Ask HN: How important is persuasion to your career?

3 pointstestingquestion9y ago1 comments

Hey HN – how important is persuasion to your career?

On a thread a while back, one commenter had really positive things to say about it. I’m curious if other people feel the same way.

Here’s what they said:

“There are some people that are magical. You go into a meeting with your mind made up, and then 30 minutes later, you leave the meeting with a completely different mindset. And you don't know how they managed to convince you so successfully. If you could figure that trick out, most of your non-technical career problems would be solved.

I've personally never learned this skill of persuasiveness, but I'd pay a lot of money if someone could teach me quickly.”

I'm talking about the kind of person who is so good at persuasiveness that they convince you without you even realizing it. That's a totally different skillset from "argue until your opponent is exhausted and gives up". I had a coworker once that was pretty good at this. I'd go into a meeting with a strategy that I was positive would work, and I'd walk out of that meeting with his strategy -- and somehow I was convinced it was even better than my original one! (Sometimes it was, sometimes it wasn't, but I never resented him if it wasn't -- because he always somehow made it seem like it was the natural choice, not just his choice.)

Anyway, that's the kind of thing i'm talking about. It's easy to talk over people and beat them over the head til they do what you want. I'm more interested in getting everyone on my side and excited about it.”

original thread - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11869688

1 comments

1 comments · 1 top-level

nostrademons9y ago

I've done this by accident occasionally but don't have it enough under conscious control that I can reliably get my way every time. Actually, from the perspective of the person doing the persuading, it doesn't feel like persuasion at all: rather, it feels like the eventual outcome was obvious and you simply explained it well enough that everyone agreed with you.

I will say that the key ingredients appear to be

1.) Comprehensive knowledge of the subject matter

2.) Lightning-quick, reflexive creativity.

3.) Immediate unconditional acceptance of what everyone else tells you.

That last point is key. To persuade people effectively, don't argue with them. (Arguing is very effective for persuading yourself, but it doesn't change other peoples' minds.) Instead, you need to reframe the debate in other terms, bringing in alternatives that were outside of their conscious awareness. Since those alternatives were outside their conscious awareness, they have no preconceived bias for or against them, and since you were listening very carefully to what they were saying, you can propose things that avoid any of the hot-button concerns that will cause them to object to a proposed course of action.