Profitable Product Management
Influence
Persuasion, presentations and team
leadership.
Author
Pete
Laver
or Company
YOUR LOGO
2
Contents
Influence
3
Persuasion
5
Team leading
7
Productivity
9
Presentation
10
Empathy and Rapport 16
Slide Shows
Assertiveness
Influence
18
19
Influence
Influence
Influence is possibly the most useful skill anyone can have. It is the ability to manipulate other people and
persuade them to do what you want. This sounds dangerous and it clearly is. Many examples
and experiments exist showing how easily we humans can be tricked or misled by authority
figures and the like into doing terrible things. Most of us merely wish to have a little more
influence and persuasive power than we currently have.
The ethical dimension is real even if we are not demonic, misleading trickery will rarely result in a happy
ending. Used sensibly the skills involved in developing influence, persuasion and selling are
helpful and can be learned and developed. Current authorities for further reading on the subject
include Daniel Khaneman and Robert Ciadini.
Six Principles (proposed by Robert Ciadini) in creating influence:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Reciprocity
Commitment and Consistency
Social Proof
Liking
Authority (endorsement)
Scarcity
Reciprocity
This means making friends through helping them solve their problems. In doing so you are contributing to
the team but at the same time incurring an obligation on their part to reciprocate when the time
comes. The idea is not to merely wave away thanks but to emphasize the team ethic you work to.
Commitment and Consistency
We do not like to be contradictory and much prefer to stick to our guns, stay with what we believe in and
resist change. Also, when getting others to commit to action it helps to get the commitment in
writing. The written word has a powerful incentive value turning a potentially vague assurance
into a promise they will prefer not to break.
Social Proof
We are heavily influenced by action. If we see others doing the recommended thing we are much more
likely to follow suit. Also, we often fear losing more than we relish winning so it is worth while
emphasizing the bad consequences of doing nothing.
Influence
3
Influence
Liking
No-one will get on with everyone but it is worth remembering that people like people who they sense like
them. We are all much cleverer at understanding body signals than we think. Therefore, making
a positive effort to see the best in others works. People who do not suffer fools gladly are
generally bullies. And those people who are not talking to you are doing so because you are not
talking to them.
Authority
Celebrity endorsement works even though we do not believe it. Footballers always buy football boots the
stars wear. Women always buy the clothes showcased by the beautiful people. Logic denies it
but the facts prove it. People will look towards whoever they respect for a lead.
Scarcity
When something is scarce we are more likely to want it. Ten a penny is unwanted but the last remaining
item is.
Summing up the above it seems to be that influence can be built by building teams and working cooperatively although the behaviour of some can be a coercive and ego driven struggle for
dominance.. Higher ranking individuals will often seize control of the agenda and set unfair rules.
One way of doing this is to control the rules of engagement:
During the Watergate trials John Dean was forced to limit his testimony to facts. This
agenda prevented him saying that he, amongst others, considered the
suggestion to break into the Watergate building so foolish that he had ignored it.
He considered the idea to be unworthy of a response. He was sent to jail.
Experiments demonstrate that interrupting others, a sure sign that the individual is not listening, is more
likely to come from nigh ranking people- another form of misusing power and men interrupt
women more often than other men:
Many Doctors have been shown to interrupt patients after less than half a minute of
explanation of their symptoms with unknown but probably damaging results. The
opposite-patients interrupting their Doctor is rare and usually ignored by the
Doctor.
Long pauses or delays in responding to a question signal rejection of what has been uttered. Timely
responses are rapport building whilst hesitation and delay are the opposite. Picking out areas of
agreement before raising an issue is rapport building.
Look for shared interests and shape your argument to seem to be consistent with improving those
interests. Debates are rarely won on logic alone.
Influence
4
Persuasion
The Art of Rhetoric,
In
written roughly 2500 years ago,
Aristotle identified logos, pathos and ethos as the three parts of an
effective persuasion strategy.
