Persuading People by Harry Mills is another of the books from the Harvard Business Press Pocket Mentor series. These are bite-sized books which focus on management topics. This particular is about persuading people and it aims to help us learn how to adapt our message to the audience, build credibility and appeal to listeners minds and hearts.

As is the custom with this series, the book is divided into two parts. The first part titled. Persuading People: The Basics contains the main content of the book and it has seven sections. The second part is titled, Tips and Tools, and it has some extra information around persuading people.

Follwoing is a brief review of each part of the book.

FIRST PART – PERSUADING PEOPLE – THE BASICS

UNDERSTANDING PERSUASION

There are four key lessons in this section:

• What is persuasion?
• Why is persuasion important?
• Key elements of persuasion?
• Ethical considerations (about persiasion)

Persuasion is described as:

…a process that enables you to change or reinforce other’s attitudes, opinions, or behaviours.

Harry implies that persuasion is important because nowadays, more and more we need to get work done through others and the days of command and control are behind us. In other words, having formal authority is not enough to influence people to get things done.

Key elements of persuasion are said to be:

• Credibility
• Common ground
• Supporting information
• Deep understanding of emotion

Ethitical considerations point to the fact that persuasion must be mutually beneficial. Continue reading →