By Charlotte Beers

November 8, 2012

Taking part in the adventure of persuading others, sweeping them up into an idea, an unexpected action or an unproven vision, is a wonderful experience. The ability to create excitement all around you is what leadership is about. Listen to the sound of leadership; it is you being eloquent, powerful, convincing, compelling, and forceful. It is not for the faint of heart, but the outcome is inevitable if you care enough to ignite a spark, which will grow into a flame.

Leading through persuasion is a form of communicating that must be learned. In fact, it has to be learned, for if you can’t persuade or convince others, you cannot lead. It helps to focus on the response you hope to evoke rather than just what you want to say as a way to counter your own reluctance to ask others to change. Of course, laying out the response you want is a central part of good communication, but in the goal of leading others, you are also always after one very specific response: “I never thought of it that way.”

To elicit an “I never thought of it that way” response, you must be prepared to express your own excitement, your keenness, the leaps you’ve made from logic to an imaginative new proposition, the size of which is yet unknown.

What new tools can you use to persuade others, to change people’s minds? Imaginary flights, hyperbolic language, music, drum rolls? Well, maybe. But there are higher forms of communicating you are can master.

You are not trying to sway people against their will but to offer them a chance to see things anew. To create change, to invent a new future, you have to be vulnerable, to show passion and belief in an unproven idea, and to risk failure by pursuing it. You, the initiator, have to find a delivery style that allows you to communicate your conviction in a compelling, inescapable way.

Tools That Help You Lead When your goal is to have more impact, when the force of your presentation will alter things, you have to deliver your message with such a high degree of fervor that it overwhelms your audience’s resistance. You may need to deflect skepticism, shake away reluctance to embrace a new idea, or break through indifference. In order of ascending artistry, here’s a list of tools that I’ve seen leaders use to carry the flame:

• Threats or consequences
• Passion, pathos
• Humor, wit
• Imperfection
• Surprise
• Wonder

Here is how each can be used to persuade: Threats or Consequences Inertia or complacency can be converted into action by force, threat, or intimidation. This is why every enterprise has a bully or two. As a manager in a team, the agreed goals are usually incentive enough to get things going. But if someone falls behind or a faction resists, then you need to find a way of  stepping out of the team and taking the lead. You may find this shocking, but a common technique for taking the lead is to be threatening; to ramp up the urgency of what’s at stake so the laggards get in line. Many men rather admire a terrorizing boss because they see the boss’s bullying as proof of his belief and fervor, which they respect. They probably feel like they’ve just switched from their football coach to their business coach.

But, you need to develop your own unique way of exercising your certain authority.  Once you’ve mastered speaking clearly about serious consequences, you won’t have to bluff or threaten to be a supplicant to convince others you mean business.

Passion, Pathos A story from the heart told well can change the response of everyone listening.  It’s persuasive because it is genuine.

Soldiers are not known for using pathos or evocative language, but consider how Colin Powell turned a hostile, cynical audience into a deeply appreciative one. In 2003, as our secretary of state, he spoke at Davos, Switzerland, to the World Economic Forum in a crowd that included a lot of people who were suspicious about the United States. He was greeted with respect and modest applause after his remarks, but the pending U.S. invasion of Iraq and our war in Afghanistan were controversial. There were heated discussions by the many religious, business, and political leaders assembled, and Secretary Powell was asked why the United States relied on hard power (military) versus soft power (diplomatic programs and dialogue). He paused to consider the question and then spoke from the heart, with the authenticity of a soldier stepping out of his role as a statesman.

“I have been a soldier for 35 years,” he began. “It was not soft power that freed Europe in World War II. For the last hundred years, when the U.S. has sent our young men and women forth to fight in other countries, many lives have been lost. Not once did we ask for treasure or land. We asked only for the ground to bury them in.”

A venture capitalist friend of mine was there. He reported, “It was as though all the hard edges in the room and the tight faces softened–you could feel the change.”