Rhetoric
Logos or logic is the factual element which seeks to prove the
improve the capability of writers or speakers
The art of discourse, an art that aims to
argument. Reducing a complex argument to its essential core is
difficult but remains at the heart of effective persuasion. A few crystal
clear ideas, imaginatively presented will be vastly more effective than
a long-winded complicated argument.
to inform, persuade, or motivate particular
This is not reducing the argument to absurdity. A TV programme
where a historian convinces a few spectators to dress up as soldiers
and take up positions in a notional battlefield may well be seen as
patronising but a clear explanation using a map followed by a walk
through the actual site of the battle might make a complicated affair
understandable to us all in an entertaining manner.
from Aristotle, who considers it a counterpart
audiences in specific situations.
Its best known definition comes
of both logic and politics, and calls it the
faculty of observing in any given case the
available means of persuasion
It typically provide heuristics for
When you think of passionate debates that we all get involved with it
becomes clear that logic alone rarely persuades. Deeply held
opinions are hard to shift.
understanding, discovering, and developing
arguments for particular situations, such as
Aristotle's three persuasive audience
Pathos is the appeal to emotion by, for example, spelling out the
consequences of failure to head the advice. If a persuasive argument
does succeed it will usually be because an emotional response has
been generated. People change their minds when they are motivated
to do so.
Branded advertising is often depicted as the arena
appeals: logos, pathos and ethos.
The five canons of rhetoric, which trace the
traditional tasks in designing a persuasive
speech, were first codified in classical
Rome: invention, arrangement, style,
memory and delivery.
where persuasion occasionally reaches state of the art levels. And the
message is almost always emotional- how will this product make me
Along with grammar, logic (dialectic) ,
feel? What statement about me will owning this product make? If you
rhetoric is one of the three arts of discourse
want to be the best you will work with the best.
Influence
5
Persuasion
Pathos is used to tell stories spelling out the consequences of failure
to use the product and the triumphs you will experience if you do. A
story about how a manager noticed a pattern of late payments and
acted quickly and cleverly to avert a customer getting into a financial
muddle could go on to point out that keeping our customers but being
vigilant about debts will not affect trade but will help to reverse our
debt problem which is leaving us short of cash.
It works better for most of us than sheets of numbers and explanations
of ratio calculations. Most of us have difficulties with large chunks of
financial data but a shared myth is often remembered for years.
Ethos (values) generally evoked the family or tribe.
The point
here is that the person attempting to be persuasive will be judged not
only on the content but also on their personal reputation. A beggar in
the street spouting philosophy is unlikely to get a fair hearing. A
Professor of Philosophy will tend to get a better hearing because it
seems much more likely that she knows what she is talking about.
Membership of a distinguished family would produce the same effect
in Ancient Greece.
Celebrity endorsement is an appeal to ethos. If the world’s best player
uses this equipment it must be good? Logos is less used as most
products today have competitors of equal quality.
Influence
6
Team Leading
Team leading (Delegation)
Meeting subordinate in corridor or via email
“Boss, we have a problem”
Response. I know this is important but I do not know enough to make a decision now
“Leave it with me and I will get back to you”
If every problem is seen as a monkey then the management analogy becomes managing these
monkeys. In the above example, the monkey has jumped from the subordinates back onto the Boss’s
back. The Boss now has a monkey to feed and the subordinate has one less to worry about.
Later on the subordinate will send an email saying “How are you getting on with solving our
problem?”
This is called Supervision but it seems to be working the wrong way around!
Your time as a manager divides into:
Boss imposed time severe penalties if ignored
System imposed time also severe penalties for ignoring
Self-imposed time
things you have decided on or agreed to do
Subordinate imposed time taken up by subordinate demands on you
Discretionary time
free to do what you want and no penalties
The idea is to reduce self- imposed and especially subordinate imposed time freeing up
discretionary time. The result is to free up time for important issues and to empower subordinates
building a better team.
