5 posts tagged “persuasion”
Today we are going to finish our series by putting this knowledge into action for us. There are 2 active and 1 passive ways to implement values during the course of your effective communication.
Passively:
1. Surveillance - You can simply keep an eye and ear out for values based content in someone’s speech. If you are talking to someone and they continue to talk about all of their wild adventures… It is safe to say that they value stimulation. Also, based on the Basic Human Values theory it is safe to say that they probably also value hedonistic and self-directed circumstances as well. You can also bet that this individual is probably not very interested in talking about conformity or security.
Actively:
1. Elicitation of Values – You can use specific questioning strategies to elicit someone’s values during the course of a communication for the purpose of using that information later in the conversation. There are two separate levels at which you can elicit values. As I mentioned previously, an individual’s psyche is made up of four major “systems”. These systems are the core evolutionary drives (most abstract, held subconsciously and relatively unchangeable), the value systems, the belief systems that surround each value system and explicit goals (least abstract, consciously/logically held, most specific and easiest to change). In light of the fact that values are the “connective tissue” that between a person’s core evolutionary drives and their explicit goals value systems can range from very abstract and subconsciously held to very specific and consciously held. So this creates two separate “levels” of elicitation and the questioning to draw out each is directed toward two separate kinesthetic classifications:
a. Action/movement – Questions that elicit what someone HAS ACTUALLY DONE in life as a whole and in certain contexts/scenarios will elicit deep rooted, subconsciously held values. By discovering what people do specifically and making an accurate interpretation of this you will have a clear view into their most abstract value systems.
b. Somatic feeling – Questions that elicit someone’s “feelings about…” will elicit their less abstract and more specific, consciously held value systems. When you begin to talk about someone’s “feelings”, you will in effect be eliciting their EVALUATION of a certain feeling that has arisen inside of them. These evaluations are generally much more critically driven and are in effect a form of rationalization geared toward “making sense” of the somatic sensation. This rationalizing and critical thinking will come from the prefrontal cortex which is in charge of rational thought and as such provides more surface level, consciously held information.
If you had to choose one or another, the deeply held, more abstract values are much more powerful in persuasion and understanding what is really going on inside of someone’s head. If you understand these values about someone, chances are that you know more about them than they themselves do. In effective persuasion it is most effective to have elicited and understood both side of the coin. Although the subconsciously held values are more powerful, the consciously held values can cause conflict if they are offended in some way and this can make the difference between success and failure.
2. Priming/activation – You can effectively activate certain value systems during the course of a communication. This can be very powerful when you are attempting to direct HOW someone is evaluating your communication. In other words, you can help direct what criteria someone will use to evaluate the efficacy or worth of the content/subject matter you are presenting. Although an individual will hierarchically categorize values, they will indeed still possess ALL of the value systems in their psyche. This means that even though someone most highly values Hedonistic pleasure over all else, there is still a part of them that values the necessity of conformity in order to stay safe so that they can continue to pursue hedonistic pleasure. Because of this you can “steer” which value system is being used as their lens at a given time. This is done through priming… There are two methods that are effective for priming:
a. Hypnotic/metaphorical language – By creating vivid and “life like” scenarios in someone’s mind you can activate particular value systems. For instance, if you create a vivid visual of a robbery that took place and how it affected the lives of an entire family due to the brutality of it, you WILL activate someone’s security value system.
b. Questioning – A quick run through our questioning post will help immensely with this… You can use specific questioning strategies to draw specific value based content from someone’s own mouth in order to activate certain values. For instance, asking someone how they think YOU should best spend your vacation if you are looking to have an exciting one WILL activate stimulation and hedonistic values in someone.
It is important to understand that your values are NOT digital… they are analog, they are on a continuum and can NOT be turned on and off like a light switch. You can influence them, but you can’t CONTROL them. If you learn and practice the above information though, you will be well on your way to becoming a communication expert yourself.
As always, to learn more about values and how they can help provide effective communication, please visit my site The Communication Expert.
The Communication
Expert | David J. Parnell
The Communication Expert Blog
You may have heard the Easter Ham story as it has been passed around for many years. I am going to reference here as it is so indicative of today’s subject. To refresh your memory, it goes something like this… A mother and daughter were in the kitchen getting preparing things for Easter Dinner. The mother pulled the Ham out of the refrigerator and just as she always did, cut the ends off of the ham before she put it into the pot.