Speaking with passion born of your own authentic experience and belief is always persuasive.

Humor and Wit You don’t always have to heavy up on earnestness just to prove you care.  You can use humor or a surprise to reveal a fresh perspective.

Humor is the most disarming ingredient for leavening the seriousness of work. I urge you to consider any avenue to humor that you can handle. Creative enterprises of any sort put a huge premium on humor because humor’s cousins, irreverence and outrageousness, are great goads to opening up “I never thought of it that way” responses. Humor is similar to the way creative departments in ad agencies use music. Anything that is too emotional to say, a deeply felt promise, a personal revelation, can always be sung. When it’s put to music, it can be heard. Humor is a carrier like that.

Imperfection Perfection, in the form of a flawless stream of words delivered with cool composure, is never as persuasive as realness.  An impassioned but imperfect speech, which shows you care too much to hide flaws, is far more compelling.

Surprises Every chance you get, introduce the unexpected, an element of surprise. A refreshing slap of surprise runs through many of the successful ways there are to persuade others toward change and to cause an audience to respond more openly.  Think of all the possible responses you can receive from your endless interactions with people, which unfortunately include lack of attention, distraction, and cynicism.  These can be interrupted by a jolt, a surprise.

Wonder You can break down a mountain of indifference by learning how to communicate in a breakthrough way. The ability to say what you mean in its leanest form dramatically improves your chances of luring distracted audiences from ambient noise and the hypnotic draw of their messages and e-mails. But there are even bigger rewards if you can evoke wonder.

It’s an unusual response, more of an occasional feat than an everyday exercise. The kind of wonder I’m talking about contains an element of surprise, too. It is an important talent to be able to surprise people into wonder, as they often spend their whole working day trying to dodge unpleasant surprises. A good surprise is a welcome break.

Here’s a way to practice being drop-dead persuasive. Set as your goal (for a meeting, phone call, or presentation) that you will instill wonder to such a degree that your listeners respond, “Hey, I never thought of it that way.”

Do you hear the wonder in this reaction? In revealing to your audiences what you feel strongly about in a lean memorable way, you are asking for nothing less than a transformation of their thinking or behavior. Transformations inspire wonder.

For the people in my who have learned to present themselves on a bigger canvas, the response they received when they returned to work fiercer and braver, was one of wonder. “What happened to Jen?” or “Joe is on fire,” bosses report back.

With every step you take to be clear about your own place at work and in every opportunity you seize to claim that place, you can become clear and communicate memorably and become more of a leader. Such clarity is surprising and often impressive. Speaking passionately from the very center of who you are is compelling, forceful, persuasive: that’s what leadership sounds like.

–Charlotte Beers is the former chairman and CEO of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide; from 2001-2003, she was the Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, reporting to Secretary of State Colin Powell. This piece is adapted from her recent book, I’d Rather Be in Charge.

[Image: Flickr user Kristina]

By Kaihan Krippendorff

November 15, 2012

After a flurry of emails in response to my blog post on passion, I reached a disheartening realization: Passion is useless if you don’t already believe.

You see, what we can achieve is limited by what we believe. Henry Ford knew this: “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you are right.”

So here I was, passionately committed to become the world-class business guru, best-selling author, the speaker who fills stadiums. And yet there was voice telling me, “You can’t do it. Keep trying, trying is fun, but in the end you will fail.”

You’ve probably heard that voice as well.

I’m making progress–my book sales are accelerating, my keynote audiences are growing, and I’m sharing the stage with people like Jack Welch and Robin Sharma–but in the back of my mind the voice pulls the reins: “You can’t do it.”

Great “outthinkers” seem to overcome this voice. Their belief matches their passion. Napoleon believed he was the greatest general of his time and so he was. Steve Jobs believed his people could achieve the impossible, so they did. Richard Branson believed he could win against British Airways, and so he won, even though every airline that tried over the prior three decades failed.

