How to Coach Yourself and Others Influencing, Inter Personal and Leadership Skills | Page 38

Composition This strategy uses the structure of your argument to compare the outcome being portrayed against an outcome that is less desirable. You are basically making your option look or sound better by contrasting it with another possible outcome. In advertisements, you can think of ‘before and after’ commercials or someone who is unhappy before a product and happy afterwards. There can be a strong emotional tug here as well. 2. Downplay On the other side of the intensify coin, you have downplaying. It is the opposite strategy from intensification. Here the goal is to distract from certain aspects of the situation. The methods you use to downplay a fact or statement are the opposite of the ones you would use to intensify them. In this situation, you would use diversion, omission, or confusion. Diversion This is a basic distraction technique. You simply divert the person’s attention to something by drawing their attention to another feature or ch aracteristic of your argument. For example, if you are trying to convince your boss to let you work from home, he or she might zone in on the fact that they wouldn’t be able to supervise you directly. Instead of letting the conversation dwell on that issue, you could divert their attention to the fact that you would be more productive without distractions, which in the long run will save the company money and will make your boss look good when you are getting things done faster. Omission This is exactly what it sounds like; you simply do not say anything about a topic that you think might sway the other person from your point of view. However, you need to be careful when you use this tactic because in a work scenario, you may be required to use full disclosure. Or, if you omit information when you work with a customer and it is information that they discover after the fact, if they consider it important information they will not appreciate the fact that you omitted the information in the first place. However, if you can safely leave certain information out of a conversation that you think would dissuade the other party, you can choose to do so. It might be something that you can address after you have already gained agreement, at which point the item may no longer have as much importance. Confusion Although this is not the most noble of persuasion tactics, it is effective. If you can establish yourself as the expert with the complex or highly scientific information, you may override the other person’s position simply because they are not able to deliver their position with the same amount of detail. If you know the topic you are discussing inside and out and the other party does not, you will be at an advantage because you will be able to show a depth of knowledge that makes it seem as if because you know more you must also know better.