Persuasion

“I am frustrated and confused“, a client said to me recently. “I continue to have excellent suggestions that will help build the business, but my ideas always seem to get tabled, and eventually lost.” “Some decisions about projects (that have little data to support their likely success) often seem to win the attention, and get the gladness of the boss”, she said.

Following additional discussion about the problem that this executive faced, I certainly felt sympathetic regarding her dilemma. However I began to detect a possible problem that could be rendering her ineffective. She appeared to be making the critical mistake of focusing too much on the content of her argument and not enough on how she delivered the message.

Recent research conducted by Gary Williams and Robert Miller (of the San Diego customer research firm, Miller-Williams, Inc.), studied 1,684 executives decision-making processes. The participants were from a variety of industries including automotive, retail, and high tech. Their cluster analysis found that the executive’s behaviors fell into five well defined groupings. These five groupings were categorized as, the Charismatics, the Thinkers, the Skeptics, the Followers, and the Controllers. The style of decision making for each grouping required a unique approach in order to get their attention and increase the likely acceptance of anyone’s ideas, or projects.

THE PROBLEM: This appeared to be a major part of the problem for the frustrated executive client. She was enthusiastic about our review of the characteristics that defined the decision–maker who was disregarding her logical, and well supported, proposals. It did not take long before it became clear she had not tuned in to his default style of decision making. This was the critical flaw, HOW she presented her ideas, NOT WHAT the content was regarding her well thought out projects (though this, understandably, is very important too).

Harvard Business Review, May 2002

Vocabulary:

▪endorsement [ɪn'dɔ:smənt] – n. процесс проставления передаточной надписи