Initiative can be placed on a scale from low to high as follows:
Waiting to be told what to do
Asking what you should do
Making a recommendation and then actioning it
Take action whilst keeping team members informed
Act on own initiative and tell the team about it later on
Good managers abhor levels one and two and control their teams by specifying the level of
initiative required. This will vary according to the task and the level of capability of the team member.
Allowing team members to improve and develop will help them and you.
Influence
7
Team Leading
Rules for Managing Monkeys
Monkeys should be fed or shot.
Allowing them to starve to death is messy, cruel and will lead to problem including post-mortems
and even attempted resurrections
You should not keep more monkeys than you can look after properly.
If subordinates have too many they will pass them around until they become ill or end up being
rescued by you.
Monkeys should only be fed by appointment.
Otherwise they will have to hunted down which is time wasting and damaging to the monkey.
Monkey feeding time is hands on and face-to-face.
Feeding by mail will leave you with the next move. Use documentation if it helps but never
instead of feeding time.
At the end of feeding time make an appointment for next time and specify
the degree of initiative allowed.
Otherwise the monkey may starve or end up living with you.
The problems involve some loss of control which most of find difficult. Handled well with the
degree of initiative carefully managed will lead to better teamwork and more time for focusing on what
is important.
Influence
8
Productivity
Work backwards from goals to milestones to tasks. Writing “launch company
website” at the top of your to-do list is a sure way to make sure you never get it done. Break down the
work into smaller and smaller chunks until you have specific tasks that can be accomplished in a few
hours or less: Sketch an outline to the introduction for the homepage video, etc. That’s how you set
goals and actually succeed in crossing them off your list.
Stop multi-tasking. No, seriously—stop. Switching from task to task quickly does not work.
In fact, changing tasks more than 10 times in a day makes you as silly as a drunk, When you’re drunk,
your IQ drops by five points. When you multitask, it drops by an average of 10 points, 15 for men, five
for women (yes, men are three times as bad at multitasking than women).
Be militant about eliminating distractions. Lock your door, put a sign up, turn off
your phone, texts, email, and instant messaging. In fact, if you know you may sneak a peek at your
email, set it to offline mode, or even turn off your Internet connection. Go to a quiet area and focus on
completing one task.
Schedule your email. Pick two or three times during the day when you’re going to use your
email. Checking your email constantly throughout the day creates a ton of noise and kills your
productivity.
Use the phone. Email isn’t meant for conversations. Don’t reply more than twice to an email.
Pick up the phone instead.
Work on your own agenda. Don’t let something else set your day. Most people go right to
their emails and start freaking out. You will end up at inbox-zero, but accomplish nothing. After you
wake up, drink water so you rehydrate, eat a good breakfast to replenish your glucose, then set
prioritised goals for the rest of your day.
Work in 60 to 90 minute intervals. Your brain uses up more glucose than any other
bodily activity. Typically you will have spent most of it after 60-90 minutes. (That’s why you feel so
burned out after super long meetings.) So take a break: Get up, go for a walk, have a snack, do
something completely different to recharge. And yes, that means you need an extra hour for breaks, not
including lunch, so if you’re required to get eight hours of work done each day, plan to be there for 9.510 hours.
Influence
9
Presentation
Make a Plan
The most common plan is summed up as, tell them what you plan to say, tell them and
tell them again –this easily becomes boring as the audience quickly pick up the structure and tend to
ignore most of it knowing it will be summarised anyway.
A better alternative is the classic structure of public speaking, dating back to antiquity, which has
probably never been bettered:
Beginning
Tell Your Story
Make Your case
Deal With Objections
Final Remarks
What is the argument that such an elderly process is relevant to-day? For starters it forms the
basis of every useful advertisement and every successful sales pitch. They do not teach Rhetoric in
school any more but they teach it to persuaders. Give it a try and see how it transforms you
presentation from death by power point into a persuasive and professional job.
Beginning
The first few moments will either grab their attention or confirm that they are in
for a dull time. Avoid the usual agenda outline and identify with the audience by complimenting them or
refer to a previous speaker in glowing terms. Or you could point out what is unique or special about the
occasion heightening the importance of the moment. The idea is to capture their attention.
