Persuasion is not the same as Manipulation.

Manipulation is that I get you to do something that is of value to me.

Persuasion is that I get you to do something that is of value to you, and to me. Persuasion starts with first thinking about the benefits to the audience, and only when you have seen how it can be of benefit to the audience, you begin looking at how it is also of benefit to you.

Aristotle's book The Rhetoric is the single most important book on the subject of persuasion.

Aristotle proposed a triad of rhetorical strategies: Logos, Ethos, and Pathos.

Logos refers to the logic and reason behind your argument. When your argument makes sense from the audience's perspective, they are more likely to be persuaded by it. This requires clear, coherent, and logical reasoning, as well as an understanding of your audience's viewpoints and interests.

Ethos is about credibility and trust. It involves demonstrating your competence, integrity, and goodwill, so that your audience trusts you and takes your arguments seriously. This can be achieved through your track record, your credentials, and the way you conduct yourself.

Pathos taps into the power of emotions. People are not purely rational beings; we are moved by our feelings and our values. Thus, engaging your audience's emotions, especially through stories, can be a powerful persuasive strategy. Stories can help make your argument more relatable, memorable, and impactful, stirring emotions that inspire action.

As leaders, we must strive to master the art of persuasion, using it ethically to inspire and motivate others to achieve common goals. This is the essence of leadership communication.

Trust is the bedrock of relationships.

Trust forms the base of all forms of collaboration and cooperation. Trust isn't granted instantly, it has to be earned. It is cultivated over time, gradually demonstrated through consistent actions that prove one is deserving of trust. This is especially crucial in the realm of leadership, as leaders who are trusted inspire confidence, garner respect, and motivate others towards a common goal.

In defining trust, I find Charles Greene's trust equation particularly insightful. According to Greene, trust is a function of credibility, reliability, and intimacy, all divided by self-orientation.

The Trust Equation

Trust = (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy) / Self-orientation

The components of the equation are as follows:

1. Credibility: This is about truthfulness and authenticity. To be credible, you must speak truthfully, exhibit expertise, and be genuine. Credibility is severely damaged by dishonesty or deceit.

2. Reliability: This is about consistency and dependability. Are you meeting your commitments? Do you do what you say you will do? The more reliable you are, the more others will trust you to deliver on your promises.

3. Intimacy: This refers to the emotional safety and openness in a relationship. It involves being willing to share emotionally and being empathetic towards others' feelings. Creating intimacy often requires taking the first step - opening up, showing vulnerability, and inviting others to do the same.

4. Self-orientation: This is the denominator in Greene's equation, meaning that a higher level of self-orientation reduces trust. When you're excessively focused on your own interests and not considering others', it erodes the trust others have in you.

Trust-building activities include asking questions to understand others better, listening actively, and paraphrasing to confirm understanding. It also involves taking responsibility for your actions, especially when things go wrong.

By understanding and consciously working on each element of Greene's trust equation, one can build stronger, trust-based relationships, whether in a personal or professional context. As leaders, we should continually strive to enhance our credibility, reliability, and intimacy, and decrease our self-orientation to foster an environment of trust and mutual respect.

The movie "Gattaca" is about a future where genes shape destiny. It's a story about two brothers - one with a dream and the other with the right genes. Despite his genetic superiority, the "gene-gifted" brother assists the other in achieving his dream. In the end, when the dreamer thanks him, he responds that he gained more from the experience because he got to share the dream. This is a powerful idea: the act of sharing dreams and working towards them together is more fulfilling than individual success.

Small dreams, those that only impact the quality of your life, will not have the transformative power that larger dreams can generate. Eric Schmidt, ex-CEO of Google, says "it is easier to achieve big dreams than small dreams... because big dreams attract better people".

Poverty is more about a lack of dreams than it is a lack of resources. If you have an inspiring dream, you will attract the resources.

This leads us to the "how" of achieving dreams: don't do it alone. Interact with others. Let your plan become a shared vision that others can contribute to. Collaboration and shared goals not only increase the likelihood of success but also enhance the journey towards achieving those goals.

In his book "Good to Great", Jim Collins introduced the concept of the Big Hairy Audacious Goal (B-HAG). Companies like Nike, Microsoft, Amazon, and entrepreneurs like Elon Musk have all set such audacious goals.

A powerful question from Dan Sullivan is a wonderful way to explore what other people around you are seeking: "Three years from now, what needs to have changed for you to be fulfilled, both personally and professionally?" This question begins a wonderful conversation... where you can explore what good people around you are seeking to make happen in their lives.

Structure is fundamental to good communication, and throughout my course, we explore 3 models that provide clear frameworks for structuring your message.

1. Connection + Challenge = Change: This model is rooted in the idea that to bring about change, one must first establish a connection with the audience's reality. By understanding and empathizing with their viewpoints, experiences, and emotions, you can create a bridge of understanding. Then, you introduce a challenge to that reality, presenting new perspectives or pushing them to reconsider their assumptions. This combination of connection and challenge is what catalyzes change. It disrupts complacency and motivates the audience to adapt, grow, or transform.

2. Consulting Structure (Situation - Complication - Question - Answer): This model is a staple in consulting scenarios but can be applied broadly to any communication where problem-solving is at the forefront. It begins with defining the situation or context clearly. Next, you introduce the complication, which is the problem or challenge that disrupts the status quo. Then, pose a question that arises from this complication. Finally, present your answer or solution to that problem. This step-by-step approach guides the audience through the problem-solving journey, making your argument clear and persuasive.

