How can I influence others without manipulating them?
andiroberts.com
How can I influence others without manipulating them?
1–10 of 232 posts
Re: How can I influence others without manipulating them?
#2If I successfully influence someone, I feel I've manipulated them nonetheless.
Re: How can I influence others without manipulating them?
#3Maybe just try to set an example without any attempt to be persuasive at all.
Re: How can I influence others without manipulating them?
#4I'll respond to the title instead of the article.
As an attorney, I've found that the best persuasion is the removal of impediments and friction standing between the person you hope to influence and what they want to do in the first place.
Most other tactics amount to force or deceit ("manipulation").
Re: How can I influence others without manipulating them?
#5If I successfully influence someone, I feel I've manipulated them nonetheless.
So, let's say you inspire someone just by existing, these things happen.
Re: How can I influence others without manipulating them?
#6I've always found that it's about defining win/win situations. Also, you should make real human connection in the process. If you don't like the person, that's a real issue. It may not be that the person is unlikeable, it may be that you aren't finding a perspective that aligns right.
But yeah, aligning incentives and making friends. Even if they don't go the way you want, you both still had a positive experience and can potentially find a way to work together in the future.
Re: How can I influence others without manipulating them?
#7Advice a sales coach gave me was “sales is sorting, not convincing.”
I always found that put me in the right headspace to focus on listening first, then being clear. Whether they sort themselves into a yes or no is on them.
Re: How can I influence others without manipulating them?
#8If I successfully influence someone, I feel I've manipulated them nonetheless.
I see this sentiment from time to time in the HN crowd, and I’m really interested in understanding more about it.
My first reaction to this? I think that you’re using “manipulate” to describe a process where somebody doesn’t want to do something, and make them do it anyway, but without using force. It feels like this has to be rooted in some kind of denial of other people’s free will—that they are somehow incapable of choosing to help you or agree with you, and can only be tricked. It seems like you would need to believe that other people don’t genuinely like you or value you.
Re: How can I influence others without manipulating them?
#9Persuasion that happens in good faith is a two-way street. You explain your position, but also truly listen to theirs. If you are prepared to change your own position based on what they say, then you can hope that they might change theirs based on what you say.
If it is truly two way in this sense, including your best efforts to extract from the other party their strongest, potentially unexpected, arguments for their position and give them your due consideration, it shouldn't feel like manipulation.
Re: How can I influence others without manipulating them?
#10I really don’t like this article. I think this article reflects more our desire to categorize things into neatly numbered lists, and reflects less any thorough understanding of influence. Big lists of aphorisms. Less in the way of concrete detail. Words are used the wrong way. Concepts are broken up into incoherent lists.
“Ratianolising” is the word used in the most wrong way. The word normally describes inventing post-hoc reasons for some decision or behavior.
“Negotiating” is a big list of aphorisms which pull in different directions. Some of the advice sounds like amateurish art-of-the-deal tips which encourage you to extract as many concessions as you can from the other side. Some of the advice pulls in the opposite direction. And then, to mix everything up, the advice to compromise and meet half-way rears its ugly head.
The more I read in this article, the worse my opinion gets. I’m stopping.
:-(