Want to be more persuasive? Make this your core skill.

There are a lot of things you can work on if you want to be more persuasive.

• Your assertiveness.
• Your ability to construct logical arguments.
• Your comfort level with confrontations and disagreements.
• Your knowledge and understanding of the discussed topic.
• And lots more…

But mastering all of these will almost be a waste of your time if you don’t also practice the most important persuasion tool in your arsenal.

You see… A lot of people who want to persuade or convince someone of something tend to go straight to the points or arguments that make the most sense to them.

The problem is that this strategy only works if those arguments happen to address the things the other person is thinking and are convincing enough.

And even then it might trigger what’s known as the backfire effect, which says that people can become more committed to their opinions when confronted with solid arguments or evidence simply because they don’t like being pressured into changing their minds.

And this is why...

The most persuasive people start with curiosity.

Instead of leading with their own arguments, truly persuasive people ask questions to genuinely try to understand the other person's thinking, without arguing for their side of things - at first.

Their goal is to first fully understand where the other person is coming from and then respond with their own opinions or arguments based on that understanding.

And they do that because they know that this is likely to achieve three very important things:

1) Create a collaborative rather than confrontational conversation.

When we demonstrate that we’re genuinely curious about the other person’s opinion and willing to consider their points, we greatly increase the likelihood that they will do the same in return.

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