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Persuasion, presentations and team leadership.

Profitable Product

Management

Influence

Contents

2

Influence 3

Persuasion 5

Team leading 7

Productivity 9

Presentation 10

Empathy and Rapport16

Slide Shows 18Assertiveness 19

Influence

3Influence

Influence

InfluenceInfluence is possibly the most useful skill anyone can have. It is the ability to manipulate

other people and persuade them to do what you want. This sounds dangerous and it clearly is. Many examples and experiments exist showing how easily we humans can be tricked or misled by authority figures and the like into doing terrible things. Most of us merely wish to have a little more influence and persuasive power than we currently have.

The ethical dimension is real even if we are not demonic, misleading trickery will rarely result in a happy ending. Used sensibly the skills involved in developing influence, persuasion and selling are helpful and can be learned and developed. Current authorities for further reading on the subject include Daniel Khaneman and Robert Ciadini.

Six Principles (proposed by Robert Ciadini) in creating influence:

1. Reciprocity2. Commitment and Consistency3. Social Proof4. Liking5. Authority (endorsement)6. Scarcity

ReciprocityThis means making friends through helping them solve their problems. In doing so you are

contributing to the team but at the same time incurring an obligation on their part to reciprocate when the time comes. The idea is not to merely wave away thanks but to emphasize the team ethic you work to.

Commitment and ConsistencyWe do not like to be contradictory and much prefer to stick to our guns, stay with what we

believe in and resist change. Also, when getting others to commit to action it helps to get the commitment in writing. The written word has a powerful incentive value turning a potentially vague assurance into a promise they will prefer not to break.

Social ProofWe are heavily influenced by action. If we see others doing the recommended thing we are

much more likely to follow suit. Also, we often fear losing more than we relish winning so it is worth while emphasizing the bad consequences of doing nothing.

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Influence

LikingNo-one will get on with everyone but it is worth remembering that people like people who

they sense like them. We are all much cleverer at understanding body signals than we think. Therefore, making a positive effort to see the best in others works. People who do not suffer fools gladly are generally bullies. And those people who are not talking to you are doing so because you are not talking to them.

AuthorityCelebrity endorsement works even though we do not believe it. Footballers always buy

football boots the stars wear. Women always buy the clothes showcased by the beautiful people. Logic denies it but the facts prove it. People will look towards whoever they respect for a lead.

ScarcityWhen something is scarce we are more likely to want it. Ten a penny is unwanted but the

last remaining item is.

Summing up the above it seems to be that influence can be built by building teams and working co-operatively although the behaviour of some can be a coercive and ego driven struggle for dominance.. Higher ranking individuals will often seize control of the agenda and set unfair rules. One way of doing this is to control the rules of engagement:

During the Watergate trials John Dean was forced to limit his testimony to facts. This agenda prevented him saying that he, amongst others, considered the suggestion to break into the Watergate building so foolish that he had ignored it. He considered the idea to be unworthy of a response. He was sent to jail.

Experiments demonstrate that interrupting others, a sure sign that the individual is not listening, is more likely to come from nigh ranking people- another form of misusing power and men interrupt women more often than other men:

Many Doctors have been shown to interrupt patients after less than half a minute of explanation of their symptoms with unknown but probably damaging results. The opposite-patients interrupting their Doctor is rare and usually ignored by the Doctor.

Long pauses or delays in responding to a question signal rejection of what has been uttered. Timely responses are rapport building whilst hesitation and delay are the opposite. Picking out areas of agreement before raising an issue is rapport building.

Look for shared interests and shape your argument to seem to be consistent with improving those interests. Debates are rarely won on logic alone. Influence

5

In The Art of Rhetoric, written roughly 2500 years ago, Aristotle identified logos, pathos and ethos as the three parts of an effective persuasion strategy.

Logos or logic is the factual element which seeks to prove the argument. Reducing a complex argument to its essential core is difficult but remains at the heart of effective persuasion. A few crystal clear ideas, imaginatively presented will be vastly more effective than a long-winded complicated argument.

This is not reducing the argument to absurdity. A TV programme where a historian convinces a few spectators to dress up as soldiers and take up positions in a notional battlefield may well be seen as patronising but a clear explanation using a map followed by a walk through the actual site of the battle might make a complicated affair understandable to us all in an entertaining manner.

When you think of passionate debates that we all get involved with it becomes clear that logic alone rarely persuades. Deeply held opinions are hard to shift.

