As an attorney, I've found that the best persuasion is the removal of impediments and friction standing between the person you hope to influence and what they want to do in the first place.
Most other tactics amount to force or deceit ("manipulation").
This connects with me. More about helping people do what they already have in mind. Connecting with people and finding overlapping interests rather than a manipulation mindset.
I've always found that it's about defining win/win situations. Also, you should make real human connection in the process. If you don't like the person, that's a real issue. It may not be that the person is unlikeable, it may be that you aren't finding a perspective that aligns right.
But yeah, aligning incentives and making friends. Even if they don't go the way you want, you both still had a positive experience and can potentially find a way to work together in the future.
Advice a sales coach gave me was “sales is sorting, not convincing.”
I always found that put me in the right headspace to focus on listening first, then being clear. Whether they sort themselves into a yes or no is on them.
Persuasion that happens in good faith is a two-way street. You explain your position, but also truly listen to theirs. If you are prepared to change your own position based on what they say, then you can hope that they might change theirs based on what you say.
If it is truly two way in this sense, including your best efforts to extract from the other party their strongest, potentially unexpected, arguments for their position and give them your due consideration, it shouldn't feel like manipulation.
Even if you’re not going to change your position, such as when the other party doesn’t believe basic facts or incontrovertible evidence, you have to be willing to listen to their position to understand why they hold that position.
When you have a debate with someone who is only waiting for their turn to talk and visibly doesn’t care to parse what you’re saying, you are not motivated to hear them out.
It has to be a discussion, not a lecture combined with light condescension and dismissal.
I really don’t like this article. I think this article reflects more our desire to categorize things into neatly numbered lists, and reflects less any thorough understanding of influence. Big lists of aphorisms. Less in the way of concrete detail. Words are used the wrong way. Concepts are broken up into incoherent lists.
“Ratianolising” is the word used in the most wrong way. The word normally describes inventing post-hoc reasons for some decision or behavior.
“Negotiating” is a big list of aphorisms which pull in different directions. Some of the advice sounds like amateurish art-of-the-deal tips which encourage you to extract as many concessions as you can from the other side. Some of the advice pulls in the opposite direction. And then, to mix everything up, the advice to compromise and meet half-way rears its ugly head.
The more I read in this article, the worse my opinion gets. I’m stopping.
The solution is not to deny yourself the tools of persuasion or "manipulation" but to be authentic and transparent. It's deceptiveness that makes influence or persuasion manipulative, not the tools and techniques.
I think it's about helping them map out the options. So, listening to what they want and truthfully sharing your opinion on how the different options will solve their problem. If the best option for them is what you sell, it's a win-win. If it's not, all good. They will thank you if you truly helped them and gave them the best option for their problem. Obviously, this isn't possible if what you sell is never the best option. In that case, the problem exists before the conversation even happens. Either make a better product or change company
This is a very HN sort of sentiment. How can I be persuasive without being gross?
I had a bit of a moment when I first became a PM. (I've done a bunch of things, engineering / sales / founding, but PM only sort of recently.) I realized that my job was to wake up in the morning and pick fights. Or more diplomatically: to tell people they were doing the wrong thing, and they should be doing a different thing, in a way that made them want to listen to me more in the future, not less.
That's the job. In fact, in almost every job, that's the job.
Impact happens when you reach people and they behave differently because of you. That's nothing to be ashamed of. If you do it authentically and with good intent, it's one of the best things you can do with your time.
It's all influence. When it's convenient and good we call it charisma, leadership, crisis navigation. When it's bad we call it manipulative, control freak, sociopathic.
The form of the question has assumptions that are broken.
The action of manipulating people is fairly obvious. It means you have a predetermined outcome that you want other people to accept The same assumption is implicit in the "How can I influence others..." Again there is the same predetermined outcome.
The answer then is obvious. You cannot. Perhaps what you are looking for is instead a way to join with other people in a participatory/collaborative fashion. You can ask what other people think, you can talk about what you think.
But as long as you have a predetermined outcome in mind, I suspect your only choices is manipulation.