Belief is contagious. It wins supporters. It’s self-fulfilling. As Harvard professor Rosebeth Moss Kanter shows in her book Confidence, the belief you can win creates momentum which improves your chances of winning.

So what do you do when you don’t believe?

Over the past four weeks, I’ve studied books and articles, interviewed entrepreneurs and experts, then assembled it all for you in a simple framework with which you can systematically attack whatever belief is holding you down. Give me 20 minutes. This works.

Fundamentals

1. Beliefs aren’t real. They are mental maps, abstractions of reality, that help us predict a complex world. My son believes good batteries must be cold because I keep ours in the freezer. He believes Santa Claus rides a sleigh.

2. Four anchors form our beliefs (For more, read Why We Believe What We Believe by Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman).

• Evidence: Something happens (e.g., gifts appear one morning and my mom says they are from Santa Claus)
• Logic: It makes sense, more specifically, it is consistent with our other beliefs (e.g., gifts can’t just appear out of nowhere, my mom and dad were asleep…it must have been Santa)
• Emotion: Strong emotional associations (a 3-year-old’s joy at getting a new choo choo) embed beliefs more indelibly
• Social consensus: We believe more deeply if others believe too (e.g., Maria and Nico and Sofia all say Santa brought them gifts too)

3. We reject what doesn’t fit. Once a belief is formed, we explain away any inconsistent evidence. I saw a documentary in which a young child said to his friends, “Santa came to my house and ate a little bit of a cookie, then he went to Jack’s house and ate a little bit and drank some milk, then to Maria’s and ate some and then…So if he went to ALL of our houses in one night, it must mean–” You are sure he is about to realize Santa can’t be real, but instead he animates excitedly, “Santa must have been really hungry!”

4. Humans need consistency between beliefs, actions, and words. In Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert Cialdini calls this “The Rule of Consistency.” This is how beliefs hold us down or lift us up. If you believe you can’t, you start acting and speaking like someone who can’t, so you actually can’t. Interestingly, the relationship also works in reverse: Change your action or words and you can change your beliefs.

The Model

Over a 12-hour flight home from Paraguay, I assembled these principles into a model we can use to deconstruct and replace any belief that holds us down. It is simpler than it looks.

Imagine a hot air balloon being held down by four anchors. The balloon represents the belief holding you down and actions and words this belief influences.

The four anchors represent evidence, logic, emotion, and social consensus. To release the balloon you must replace the offending belief. Do this in five steps:

Step 1: Identify the belief. Find a belief that is holding you down. Tip: Write down beliefs until you find one that hurts. In my case, “You don’t really have what it takes to be world-class author/speaker/thinker.”

Step 2: Identify the anchors.

• What evidence/events anchor the belief? (my books aren’t on the NYT best-seller list)
• What emotions anchor your belief? (I feel comfort because in not really trying, I know I can’t fail)
• Who around you reinforces this belief (social consensus)? (well-intentioned people who congratulate me on already having achieved the dream)
• What logic locks in this belief; what “dependent beliefs” fit? (wanting to fill a stadium is self-centered, thinking I can offer what people don’t already know is conceited)

Step 3: Pick a new belief. What alternative belief would be consistent with someone who really achieves your dream? (I am destined to be a best-selling business thinker and speaker.)

Step 4: Release the anchors.

• Evidence: what alternative evidence supports this new belief? (people pay me lots of money to speak, I’m sharing the stage with some of the biggest business gurus)
• Emotions: what does it feel like to really live this new belief and fulfill your dream? (passion, purpose, having made an impact)
• Social consensus: who can you surround yourself with to support the new belief? (other business gurus and authors)
• Beliefs: how can you replace the “dependent beliefs” identified above? (this is not conceited because it’s about serving others; the best business gurus do it to serve others, not for their ego)

Step 5: Set your course.  Write down five specific things you will do (action) and say (words) that force you to live your new belief.

Completing this process took me 20 minutes and has put me fully in the game, committed and knowing I can win. Would that be worth your time?