Pathos is the appeal to emotion by, for example, spelling out the consequences of failure to head the advice. If a persuasive argument does succeed it will usually be because an emotional response has been generated. People change their minds when they are motivated to do so.

Branded advertising is often depicted as the

arena where persuasion occasionally reaches state of the art

levels. And the message is almost always emotional- how will

this product make me feel? What statement about me will

owning this product make? If you want to be the best you

will work with the best.

RhetoricThe art of discourse, an art that aims

to improve the capability of writers or

speakers to inform, persuade, or

motivate particular audiences in

specific situations.  

Its best known definition comes

from Aristotle, who considers it a

counterpart of both logic and politics,

and calls it the faculty of observing in

any given case the available means of

persuasion

It typically provide heuristics for

understanding, discovering, and

developing arguments for particular

situations, such as Aristotle's three

persuasive audience appeals: logos,

pathos and ethos.

The five canons of rhetoric, which

trace the traditional tasks in designing

a persuasive speech, were first

codified in classical Rome: invention,

arrangement, style, memory and

delivery.

Along with grammar, logic (dialectic) ,

rhetoric is one of the three arts of

discourse

Persuasion

Influence

6

Persuasion

Pathos is used to tell stories spelling out the consequences of failure to use the product and the triumphs you will experience if you do. A story about how a manager noticed a pattern of late payments and acted quickly and cleverly to avert a customer getting into a financial muddle could go on to point out that keeping our customers but being vigilant about debts will not affect trade but will help to reverse our debt problem which is leaving us short of cash.

It works better for most of us than sheets of numbers and explanations of ratio calculations. Most of us have difficulties with large chunks of financial data but a shared myth is often remembered for years.

Ethos (values) generally evoked the family or tribe. The point here is that the person attempting to be persuasive will be judged not only on the content but also on their personal reputation. A beggar in the street spouting philosophy is unlikely to get a fair hearing. A Professor of Philosophy will tend to get a better hearing because it seems much more likely that she knows what she is talking about. Membership of a distinguished family would produce the same effect in Ancient Greece.

Celebrity endorsement is an appeal to ethos. If the world’s best player uses this equipment it must be good? Logos is less used as most products today have competitors of equal quality.

Influence

7

Team Leading

Team leading (Delegation)

Meeting subordinate in corridor or via email “Boss, we have a problem”

Response. I know this is important but I do not know enough to make a decision now

“Leave it with me and I will get back to you”

If every problem is seen as a monkey then the management analogy becomes managing these monkeys. In the above example, the monkey has jumped from the subordinates back onto the Boss’s back. The Boss now has a monkey to feed and the subordinate has one less to worry about.

Later on the subordinate will send an email saying “How are you getting on with solving our problem?”

This is called Supervision but it seems to be working the wrong way around!

Your time as a manager divides into:

Boss imposed time severe penalties if ignored

System imposed time also severe penalties for ignoring

Self-imposed time things you have decided on or agreed to do

Subordinate imposed time taken up by subordinate demands on you

Discretionary time free to do what you want and no penalties

The idea is to reduce self- imposed and especially subordinate imposed time freeing up discretionary time. The result is to free up time for important issues and to empower subordinates building a better team.

Initiative can be placed on a scale from low to high as follows:

Waiting to be told what to doAsking what you should doMaking a recommendation and then actioning itTake action whilst keeping team members informedAct on own initiative and tell the team about it later

on

Good managers abhor levels one and two and control their teams by specifying the level of initiative required. This will vary according to the task and the level of capability of the team member. Allowing team members to improve and develop will help them and you.

Influence

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Team Leading

Rules for Managing Monkeys

Monkeys should be fed or shot. Allowing them to starve to death is messy, cruel and will lead to problem including

post-mortems and even attempted resurrections

You should not keep more monkeys than you can look after properly.

If subordinates have too many they will pass them around until they become ill or end up being rescued by you.

Monkeys should only be fed by appointment. Otherwise they will have to hunted down which is time wasting and damaging to the

monkey.

Monkey feeding time is hands on and face-to-face. Feeding by mail will leave you with the next move. Use documentation if it helps

but never instead of feeding time.

At the end of feeding time make an appointment for next time and specify the degree of initiative allowed.

Otherwise the monkey may starve or end up living with you.

The problems involve some loss of control which most of find difficult. Handled well with the degree of initiative carefully managed will lead to better teamwork and more time for focusing on what is important.

