What different persuasive approaches would you use on the following audiences: a boss, a peer, a challenging person, or an open-minded person? Why would your approach differ?
Different audiences require different approaches to persuading them because they can express various attitudes to you, and they can assess your reliability in many ways depending on the criticism, sympathy, or even open hostility. That is why it is significant to pay attention to the peculiarities of the attitude of that person whom it is necessary to persuade.
To persuade the boss, it is important to provide credible information with references to reliable sources, current data, and facts. The message should be well-developed and logically organized to present the effective and rational result of the proper analysis. To persuade the peer, it is important to demonstrate the knowledge of the material discussed and even additional information. Peers can be considered as the critical audience that is why you should provide all the arguments with references to reliable sources and evidence. The arguments should be rational with analyzing the pros and cons of the issue.
The challenging person is rather difficult to persuade because he or she often has the quite opposite vision of the question. That is why it is necessary to present reasonable arguments with references to a lot of evidence and facts in which credibility and reliability are obvious. To be able to persuade effectively, it is necessary to draw the person’s attention to your words. Thus, the emotional hooks at the beginning of speech with basing on the recent influential facts are also effective. It is necessary to save the person’s attention until the concluding part of the speech with the help of interesting and reliable facts and the logic structure of the argument.
The open-minded person will react to the emotional appeal that is why it is significant to pay attention to your similarities to establish effective contact and use the sympathetic attitude. Thus, the approaches are different because of the differences in the audience’s attitude.
What is the difference between persuasion and manipulation? How do arguments and language affect the difference?
The difference between persuasion and manipulation is in the character of the intent of this or that action. When you want to persuade you to want the other person to change his or her mind because of the facts, evidence, and logical arguments provided by you. All this information is reliable and truthful, and your specific goal is to persuade the audience to adopt or share your point of view with references to the explanation presented. Thus, you try to lead your opponent to the adoption of your point of view by using logic and without any emotional or moral pressure.
When the person aims to influence the other people or even control them he or she uses manipulative techniques that are based on providing emotional and moral pressure, presenting misleading information. The intents of manipulation can often be considered as dishonest because the person changes her mind and act according to the leader’s desires despite her real wishes and viewpoints.
To manipulate the persons’ behavior and thoughts, people can focus on different language techniques when they use a lot of repetitions in their speech, definite jokes, and compliments. The language of manipulation is used to provoke the person’s strong reactions which can be unusual for him or her. Even blackmail can be used as a manipulative technique when the person is forced to think and act in a certain way.