before reaching out to your stakeholders.

PART MATRICES, PART PYRAMIDS – CREATE A ROBUST MESSAGE

Preparing to deliver your recommendations to an audience – be it a one-to-one conversation or with a larger group – it is useful to clarify what you want that conversation to achieve. A from/to matrix can help you do so: it lays out in one column what your audience currently thinks (or does) and in another column what you want them to think (or do) as a result of your communication.21

Depending on your problem and audience, you are likely to encounter differing levels of support. Some might be highly supportive from the outset, and all you need to do is lay out the plan of action to get the implementation started. Others might be more critical of what you are about to propose and will require to be convinced more deliberately.

Although it is always challenging to find an appropriate angle for these different situations, FrED gives you concrete avenues, depending on how much pushback is expected.

• •When you expect little pushback (1), you can directly present your chosen alternative and explain why the decision was made. This approach can be conveyed quickly as it only focuses on the alternative that was selected.
• •When you expect some pushback (2), jumping directly to your chosen alternative might create resistance. You might be better off first outlining the most relevant alternatives you considered and their trade-offs, starting with those that you ended up discarding. Only then explain why you chose your alternative. Although some people may continue to disagree, this approach underscores that you considered various avenues. That conveys procedural fairness (see Chapter 6), which increases the likelihood that critics, although potentially still disagreeing with the outcome, will at least understand and respect why you made that decision in that way.
• •If you expect significant pushback (3), go back to the basics. You may start with covering what’s important to the stakeholders – that is, the treasure and the decision criteria. Doing so will also help you sensitise the audience that different people care about different things and that the tensions among these different objectives can’t be easily reconciled. For instance, you might point to the tensions between ensuring short-term success and long-term survival or the tensions between the objectives of your shareholders who are focused on financial returns and those of your internal stakeholders, like the union members, who are prioritising job security and working conditions. Next, you might review the available alternatives, starting with those that you ended up discarding. Go over each alternative’s trade-offs as doing so will make your thinking more transparent. Finally, present the alternative that you ended up selecting. Don’t just present its positives, also cover where it falls short and explain why, overall, you feel that the alternative still has a better overall profile than the others. It will still be a challenging moment, no doubt, but you are more likely to be able to show that you have taken the different perspectives into consideration than if you directly present your chosen alternative.

No matter which approach you choose, the broader point is that you should try to meet your audience where they are before taking them to where you want them to be.

Having defined what you want to communicate, you will also need to identify the level of detail that you want to get into. Here, it might be useful to organise your message as a pyramid, which helps you use an appropriate level of detail without omitting important parts. To this end, you may start with your key message – the top of your pyramid – before drilling down into details as needed. Your key message boils down to a phrase or two, which summarises what you’re going to tell them: ‘I’m here to recommend that we increase revenues by focusing our efforts to get clients from our main competitor to shift to us. Here’s why.’

Your key message relies on your storyline – the handful of ideas that work together to support your conclusion. Each of these ideas consists of arguments, each of which uses reasoning and evidence.

Organising your message in such a pyramid, you can best plan what to present given the time that’s allocated to you and the level of support needed for each part.

TRANSITION FROM BEING OPEN TO BEING BULLETPROOF

It is commendable to be open-minded during the problem-solving process, but this flexibility might be misunderstood as indecisiveness, if you still display it when presenting your recommendations and explaining the way forward to the rest of the organisation. In the words of a senior executive we recently interviewed, ‘when presenting to my board, I can’t be seen as arrogant, but I need to have answers’. Therefore, at some point, you need to switch your mindset from problem-solving mode, where you gather feedback and insights from others to help you identify a great solution, to ‘selling’ mode, where you convince a broader audience of your chosen path without getting caught in detailed discussions about the quality of your solution.

Moving into selling mode requires you to change how you engage. The FrED tools, including the why and how maps, decision matrices and on-balance decisions, will help you structure your thinking processes in a way that makes them amenable to getting constructive feedback from your stakeholders. Yet, showing your decision matrix to a broader audience, who might be unfamiliar with the topic and not necessarily constructive, is often not a good idea. Why? Because doing so can open a Pandora’s box of debate and dissent around criteria, alternatives and evaluations that you don’t want to have this late in the process.

