Three Questions to Assess a Person’s Persuasiveness Skill

There are different languages for leadership and business communication, one of which is "persuasion," the capability of a person or argument to convince someone to accept a desired way of thinking. It becomes an important skill because today’s workforce is multi-generational, multi-cultural, people bring up different viewpoint to the table which is great, but to make an agreement with certain important issues, being persuasiveness is crucial to harmonize and solve problems more frictionlessly. What’re the good questions to assess a person’s “persuasiveness” skill?
How profound can you make influence on others? Influence and persuasion are so closely linked they are probably the same thing. To be persuasive, means to be able to shape other people's views or opinions towards one's own views or perspectives. Nowaday, every digital professional need to have certain level of leadership quality and potential in order to solve business problems more effectively, and persuasiveness is one of such leadership qualities. To lead, you need to persuade others to follow, they will not follow unless they are influenced by your persuasion. Persuasiveness is so interrelated with influence, and influence can be used to define a good leader who all have a vision and influence with that vision or toward that vision or to contribute to that vision. Knowledge is power, in order to be persuasive, you need to have vision, knowledge, insight, and wisdom to make profound influence.
Are you intentional practicing the persuasiveness skills via building trust and confidence? Influence and persuasion begin with trust, but influence does not necessarily come as a giving to a person with a high trust index. It’s a skill to be learned, a persuasive communication, exemplary leadership, personal sacrifice, all held together by a collection of confidence. Trustworthiness without influence is like an activity report, not an insightful book; Influence without Trustworthiness is like a book cover without context & content. The purpose of leadership persuasiveness  is to convey the vision, update the outdated viewpoint, or get the work done promptly. It’s a cohesive effort to fulfill the the purpose of leadership which is to awaken possibility in people to deliver extraordinary results. Leadership is the art of getting someone else do something you need to be done, and they want to do it!" (Eisenhower).
What are your persuasiveness and influence styles? Are you practicing persuasiveness and make Influence via inspiring, to encourage others toward your vision by communicating in depth and breadth? Do you make Influence via asserting, to present ideas via confidence & persuasion and expertise? Do you persuade via negotiating and exchanging, to get others’ see your point of view, make tradeoff or compromise; Do you make Influence via bridging: to rely on reciprocity, attempt to influence outcomes by uniting or connecting with others; or do you persuade via rationalizing, data analytics. Influence style is not always poetic, it can be made via logic and reasoning; data and statistics.


Every profession and role has its unique influence in the world, being persuasive is an important professional quality based on courage to influence, knowledge to understand, confidence to assert, wisdom to negotiate, uniqueness to bridge; to share the vision, be mindful and get things down in harmonized way.


Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu