How To Persuade And Influence People

What's up, everybody? This is Charlie from Charisma on Command. And today I want to show you a video on how to be persuasive when you need people to change. Because the truth is, there are situations in our lives, like our social lives, where you don't have to be persuasive. If you don't get along with someone, guess what? You can just filter them out of your life and keep the people that are positive that lift you up. But in certain situations, particularly the working world, if you're in a large organization or you just have some people beneath you or you're trying to get some team to do something that you want, you are going to have to work with people that who disagree with you. And you can't just filter them out. So you need to know how to be persuasive against obstinacy. So this video is going to show you Barack Obama speaking on one of the most recent shootings that happened just a few days ago at the time of this. And he follows these steps very, very well. Regardless of where your politics fall on this issue, there is a lot to learn from this, so let's dive in.

But as I said just a few months ago, and I said a few months before that, and I said each time we see one of these mass shootings, our thoughts and prayers are not enough.

So what you see right here, this is the first step, is you need to introduce the problem that you have in your organization, wherever, wherever you need people to change. Whatever you're doing is not working. And the first step is going to be to show that to people and associate pain to the status quo. So just watch what he does here.

It's not enough. It does not capture the heartache and grief and anger that we should feel. And it does nothing to prevent this carnage from being inflicted someplace else in America.

So there you go. There's the problem, there's the current pain, is that this is going to happen again and it's going to suck and we should all feel terrible about it. Now, I'm gonna bounce around here a little bit because I want to show you, as he continues this point right here, to elicit further pain with the status quo.

Somehow this has become routine. The reporting is routine. My response here at this podium ends up being routine. The conversation in the aftermath of it, we've become numb to this.

And you see the emotion that he's eliciting is like almost shame or embarrassment at how frequently this occurs. And he's gonna go running into all these Negative cultural feelings that we have associated with the different times this happened. And he does this right now.

We talked about this after Columbine and Blacksburg, after Tucson, after Newtown, after Aurora, after Charleston, after. It cannot be this easy for somebody who wants to inflict harm on other people to get his or her hands on a gun.

So there you go. That is step one. This sucks. What we are living in right now is terrible. When people don't want to change, the first step is not to tell them how wonderful it will be when they change or start to dealing with anything else. The first step is to get them moving. And to do that, you have to make them associate the status quo, the current action or inaction that they are taking with serious pain. And he does that very well. In the opening of this speech, I am going to bounce around and go back because I want to make this very clear. He does sort of go back and forth between some of these steps. But moving now, I want to show you the second step, which is going to be handling objections before people actually bring them up. You do not want to have to wait until after you talk for people to say, well, you didn't cover this, or you didn't cover that, or, how are we supposed to do this? You need to preemptively handle anything, any objections. And like two thirds or three quarters of this speech is just him handling the objections that he knows he's going to get. So let's check it out.

And it's fair to say that anybody who does this has a sickness in their minds, regardless of what they think their motivations may be. But we are not the only country on Earth that has people with mental illnesses or want to do harm to other people. We are the only advanced country on Earth that sees these kinds of mass shootings every few months.

So, boom, there's your first objection. He goes through like six or seven of these. I'm going to show you a couple of them as he bounces around. But you need to know, you need to put yourself into the shoes of the people that you're trying to convince. Why did they think it is impossible for them to change? Why do they think it isn't a good idea for them to change? And you need to cover that and deal with those objections first. It shouldn't be a dialogue where you go. And they go, oh, yeah, what about this? Because now they are dug into their position. The more you can preemptively address the objection, the less strong the objection becomes. So I wanted to show you a couple More examples, at the risk of being pedantic here, of this objection handling.

And what's become routine, of course, is the response of those who oppose any kind of common sense gun legislation. Right now, I can imagine the press releases being cranked out. We need more guns. They'll argue fewer gun safety laws.

The way to think about objections, oddly enough, what it reminds me of is the movie 8 Mile, the very last scene where Eminem is rapping against the guy, his rap, that is the best scene in the entire movie, is where he says that could be said negatively about him before his opposition. That's how to think about presenting these objections. You don't want to do it in a way where you just say it. You need to come up with a reason why those objections are not valid. But if you do that, you will leave the people who are naysayers, who do not want to change with nothing to hold on to. So it's so important get in their shoes and think of the other objections that they might come up with.

There are scores of responsible gun owners in this country. They know that's not true.

