How to Coach Yourself and Others Influencing, Inter Personal and Leadership Skills | Page 37

5. Framework Theories for Applying
Persuasion and Influence Techniques
You’ve learned a great deal at this point about building rapport and have gotten some
insight into how the words you choose can help to persuade someone. But how do you
know how to apply those tools? To answer this question, we’ll look at some theories
posed on how persuasion works. Yes, you have some tools now to help you influence
and persuade others, but this information will give you a ramework for how you can
apply them.

1/ Rank’s Intensify and Downplay Model
In this model, Henry Rank describes a model of persuasion using two opposite
strategies: intensification and downplay. This means that when you are in a situation
where you are attempting to persuade someone else, you use the two strategies to
highlight certain aspects of the conversation and to downplay other aspects of the
conversation.

1. Intensify
When you intensify something, you draw attention to it by making it more significant.
You use three tools to intensify something: repetition, association and composition.
You will recognize these concepts from commercials and other marketing campaigns
because they are effective at getting you to hear a message and purchase their product.
If you think about it, you are doing the same thing when you are attempting to persuade
someone, only your product is an idea or a decision.
Repetition
When you repeat something multiple times, it is more likely that the other person will
remember it, which can help them to be influenced by it. Plus, when you repeat
something enough, the listener is more likely to accept that thought or statement as
true. You see this in commercials when an advertisement repeats a word over and over
again. New, improved, bargain, or other descriptors are commonly repeated in hopes
that you will remember the statement.
Association
In this technique, you draw a connection for the listener between your concept and
another idea with which they are already emotionally connected. You can use negative
or positive emotions in this technique. For example, you can persuade someone to keep
a job by associating the loss of a job with the loss of their home and their family’s
comfort. You can persuade someone to accept a delegated task by associating it with a
sense of pride in accomplishment or by letting them know you are choosing them
because you associate them with intelligence and prudent thought. You see this in
commercials when the ‘beautiful people’ are using the product and smiling brightly, or
when the guy who uses the product gets the girl.
The advertiser is trying to draw an association between their product and the emotional
experience of the people being portrayed.