You might also want to reassess what the question is. We talk about so much, but we do so little. Imagine that my car won't start and I want to fix it. The idea of influencing people here is silliness. We care very little about who thinks what, as long as the car starts. The thinking is in service of an action that produces a result.
Find the place where their interests and yours intersect, and frame them existing there as an inevitability. If there is no intersection, don't try to force it.
Public debates are necessary to get new ideas out there, but individuals and groups would rather be horrible than change their minds after an argument.
Attempting to argue with people, in good faith or otherwise, to change their mind is a philosophical trap.
Persuasion is just getting people to come around to your way of thinking without direct argumentation. It gets manipulative, psyopy and evil when fear, envy, lust, guilt, etc nudges are applied.
What they mean is "influence" (positive connotation) without "manipulate" (negative connotation). But this is simply a nuance on "intent" i.e. whether it is good or bad from the pov of the instigator. But the recipient also has an important role to play in this interaction since they are the one perceiving the intent which might be different from what was intended. So the instigator has to sometimes "manipulate" to gain "influence". The End-Goal often (but not always) justifies the means.
This is the realm of Worldly Wisdom/Propaganda/Politics covered in the classic works of Baltasar Gracian/Machiavelli/Francesco Guicciardini/Kautilya/Kamandaki/Vishnu Sharma/Edward Bernays/Jacques Ellul etc.
On the Psychological realm, see the works of B.F.Skinner on Operant Conditioning/Behaviourism and Verbal Behaviour.
c-suite person here...my job is "influence to empower" my team and others - to unlock opportunity for the company I represent.
My advice would be: Stay honest with yourself. To influence IS to manipulate.
Playing squeamish is a slippery slope into avoiding accountability for your actions.
In other words - don't judge the tools - judge your motives and the outcome.
Accept there is always a trade and balance.
If you can be honest about your motives and actions with yourself your friends and colleagues - chances are that you can achieve your goals with ethics and empathy intact.
If you can't, then it's time to take a look at yourself - not the tools.
The key question is whether we use our moral compass when we influence or manipulate. Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with moral manipulation.
The real inquiry is about the moral values we prioritize. Are we only focused on our own gain? Do we genuinely aim to help others? Or are we somewhere in the middle?
When we seek to benefit others, is it truly for them, or is it more about our own satisfaction from doing something “good”? Do those “good” actions genuinely help everyone, or merely specific groups at the cost of others? Perhaps someone has lost out because of our so-called “good” deeds.
By pondering and answering these questions, you'll be able to influence others without resorting to non-moral manipulation.
By setting a "good" example during a time they are in an unfavorable or weaker position. Which could mean remaining firm on the outside while providing space for their ego to transform their loss into a learning experience and improve their performance. It's written this way because the methods are different for the enabler and/or the receiver. I hope you understand obi one!
People will do anything for those who encourage their dreams, justify their failures, allay their fears, confirm their suspicions and help them throw rocks at their enemies.
I see a lot of whitewashing of Charlie Kirk on social media at the moment that this quote reminds me of. The guy made a killing from speaking hate and then he got killed by hate himself. Like the guy that's always in the jurassic park movies, that doesn't think letting the t-rex out will be much of a problem, and then he get's killed by the t-rex and everyone else needs to deal with the t-rex of hate and far wingism walking the streets.
55 comments
[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 61.4 ms ] threadAs an attorney, I've found that the best persuasion is the removal of impediments and friction standing between the person you hope to influence and what they want to do in the first place.
Most other tactics amount to force or deceit ("manipulation").
exactly!
But yeah, aligning incentives and making friends. Even if they don't go the way you want, you both still had a positive experience and can potentially find a way to work together in the future.
I always found that put me in the right headspace to focus on listening first, then being clear. Whether they sort themselves into a yes or no is on them.
If it is truly two way in this sense, including your best efforts to extract from the other party their strongest, potentially unexpected, arguments for their position and give them your due consideration, it shouldn't feel like manipulation.
When you have a debate with someone who is only waiting for their turn to talk and visibly doesn’t care to parse what you’re saying, you are not motivated to hear them out.
It has to be a discussion, not a lecture combined with light condescension and dismissal.
“Ratianolising” is the word used in the most wrong way. The word normally describes inventing post-hoc reasons for some decision or behavior.
“Negotiating” is a big list of aphorisms which pull in different directions. Some of the advice sounds like amateurish art-of-the-deal tips which encourage you to extract as many concessions as you can from the other side. Some of the advice pulls in the opposite direction. And then, to mix everything up, the advice to compromise and meet half-way rears its ugly head.
The more I read in this article, the worse my opinion gets. I’m stopping.
:-(
I had a bit of a moment when I first became a PM. (I've done a bunch of things, engineering / sales / founding, but PM only sort of recently.) I realized that my job was to wake up in the morning and pick fights. Or more diplomatically: to tell people they were doing the wrong thing, and they should be doing a different thing, in a way that made them want to listen to me more in the future, not less.
That's the job. In fact, in almost every job, that's the job.
Impact happens when you reach people and they behave differently because of you. That's nothing to be ashamed of. If you do it authentically and with good intent, it's one of the best things you can do with your time.
The action of manipulating people is fairly obvious. It means you have a predetermined outcome that you want other people to accept The same assumption is implicit in the "How can I influence others..." Again there is the same predetermined outcome.
The answer then is obvious. You cannot. Perhaps what you are looking for is instead a way to join with other people in a participatory/collaborative fashion. You can ask what other people think, you can talk about what you think.
But as long as you have a predetermined outcome in mind, I suspect your only choices is manipulation.
You might also want to reassess what the question is. We talk about so much, but we do so little. Imagine that my car won't start and I want to fix it. The idea of influencing people here is silliness. We care very little about who thinks what, as long as the car starts. The thinking is in service of an action that produces a result.
In my opinion! :-)
[edit: fix wording, typos]
Attempting to argue with people, in good faith or otherwise, to change their mind is a philosophical trap.
Persuasion is just getting people to come around to your way of thinking without direct argumentation. It gets manipulative, psyopy and evil when fear, envy, lust, guilt, etc nudges are applied.
What they mean is "influence" (positive connotation) without "manipulate" (negative connotation). But this is simply a nuance on "intent" i.e. whether it is good or bad from the pov of the instigator. But the recipient also has an important role to play in this interaction since they are the one perceiving the intent which might be different from what was intended. So the instigator has to sometimes "manipulate" to gain "influence". The End-Goal often (but not always) justifies the means.
This is the realm of Worldly Wisdom/Propaganda/Politics covered in the classic works of Baltasar Gracian/Machiavelli/Francesco Guicciardini/Kautilya/Kamandaki/Vishnu Sharma/Edward Bernays/Jacques Ellul etc.
On the Psychological realm, see the works of B.F.Skinner on Operant Conditioning/Behaviourism and Verbal Behaviour.
My advice would be: Stay honest with yourself. To influence IS to manipulate.
Playing squeamish is a slippery slope into avoiding accountability for your actions.
In other words - don't judge the tools - judge your motives and the outcome.
Accept there is always a trade and balance.
If you can be honest about your motives and actions with yourself your friends and colleagues - chances are that you can achieve your goals with ethics and empathy intact.
If you can't, then it's time to take a look at yourself - not the tools.
Good luck
The key question is whether we use our moral compass when we influence or manipulate. Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with moral manipulation.
The real inquiry is about the moral values we prioritize. Are we only focused on our own gain? Do we genuinely aim to help others? Or are we somewhere in the middle?
When we seek to benefit others, is it truly for them, or is it more about our own satisfaction from doing something “good”? Do those “good” actions genuinely help everyone, or merely specific groups at the cost of others? Perhaps someone has lost out because of our so-called “good” deeds.
By pondering and answering these questions, you'll be able to influence others without resorting to non-moral manipulation.
By listening to them.
Next question.
-- Blair Warren