There are some people that are magical. You go into a meeting with your mind made up, and then 30 minutes later, you leave the meeting with a completely different mindset. And you don't know how they managed to convince you so successfully. If you could figure that trick out, most of your non-technical career problems would be solved. I've personally never learned this skill of persuasiveness, but I'd pay a lot of money if someone could teach me quickly.
Check out the book How to Win Friends and Influence People [1]. The author, Dale Carnegie, used to teach a hugely popular course on that. I held off reading the book for a long time because I thought that it was about being manipulative. It's not at all. It's about being a good person.
This is the one and single book that I'm sure helped my personal / career life.
I highly recommend. It gives you a powerful alternative and a beacon that you follow every time you have a conversation with someone. Although the book is old ( before the Internet ), it has pretty much summed up everything about people's nature and can teach you what your parents / teachers forgot.
Well, I can recommend the book "How to win friends and influence people". I can echo other commenters have already said and suggest.
1. Say less.
2. Listen more.
3. Think of everything from the other people's point of view and honestly consider what is best for them.
I think one thing you said was quite telling: "you go into a meeting with your mind made up". I'd suggest trying to being open to having your mind changed is a good first step too ;)
I've personally never learned this skill of persuasiveness,
The few people I've met like this were pretty much office bullies. There's no mythical silver tongued nice guy. When someone dominates the meeting and shoves his agenda into your face and argues until you're exhausted, well, that works because he's not worth fighting. The question is do you want to be a person like that? Pretty much anyone can be taught to be a Gordon Gekko or a GlenGarry Glen Ross's Blake.
I don't take my job remotely seriously enough or care to modify how I act for crap like this. I kinda pity those who do. They seem to get their validation and emotional fulfillment only from work.
The above might be overly critical, but I think everyone hits a point in their career where they have to decide where they will draw the line in terms of personal modification to get ahead. There are so many more asshole-ish ways I could be at work that would definitely lead me to a higher level of success. I just consider it against my moral system to be a person like that and think its absurd that we have to do this constant study of "how to get ahead" just to make a decent living. Threads like this just depress me. Work life shouldn't make this kind of demand on our personal and internal lives. I think if everyone pushed back more against employers, we'd all be happier, instead we have this rat-race that we accept as perfectly normal and rational. Its not.
Well, bullying is a little more overt than what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the kind of person who is so good at persuasiveness that they convince you without you even realizing it. That's a totally different skillset from "argue until your opponent is exhausted and gives up". I had a coworker once that was pretty good at this. I'd go into a meeting with a strategy that I was positive would work, and I'd walk out of that meeting with his strategy -- and somehow I was convinced it was even better than my original one! (Sometimes it was, sometimes it wasn't, but I never resented him if it wasn't -- because he always somehow made it seem like it was the natural choice, not just his choice.)
Anyway, that's the kind of thing i'm talking about. It's easy to talk over people and beat them over the head til they do what you want. I'm more interested in getting everyone on my side and excited about it.
You can become better at this by doing it a lot. Every time a situation presents itself where you can try to convince someone of something, try to do it just for the heck of it. Most people evade these situations, but if you keep at it, it will improve.
Persuasion is independent of "shyness" (actually, being an introvert) but a lot of it has to do with natural talent, unfortunately [1]. You can definitely improve it, but some people are just born with a higher degree of "energy transitivity". For instance, their face have more muscles and they're wired in such a way that it is easier for them to control it, among other things.
[1] Malcom Gladwell wrote about this briefly in "The Tipping Point". You can learn more on this by looking up the book "Emotional Contagion" by Elaine Hatfield, John Cacioppo and Richard Rapson. There's also Howard Friedman, from the University of California, who created the Affective Communication Test, which aims to give an individual a measure of his personal carisma - this transmissive or "magical" ability you speak of:
http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~friedman/act.html
Read Dale Carnegie's classic "How to Win Friends and Influence People"; it's still in print 70 years after it was published for a reason.
The Dale Carnegie Company also offers instructor-led training in small classes. Having taken it, I would recommend taking the in-person course if you can; nearly every major city has a DC office. If you're willing it to take it seriously and put work into it, it can be quite beneficial.
Just bought that book after having it been recommended about a dozen times. Although I can't comment of the contents of the book (haven't read it yet), I want to point out how incredibly popular it apparently is.
It is generally speaking, but many people have that ability without being labeled as a 'sales man' and I believe many sales men lack it as well (but they may be good at sales because the product would sell itself).
I would also say it's kind of magical.. some sort of energy transmission..
You don't have to be a salesperson to be good at sales. The art of selling something (and it is an art) is something that you can apply to many situations. Generally, it's the art of getting what you want, and that is extremely valuable to pretty much anyone.
The way you talk about it reminds me of people's account of Jobs' so called "reality distortion field". However, it's not some mystical thing that some people are born with. It's a learned skill just like software engineering.
Comments
There are some people that are magical. You go into a meeting with your mind made up, and then 30 minutes later, you leave the meeting with a completely different mindset. And you don't know how they managed to convince you so successfully. If you could figure that trick out, most of your non-technical career problems would be solved. I've personally never learned this skill of persuasiveness, but I'd pay a lot of money if someone could teach me quickly.