Three years ago I stood here in front of you and described the desperate plight
we faced. What a difference three years have made- thanks to you.
Other approaches might include framing the speech and clearly, perhaps surprisingly, outlining
the context.
Although the title of my presentation is profitability the real reason for our
disappointing performance is poor service and dwindling customer satisfaction and I
would like to spend some time addressing this issue.
Influence
10
Presentation
Tell Your Story
You may feel that a business presentation is not a tale or yarn. It is. Think it through. What is
the required result? What do you want them to believe in when its finished? Put your talk in context
and tell it succinctly.
Before I describe the remarkable innovations perfected by our developers I
would like to take a moment to tell you about the man behind it all. It has been his
inventiveness and curiosity and his never ending enthusiasm that has infected
everyone who had the pleasure to work with him. Today, thanks to…..
Make Your case
Think back to presentations you have sat through yourself. How much of the facts do you
remember? Your audience will soon forget what you have told them too.
It is vital to make sure that this section presents the substantiation of what you have to sell. To
make it compelling build it around two or three themed arguments that link clearly together. A long list
of points suggests that you are bolstering up a weak proposition. Even worse, the smarter listeners will
attack the weakest point first undermining your position.
There are three good reasons why this business expansion is the right course of
action. Firstly, the profits, whilst good, have been substantially understated because
of the pairing of the unprofitable Printing works located nearby. Secondly, the vital
water supply will become available following the closure of the printing works. Thirdly,
the two operations were initially placed here because of the intention of the
Government to expand the town and local region. This is now happening providing a
growing and prosperous market for the long term.
Deal with Objections
There will probably be people who oppose your solution to the problem and prefer another. We
must assume that they will get their opportunity to say so and be prepared to respond. Here we
anticipate their objections and refute therm.
This project will cost a lot of money and will certainly cannibalise some of our
existing products. If we decide not to go ahead for these reasons we must be
prepared to see our competitors do it for us.
Influence
11
Presentation
Final Remarks
You could bore everyone to death by summarizing an going over it all over again. Avoid the
temptation. Instead, use the final phase to appeal for understanding and approval of what you have
said.
You leave here today knowing that we lead the market with world-beating
products. It makes me proud to belong to the company and I know you feel the same.
We will not let ourselves down when we have a momentous decision to make. Thank
you.
Rehearsal
What we have so far is a plan. Write it out and decide how to present it. Reading from slides is
dull and you will need to ignore the collective sigh when you turn on your computer! Instead, turn your
talk into a set of notes you can refer to. Make sure you have five sections and practice until you have
memorised the details. Use a slide show if you want to but make sure it is a visual aid rather than a
copy of your talk.
Action
Make sure the room is laid out sensibly so that everyone can hear you and test everything before
you start. If the computer freezes and the lights go out you have your notes and a suitable hand out.
You are ready for anything. You do not need to ask if everyone can hear and see you, you have
checked and they can.
Public speaking is infectious and what you want to spread around is enthusiasm and optimism
rather than the reverse. A nervous person is embarrassing. The good news is that body language can
be controlled concealing any nervousness. Make sure your pockets are empty leaving nothing to be
nervously jangled around. Decide what you are going to do with your hands and what movements you
will make beforehand. As Noel Coward said, the trick is to make sure all your zips are fastened and
don’t fall over the furniture.
A great way to release pent up nerves is to get some sort of audience participation
right from the start. If it’s a small audience shake hands with them and ask them a useful
question, Who are you with or which department? Thanks for coming and I hope you find it useful.
Avoid jokes unless you are good at them. It is important to breathe. Loss of consciousness will follow
quickly if you ignore this advice. Control your breathing and you will find that you can control your
nerves. If you need to pause do so. A short silence is not damaging. Babbling or fainting is.
Influence
12
Presentation
Vary the pace
Vary the pace by speeding up to energise the audience and slowing down to emphasise key
points. Pause before announcing something significant that will please the audience (not as long as
the X Factor).
