Vishen LakhianiFounder of Mindvalley | NYT Bestselling Author | Transforming Lives Globally

Trust is the most persuasive thing that you have at your disposal

14 Aug 2025 · 1 min

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Vishen Lakhiani argues that trust beats technique in persuasion. A skilled negotiator without trust loses to an unskilled one who has it. Building genuine connection matters more than mastering tactics.

Chapters

If I put the face of somebody who you know up on this screen, how long would it take for you to know whether or not you trust them? A split second. You didn't need to think about that. Right. It was instant, subconscious, automatic. Kind of like a bias. At the end of the day, trust is just a positive bias. Right. Imagine this. Imagine you have the world's greatest negotiator right here negotiating with you on a topic, trying to persuade you, but you don't trust that person. Now imagine here you have the world's worst negotiator and communicator, but you trust them on the issue. Who's going to be more persuasive to you? It's the person you trust. So we over index on these negotiation strategies and tactics. We're trying to break through and we think we just need another tool in our pocket to break through. But if we reconnect with just our core base, humanity, and connect with the other person and build trust, that's going to be the most persuasive thing that you have at your disposal.