How to be persuasive

So, you’ve got a great idea for what your team should work on next.

Or maybe you’re sure that one approach is better than another. Or there’s a candidate with low interview scores that the company should still hire. Or a distraction your coworker ought to drop. Or some work you need another team to prioritize.

Sometimes you can just present your recommendation and it will happen.

Most of the other time you need to be persuasive.

I’ve seen all kinds of ways that people fail to convince others to do what they think is right.

One mistake is being out of balance with how strongly you present your recommendation. Too lightly and people might not realize how important you think it is. Too strongly and people might assume you’re stubborn and lose trust in your judgement.

A related mistake is trying to be persuasive at the wrong time.

Let’s say your team is sketching ideas for a new product. If you’re making suggestion about design while the team is trying to understand whether people even want the product, they’ll see your ideas as a distraction. Reframe your ideas as helping to better answer whether people want the product, or wait until the team is thinking about the design.

On the other hand, if you come over the week the product is about to launch and suggest major changes to the direction, it’s unlikely that the team would stop the launch and go back to the drawing board. Unless you think that launching the product without your changes would be a major disaster, focus on influencing the next version of the product.

I’ve also seen people fail to persuade because they’re not paying attention to what the other party cares about. You can’t just use the logic that appeals to yourself. You’ve either got to speak to their values or convince them to care about your values.

The most persuasive people don’t have to be slick sales guys or argue until everyone is exhausted. They bring teammates over so smoothly it’s not alway obvious there was ever dissent.

Here are some things to practice to become more persuasive.

Listen

Great persuasion always starts with great listening. Before you say a word, make sure you’ve really heard what the other people are saying and what they care about.

If you don’t share the same values, try going deeper to find the goals you do share. One place to start might be your company’s mission statement.

You want to listen so well that your teammates will trust you to understand and care about their goals.

Build Credibility

To persuade your teammates, you need to first get them to trust you. Do your homework and think your proposal through from end to end. The goals and constraints you surfaced while listening can help direct your research.

If you’ve got holes in your plan or act too stubborn, it can cause a massive loss of credibility. Once your teammates get the idea that you haven’t thought a plan all the way through, they’ll start second guessing every part of it.

Talk in the language that your teammates find compelling

It’s easy to make the mistake of pitching your idea with the points that are most compelling to you, instead of to your audience. Lead with the things that they care about.

One engineer I worked with told me that she wanted to redo a part of our product because the code was a mess. That change stayed low on our list. Then she switched how she talked about it — she knew I cared a lot about performance, so she told me that we could speed up the product a lot after we simplified the code. Suddenly that change had a lot more of my interest.

Repeat as necessary

Some great ideas need to wait for their time to come. Don’t get discouraged if your plan doesn’t get picked up immediately.

When you really believe in something, take opportunities to keep it top of mind. Start to build up the feeling that your change is inevitable, so that people will recognize when it’s time for it to happen.

PS. This is my first post on Medium. Please recommend it or comment to let me know what you think! For my other posts, see http://pmblog.quora.com/