The Lighthouse
Fear and nerves causes the speaker to avoid looking directly at the audience. Instead, look
straight at them. Throughout your talk scan around the audience making brief eye contact with
individuals. This can be difficult for nervous speakers and takes practice. Making eye contact
establishes rapport and reduces nerves.
Answering Questions
Always allow time for questions at the end. Think through what the probable questions will be
and have your answers in mind. Never ever put someone down in public even if you think their
question or response is idiotic. Doing so will invoke sympathy for the squashed individuals
predicament and turn the audience hostile. If you are in a powerful position the hostility will be covert
but still there-you will have lost the audience
.
The best response to a difficult question is generally to draw the questioner out. What makes
you think that? Can you give us a practical example of what you mean? If the line of argument is faulty
this will uncover it. The difficult person will lose the audience and you can move on.
Feedback and Mirroring
Feedback is non-judgmental interaction where you avoid any negative responses and focus on
being honest but fair. It is a management skill that is rare in the largely politicised environments found
in many organisations. It is a useful way of responding to questions in a public meeting but it can be
seen as parroting, I hear what you are saying but…
So, what you are saying is that I am merely repeating the company line when
what you really need is more people? Is that right? The likely answer is yes. The
questioner is agreeing with you and the question is clarified. The feedback will
probably go down a little bit better.
Influence
13
Presentation
Tips
Use of the right words is powerful. For example, you simply cannot exaggerate the power of positive
thinking. No-one was ever persuaded by someone who does not believe what they are saying. On
the other hand, rhetorical devices are widely and clumsily used by politicians and most of us get
tired of it. Some are infamous such as concealing a piece of bad news with the good or when the
audience is distracted. Applied clumsily they do more harm than good and seem manipulative and
false. Starting every line with hard working families is lamentable and false. Use these tips
sparingly and honestly and in context.
Talking without Notes
You are clearly master of your subject if you can do this (or so it seems). Reduce your notes to 4 or
5 key headings and practice the content below each heading until you are confident you can pull it
off.
Antithesis
Reversing a common theme:
And so, my fellow Americans, Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what
you can do for your country.
This sentence is remembered for JF Kennedy’s Inauguration of 1961 when much else has been
long forgotten.
Parallel sentences
Repetition in language structure helps the audience to hear and remember.
We will do the job properly. We will do the job cost effectively. We will do the job to
the highest standard possible. Above all, we will do the job.
Nests of three
The inexplicable power of nests of three was well known to the Ancient Greeks and has helped
immortalise speeches by Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King, Shakespeare and others.
Friends, Romans and Countrymen! (Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar)
All God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and
Catholics, (Martin Luther King)
The new finish will cut your costs, eliminate heat problems and protect your
equipment permanently.
Influence
14
Presentation
It isn’t so much what the product can do for you. Think about what you could do
with the product.
Rhetorical Questions
Asked for effect rather than requiring answers rhetorical questions invite the answers in the
audiences mind.
Are you going to be comfortable with mediocrity? Do you want to succeed?
Claptraps are pregnant pauses that invite applause or other demonstrations of solidarity and
approval.
Contrastive Pairs
Keeping the grammatical structure similar in describing two courses of action. One is your
preferred plan and the other is a straw man or set up designed to be unappealing thereby highlighting
the preferred option. Often the frame of reference is limited excluding other appealing ideas.
Our only option is to increase the range and depth of the bombing programme or
we lose the country and lose the war.
Repetition
Capturing good ideas into a catchy phrase,
The Borderless organisation, Acid rain, climate change
Repeating the line often can ingrain crucial ideas into the audiences mind can help them to
quickly understand and buy into complex strategies.
Value laden words
Understanding the underlying residual value underpinning certain words is important. It can be
seen as coercive and Machiavellian but it is also common sense. Political speeches will often use
negative adjectives describing an opposing scheme and enrich their own with positive messages.
This divisive scheme based on patchy research using old fashioned methods
can only result in underperforming schools.
This excellent scheme based on well-founded research using tried and tested
methods is sure to result in substantial improvement in academic performance .