Influence

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Productivity

Work backwards from goals to milestones to tasks.  Writing “launch company website” at the top of your to-do list is a sure way to make sure you never get it done. Break down the work into smaller and smaller chunks until you have specific tasks that can be accomplished in a few hours or less: Sketch an outline to the introduction for the homepage video, etc. That’s how you set goals and actually succeed in crossing them off your list.

Stop multi-tasking. No, seriously—stop. Switching from task to task quickly does not work. In fact, changing tasks more than 10 times in a day makes you as silly as a drunk, When you’re drunk, your IQ drops by five points. When you multitask, it drops by an average of 10 points, 15 for men, five for women (yes, men are three times as bad at multitasking than women). 

Be militant about eliminating distractions. Lock your door, put a sign up, turn off your phone, texts, email, and instant messaging. In fact, if you know you may sneak a peek at your email, set it to offline mode, or even turn off your Internet connection. Go to a quiet area and focus on completing one task.

Schedule your email. Pick two or three times during the day when you’re going to use your email. Checking your email constantly throughout the day creates a ton of noise and kills your productivity.

Use the phone. Email isn’t meant for conversations. Don’t reply more than twice to an email. Pick up the phone instead.

 Work on your own agenda. Don’t let something else set your day. Most

people go right to their emails and start freaking out. You will end up at inbox-zero, but accomplish nothing. After you wake up, drink water so you rehydrate, eat a good breakfast to replenish your glucose, then set prioritised goals for the rest of your day. 

Work in 60 to 90 minute intervals. Your brain uses up more glucose than any other bodily activity. Typically you will have spent most of it after 60-90 minutes. (That’s why you feel so burned out after super long meetings.) So take a break: Get up, go for a walk, have a snack, do something completely different to recharge. And yes, that means you need an extra hour for breaks, not including lunch, so if you’re required to get eight hours of work done each day, plan to be there for 9.5-10 hours.

Influence

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Presentation

Make a Plan 

The most common plan is summed up as, tell them what you plan to say, tell them and tell them again –this easily becomes boring as the audience quickly pick up the structure and tend to ignore most of it knowing it will be summarised anyway.

A better alternative is the classic structure of public speaking, dating back to antiquity, which has probably never been bettered:

BeginningTell Your StoryMake Your caseDeal With Objections Final Remarks

What is the argument that such an elderly process is relevant to-day? For starters it forms the basis of every useful advertisement and every successful sales pitch. They do not teach Rhetoric in school any more but they teach it to persuaders. Give it a try and see how it transforms you presentation from death by power point into a persuasive and professional job.

Beginning

The first few moments will either grab their attention or confirm that they are in for a dull time. Avoid the usual agenda outline and identify with the audience by complimenting them or refer to a previous speaker in glowing terms. Or you could point out what is unique or special about the occasion heightening the importance of the moment. The idea is to capture their attention.

Three years ago I stood here in front of you and described the

desperate plight we faced. What a difference three years have made- thanks to you.

Other approaches might include framing the speech and clearly, perhaps surprisingly, outlining the context.

Although the title of my presentation is profitability the real reason for our disappointing performance is poor service and dwindling customer satisfaction and I would like to spend some time addressing this issue.

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Presentation

 

Tell Your StoryYou may feel that a business presentation is not a tale or yarn. It is. Think it

through. What is the required result? What do you want them to believe in when its finished? Put your talk in context and tell it succinctly.

Before I describe the remarkable innovations perfected by our developers I would like to take a moment to tell you about the man behind it all. It has been his inventiveness and curiosity and his never ending enthusiasm that has infected everyone who had the pleasure to work with him. Today, thanks to…..

Make Your caseThink back to presentations you have sat through yourself. How much of the facts

do you remember? Your audience will soon forget what you have told them too.

It is vital to make sure that this section presents the substantiation of what you have to sell. To make it compelling build it around two or three themed arguments that link clearly together. A long list of points suggests that you are bolstering up a weak proposition. Even worse, the smarter listeners will attack the weakest point first undermining your position.

There are three good reasons why this business expansion is the right course of action. Firstly, the profits, whilst good, have been substantially understated because of the pairing of the unprofitable Printing works located nearby. Secondly, the vital water supply will become available following the closure of the printing works. Thirdly, the two operations were initially placed here because of the intention of the Government to expand the town and local region. This is now happening providing a growing and prosperous market for the long term.

Deal with ObjectionsThere will probably be people who oppose your solution to the problem and prefer

another. We must assume that they will get their opportunity to say so and be prepared to respond. Here we anticipate their objections and refute therm.

