Go from "telling" to "selling"

The ancient Greeks studied the principles of persuasion and explained it as three components. They are ethos, pathos and logos.

Ethos, the root of the word ethics, represents a person's character and credibility. People feel comfortable buying from someone who is credible. They trust that person and establish a rapport, a feeling of being comfortable. The basis of all rapport is perceived similarity.

The one thing a leader can always have in common with another person is his or her best interest.

When you communicate in such a way as to demonstrate that you want what is best for the other person, he or she will be drawn to you.

Leaders have people power because they recognize and appreciate the significance of others. When you communicate from the other person's perspective, you quickly develop rapport.

Once you've won the trust of the listener you've opened his or her mind to consider your message. You must find a way to impact him or her with what you want them to understand, and that requires making an emotional connection.

Pathos arouses the passions of the listener or audience. It includes the power of MOTIVE: "the meaning of their involvement vividly explained."

If you've ever taken a sales course, you've heard this general truism: people buy on the basis of emotion and then justify their decision with logic.

I think it is more accurate to say that all the facts and figures won't sell someone if the person doesn't feel good about buying. Emotional impact is key in selling ideas and gaining commitment.

Yet good decision making is seldom if ever made on emotion alone. There is another component of persuasive communication.

Most of us can recall getting engaged by the emotional only to regret the decision we made under those circumstances. We need more than emotion to buy whatever another person is selling, whether it is a product, a service or an idea. What justifies and supports the emotion of any decision is logic.

Logos is logic, the marshalling of reason. It is usually called into play right after a person thinks, "That sounds good, but…" At that point, they're looking for reasons to support their feelings.

Some people are more persuaded by emotion, while others weigh logic more heavily.

Since leaders aren't clairvoyant, they design their communication to include both—after, of course, they create rapport.

Leaders Influence

Impressing someone changes what he or she thinks about you. Influencing them changes what they do because of you. Leaders care little about the impressions they make. Instead, they strive to influence others to take positive action.

Here's how to influence every time you communicate:

1.) Start with a question

"What do I want the person I'm communicating with to think, feel and do when I'm done?"

Be clear on what you want. If there was ever a time to "begin with the end in mind," it is when you communicate.

Leaders communicate intentionally. That means that they know what they want every conversation, email, phone call or speech to accomplish. Then they design what and how they communicate to achieve it.

2.) Focus on quality, not quantity

Ever heard it said—or say it yourself—that "things would be better if we just communicated more?" Often communicating more just creates more problems.

Good communication is about quality, not quantity.

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