Perplexed as to why the mother always cut off the ends of the ham prior to cooking, the daughter asked the mother why. The mother’s response was “because you’re supposed to”… As far as the daughter was concerned, the answer was entirely insufficient. The ham looked like it fit in the pan just fine and the ends of it kind of dried out as a result. This just didn’t make sense… As she pressed the mother further, the mother let her know that her mother (the grandmother) had always done it and she learned from her…
Not to be denied, the daughter decided to call the grandmother to find out the culinary rule that was dictating this dissection of the ham prior to baking. After a few pleasantries the granddaughter asked her grandmother… “Grandma, why do you have to cut the ends of the ham off before you bake it?” The grandmother’s answer was “Well honey, back when we were younger and didn’t have a lot of money we couldn’t afford the proper size pan to bake the ham. Since the one we had was so small, I always had to cut it to make it fit in the pan…” So, in effect the mother was unnecessarily caring out a now useless act…
We will dispense with the moral of the story as that isn’t what we are going after. This little illustrates what is known as a Value Based Judgment. In a literal sense, a Value Based Judgment is a claim of “right” or “wrong” in the objective sense and is based on a value system. In the story above the judgment is that it is right to cut the ham.
Now, although right and wrong are usually matters of subjectivity, it can often be misleading to make these statements without citing the source of the judgment. I think we can all agree that one source may be more credible than another. For instance a professor versus a student in a respective field. When a statement like this is made, one it which the person making the judgment is removed from the judgment itself, it is called a “Lost Performative”.
The psychology of how these types of beliefs are formed is
subject matter for another day. What is important for our purposes hear is to
recognize these types of statements when we hear them. “Boys shouldn’t play
with dolls” or “good girls shouldn’t cry”… These statements represent a major
gap in the foundational information and beliefs that the person is holding
mentally and the actual information they are communicating. This gap is not only responsible for perpetuating misinformation, it can cause havoc on a conversation.
There are a number of ways to spot and rectify these types of statements. To learn more, please visit my website.
David J. Parnell | Communication Expert
In following yesterday post on The Culprits of Miscommunication, we will begin by addressing our linguistic or non-verbal “distortions”. The actual distortion per se is not necessarily in the original message or information that shows up in your speech as much as it is in the translation of your message. Keeping in mind that your brain is constantly, relentlessly trying to establish pattern and predictability in your surroundings, it is no wonder communication distortions occur.
“Mind Reading” is one such distortion and can occur in your communication partner’s translation of your message. For instance, let’s say you are out on a date and things seem to be going swimmingly… Your date seems to be really into you, but as usual your starting to run out of things to say. Searching your mind you remember a story that a friend told you earlier that day about a date gone wrong for them. All though it is a bit racy, you go for it anyway… What the heck, things seem comfortable enough.
Well as you get to the end of your story, your dates demeanor changes suddenly and once the check comes they split… What the heck happened? You only told a story about a friend of yours… More on this is a bit, let’s get to the science of it.
The mammalian population has been gifted with what are known as “mirror neurons” in our brains and their sole responsibility is to mimic or imitate the person/animal that we are engaged with. When I say mimic, this doesn’t necessarily mean actually performing the same action as them, but at a minimum internally/mentally mimicking them… the result is the ability to “feel” internally what they are feeling/experiencing at the time. The benefits to this are evident. If we choose to do so, we can learn and implement skills we see. This also facilitates powerful socializing and networking tools we have such as compassion, empathy and teamwork.
Along with this network of mirror neurons, we have a hormone running through us called oxytocin that, although much more prevalent in women, has shown in experiments to greatly increase our ability to “mind read”. Oxytocin is much more concentrated in women as one it’s main functions surrounds the facilitation of reproduction and birth bonding. We are not referring to ESP here, but oxytocin does aid in our ability to more accurately predict what someone is feeling based on our own sensory acuity. This is our reading of their facial expressions, body language, verbiage, etc…
From a psychological stand point, we can only view and understand messages through our own frame of reference. Our frame of reference is analogous to a mental filter through which we “see” the world. When we receive linguistic and nonverbal communication alike, our brain instantly compares that information to our stored knowledge and experience. In this way and only in this way are we able to “understand” the messages we are receiving. As a result, we have an inherently limited capacity to interpret our surroundings. All three of the above mechanisms combine facilitate our capacity to “mind read” during our interactions. Unfortunately, we are only correct a certain percentage of the time… and if it isn’t 100%, we can run into problems.
OK, back to the date… Now, you were only telling a story that you thought was funny in hopes to prevent the weird awkward silence that both of you have been dreading. You were hoping to simply get a laugh out of her… Let’s look at it from your date’s point of view.