The picture of a cruise ship is a useful illustration of how you should be judicious about which tools you reveal to different audiences. Big cruise ships have up to 20 decks, where often only the upper decks are accessible to the passengers. Even though the cargo, kitchen, and engine decks are critical, they remain out of sight. Instead, passengers stroll around the upper decks, moving from the pool to the restaurants to the movie theatre and back to their cabin without seeing the supporting operations.

Similarly, FrED’s tools are important to help you reach solid conclusions – they are the cargo, kitchen and engine decks of your analysis – but you don’t necessarily want to show them to your broader stakeholders. There, you want to keep the focus on the overall storyline, perhaps supported by a few key visuals and clear recommendations. And, in case there is pushback, you want to have a sufficient grasp of your alternatives to be able to explain why you made the decision you made. But you don’t want to expose all the details of your efforts.

We highlight this point because we often have participants in our programmes who enjoy working with FrED’s frameworks and processes so much that they want to share them with their broader audience. Often, however, this does not end well as their audience divert the flow of the presentation to focus on unintended aspects.

One final note about getting into selling mode: It’s not because you’re trying to convince others that you need to provide false certainty. Although it is widely accepted that people prefer to receive advice that appears certain, recent research finds that this hypothesis might need to be revisited.23 In short, instead of pretending that you know for sure what will happen, you might acknowledge whatever inherent uncertainty there is: ‘based on what we see today, we are 70% confident that the best option is X, but we also acknowledge that there is inherent uncertainty, and therefore we’ll continue monitoring the situation frequently to change course swiftly if needs be.’ We’ll continue our discussion of uncertainty in the next chapter.

CHAPTER 8 TAKEAWAYS

Even the greatest analysis isn’t enough. To convert your strategy into a solution, you need to synthesise your findings into a compelling argument that will convince your stakeholders.

Don’t make your final reveal one big surprise! Instead, and time permitting, win stakeholders one at a time ahead.

Appealing to logic might only take you so far. Sometimes, skilfully appealing to emotions or character (the three legs of the Aristotelean persuasion stool) might be more effective. In the end, your message should blend them.

Creating a powerful storyline doesn’t have to be an obscure art. As with the rest of FrED, structuring your effort can guide you: identify what you want to achieve (from/to matrix), meet your audience where they are (at the criteria for high pushback; at the discarded alternatives for medium pushback; at the preferred alternative for little pushback), and build your message (pyramid).

Transition from being open during the problem-solving process to being bulletproof when presenting recommendations and explaining the way forward.

