Margaret’s Persuasion Coach Blog

Immediately after learning of the election results, I plunged into a deep grief, like after death of a loved one or a romantic break up. People find me exceptionally calm, but that night, I cratered. This grief triggered some equally deep self-assessment.

Catherine Onyemelukwe, a white American, went to Nigeria with the Peace Corps in the early 1960s and stayed twenty-four years. Now based in the U.S., Catherine serves on the U.S. Committee for UN Women, She is an activist for racial justice in her community and her...

Dear readers, I have been wanting to reach out and post something of comfort or a way forward at a time when many of us are experiencing grief in the wake of the recent election. Unfortunately, my own grief includes muddle-headed symptoms. I sometimes find myself...

I’ve been reading The Book of Joy by the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Douglas Abrams. Abrams interviews the two religious leaders about how they remain so joyful, given the hardships they’ve endured… Here are a few of the ways I’ve been practicing this joy tip.

[M]y vote for the most mischievous double-meaning term goes to the word “theory.” In common parlance, “theory” can mean an explanation that seems logical, or even a mere guess. A scientific theory, such as Einstein’s theory of general relativity, is a different animal.

People often describe good communication as “getting on the same page,” but sometimes we aren’t even using the same dictionary. Many terms have one meaning in the common vernacular, but a very different scientific or medical meaning. This leads to miscommunicating and sometimes deliberately misleading people.

Seeing this allowed me to believe in accretion in a way simply knowing the scientific explanation never had….Persuasion, consensus building and related communication skills can be like that…Only by trying the skills, seeing for yourself how they work, can you truly appreciate their power.

New studies now indicate how small, even fleeting, triggers, such as headlines and photos, can affect not only our moods, but even our mental and emotional health…Pictures, e.g., of kindly or angry human faces, affect us even more because they’re processed in the right brain. This automatically triggers emotions we feel in our bodies.

Last time I wrote about Isobel and Violet building a friendship despite differences of opinion. But Mary and Henry show us what not to do. The two are mutually attracted, passionately so. Yet Mary insists that they “aren’t right” for each other.

Our local PBS station recently re-aired all six seasons of Downton Abbey during a pledge drive. I’ve enjoyed them, but as a consensus trainer and author, I also had professional reasons to watch. I wanted to follow the development of the friendship between...