Earlier that week she had been on another date with some creepy guy… right before he tried to grab her and make out with her he told her a story very similar to yours… In fact, his facial expressions kind of looked like yours while you were telling that story… So what does this mean? In short, she “felt” like you were going to try something more than simply telling a story. She performed a mind read... Although it was inaccurate, it inevitably happened and your left holding the check and nothing but a bruised sense of self… Less than ideal?
Worthy of note is that this does NOT happen consciously, these are all messages and interpretations happening at the nonconscious level. Without top-down executive control, this will simply “happen” and people (including you) will react automatically and turn the rest of your communication into history…
How do you fix this? Good question and this is something that I get into specifically in my series “The Evolved Communicator”. Please visit me to learn more...
David J. Parnell | Communication Expert
Following yesterdays post on your brain’s processing function, we will begin to delve further into the “reality” that these attentional processes create in your own world. Now, while the focus of your attention is being directed per se by the two major processes we discussed yesterday, it is not necessarily being dissected, evaluated acutely and then purged of unwanted “material” for efficient communication. In other words, a great deal of information is stored that is by no means necessary or even relevant for your survival or thriving success for that matter. So although there is a great deal of purging going on during the initial attentionally biased processing, there is still a massive information glut stored in your brain on a daily basis.
Now our brain has developed and implemented an AMAZINGLY efficient and effective storage, retrieval and re-presentation process in what is known as LANGUAGE. This may seem less than epiphanic, however most people do not know the extent to which language literally constructs their internalized mental world. When I tell you to think of a tree, you will hear the word “tree”, you will say the word “tree” internally, your brain will call upon all of the thousands or millions of concepts surrounding the word “tree” and create a mentally constructed image of a “tree” and then a mental check will occur verifying that “yes, this is indeed a tree”. There is much internal dialogue and communication occurring during this process and the entire movement per se is facilitated and directed by the word “tree”.
Now, let’s extrapolate that out… How about I ask you to guide me in making a decision as to whether or not my significant other and I should have a baby right now… Oh boy is there a lot going on inside your head… The amount of constructing going on internally is huge… You will internally represent a baby, child rearing, schooling, disciplinary challenges, feeding, driving them to soccer practice, etc… Along with all of the visual, auditory and kinesthetic representations will come all of your values, rules and belief systems that surround child rearing. These especially my friends are EXCLUSIVELY represented in language based terms. These rules, values and beliefs are the literal glue that hold your world together… allowing you to make sense of things. Well you get the point here, there is a ridiculously large amount of informational processing occurring that is language based and all of this will be done almost instantly to provide an answer to the question I posed.
Rules, regulations, values and beliefs for the most part are subject matter for another time. Here we will stay focused on the gaps if representing your mental world to the others you are interacting with. Let’s revisit the tree… Now if I ask you to tell me “what a tree looks like”, you will most likely say something along the lines of “well it is tall with green leaves and a brown trunk”…
In adhering to the least energy principle (which we will evaluate in another post) you will give me just enough information to answer the question… as it (the question) has been presented by me (which may very well have gaps of it’s own).
Now, does this accurately represent all of the knowledge you have of a tree? Hardly… There are differently shaped leaves, with different colors, or needles instead of leaves and some have hard chunky bark where as others have almost skin and some are white at the base whereas others may be gray and the leaves have a vein like structure to them and so on…
So what does all of this mean? In the large crevasse between the comprehensive battery of knowledge you have stored internally and the actual representation of that knowledge to another human being whether written or orally, stands three categorically problematic systems. They are generalizations, distortions and deletions… These three gremlins per se are almost exclusively the culprits of every unintentional miscommunication on face of the planet… Our only defense it the ability to recognize them and defeat them with inquisition.
Moving forward we will begin to look at the micro components of each system and how we can effectively recognize and sterilize these gaps for effective and clear communication.
Effective communication is a lot more than simply choosing the right words. Being persuasive, forming the right communication strategies and speaking effectively are just a few of the components necessary for people to communicate effectively.
One important component that is often overlooked is mental energy reserves. Now, I understand very well that the concept of mental energy has at least until recently been considered a metaphor. When your "mental energy" was down, traditionally you just “give a little bit more effort”, “man up” or just focus and you’d be fine. How you "felt" inside was just your perception... It wasn’t real… an actual thing… Well, is turns out that it is indeed a measurable "thing" and knowing this spins the old paradigm on it's head... Now stick with me because we're not getting metaphysical here, we’re going to get to the rock solid science soon enough.
