More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
January 5 - December 28, 2019
practice of agreeing with an opponent’s point. It defuses tension faster than any other tool.
Effective persuasion requires reading the beliefs and expectations, values, and emotions of your audience. You can do this cynically. You can use rhetoric to get your point across, and even to change the world. But often the goal “is people, not ideas,” as David puts it.
Rhetoric can be—often is—a destructive force. That alone is reason enough to learn it, if only to inoculate ourselves against its manipulation. But rhetoric also offers the most healing power I know. I honestly believe it can save our civilization.
Rhetoric is the art of influence, friendship, and eloquence, of ready wit and irrefutable logic. And it harnesses the most powerful of social forces, argument.
It’s a form of amplification, an essential rhetorical tactic that turns up the volume as you speak. In a presentation, you can amplify by layering your points: “Not only do we have this, but we also…”
If your idea has been used elsewhere, describe its success in vivid detail as though the audience itself had accomplished it. Show how much more skill and resources your plan dedicates to the idea. Then feel free to use your favorite cliché, e.g., “It’s a slam dunk.”
Seduction is manipulation, manipulation is half of argument, and therefore many of us shy from it. But seduction offers more than just consensual sex. It can bring you consensus. Even Aristotle, that logical old soul, believed in the curative powers of seduction. Logic alone will rarely get people to do anything. They have to desire the act. You may not like seduction’s manipulative aspects; still, it beats fighting, which is what we usually mistake for an argument.
You can use seduction—the nonsexual kind—in a presentation. Will your plan increase efficiency? Get your audience to lust after it; paint a vision of actually taking lunch hours and seeing their families more.
Functionaries, like water, follow the path of least resistance.
“Either we control expenses or let expenses control us.”
The growing profession of “leadership branding coaches” teaches CEO wannabes how to embody their company. The ideal trait? Not aggression, not brains, but the ability to tell a compelling life story and make yourself desirable. Later on, you’ll see how storytelling is critical to emotional persuasion.
but the more subtle, eloquent approaches lead to long-term commitment. Corporate recruiters will confirm this theory. There are a few alpha types in the business world who live to bully their colleagues and stomp on the competition, but if you ask headhunters what they look for in executive material, they describe a persuader and team builder, not an aggressor.
The basic difference between an argument and a fight: an argument, done skillfully, gets people to want to do what you want. You fight to win; you argue to achieve agreement.
Play the good citizen you assume the cop wants you to be. Concede his point. YOU: I’m sure you’re right, Officer. I should have been watching my speedometer more.
must have been watching the road too closely. Can you suggest a way for me to follow my speedometer without getting distracted? This approach appeals to the cop’s expertise. It might work, as long as you keep any sarcasm out of your voice. But assume that the appeal needs a little more sweetening. COP: You can start by driving under the speed limit. Then you won’t have to watch your speedometer so much. YOU: Well, that’s true, I could. I’ve been tailgated a lot when I do that, but that’s their problem, isn’t it? COP: Right. You worry about your own driving. YOU: I will. This has helped a lot,
...more
you is to agree with them—tactically, that is. Agreeing up front does not mean giving up the argument. Instead, use your opponent’s point to get what you want. Practice rhetorical jujitsu by using your opponent’s own moves to throw him off balance. Does up-front agreeing seem to lack in stand-up-for-yourself-ishness? Yes, I suppose it does. But wimps like us shall inherit the rhetorical earth. While the rest of the world fights, we’ll argue. And argument gets you what you want more than fighting does.
attentiveness may be the best mood for a rational talk. Instead of a joke, use mild surprise. “I brought some prepared remarks, but after meeting some of you
today I’ve decided to speak from the heart.”
Changing the mood is the easiest goal, and usually the one you work on first. St. Augustine, a onetime rhetoric professor and one of the fathers of the Christian Church, gave famously boffo sermons. The secret, he said, was not to be content merely with seizing the audience’s sympathetic attention. He was never satisfied until he made them cry. (Augustine could not have been invited to many parties.) As one of the great sermonizers of all time, he converted pagans to Christianity through sheer emotional pyrotechnics. By changing your audience’s emotion, you make them more vulnerable to your
...more
listing the most extreme choices first and last, and putting the one Kissinger preferred in the middle. Nixon inevitably chose the “correct” option, according to Kissinger. (Not exactly the most subtle tactic, but I’ve seen it used successfully in corporate PowerPoint presentations.)
Self-deprecating humor is an acceptable way to brag. Mentioning a moment of boneheadedness at my former company beats the far more obnoxious “I was a high-level manager at a publishing company that had twenty-three million customers the year I left.” The term du jour for this device: humblebrag.
values, and choice—show a certain pattern. The blame questions deal with the past. The values questions are in the present tense. And the choice questions have to do with the future.
the tense that Aristotle saved for his favorite rhetoric. He called it “deliberative,” because it argues about choices and helps us decide how to meet our mutual goals. Deliberative argument’s chief topic is “the advantageous,” according to Aristotle. This is the most pragmatic kind of rhetoric. It skips right and wrong, good and bad, in favor of expedience.
Present-tense (demonstrative) rhetoric tends to finish with people bonding or separating. Past-tense (forensic) rhetoric threatens punishment. Future-tense (deliberative) argument promises a payoff. You can see why Aristotle dedicated the rhetoric of decision-making to the future.
propose an extreme choice first. It will make the one you want sound more reasonable. I used the technique myself in getting my wife to agree to name our son after my uncle George. I proposed lots of alternatives—my personal favorite was Herman Melville Heinrichs—until she finally said, “You know, ‘George’ doesn’t really sound that bad.” I kissed her and told her how much I loved her, and notched another argument on my belt.
A good persuader anticipates the audience’s objections. Ideally, you want to produce them even before the audience can. The technique makes your listeners more malleable. They begin to assume you’ll take care of all their qualms, and they lapse into a bovine state of persuadability.
