Excerpts

HOW THIS BOOK CAN HELP YOU If your business success depends on your ability to persuade and influence others, this book can help you. In it, you will find specific advice on how to: Appeal to and motivate different kinds of people Enhance your credibility Develop your working relationships Be influential within your organizational hierarchy Gain compliance and agreement with your ideas Influence superiors, subordinates, and customers Make your points logically Persuade in different organizational or country cultures WHO CAN USE THIS BOOK This book will be useful to you if your ability to get things done depends on dealing with other people through persuasive communication skills. Consider the following: Almost all of your communication at work has a persuasive component. The more responsibility you acquire, the more you must deal with others to get your work done. Being persuasive at work depends on developing and maintaining relationships. WHY THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN Many of the MBA students and executives I have taught have told me that they want a quick, readable guide to the issues discussed in class. In developing this course, I discovered that most books on persuasion are long, tedious, and academic. This book, in contrast, is brief, relevant, and reader-friendly. Brief. This is a summary of key ideas that does not include lengthy academic explanations, cases, or exercises. Relevant: Only the relevant issues are included, issues you can use immediately in your work. You will not find digressions or full explanations of the underlying theories that support the advice presented. Reader friendly: I have tried to make the format easy and quick to read, with charts and headings that should help you to skim the information. HOW THIS BOOK IS ORGANIZED This book is organized into six chapters. I. Develop Your Argument. To help you construct a supportable argument for a position or decision you have made, you will learn how to state your position clearly, provide reasons that support your position, choose evidence that supports your reasons, and make them all fit together logically. II. Check Your Logic. In this chapter you will learn strategies for creating a logical message structure as well as for avoiding the pitfalls of unfair and illogical arguments. III. Analyze Your Audience. This chapter provides a number of ways to analyze your particular audience. The chapter includes questions to ask yourself as well as a number of approaches to gaining information about your audience. IV. Motivate Your Audience. Two important aspects of persuasion--audience motivation techniques and credibility enhancement techniques--are covered in this chapter. V. Study the Organization. In this chapter, you will learn how to analyze organizational structures and ways of sharing information--as well as your own position in the organization, based on the relationships involved and your credibility. VI. Consider the Culture. Information on differences among the various world cultures is provided in this chapter, which addresses such issues as context, time, view of society, view of employee, view of authority, silence, and gender. You will find advice and strategies for dealing with people from cultures other than your own. Excerpted from Guide to Managerial Persuasion and Influence by Jane P. Thomas All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.