This project will cost a lot of money and will certainly cannibalise some of our existing products. If we decide not to go ahead for these reasons we must be prepared to see our competitors do it for us.

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Presentation

 

Final Remarks

You could bore everyone to death by summarizing an going over it all over again. Avoid the temptation. Instead, use the final phase to appeal for understanding and approval of what you have said.

You leave here today knowing that we lead the market with world-beating products. It makes me proud to belong to the company and I know you feel the same. We will not let ourselves down when we have a momentous decision to make. Thank you.

RehearsalWhat we have so far is a plan. Write it out and decide how to present it. Reading

from slides is dull and you will need to ignore the collective sigh when you turn on your computer! Instead, turn your talk into a set of notes you can refer to. Make sure you have five sections and practice until you have memorised the details. Use a slide show if you want to but make sure it is a visual aid rather than a copy of your talk.

ActionMake sure the room is laid out sensibly so that everyone can hear you and test

everything before you start. If the computer freezes and the lights go out you have your notes and a suitable hand out. You are ready for anything. You do not need to ask if everyone can hear and see you, you have checked and they can.

Public speaking is infectious and what you want to spread around is enthusiasm and optimism rather than the reverse. A nervous person is embarrassing. The good news is that body language can be controlled concealing any nervousness. Make sure your pockets are empty leaving nothing to be nervously jangled around. Decide what you are going to do with your hands and what movements you will make beforehand. As Noel Coward said, the trick is to make sure all your zips are fastened and don’t fall over the furniture.

A great way to release pent up nerves is to get some sort of audience participation right from the start. If it’s a small audience shake hands with them and ask them a useful question, Who are you with or which department? Thanks for coming and I hope you find it useful. Avoid jokes unless you are good at them. It is important to breathe. Loss of consciousness will follow quickly if you ignore this advice. Control your breathing and you will find that you can control your nerves. If you need to pause do so. A short silence is not damaging. Babbling or fainting is.Influence

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Presentation

 Vary the pace

Vary the pace by speeding up to energise the audience and slowing down to emphasise key points. Pause before announcing something significant that will please the audience (not as long as the X Factor).

The LighthouseFear and nerves causes the speaker to avoid looking directly at the audience.

Instead, look straight at them. Throughout your talk scan around the audience making brief eye contact with individuals. This can be difficult for nervous speakers and takes practice. Making eye contact establishes rapport and reduces nerves.

Answering QuestionsAlways allow time for questions at the end. Think through what the probable

questions will be and have your answers in mind. Never ever put someone down in public even if you think their question or response is idiotic. Doing so will invoke sympathy for the squashed individuals predicament and turn the audience hostile. If you are in a powerful position the hostility will be covert but still there-you will have lost the audience

.The best response to a difficult question is generally to draw the questioner out.

What makes you think that? Can you give us a practical example of what you mean? If the line of argument is faulty this will uncover it. The difficult person will lose the audience and you can move on.

Feedback and MirroringFeedback is non-judgmental interaction where you avoid any negative responses

and focus on being honest but fair. It is a management skill that is rare in the largely politicised environments found in many organisations. It is a useful way of responding to questions in a public meeting but it can be seen as parroting, I hear what you are saying but…

So, what you are saying is that I am merely repeating the company line when what you really need is more people? Is that right? The likely answer is yes. The questioner is agreeing with you and the question is clarified. The feedback will probably go down a little bit better.

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TipsUse of the right words is powerful. For example, you simply cannot exaggerate the power of positive thinking. No-one was ever persuaded by someone who does not believe what they are saying. On the other hand, rhetorical devices are widely and clumsily used by politicians and most of us get tired of it. Some are infamous such as concealing a piece of bad news with the good or when the audience is distracted. Applied clumsily they do more harm than good and seem manipulative and false. Starting every line with hard working families is lamentable and false. Use these tips sparingly and honestly and in context.

Talking without NotesYou are clearly master of your subject if you can do this (or so it seems). Reduce your notes to 4 or 5 key headings and practice the content below each heading until you are confident you can pull it off.

AntithesisReversing a common theme:

And so, my fellow Americans, Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.

This sentence is remembered for JF Kennedy’s Inauguration of 1961 when much else has been long forgotten.

Parallel sentencesRepetition in language structure helps the audience to hear and remember.

We will do the job properly. We will do the job cost effectively. We will do the job to the highest standard possible. Above all, we will do the job.

Nests of threeThe inexplicable power of nests of three was well known to the Ancient Greeks and has helped immortalise speeches by Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King, Shakespeare and others.

