Persuasiveness stems from clarity of thought.
Persuasiveness sounds like high consideration and high conviction
Persuasiveness is the skill of leading people to your answer without even realizing it.
A superpower I realize I possess from working at this company and in such a documentation-heavy organization funnily enough, comes from my time spent at Canva.
I haven’t struggled as much with proposing my ideas, providing feedback and getting proposals across the board at Superpower, and I think it comes from persuasiveness in my written communication. From reading and being trained with really great documentation from the get-go in my career.
Yes! It sounds kind of lame. And yes! I am tooting my own horn.
But something I thoroughly enjoyed this week was giving feedback to a friend and colleague, and seeing his improvement recognized by the company.
His work-style archetype could be likened to that of a rampaging bull. A hammer that sees everything like a nail, and the type of person you can expect to step on people’s toes and get sh*t done, but you often need go back and clean up the smashed pieces and bandage up said people’s toes.
Through observation a lot of his ideas were receiving push back because he the way he presented them were so incredibly unclear.
Which leads to idea #1:
#1: Persuasiveness stems from clarity of thought
Persuasive people clearly lay out their ideas, whether via sign posting what they will be talking about or laying out all the key points. And it’s important to mention not all relevant points are key. Sometimes less is totally more if it gets the main ideas across.
If people don’t even understand your ideas, you can’t fathom them to believe in them.
#2 Persuasiveness sounds like high consideration and high conviction
High conviction in the tonality that you present your ideas matter.
And high consideration in laying out all the points before someone so they can see you’ve critically thought on everything is also incredibly important. It removes any sliver of doubt in someone’s mind and makes you seem all the more competent.
#3 Persuasiveness is the skill of leading people to your answer without even realizing it
This is probably the most difficult part of persuasion.
It’s the nuance tweaking a person’s tone of high conviction.
It’s the storytelling. The narrative. Being agreeable, making people feel at your side so they can follow and lead the horse to water.
You can lead people to your answer by doing steps #1 and #2 very well, but the most persuasive people do #1 and #2 in a way of showing rather than telling, you don’t even realize they’ve captured #3.