Check out the book How to Win Friends and Influence People [1]. The author, Dale Carnegie, used to teach a hugely popular course on that. I held off reading the book for a long time because I thought that it was about being manipulative. It's not at all. It's about being a good person.
[1] http://www.yourcoach.be/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Dale...
This is the one and single book that I'm sure helped my personal / career life.
I highly recommend. It gives you a powerful alternative and a beacon that you follow every time you have a conversation with someone. Although the book is old ( before the Internet ), it has pretty much summed up everything about people's nature and can teach you what your parents / teachers forgot.
Well, I can recommend the book "How to win friends and influence people". I can echo other commenters have already said and suggest.
1. Say less.
2. Listen more.
3. Think of everything from the other people's point of view and honestly consider what is best for them.
I think one thing you said was quite telling: "you go into a meeting with your mind made up". I'd suggest trying to being open to having your mind changed is a good first step too ;)
Talk less. Smile more. Don't let them know what you're against or what you're for.
This sounds like a Radiohead lyric.
Hamilton?
Aaron Burr's philosophy, as written in Hamilton.
I am not the reason no one trusts you
No one knows what you believe
The few people I've met like this were pretty much office bullies. There's no mythical silver tongued nice guy. When someone dominates the meeting and shoves his agenda into your face and argues until you're exhausted, well, that works because he's not worth fighting. The question is do you want to be a person like that? Pretty much anyone can be taught to be a Gordon Gekko or a GlenGarry Glen Ross's Blake.
I don't take my job remotely seriously enough or care to modify how I act for crap like this. I kinda pity those who do. They seem to get their validation and emotional fulfillment only from work.
The above might be overly critical, but I think everyone hits a point in their career where they have to decide where they will draw the line in terms of personal modification to get ahead. There are so many more asshole-ish ways I could be at work that would definitely lead me to a higher level of success. I just consider it against my moral system to be a person like that and think its absurd that we have to do this constant study of "how to get ahead" just to make a decent living. Threads like this just depress me. Work life shouldn't make this kind of demand on our personal and internal lives. I think if everyone pushed back more against employers, we'd all be happier, instead we have this rat-race that we accept as perfectly normal and rational. Its not.
Well, bullying is a little more overt than what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the kind of person who is so good at persuasiveness that they convince you without you even realizing it. That's a totally different skillset from "argue until your opponent is exhausted and gives up". I had a coworker once that was pretty good at this. I'd go into a meeting with a strategy that I was positive would work, and I'd walk out of that meeting with his strategy -- and somehow I was convinced it was even better than my original one! (Sometimes it was, sometimes it wasn't, but I never resented him if it wasn't -- because he always somehow made it seem like it was the natural choice, not just his choice.)
Anyway, that's the kind of thing i'm talking about. It's easy to talk over people and beat them over the head til they do what you want. I'm more interested in getting everyone on my side and excited about it.
You can become better at this by doing it a lot. Every time a situation presents itself where you can try to convince someone of something, try to do it just for the heck of it. Most people evade these situations, but if you keep at it, it will improve.
Persuasion is independent of "shyness" (actually, being an introvert) but a lot of it has to do with natural talent, unfortunately [1]. You can definitely improve it, but some people are just born with a higher degree of "energy transitivity". For instance, their face have more muscles and they're wired in such a way that it is easier for them to control it, among other things.
[1] Malcom Gladwell wrote about this briefly in "The Tipping Point". You can learn more on this by looking up the book "Emotional Contagion" by Elaine Hatfield, John Cacioppo and Richard Rapson. There's also Howard Friedman, from the University of California, who created the Affective Communication Test, which aims to give an individual a measure of his personal carisma - this transmissive or "magical" ability you speak of: http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~friedman/act.html
Read Dale Carnegie's classic "How to Win Friends and Influence People"; it's still in print 70 years after it was published for a reason.
The Dale Carnegie Company also offers instructor-led training in small classes. Having taken it, I would recommend taking the in-person course if you can; nearly every major city has a DC office. If you're willing it to take it seriously and put work into it, it can be quite beneficial.
Just bought that book after having it been recommended about a dozen times. Although I can't comment of the contents of the book (haven't read it yet), I want to point out how incredibly popular it apparently is.
It's called Sales. :)
It is generally speaking, but many people have that ability without being labeled as a 'sales man' and I believe many sales men lack it as well (but they may be good at sales because the product would sell itself).
I would also say it's kind of magical.. some sort of energy transmission..
You don't have to be a salesperson to be good at sales. The art of selling something (and it is an art) is something that you can apply to many situations. Generally, it's the art of getting what you want, and that is extremely valuable to pretty much anyone.
The way you talk about it reminds me of people's account of Jobs' so called "reality distortion field". However, it's not some mystical thing that some people are born with. It's a learned skill just like software engineering.
What's your time frame for "quickly"? Two hours, two days, two weeks?
Not the GP, but I'd settle to learn that in 2 to 5 years as "quickly".
I think this is a fascinating subject! Let me dig into it and if I find something that's usable (and teachable) I'll write it out.
Many comments have pointed out "How to win friends and influence people" so I'll start there.
May be you already started to figure it out..