Influence
15
Empathy and Rapport
Empathy
Empathy is the knack of identifying with the experience of the other person. It adds warmth.
Communication beyond the superficial level is impossible without rapport which can be understood as
heat. A cold atmosphere makes communication very hard if not impossible. The warmer the atmosphere
between the communicators the more meaningful the conversation is likely to be. Once the superficial
introductory stage is passed the more empathetic you can be toward the other person the better.
I understand how you feel because I have experienced something like it myself and I
know how uncomfortable it can be.
Do keep control and stop long winded people by a polite as possible intervention before moving on and
always address your answers to the whole audience not just the questioner. Finally, if you are caught out
by a question you cannot answer admit it and promise to get back to the questioner with the right answer
as soon as possible. Perhaps paradoxically, this response is respected and slippery and evasive
responses are not
Pitch to the Audience
The most effective persuasive technique is the one preferred by the audience. A saving in logistics needs
to be presented quite differently to a trade union or the shareholders or even the Board of Directors. Each
group has priorities that are markedly different even though the logistics innovation could conceivably be
of benefit to them all.
Some people are very visual in the way they absorb and process information. They will respond best to
imagery, tables and graphs. Others tend to absorb information as words and other auditory stimuli. The
third type is very physical and learns by interaction and demonstration (kinaesthetic learners). All three
learning modes (visual, auditory and kinaesthetic) are usually present in all of us but most of us prefer
one mode as our preferred learning style.
Influence
16
Slide Shows
Keep it Simple
Most of us have been bored during slide shows that presenters use as notes for their talk. The slide show
should be a visual aid that adds value. Describing a place benefits from a well chosen photograph. Discussing
a new product might benefit from a picture. It might benefit more from real samples and a diagram to explain
its function. Video and music can be embedded if relevant. Keep it simple whenever possible.
Using pictures that can be drawn or printed onto large white cardboard sheets placed around the room might
make a welcome change from computers on occasion. Written material will be read whilst the audience ignore
you so plan time for this if necessary.
Equipment
If you use a slide show you will probably turn to Microsoft’s PowerPoint or Apple Keynote. Both do a good job
although experts tend to rate the Apple product better for its graphics. Apache’s Open Office is completely free
of charges and very effective. All can be enhanced by taking material from the internet although care should
be taken with copyright. Creative Commons is a not for profit organisation that can help with this.
Alternatives to traditional slide shows include Prezi which offers a huge virtual whiteboard that can zoom in to
small details and out for context eliminating the need for individual slides. Pinterest allows for visual boards to
be built on the web and Slide Rocket is one of the better cloud based products.
Content is More Important than Razzmatazz
Content is more important than graphical appeal. Structure your presentation by pinpointing your objectives,
what your audience is thinking now, and what points you need to make in order to move the audience from
where they are to where you are. Ensure that the content of your presentation is solid before you decide on the
visual elements.
Use Contrast
You need a lot of contrast between the text and the background colour. Either a dark background with light text
or a light background and dark letters. Most projectors make colours duller than they appear on a screen, and
you should check this if possible.
Use a big enough font
Any font size less than 20 point is too small to be reasonably read in large audience presentations. If you are
given a small screen in a big room, your font will look smaller because the image will not be as big as it should
be. In this case, try the wall instead of a screen or move the chairs closer to the screen.
Influence
17
Slide Shows
Special effects
We want the audience to read the screen, and then focus back on the presenter to hear the message. Flying
text and other effects makes it harder for the audience members to read since they have to wait until the text
stays still to read it. They focus on the show instead of the content.
Turn off the pointer
Some people are irritated by the arrow key which they find distracting. In show view press ctrl H and it
disappears. Press a to retrieve it (not escape which will drop you into normal view).
Use visuals
Use visuals such as graphs, diagrams, photos and media clips to engage the audience. You can get free
pictures from Creative Commons or at reasonable prices from websites such as istockphoto.com.
..
