Margaret’s Persuasion Coach Blog

In consensus training courses, we watch a person’s arm strength diminish visibly after (s)he concentrates on self criticism.  Then we see the strength increase when (s) practices legitimate self praise.  The most important lesson I drew from reading The Secret by...

When presenting training programs, I know that, if someone enters my classroom late, every student in the room will likely miss a bit of what I was saying, even though they think they weren't distracted. But external distractions aren't the only things that cause us...

Most of us honor diversity in gender, race, religion, etc. But without realizing it, we may discount valuable contributions from those whose temperaments differ from our own.   People who think quickly are often good at coming up with tactics for dealing with...

In “Fear v. Consensus,” I wrote about how fear defeats our best efforts to build consensus, and about one antidote to fear—extending a little love to someone in some way.   Humor is also good medicine in many ways.  It can dispel the fear that, as Yoda said,...

OK, so they aren’t really addicts.  They’re just people who use email, text messaging, social media, or any other form of writing as their default way of communicating.  They resist talking to you in person, or even on the phone.   My friend and fellow writer...

It pays to practice and test your ideas to get feedback before an important communication.  By trying out different versions of my slogan on a few people, I made a sea change in its effectiveness by changing just one word.  I then featured the improved version on the...

In my first post in this series, I told the story of how a one-word change in a slogan turned listeners reactions around 180 degrees. This means you have many opportunities and options for “clicking” with someone. When I changed “want” to “need,” responses changed...

When I first began to extend my consensus and communication services to faith communities and other nonprofits, I tried out my slogan on a man I met at church, whom I’ll call Jack. The slogan, which had been clicking with my corporate and professional clients, was,...

Yoda was right, “Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” Fear and anger can also lead to poor decisions, including those we make when we are trying to build consensus out of some type of difference or disagreement.  This is why, in Bridges...

Lately I’ve been re-reading The 100 Simple Secrets of Successful People by David Niven, Ph.D.  Each “secret” is about two pages long and includes a brief exposition of a principle, a real life example, and a statistic backing up the point.  I read only one secret each...