Friends, Romans and Countrymen! (Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar)All God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, (Martin Luther King)The new finish will cut your costs, eliminate heat problems and protect your equipment permanently.

Presentation

Influence

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Presentation

 

It isn’t so much what the product can do for you. Think about what you could do with the product.

Rhetorical QuestionsAsked for effect rather than requiring answers rhetorical questions invite the

answers in the audiences mind. Are you going to be comfortable with mediocrity? Do you want to

succeed?

Claptraps are pregnant pauses that invite applause or other demonstrations of solidarity and approval.

Contrastive PairsKeeping the grammatical structure similar in describing two courses of action. One

is your preferred plan and the other is a straw man or set up designed to be unappealing thereby highlighting the preferred option. Often the frame of reference is limited excluding other appealing ideas.

Our only option is to increase the range and depth of the bombing programme or we lose the country and lose the war.

RepetitionCapturing good ideas into a catchy phrase,

The Borderless organisation, Acid rain, climate change

Repeating the line often can ingrain crucial ideas into the audiences mind can help them to quickly understand and buy into complex strategies.

Value laden wordsUnderstanding the underlying residual value underpinning certain words is

important. It can be seen as coercive and Machiavellian but it is also common sense. Political speeches will often use negative adjectives describing an opposing scheme and enrich their own with positive messages.

This divisive scheme based on patchy research using old fashioned methods can only result in underperforming schools.

This excellent scheme based on well-founded research using tried and tested methods is sure to result in substantial improvement in academic performance.

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EmpathyEmpathy is the knack of identifying with the experience of the other person. It adds warmth. Communication beyond the superficial level is impossible without rapport which can be understood as heat. A cold atmosphere makes communication very hard if not impossible. The warmer the atmosphere between the communicators the more meaningful the conversation is likely to be. Once the superficial introductory stage is passed the more empathetic you can be toward the other person the better.

I understand how you feel because I have experienced something like it myself and I know how uncomfortable it can be.

Do keep control and stop long winded people by a polite as possible intervention before moving on and always address your answers to the whole audience not just the questioner. Finally, if you are caught out by a question you cannot answer admit it and promise to get back to the questioner with the right answer as soon as possible. Perhaps paradoxically, this response is respected and slippery and evasive responses are not

Pitch to the Audience The most effective persuasive technique is the one preferred by the audience. A saving in logistics needs to be presented quite differently to a trade union or the shareholders or even the Board of Directors. Each group has priorities that are markedly different even though the logistics innovation could conceivably be of benefit to them all.

Some people are very visual in the way they absorb and process information. They will respond best to imagery, tables and graphs. Others tend to absorb information as words and other auditory stimuli. The third type is very physical and learns by interaction and demonstration (kinaesthetic learners). All three learning modes (visual, auditory and kinaesthetic) are usually present in all of us but most of us prefer one mode as our preferred learning style.

Empathy and Rapport

Influence

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Keep it SimpleMost of us have been bored during slide shows that presenters use as notes for their talk. The slide show should be a visual aid that adds value. Describing a place benefits from a well chosen photograph. Discussing a new product might benefit from a picture. It might benefit more from real samples and a diagram to explain its function. Video and music can be embedded if relevant. Keep it simple whenever possible.

Using pictures that can be drawn or printed onto large white cardboard sheets placed around the room might make a welcome change from computers on occasion. Written material will be read whilst the audience ignore you so plan time for this if necessary.

EquipmentIf you use a slide show you will probably turn to Microsoft’s PowerPoint or Apple Keynote. Both do a good job although experts tend to rate the Apple product better for its graphics. Apache’s Open Office is completely free of charges and very effective. All can be enhanced by taking material from the internet although care should be taken with copyright. Creative Commons is a not for profit organisation that can help with this.

Alternatives to traditional slide shows include Prezi which offers a huge virtual whiteboard that can zoom in to small details and out for context eliminating the need for individual slides. Pinterest allows for visual boards to be built on the web and Slide Rocket is one of the better cloud based products.

Content is More Important than RazzmatazzContent is more important than graphical appeal. Structure your presentation by pinpointing your objectives, what your audience is thinking now, and what points you need to make in order to move the audience from where they are to where you are. Ensure that the content of your presentation is solid before you decide on the visual elements.

Use ContrastYou need a lot of contrast between the text and the background colour. Either a dark background with light text or a light background and dark letters. Most projectors make colours duller than they appear on a screen, and you should check this if possible.

