To win people’s hearts and appeal to their emotions, try these four tactics:
1. Listen actively
Active listening means reflecting back and summarizing the content and emotions in your listeners’ responses to your ideas.
By reflecting and summarizing, you show that you’ve heard and understood the people you’re trying to persuade. This helps to forge a powerful emotional connection with them, making them more receptive to your ideas.
Guidelines for active listening include:
Reflect content. Paraphrase the factual details you’re hearing from those you want to persuade: “It sounds like…” “In other words…” “So you’re saying…” “It seems that…” “Let me make sure that I understand you correctly. What I hear you saying is this. Is that accurate?”
Reflect emotions. Acknowledge your listener’s feelings and acknowledge the different types of feelings that you hear. So if a person seems to be really resistant, you might say, “I’m getting the feeling that you have a concern about this. Could you tell me a little bit more about that?”
2. Use vivid descriptions
Vivid descriptions or words that paint evocative images in people’s minds-deeply tap into listeners’ emotions.
3. Metaphors and analogies
Analogies let you relate a new idea to one that’s already familiar to someone you’re trying to persuade. Analogies help people understand and, therefore, accept a new idea. Analogies also foster feelings of familiarity, which many people find reassuring.
Changing the playing field, using analogies, and making it simple to say yes are ways that you can begin to persuade people to do things differently than they’ve done them in the past.
4. Tell stories
Starting a meeting with a story engages a team and may just provide an effective framework for the meeting itself.
You can’t deliver an effective presentation unless others trust you. Earn trust by telling stories that build credibility and relationships with your team.
The best stories capture your listeners’ attention and end with a lesson that applies to your current business situation. They’re also concise. They take less than 90 seconds to tell. And they’re personal. They’re about something that happened to you. Tell a powerful story, and people will identify with you and see you as someone they can trust. After that, they’ll want to follow you.