Leaders must influence people to change behavior, follow a vision, or accept new beliefs. In the final episode of our EQ series Hannah, Chris, and Luke discuss the power of persuasion. Influencing people through persuasion requires leaders to use story, logic, and emotion to inspire people to take action.

In this episode, your hosts complete their unlocking EQ series by exploring the topic of persuasion. Hannah looks at it as a simple way to alter behavior and influence someone to change. It could be encouraging them to action or do something differently. Ultimately, it’s anything that involves some level of change or activity that is influenced by somebody else.

Luke shares the importance of trust when dealing with any form of persuasion. For example, suppose you are a team member who’s trying to convince a disagreeable leader to try something different or give an alternative strategy a shot. In that case, you must build a rapport and capture their attention by addressing key points that matter to them, like securing quick wins.

Chris discusses how if a leader does everything right, they can yield persuasion. If we do everything right in business, it will generate revenue. But we cannot just decide to be more persuasive. We must be self-aware and deploy the other 14 things that the hosts regularly discuss on the Magic in the Room podcast around unlocking our emotional intelligence.

Hannah often thinks of persuasion as a very specific and intentional form of influence. History has taught us that it can be used for good and, sadly, in nefarious ways too. We’ve all seen examples of leaders who persuade people to do deplorable things and communicating using scarcity is a technique often used in this way.

In the wrong hands, it can be used to convince many people to make choices that they wouldn’t have otherwise made, which is not in the best interest of humanity. For Chris, persuasion should be seen as the last measurement of leadership effectiveness. Although we often discuss what is right and what is wrong, a leader’s role is to be effective.

We can read an article and learn how to complete a different financial technique or learn how to market a business or outsource time-consuming tasks. But we can’t outsource our team’s emotional intelligence, and there is overwhelming evidence that emotional intelligence matters. It can affect everything from our bottom line to the retention of our best people and ability to fulfill the purpose of our organization.

Hannah, Chris, and Luke enjoy helping businesses and individuals to think through how they can increase emotional intelligence in a team. They also provide educational content and experiences for teams around what it means to be an effective leader, teammate, team and address the mindsets that drive transformational performance.

You can also contact the hosts at  info@purposeandperformancegroup.com. Remember to fill out the listener survey and get a free Magic in the Room hat by going to  www.magicintheroom.com.

The post Magic in the Room #59: The Power of Persuasion appeared first on Purpose and Performance Group.