Professor Gary Orren is currently he is a Professor of Public Policy at the JFK School of Government, and I had the pleasure of attending a seminar led by him on the Strategies of Persuasion.
The bottom line was that all the principles laid out are known to each and everyone of us, all are common sense, and none of us follows it at all.
Persuasion lies at the heart of our personal and professional lives. Whether the goal is to convince one person in a face-to-face encounter, influence a small group in a meeting, sway an entire organization, or win over the public, success or failure usually depends on our ability to recognize and weigh opportunities for influence and to employ effective strategies for building support. Dr. Gary Orren has been studying the science and art of persuasion for 30 years. Drawing on his own and others’ research in social psychology, behavioral science, and communications, he has identified a set of proven principles of persuasion. Those principles are built into the PPP, a multi-rater questionnaire which allows you and others who know you to evaluate your skills along the key dimensions of persuasion, including:
How well you understand the background and pre-dispositions of your target audiences
Whether you effectively convey your own expertise and credibility
Whether your arguments are simple and clear
How well you develop rapport with other people
Professor Gary Orren is a Professor of Public Policy at the JFK School of Government, and his research includes giving seminars on the Art of Persuasion.
According to Professor Orren: “Persuasion lies at the heart of our personal and professional lives. Whether the goal is to convince one person in a face-to-face encounter, influence a small group in a meeting, sway an entire organization, or win over the public, success or failure usually depends on our ability to recognize and weigh opportunities for influence and to employ effective strategies for building support.”
He argues that you can only persuade people if:
- You understand the background and pre-dispositions of your target audiences
- Whether you effectively convey your own expertise and credibility
- Whether your arguments are simple and clear
- How well you develop rapport with other people
Are these common sense points integrated into your message when you speak to your patients? How successful are you at persuading your patients in case acceptance? When you are not successful in persuading your patients do you try and understand why?
You may have the best case in the world, a watertight argument, but when using persuasion, the one who has the final say is the one being persuaded.