CHAPTER 8 NOTES

1.   1See, for instance, Bartunek, J. M. (2007). ’Academic-practitioner collaboration need not require joint or relevant research: Toward a relational scholarship of integration.’ Academy of Management Journal 50(6): 1323–1333. Stucki, I. and F. Sager (2018). ’Aristotelian framing: Logos, ethos, pathos and the use of evidence in policy frames.’ Policy Sciences 51(3): 373–385.
2.   2Is ethos really working? Some rhetoricians argue that appealing to ethos has the most important impact over the long run (Bartunek, J. M. (2007). ‘Academic-practitioner collaboration need not require joint or relevant re search: Toward a relational scholarship of integration.’ Academy of Management Journal 50(6): 1323–1333.). But some research has found the effect of credibility to be underwhelming (Hample, D. and J. M. Hample (2014). ’Persuasion about health risks: evidence, credibility, scientific flourishes, and risk perceptions.’ Argumentation and Advocacy 51(1): 17–29.).
3.   3See p. xviii of Rosenzweig, P. (2007). The halo effect ... and the eight other business delusions that deceive managers, Free Press.
4.   4Yet again, pathos > logos. Unfortunately. For an example of a balanced, logic argument losing against an emotional-but-anecdotal one, see Moore, D. A. (2021). ‘Perfectly confident leadership.’ California Management Review 63(3): 58–69.
5.   5See p. xi of Haidt, J. (2006). The happiness hypothesis: Finding modern truth in ancient wisdom, Basic Books.
6.   6I’m going with this guy. For an example of how you can start with evaluating alternatives before coming to a conclusion, see Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama during the 2008 US presidential race. In the video, Powell, a lifelong Republican, doesn’t start with his conclusion. Instead, he devotes the first six minutes to evaluating the qualities of Obama and McCain using clear criteria. Only then does he conclude that Obama is the more promising candidate. (Glaister, D. (2008). Colin Powell endorses Barack Obama for president. The Guardian) Video available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2U63fXBlFo.
7.   7Seo, M.-G. and L. F. Barrett (2007). ’Being emotional during decision making—good or bad? An empirical investigation.’ Academy of Management Journal 50(4): 923–940. For a review of usefulness of emotions, see Bartunek, J. M. Ibid. ’Academic-practitioner collaboration need not require joint or relevant research: Toward a relational scholarship of integration.’ (6): 1323–1333.
8.   8Arthur, C. (2011). Nokia’s chief executive to staff: ’we are standing on a burning platform. The Guardian.
9.   9See Cialdini, R. B. (2001). ’The science of persuasion.’ Scientific ­American 284(2): 76–81. Cialdini, R. B. and N. J. Goldstein (2002). ’The science and practice of persuasion.’ Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly 43(2): 40–50.
10. 10See pp. 128–149 of Block, P. (2017). The empowered manager: Positive political skills at work. Hoboken, New Jersey, John Wiley & Sons.
11. 11Lynn, M. (1991). ’Scarcity effects on value: A quantitative review of the commodity theory literature.’ Psychology & Marketing 8(1): 43–57.
12. 12On loss aversion, see, for instance, pp. 731–732 of Adler, R. S. (2005). ’Flawed Thinking: Addressing Decision Biases in Negotiation.’ Ohio St. J. on Disp. Resol. 20: 683, Arceneaux, K. (2012). ’Cognitive biases and the strength of political arguments.’ American Journal of Political Science 56(2): 271–285.
13. 13Tannenbaum, S. I., A. M. Traylor, E. J. Thomas and E. Salas (2021). ’Managing teamwork in the face of pandemic: evidence-based tips.’ BMJ Quality & Safety 30(1): 59–63.
14. 14For an in-depth coverage of the concept of psychological safety, see Edmondson, A. (2019). The fearless organization, Wiley.
15. 15For a more in-depth discussion of the growth mindset concept, see Carol, D. (2007). Mindset, Ballantine Books. For supporting evidence of adopting a growth mindset, see Yeager, D. S., P. Hanselman, G. M. Walton, J. S. Murray, R. Crosnoe, C. Muller, E. Tipton, B. Schneider, C. S. Hulleman, C. P. Hinojosa, D. Paunesku, C. Romero, K. Flint, A. Roberts, R. Iachan, J. Buontempo, S. Man Yang, C. M. Carvalho, P. R. Hahn, M. Gopalan, P. Mhatre, R. Ferguson, A. L. Duckworth and C. S. Dweck (2019). ’A national experiment reveals where a growth mindset improves achievement.’ Nature 573(7774): 364–369.
16. 16Bransford, J. D. and M. K. Johnson (1972). ’Contextual prerequisites for understanding: Some investigations of comprehension and recall.’ Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 11(6): 717–726.
17. 17See, for instance, pp. 63–97 of Heath, C. and D. Heath (2007). Made to stick: Why some ideas survive and others die. New York, Random House.
18. 18De Smet, A., G. Jost and L. Weiss (2019). ’Three keys to faster, better decisions.’ The McKinsey Quarterly.
19. 19See pp. 11–12 of French, S., J. Maule and N. Papamichail (2009). Decision behaviour, analysis and support, Cambridge University Press.
20. 20De Smet, A., G. Jost and L. Weiss (2019). ’Three keys to faster, better decisions.’ The McKinsey Quarterly. See also Rogers, P. and M. Blenko (2006). ’Who has the D.’ Harvard Business Review 84(1): 52–61.
21. 21We’ve stolen the ‘from/to matrix’ from Andrew Abela, who calls it a ‘From-to/Think-Do’ matrix; see pp. 29–34 of Abela, A. (2008). Advanced presentations by design: Creating communication that drives action, John Wiley & Sons.
22. 22Steve Jobs quoted on p. 13 of Rumelt, R. P. (2011). Good strategy/bad strategy: The difference and why it matters.
23. 23Gaertig, C. and J. P. Simmons (2018). ’Do people inherently dislike uncertain advice?’ Psychological Science 29(4): 504–520.