3. Logos-based persuasive speech: This model harnesses the power of logos, or logical reasoning, to persuade your audience. It starts with making a connection, similar to the first model. After you've connected with the audience's reality, explain what your message means in this context. Then, highlight three benefits of your proposal or idea. By grouping benefits into threes, you can take advantage of the 'rule of three' in rhetoric, which makes your argument more memorable and impactful. After presenting the benefits, issue a call to action, urging your audience to act based on your arguments. Finally, conclude with an emotional close, tapping into pathos, or emotion, to leave a lasting impression. This model helps you think clearly and systematically about your message, ensuring that it is logically sound and emotionally resonant.

Structured communication enables your audience to follow your thoughts more easily, leading to increased comprehension and greater persuasiveness. Whether you're inspiring change, resolving a problem, or persuading with logic, these models provide a roadmap for crafting compelling messages.

My mentor, Verne Harnish says that leaders must increase their question-to-answer ratio.

When you're asking questions, you're in control of the conversation. This doesn't mean manipulating the discussion but guiding it in a meaningful direction. You're not only accumulating information, but you're also showing interest, demonstrating empathy, and encouraging deeper thought.

Remember, no one does anything truly stupid... from their perspective. Everyone's actions make sense given their worldview, values, and the information they're attending to. So, one of our challenges as communicators is understanding the other person's point of view. To do that, we must ask questions – the right kind of questions.

Furthermore, when you ask questions, you're not just seeking to learn, you're also conveying that you care about the other person's thoughts, feelings, and experiences. This builds trust and deepens relationships, which are crucial for effective leadership.

Here are two sets of questions that I recommend:

Set A is great for eliciting a general overview:

1. What’s going well?

2. What’s not going well?

3. What would you change?

4. What else?

Set B is useful for sparking dialogue and digging deeper into specific topics:

1. Fact: Ask factual questions to begin the dialogue. For instance, "What was your revenue last year?"

2. Opinion: Ask opinion-based questions to find out what’s valuable to them. "What do you think about the current strategy?"

3. Impact: Ask about the stakes to understand the importance of the issue. "What’s the impact of not hitting your target?"

4. Change: Ask what they would alter to know what they desire. "What would you change about our approach?"

Staying in 'question mode' can be transformative for your leadership and communication style. It ensures that you are gathering information, understanding perspectives, and showing your interest and care. Remember, the best leaders are not those with all the answers, but those who ask the right questions.

I'd like to discuss the subtle art and science of listening, its profound impact on communication, and how we engage with others.

How Hearing is unique among our senses

Firstly, let's discuss the uniqueness of hearing as a sense. Unlike our other senses, our auditory system has a buffer, a sort of short-term memory that retains the last eight seconds of what we hear. This mechanism allows us to 're-listen' if we miss something. However, it can also make us complacent, leading us to pay less attention than we should. This 'auditory laziness' is a dangerous trap that can undermine effective communication.

As communicators and leaders, it is crucial to actively commit to listening. We should strive to listen with our eyes, not just our ears. Look for what's really happening beneath the surface. Observe the coherence (or incoherence) between words and body language. The message is often in their eyes, their gestures, their tone. Learn to listen behind the words.

There are four levels of engagement we can explore, each with its own implications:

1. Empathy: This is the highest level of engagement. Empathy is about understanding what it's like for the other person... from their value system.

2. Sympathy: sympathy is seeing what is happening to the other person, but processing it though our own value system... imagining what it would feel like for us to experience what the other is living through. We delete the soul of the other and put ourselves there instead. We take on their emotions and suffer their problem as our own.

3. Apathy: Is the result of too much sympathy. You've taken on too many other people's problems and you've stopped caring.

4. Antipathy: If you close the door, and disengage through apathy... but people still find ways to share their problems... you will move to antipathy... where you are rude to cut them off.

There is a saying that “Being really listened to is so close to love, few can tell the difference”. Listening deeply is a powerful way of engaging with another human.

A practical way to express active listening is by regularly asking, "Why is this important to you?" Never assume you understand the significance of a topic to someone else. Their answer might surprise you, and it opens the door to deeper connection and understanding. It's not enough to just hear people; we must genuinely listen.

Once upon a time...

Let's explore the power of storytelling and how it adds meaning to our lives and actions.

Imagine three bricklayers working on a cathedral. When asked what they are doing, the first says, "I'm laying bricks," the second says, "I'm building a wall," while the third proclaims, "I'm building a cathedral." Each person is engaged in the exact same task, yet the meaning they derive from it varies vastly. This analogy underscores the importance of perspective and how we frame our work and roles.

This is where storytelling plays a pivotal role. We tell stories to give meaning to our actions and to help others find deeper meaning in their own lives. A good story can help change the narrative from merely 'laying bricks' to 'building cathedrals'.

"People don't resist change, they resist being changed"

Imposed changes often meet with resistance because they feel external, arbitrary, or threatening. But if people understand the story – the why behind the change – they're more likely to embrace it willingly. Hence, we need to stop merely telling people what to do and instead share our own paths, challenges, and transformations.

To craft a compelling story, remember these three key elements:

1. Character: Identify the central figure or 'somebody' in your story. This could be you, someone else, or even a group of people.

2. Desire: Define what the character wants. This is the goal or objective driving the character forward.

3. Obstacle: Illustrate the challenges or 'obstacles' the character must overcome to achieve their desire. This creates tension and engages the audience.

As for the source of your stories, start with your own life. Your experiences are rich with authentic, relatable material. Beyond that, fables, parables, and children's stories are also excellent sources. They're simple, memorable, and always contain meaningful values or morals.

Remember, storytelling is more than just conveying information; it's about inspiring, connecting, and imparting meaning. So, the next time you share a story, ask yourself: am I laying bricks, building a wall, or building a cathedral?