Effectively communicating can require intense cognitive effort which is known as “top-down executive control” in the brain. Basically your prefrontal cortex is working overtime to manage the unrelenting force of the unconscious drives of the brain. To do this takes quite a bit of volitional control and can be extremely taxing on the brain. In other words, if you're in trouble while trying to “sell the lie”, “get girl” or “close the sale” there is usually a lot of executive control going on in your head. If your mental “energy source” is down, how do you think you're going to perform? I know, I know… you're too mentally strong to fall under the pressure… well I'm going to show you why you're not.
(By the way, I don't condone lying, it is metaphorical)
Aside from the “juicy” (look for the pun later in the blog) behavior above, many other common behaviors have been found to rely on and deplete this elusive “energy source” as well, including managing your impression, suppressing stereotypes and prejudice, coping with negative thoughts and fears, controlling your spending, restraining aggression, etc…
The notion had been toyed around with quite a bit in the academic world for some time that self-control and this type of top-down processing rely on a particular and limited energy reserve or strength. Now, if this was true and there was indeed a limited energy reserve it would hold that once someone engaged in a rigorous cognitive process that requires top-down processing or strong self-control, that those energy reserves would become depleted as a result, correct? This would make subsequent performance much less effective and much more difficult volitionally.
With this being a pretty interesting topic, you know that academia couldn't keep their hands off of it. So in an effort to find this elusive "energy reserve" once and for all, Florida State and Texas A&M engaged in a number of studies to prove this theory.
A number of experiments were executed placing subjects in routines that tested their volitional power and self-control. From a biological standpoint, based on all the research to date, glucose seemed to be the likely candidate for this energy reserve. There are a number of reasons but we won’t get into that here…
So what do you think the results were? The studies empirically determined that effort-ful suppression of urges through execution of volition directly and significantly depleted glucose levels in the brain. This in return had a significant and direct impact on the individual’s subsequent ability to perform and effectively communicate.
In one study in particular, subjects were paired into groups with subjects of another race to interact in discussions on areas such as affirmative action and criminal profiling to create a mentally taxing situation for individuals who scored low on the IMS (The Internal motivation to respond without prejudice scale) which measures someone's drive to stay away from any racial stereotyping in speech or action. This might require some mental control.. no?
Well, the results were undeniable… same race pairs experience almost no glucose depletion where as mixed race pairs experienced massive glucose depletion… Now even though nearly all of the brain’s activities consume some glucose, most cognitive processes are relatively unaffected by subtle or minor fluctuations in glucose levels within the normal range. Controlled, effort-ful processes that rely on higher executive function however turned out to be HIGHLY SUSCEPTIBLE to normal fluctuations in glucose.
So what does this mean for the average person who's interacting with, communicating to and attempting to gain the cooperation of someone on a daily basis? Well you may not find yourself in a racially mixed group discussing affirmative action frequently, but think outside the box a little bit… When your boss is grilling you because you asked for a raise, effectively communicating to him while suppressing the desire to tell him to shut up may tax you. What about trying to get a date with the new girl, fro the last 20 minutes of her cat story you have to suppress your compulsion to tell her you don't care... How about closing the sale... Man do you just want to tell them "just sign the darn contract so we can get on with our lives". Well you see where I am going with this...
A professional communicator needs to be aware of this fact so that they can best prepare themselves for any potentially “taxing” interactions that they see coming their way. But have no fear, if you find that your sugar levels are low or your not feeling “on”, there are a number of quick fixes. Ideally you will eat some fruit if it's available, but lemonade or any other juices (theres the pun...) including a good cold Red Bull will do the trick. In fact, Red Bull or other glucose laden drinks will have a quicker effect. Fructose (fruit sugar) breaks down into glucose more slowly, but is healthier. Processed sugar is already there so it will affect you quicker.
Once you have glucose in your system, it is absorbed into
the bloodstream at a rate of 30 calories per minute and after about 10 minutes
can be metabolized to the brain. Now, everybody knows that you fell "better" after eating, especially sugar. What is important here is that mental energy isn't just a fluffy perception, it is real, it is measurable and can be depleted. Can you drive your car without gas by "focusing"???
So if you have a “make it or break it” sales appointment or you're coming home late and you know that your spouse will be waiting up for a sneak attack, take a quick mental check and make sure that everything feels in line. If not grab some Red Bull and start working on your communication strategy before your pending communication... You’ll be glad you did…
*Disclaimer. This article is not advocating the usage of Red Bull or any other products. The author of this article is not a medical doctor and the information should not be held as prescribed medical advice as dictated by the AMA. Usage of any products containing sugar are done at your own risk.