So now we're moving into the third step, which is going to be consistency, right? We've associated the problem with pain. We've dealt with objections. Now what we need to do is convince people that the course of action that we want them to take is actually consistent with their current identity. You do not want to be convincing people that they need to make massive changes, even if the changes are really massive changes, because people naturally resist change. What they will move towards, though, is seeing that, hey, maybe this thing that I didn't realize is like me actually is right. So that's why he says, what responsible gun owners. He's not trying to tell people, give up all your guns. He's saying the responsible thing to do because you're a responsible person, aren't you? Is to follow my course of action.

We know because of the polling that says the majority of Americans understand we should be changing these laws, including the majority of responsible law abiding gun owners.

The objection to what Obama says a lot of the times regarding guns is that if you follow the law and you're responsible, there's not a problem. He has grouped those people into his side and made them consistent with his beliefs by saying, look at the thing, look at the social proof. We've got all these polls that say this is what people like you want to do. Very, very powerful. And we're going to continue now with more and more handling of this consistency.

News Organizations, because I won't put these facts forward. Have news organizations tally up the number of Americans who've been killed through terrorist attacks over the last decade and the number of Americans who have been killed by gun violence and post those side by side on your news reports. This won't be information coming from me, it will be coming from you.

I think this is the most brilliant part of the entire speech and it's the part just a few days later that is getting the most coverage because the news organizations did in fact do what he said. This is still step three, consistency. You need to make people feel, feel like it is part of their identity to change. And the way that you do this is not by preaching at them, showing them stats and statistics. You give them ownership of the argument. And that's what he's done here. He says, I'm not going to put this in front of you, you should go up, look up these numbers, do it on your own and guess what happens when that, then that occurs. The news stations, the people that are looking for these numbers, they retain personal ownership of this fact and it begins to move them more than if Obama stood up there with a chart and said look at this, you need to accept this. Instead of in that case they'd be resistant, but because they're going and doing it on their own, there is implicit ownership there. So, so, so huge.

We spend over a trillion dollars and pass countless laws and devote entire agencies to preventing terrorist attacks on our soil, and rightfully so.

So what's he doing here? He is comparing something that people already are supportive of and already do, which is spending money to prevent terrorist attacks. Right? A lot of money. And he says that's a great idea, he's on your side. And what he's about to do is take that pre existing action and say why? It's like what he wants you to do in the future. Again, if you need people to change, it is far, far easier to convince them that the thing that you want them to do is basically what they've been doing in the past with a shift. It's not this whole new thing. They don't have to become a brand new type of person. They don't have to give up their most deeply held values and beliefs. They just need to see things in a slightly different perspective. And, and if they do that, what they'll see is that this is actually the type of person they are. A responsible gun owning, law abiding citizen is going to be someone who is in favor of these.

When Americans are killed in mine disasters, we work to make mines safer. When Americans are killed in floods and hurricanes, we make communities safer.

Again, you can see where he's going here. Still, step three, he's saying, look at all these things that we already do, how we already handle this. This is a logical extension. Gun safety is a logical extension of the way that we help protect people from weather and mines and all these kinds of things. The last thing that he's going to do here is going to be to make an ask. It's kind of a humbling ask right here. And he just says that he needs help.

I'd ask the American people to think about how they can get our government to change these laws. And this is not something I can do by myself. I've got to have a Congress and I've got to have state legislatures.

So right here, Obama goes through and just lists all the people that he needs. But this is what you have to do. At the end of any of these speeches that you're giving, if you're trying to get people on board, you cannot drag them. You need to say, I need your help, and ask at the end, because it is an ask. At the end of the day, you cannot make anyone do anything. That is not what persuasion is. It is getting them to want to do things, to take action, ownership over an idea that maybe started in your head, but that you helped cultivate in theirs. So those are the five steps. Actually, there's one that a Barack Obama missed that I like to do whenever I'm trying to persuade people, which is the fourth step right before you ask, is to detail in explicit detail what it would look like if things went well with your new plan. So that you don't just have people running away from a status quo of pain, but you have them running towards something that is really exciting. So if you add those together, what you have is, first, illustrate the problem and associate pain to it. Second, preemptively deal with any objections that you have researched. And you know that your audience has three, convince them that your plan of action is actually consistent with the type of person that they are and the type of person that they want to be. It's a logical extension of their current value system, not a deviation from it. And then fourth, which is not seen here, paint the heaven that happens if they go in the direction that you'd like them to. And fifth, end with an ask. You cannot force them to. You need to just ask. So hope that has been helpful. If you like these and want to get more of them, on YouTube. Please subscribe to the channel. Thumbs up it. And of course, what is most helpful to me is if you write a comment with a specific video of a charisma breakdown that you'd like me to do. That helps so, so much. This is Charlie Hubert and I hope you found this helpful.