Find a slide quickly
On the normal view collapse the left hand thumbnails to outlines and put a descriptive title on each (already
numbered) slide. Make a list or print the view. As the slides are numbered you can quickly identify the slide
required. Without leaving the show screen type the slide number and press enter and the needed slide appears.
You can use this feature to find a Q&A slide or to skip a section.
Blank the screen
Say you need to kill the screen so that the audience can concentrate on something you wish to say or do
outside of the slide show before returning to it? In show mode, press the full stop. To go back to where you
were on the show press the full stop again.
Draw on the screen
To draw on the screen during your presentation to illustrate a particular element press Ctrl-P key to display a
pen. Use the left mouse button to draw on the slide To erase press the E key. To hide the pen, press the A key
or Ctrl-H.
The Last Slide
The last slide you use to should not be the last slide. Add three copies of the last slide to ensure you do not fall
off the end in error. It can help to add some slides with answers to expected and likely questions and leave a
blank slide as a final back up.
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18
Assertiveness
Aggression
–
–
–
Get what you want any way that works
Causes trouble in the long-run, humiliates others
What goes around comes around
Submission
–
–
–
Hope for what you want!
Stay out of trouble, repress true feelings
Loss of respect (self and others)
Assertion
–
–
–
–
–
–
Ask for what you want
Open and direct, claim your rights
Without disregarding others
Wins respect and trust (from yourself as well as others)
Improves rapport and sensitivity
Reduces anxiety and stress
Assertive Language
Type
Non-assertive
Assertive
Aggressive
Voice
Volume
Tone
Pace
Rambling, verbose
Permission
seeking
Firm, positive
“I” statements
Facts and
opinions
separated
Too many “I”
statements
Boastfulness
Face
I should…
I ought…
Suggestions
without
spurious advice
Threats
Body
Rigid, bent
Fidgeting about
Not blaming,
acute
questions,
Positive words
Heavily weighted
“advice”
Blaming
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19
Assertiveness
Body Language
Type
Non-assertive
Voice
Volume
Tone
Pace
Face
Assertive
Whining
Quiet
Apologetic,
Hesitant or too
fast
Sorry!
Firm, positive
Appropriate
Level tone
Natural
Eyes, head
down, worried
Appropriate
eye contact
Aggressive
Loud,
sarcastic
Bullying
Hard, fast,
slow
Question Typology
Asking questions, listening
to the response and probing
deeper towards a solution is
the Socratic method.
There are six question types
in English:
How did it happen?
Why did it happen?
Hard stare,
tight, chin up
What happened?
When did it happen
Where did it happen?
Who was involved?
Body
Rigid, bent
Fidgeting about
Questions Will
Get attention
Keep discussions going
Encourage thinking
Check understanding
Win agreement
Obtain feedback
Confront and guide
Upright, mobile
Movements
linked to words
Square
Leaning in,
tensed
Clenched fist
Tapping
Do This
Know where you are going
Collect and use everyone's
contribution
Start general and move to
the specific
You can add the mirror
question to the list. This is
simply repeating what you
heard and waiting. Used
sparingly it encourages
further reflection. In effect, it
makes the responder
question themselves.
Don’t Do This
Ignore anyone
Put people under pressure
Give up
Don’t make them guess what
you are thinking
If you are right the rest are
wrong (and they wont enjoy
it)
Influence
20
Assertiveness
A Good Listener?
Good listeners give you their full attention:
eye contact, non evaluative, atmosphere
rapport: matching and pacing
They reflect back what they have heard
Summarise what they think you said
Interpret the information
-so it sounds like you are planning to do such and such?
Good listening is not a technique, its an attitude of mind where the listener suppresses
his/her own agenda to pay 100% attention.
Good listeners do not try to solve the other persons problems or ask questions to push the
speaker in a certain direction.
Listening carefully to someone else is a rare and special compliment
Accentuate the positive
Look for points of agreement first
Build on common ground
Non verbal signals trump words
•Energy levels
•Eye contact
•Touching
•Space and timing
Influence
21