Use a big enough fontAny font size less than 20 point is too small to be reasonably read in large audience presentations. If you are given a small screen in a big room, your font will look smaller because the image will not be as big as it should be. In this case, try the wall instead of a screen or move the chairs closer to the screen.

Slide Shows

Influence

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Special effectsWe want the audience to read the screen, and then focus back on the presenter to hear the message. Flying text and other effects makes it harder for the audience members to read since they have to wait until the text stays still to read it. They focus on the show instead of the content.

Turn off the pointer Some people are irritated by the arrow key which they find distracting. In show view press ctrl H and it disappears. Press a to retrieve it (not escape which will drop you into normal view).

Use visuals Use visuals such as graphs, diagrams, photos and media clips to engage the audience. You can get free pictures from Creative Commons or at reasonable prices from websites such as istockphoto.com...

Find a slide quickly On the normal view collapse the left hand thumbnails to outlines and put a descriptive title on each (already numbered) slide. Make a list or print the view. As the slides are numbered you can quickly identify the slide required. Without leaving the show screen type the slide number and press enter and the needed slide appears. You can use this feature to find a Q&A slide or to skip a section.

Blank the screen Say you need to kill the screen so that the audience can concentrate on something you wish to say or do outside of the slide show before returning to it? In show mode, press the full stop. To go back to where you were on the show press the full stop again.

Draw on the screen To draw on the screen during your presentation to illustrate a particular element press Ctrl-P key to display a pen. Use the left mouse button to draw on the slide To erase press the E key. To hide the pen, press the A key or Ctrl-H.

The Last Slide

The last slide you use to should not be the last slide. Add three copies of the last slide to ensure you do not fall off the end in error. It can help to add some slides with answers to expected and likely questions and leave a blank slide as a final back up.

Slide Shows

Influence

19Influence

Aggression– Get what you want any way that works– Causes trouble in the long-run, humiliates others– What goes around comes around

Submission– Hope for what you want!– Stay out of trouble, repress true feelings– Loss of respect (self and others)

Assertion– Ask for what you want– Open and direct, claim your rights– Without disregarding others– Wins respect and trust (from yourself as well as others)– Improves rapport and sensitivity– Reduces anxiety and stress

Assertive Language

Assertiveness

Type Non-assertive

Assertive Aggressive

VoiceVolumeTonePace

Rambling, verbosePermission seeking

Firm, positive“I” statementsFacts and opinions separated

Too many “I” statementsBoastfulness

Face I should…I ought…

Suggestions without spurious advice

Threats

Body Rigid, bentFidgeting about

Not blaming, acute questions,Positive words

Heavily weighted “advice”Blaming

20

Type Non-assertive

Assertive Aggressive

VoiceVolumeTonePace

WhiningQuietApologetic, Hesitant or too fastSorry!

Firm, positiveAppropriateLevel toneNatural

Loud, sarcasticBullyingHard, fast, slow

Face Eyes, head down, worried

Appropriate eye contact

Hard stare, tight, chin up

Body Rigid, bentFidgeting about

Upright, mobileMovements linked to wordsSquare

Leaning in, tensedClenched fistTapping

Body Language

Assertiveness

Questions WillGet attentionKeep discussions goingEncourage thinkingCheck understandingWin agreementObtain feedbackConfront and guide

Do ThisKnow where you are goingCollect and use everyone's contributionStart general and move to the specific

Don’t Do ThisIgnore anyonePut people under pressureGive upDon’t make them guess what you are thinkingIf you are right the rest are wrong (and they wont enjoy it)

Question Typology

Asking questions, listening to the response and probing deeper towards a solution is the Socratic method.

There are six question types in English:

How did it happen?

Why did it happen?

What happened?

When did it happen

Where did it happen?

Who was involved?

You can add the mirror question to the list. This is simply repeating what you heard and waiting. Used sparingly it encourages further reflection. In effect, it makes the responder question themselves.

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A Good Listener?

Good listeners give you their full attention:

eye contact, non evaluative, atmosphererapport: matching and pacing

They reflect back what they have heardSummarise what they think you saidInterpret the information

-so it sounds like you are planning to do such and such?

Good listening is not a technique, its an attitude of mind where the listener suppresses his/her own agenda to pay 100% attention.

Good listeners do not try to solve the other persons problems or ask questions to push the speaker in a certain direction.

Listening carefully to someone else is a rare and special compliment

Accentuate the positiveLook for points of agreement firstBuild on common ground

Non verbal signals trump words

•Energy levels•Eye contact•Touching •Space and timing

Assertiveness

Influence