Patrick King - Persuasion Tactics: Covert Psychology Strategies to Influence, Persuade, & Get Your Way (Without Manipulation)

When I was in third grade, a fitness craze swept the nation.

In hindsight, it must have been related to the appointment of Arnold Schwarzenegger to the Presidents Council on Fitness, and the country was overly excited to have the Terminator in a position of actual authority. Of course, this was before the Terminator became the Governator of California, but I digress.

The reason I remember this so vividly was because my third grade teacher wholeheartedly embraced the fitness craze and had our entire class run a mile (1.6 kilometers) every day for a period of three months.

Corralling 30 hyper, obnoxious, and unofficially ADHD-diagnosed eight-year olds was a tall order, especially for a purpose that we had no concept of. Fitness to us as children was as abstract as a home mortgage, and we cared just as much about it.

Leading a class of children to a hot track on days where it was up to 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius) could take some serious pleading, and in fact I do remember some pleading on her behalf for the first few days.

Kids, not unlike adults, rarely react well to direct and forced persuasion. Well go along grumbling and dragging our feet if were commanded to do something, but sweetening the goal with other incentives is how society actually functions. In other words, finding motivation was key, lest my class unintentionally reenact Lord of the Flies .

It became quickly clear to my teacher that we needed motivation through something that wasnt fitness-related, so she issued us a challenge from a fourth grade class, who claimed that they could collectively improve their average mile time more than we could.

The stakes were high: the class with the most improved average time would have a pizza party thrown in their honor, complete with orange slices and soda.

Now thats motivation for an eight-year old!

The pizza party was actually secondary to our desire to take down some older kids. Suddenly running became a hobby to all of us, even to Big Bobby, as we called him, who had to walk most of the time.

We grew to love our daily mile, and thats how my third grade teacher was the first example of great persuasion Ive seen in my life.

She was able to inspire us to action an action which objectively is pretty terrible on a daily basis. But by indirectly avoiding the reality of running a mile in 90-degree heat, she changed the frame and made it about accepting a monumental challenge (remember, beating a fourth grader is a big deal for a third grader), coming together as a class, working towards a common reward, and fighting for our pride.

Thats the most effective manner of persuasion the kind where you can spur into people action by zeroing in on what drives people, what they want to avoid, and what will make them happy.

The vast majority of the time, what you want isnt quite what others will want. In essence, you will constantly be trying to lead people to contested and unpopular decisions. There will almost always be opposition to what you propose, and its not your fault people come into situations with their own preconceptions, notions, and baggage, so its inevitable. But that doesnt change your overall objective of persuasion.

What do you do if the front door is barricaded? You find your way in through the windows and backdoor, and infiltrate the chimney.

In other words, you find a way to open the cracks of peoples psychology to find exactly what drives them, and use that to inspire action and accomplish your objective. You find persuasion tactics to draw people in, make them think differently, and ultimately see your way.

Thats the root of persuasion realizing that most situations simply call for a smarter, more analytical approach, as opposed to bluster and bravado. Understanding that there are different types of people and motivation is key, but so are specific phrases and knowing how to capitalize on emotional decisions.

This isnt a book about techniques to magically make someone follow you to the ends of the earth its a book about human engineering and how to take advantage of the way people think and tend to think. When you know how someone thinks and what drives them, you can create a path that appeals to them.

I later found out that my teacher made the entire challenge up, but I couldnt help but commend her genius on how to keep a group of kids docile and generally easy to manage.

We still got our pizza party, and I learned a valuable lesson that children and adults alike are all ruled by the same basic desires that make persuasion tactics possible.