Anybody would appreciate and look up to a person with good convincing and persuading skills. Come to think of it, all of our daily conversations are in some way or the other acts of convincing and persuading people. Our conversations include our ideas, views, opinions and feelings about a particular thing. Think about it for a minute: whenever you are involved in any discussion, at the end you will always have a different view about that particular topic of discussion. You might either change your opinion or you might hold it even more assertively.
Either way, your thinking is bound to change. How does that change occur? Due to an individual’s convincing and persuading skills. From the SSB point of view, having good persuading skills is important for your Group Discussions (GD) and Lecturette.
Coming from a psychology background, I can assure you that having good and impactful convincing skills is a major differentiating feature between a successful person and a mediocre person.
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The whole act of convincing and persuading people is psychological. It basically falls under one of its branches called social psychology.
Here are some of the psychological tricks you can use to convince people:
- Be confident. Talk fast.
Any individual is more likely to listen to and comply with a person who is confident while speaking and knows what he’s speaking. Audiences assume that a confident speaker is more knowledgeable and trustworthy which acts as an advantage to the speaker since it increases the chances of the audience being convinced. (Amplification hypothesis) - Decide when to talk fast and when to talk slow.
There might come a situation where you feel that the audience is a tough one. In cases where the audience seems hard to please, talk fast. It makes it harder for them to point at the flaws and actually listen to what you are saying. Similarly, when your audience likes you, talk slowly. Give them time to accept what you are saying. - Reciprocity.
It works on the fact that it’s a common human tendency to return a favour and requests done by others. For example, in a college setting it might involve one student asking his friend to give him notes in return for a favour he did his friend earlier. - Flattery.
In other words also known as buttering! Flattery works really well when we want to convince someone. It’s very simple provided you do it right. If you try to flatter someone who thinks highly of himself/herself (high self-esteem) then it’s more likely to work because you are validating their views about themselves which keep their cognitive balance in harmony. But if you flatter someone with low self-esteem, it will probably not work at all since what you are saying is not at all same to what the person thinks of himself/herself. - Mirroring.
This again works on the principle of validation of thoughts about self. The name is quite self-explanatory. During a conversation with someone, observe their body language, their gestures, and their postures. Mirror them. Copy their hand movements while speaking. It will make the person to like you more which in a way will make you to convince them better. - Nod
This trick is really simple yet effective. A nod is basically you telling the other person that you agree with them. This has a psychological effect on the person whom you are trying to convince. A nod is basically you telling the other person that you agree with them. When you want to convince someone nod in front of them while speaking. They will also end up nodding and in a way agreeing with what you are saying. - Foot In The Door
This technique is used by an individual to convince and persuade another individual with a smaller request first and then the actual bigger request. If you go to someone with a request or if you want to persuade someone, you would first ask for a small favour, when the other person accepts that request you would then ask the bigger (actual) request that you wanted all along. Example, Can I borrow the car to go to the store?” followed by “Can I borrow the car for the weekend?” The person is likely to accept the second bigger request since he accepted the first one and in a way feels obligated to accept the second request as well. - Door In The Face Technique
This is the opposite of the foot in the door technique. In this, one starts off with an unreasonable and a bigger request (that he knows will not be accepted) and then comes down to a smaller and more reasonable request (which he actually wanted). The person whom you are trying to convince will automatically comply because you have scaled down your request from being too unreasonable to acceptable.
Next time you want to convince people in a GD, a speech or an interview you might want to try the above-mentioned tricks!
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