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Persuasion Skills: Influence People and Drive Action
358 students
Persuasion Skills: Influence People and Drive Action
persuasion skills | how to influence people | change management | public speaking | copywriting | coaching questions
Last updated 9/2026
English
English [Auto],
What you'll learn
- Write a message that gets read and answered, not skimmed and forgotten
- Ask a question that changes someone's mind faster than an argument would
- Listen well enough that the real objection surfaces
- Hold a room, including the part where someone decides to resist you
- Use metaphor and story as a working device rather than decoration
- Make a case for something people are defensive about
- Create urgency without manufacturing a crisis, using Kotter's model
- Direct the rational side, motivate the emotional side, clear the path
- Argue persuasively across cultures where directness means different things
- Learn alongside Mike's 1.6 million students from 185 countries
Explore related topics
Course content
16 sections • 44 lectures • 18h 36m total length
Requirements
- A situation where you need someone to act and they currently are not
- No prior training in communication or psychology required
- Willingness to be talked out of your own position occasionally
- English at intermediate level or above, since all lessons are in English
- One real message or meeting you can rework as you go
Description
This course contains the use of artificial intelligence.
Being right is not persuasive. It is a prerequisite, and it is the part you have already done, and it is why you are stuck.
Why good arguments lose
Because almost no resistance is logical. The person nodding along in the meeting has a reason to prefer the current arrangement that they are not going to say out loud. The proposal you sent was clear, correct and unanswered. The team agreed to the change and then simply carried on as before. In each case you were arguing with the rational half of someone and the decision was being made by the other half, which does not respond to evidence and was never addressed.
What this course covers
Forty-two lessons across six ways people actually get moved. Writing first: why a message goes unread, applying persuasion structures to text, copywriting and story, using emotion without manipulating, building a real exchange rather than a broadcast, arguing from a weak position, and reaching someone who has already ignored you twice. Then asking instead of telling: the GROW model, nine principles, the balance wheel and scales, listening well enough that the real objection appears, identifying and using the other person's language, what separates a powerful question from an open one, and delivering a message so it holds. Then the room: Dale's cone, preparation, delivery styles, group dynamics and resistance, group norms, metaphor and parable as working devices, how to open and how to close, and doing it through a screen. Then contested ground: making the case for something people are defensive about, designing a session that changes perception, role-play and facilitation as tactics, and checking whether anything moved. Then driving action: eight standard failures, Kotter's model, building genuine urgency, the rider-elephant-path frame, vision, quick wins and making it stick. Finally across borders: context, feedback, argument, power distance, decision-making, constructive conflict and time.
A note on where this material comes from
Three of the six blocks were recorded for a people-function audience. The written persuasion block uses candidate outreach as its worked case; the coaching block is framed as coaching inside an organisation. The third is a course on running training about diversity and inclusion — included not for the subject but because it is the only material here that deals directly with persuading a room that has already decided to defend itself, which is the hardest version of this skill. The techniques in all three are general.
Who is teaching this
I am Mike Pritula. I built the people system at Preply as it became a unicorn, and I have worked at Wargaming, iDeals and Alfa-Bank. More than 1.6 million students have enrolled in my courses across 185 countries, and over 150,000 specialists have gone through my programmes. I hold PHRi and SHRM-CP certifications and represent HRCI in more than ten countries.
What is included
Lifetime access to all 42 lessons
Active instructor support in the Q&A section
A Udemy Certificate of Completion
Working models: AIDA, FAB, SPIN, GROW, the balance wheel, Dale's cone, Kotter's eight steps, the rider-elephant-path frame, the cultural map
Direct treatment of resistance rather than advice to be more confident
Where to start
Take the last proposal of yours that went nowhere and write down what the person had to lose by agreeing. If you cannot answer, you never addressed the actual objection. Enrol now and start today.
Who this course is for:
- Specialists with responsibility and no authority to go with it
- Managers whose good proposals keep dying quietly in other people's inboxes
- Consultants and internal advisers who have to sell every recommendation
- Project leads working across functions that do not report to them
- People running change nobody asked for
- Anyone who has been right and lost the argument anyway
- Professionals persuading colleagues in other countries and cultures