Importance of convincing and persuading skills for an employee.

Persuasion skills can be learnt just like any others, and they are a key part of being able to influence others to achieve your goals and objectives.

Barriers to Successful Persuasion

Thinking that you are better at persuasion than you are, and therefore failing to hone your skills. Instead, take a long, hard look at yourself, and see where your skills need to be improved. One way to think about what works in persuading others is to think about what doesn’t work first.

1. Trying too hard to persuade. Seeming too keen probably puts people off faster than anything else.


2. Failing to put in the effort required to get what you want. Nothing, or at least not much, is free in this world.


3. Talking too much. Stop, and just listen to the people you need to persuade.


4. Providing too much information, which just confuses people, and makes them think you are trying to blind them with science. What, they ask, are you not telling them?


5. Getting desperate. Like insincerity, people can spot fear at a distance, and don’t like it.


6. Being afraid of rejection. This can even stop people from trying to persuade in extreme cases.


7. Not being prepared. You can’t ‘wing it’ every time. Your audience will see through you, and will think that you value your time more highly than theirs.


8. Making assumptions about your audience, and then not being prepared to reassess when new evidence emerges.


9. Forgetting that the whole conversation is important. You need to engage in order to persuade, right from the beginning.

Successful Persuasion

Research shows that there are a number of things that people like about successful persuaders.

The key skills for successful persuasion, then, are pretty wide. First of all, successful persuaders tend to have high self-esteem and good Emotional Intelligence more generally. They really believe that they will succeed.

You also need to remain motivated and believe in yourself and your ideas. See our pages on Self-motivation for more.

Additionally, you need to understand how your audience thinks.

Key skills here include Empathy, and good Listening Skills, including Active Listening. If you listen, your audience will usually tell you what and how they are thinking. It also helps to be able to build rapport; people like those who take time to become a friend, as well as an influencer. It follows, really: if we’re honest, we’d all much rather do what a friend suggests than someone we dislike, however sensible the idea. Building rapport also helps to build trust, and for more about building trust, have a look at our page on Personal Empowerment.

Good persuaders or influencers also have very good Communication Skills.

It’s essential that you can get your point across succinctly and effectively, otherwise you’re never going to persuade anyone of the merits of your position.

The final skill of good persuaders is being organized. They do their homework, they know their audience and they know their subject. They have taken time to organize themselves and think about what they want to achieve. For more about this, take a look at our pages on Organization Skills, Strategic Thinking and Action Planning.