
As a human, we are influenced by our own thought, we brought them everywhere with us. We talk too much about ourselves, about our field, our skills, our capacity. We think of ourselves as the most important person in the world, so everybody must have to adhere to our ideas and opinions.
In conversation with others, we are more interested in talking about our opinion instead of listening to what other people can teach us, what we can learn from them.
In our point of view, our opinion is always the best and the more rational than other’s opinions.
Indeed, that behavior is due to our self-opinion and what we often forget is that others have their self-opinion too.
Our self-opinion shapes a pattern of thinking in our mind and that makes us think of ourselves as the most rational person.
In the book “the laws of human nature”, Robert Green described 3 universal self-opinion qualities most of us share:
- we think that we are autonomous, we act on our free will
- we think that we are intelligent in our own way
- we think that we are basically good and decent
What we often not see is that the majority of people think the same about their own opinion.
In a conversation our reaction to the opinions of others can lead to 3 specific behaviors:
First, in our speaking, we can reject the opinion of the person we are talking to, and that often leads him/her to be more attached to his opinion and lead to an argument, they just can’t accept to change their opinion. We see that behavior often in electoral campaign, when we encounter a follower of the candidate we do not support, we often think of ourselves as the most rational and try to change the support of that person to our own candidate but often they just became more and more attached to their candidate and it often leads us to long argument. What we do not see is that the person thinks of himself as more rational too, and can’t just accept or validate any of our opinions.
Second, in our speaking, we do not really accept nor reject opinions of the person we are talking too, so we appear as someone neutral and he (she) can become more open to our opinions if we present it logically to him(her).
We see this often in a sport when we try to show other people that other kinds of sport can also be cool without giving a bad comment about the sport they like. Suppose that we try to show to a basketball fan that tennis can also be fun, we often can’t even compare it to basket and we say to him, basket is really awesome I like it but tennis is awesome too you would like it, often the other people can say to us something like “really, I don’t really understand the laws in tennis” and can explain him some important rulers of tennis. He will like it or not but that often doesn’t lead to arguments.
Finally, we are totally open, we accept or confirm other’s opinions. That often leads the person we are talking to, to be completely open to us, he began to talk more and more about his opinions and feelings. He began to behave as if we know each other for a long time.
Just take everything you share with someone (sport, politic, music, et cetera) and see what happen when you talk to someone who likes your choice.
According to Robert Green, to gain the influence you must be more open to other people’s opinions, you must create to others a sensation of relaxation with us, by validating their opinions and by listening more. We must observe others and ask them questions about topics that seem to be more interesting for them, you can see that by looking at the conviction they have when they talk about some topics.
Robert Green suggest 5 strategies that help us become a master persuader:
1. Transform yourself into a deep listener
2. Infect people with the proper mood
3. Confirm their self-opinion
4. Allay their insecurities
5. Use people’s resistance and stubbornness
We must create a sense of comprehension with others, they must feel as if they are important when they are with us. To do so, we must learn to listen to their desire, to pay more attention to the skills they possess. We must give them smalls presents, such as dinner or coffee.
When we want to ask for a favor, we must not remind other people what we have done from them in the past, instead, we must try to stimulate their feeling of gratitude. We must remind them of all the good things they have done for us in the past. This will confirm their self-opinion about being generous.
