Ask 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