The ability to persuade is a critical skill for a leader; it’s to a leader what blueprints are to a builder. You can’t be a successful leader without this ability. When you are able to persuade others to accept your point of view, you will see an entirely new picture. You will see and hear different things in the communication process than others do.
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To be able to influence others, you must first understand a useful and practical model of communication (Figure 1).
Physiology relates to how you are sitting, your breathing, your muscle tension. It is not simply posture but includes all physical action and inaction at each given moment. Physiology includes your actual body position as well as the position of your legs, arms, hands, and fingers. Finally, it includes the physical position and the movement of your eyes.
Internal representations are the components of your five senses: visual, auditory, kinesthetic (feelings, touch), smells, and tastes. A sixth representation, auditory digital, is your internal dialogue.
Internal representations are configurations of information created and stored in the mind after being run through internal processing filters, which create an individual’s biases. These biases are usually based on experiences. When you think of your “home” or “office,” you are remembering an internal representation. When you imagine something you have not ever seen, you are constructing an internal representation.
Your state of mind is a combination of internal representations and your physiology at any given moment. States can last for seconds or days. A person’s state of mind, therefore, is the sum of all neurological processes in an individual at one moment in time. The state of mind you are in will filter or affect the final result of your interpretation and understanding of any experience you have at that moment.
Your ability to influence others depends on where others are at the given moment of persuasion. This explains why an idea that was rejected out of hand yesterday is accepted today. The presentation could be exactly the same, but the position of the individual within his own self is different.
In the persuasion process, your goal is to associate your idea with the other person’s favorite or target states. Whatever those states are that the person is constantly striving to attain need to be inextricably linked to whatever idea is presented. This is how most advertising on television works and how the media are able literally to program your mind. You can proceed once you realize that to successfully persuade someone, you want to associate your ideas with that person’s target states.
People may make very different interpretations from an identical external stimulus. Many more interpretations and conclusions can come from the same situation. The interpretations are encoded with all the factual events and stored in memory with all the associations intact. When these events are recalled, they tend to be “state dependent”: The person will recall not only actual events but also his interpretation of those events and, more impressively, the feelings he had at the time of the original events.
We all have beliefs and positions that we chose or had indoctrinated in us by a variety of outside stimuli. Your beliefs actually control your behavior. They allow you to do certain things and prevent you from doing others. Each belief is connected to a value. Each belief is a statement about how you see the world.
Beliefs are generalizations that are very important to you. You don’t like people attacking your beliefs; you believe others should believe as you do-otherwise they are probably wrong. You wouldn’t believe something if you didn’t think it was right. A belief is not something concrete. Like values, they are inside us. Almost all beliefs are based on emotion and are virtually impenetrable by logical thinking.
In the persuasion process, you will work within an individual’s structure of belief. Most people are consciously aware of most of their beliefs.
Everything in communication is processed through beliefs. When your beliefs interfere with the persuasion process, you will be unable to persuade the other person. You must meet a person at his beliefs, not yours. You can influence a person only if what you are saying is in sync with that person’s beliefs.
Attitudes are a collection of values and beliefs around a certain subject. Most people try to change other people’s attitudes without success. Attitude cannot be changed without first changing values. Beliefs, as mentioned, depend on values. Likewise, attitudes depend on beliefs. Attitudes need to be addressed in the persuasion process. Because attitudes occur in the conscious mind, the instinct is to deal with them consciously. Unfortunately, you normally will have little success in changing attitudes alone. Just telling someone to change his attitude never works-never.
Decisions affect the persuasion process in an interesting way. Past decisions are full of content, and a person’s past decision will come into play in a couple of different ways.
Success/failure. When an individual makes a decision within a specific context, that person will experience certain degrees of success or failure. The most important of these successes or failures will impact future decisions.
Consistency. You tend to make decisions consistent with the decisions you’ve made in the past. Because you have an internal desire to be consistent and indeed can’t do anything inconsistent with your core values, you will decide future issues based on past information.
Memories, like decisions, are full of content. They play a critical role in the persuasion process. Everything is filtered through your memories. If you’ve had good experiences with people in the past, you likely will enjoy meeting with them. If you’ve had good experiences with relationships, you will want more of the same.
If, as a fire service leader, you study the persuasion process outlined above, you will be more successful in accomplishing things within the scope of your duties. ■
■ JOHN M. BUCKMAN III has served as chief of the German Township (IN) Volunteer Fire Department for 27 years. He serves on the Department of Homeland Security State, Tribal and Local Advisory Task Force for the Secretary. Buckman served as president of the International Association of Fire Chiefs in 2001-2002 and is a member of the FDIC Executive Committee and the Fire Engineering Editorial Advisory Board.
