Session 6: Obstacles to Persuasion

The session-5 started with SKG sir giving us some theoretical inputs about the Persuasion. A video of “The Pursuit to Happiness” was shown and then we discussed about people’s attitude. Differences in Attitude and Behaviour were elaborated in the session. Attitude is something which is not expressed explicitly where as Behaviour is expressed explicitly (Thanks to Joydeep for revising!). It is important to note that Persuasion is a process of changing people’s attitude from Position A to Position B. (See Figure)

There can be various obstacles for changing the attitude of the people. People may like to perceive what they want to; they may like to remember what they want to; they might relate the experience they want to; some body may give forewarning of the persuasion; People may have been committed to contrary cause & the pressure of peer group can cause obstacle as well. We did a small exercise on the Obstacles and related strategies to overcome them.

The figure above states various examples dealt in the class reflecting the obstacles in persuasion.

The second part started with the presentation where we saw a video clip when Anup explaining importance of persuasion in Personal Life as well (!). They also showed some traits of decision makers from the movie clip- “Ek ruka hua Faisla”. The point they wanted to emphasise was that different decision makers need different strategies to be persuaded. The next presentation was by Jatin & Mukesh. Here we saw the anger of SKG sir. I must confine that sir has his own way of persuading the students. He himself comes with such preparation and knowledge & then lists down all the expectations from us. Failing on which, he clearly gives feedback. By this way, he also inspires others to work harder.

Assignment- Influencing Audio Clip

I also submitted two audio clips in which I had tried to influence two people in the work-place situation. The first one was when I was trying to Influence Mahesh, my colleague, to substitute me for a meeting. I tried to be Friendly with him and gave reason for my absence. I also bargained with him on the time of the meeting. At the same time I tried to insist the importance of the meeting and why it was important not to miss it. In the second clip I called my friend and tried to create an Onsite-Offshore situation, where I am trying to influence him to provide more human resource for a project. I tried giving reason as well as bargaining for the number of people. I also insisted importance by showing that more projects are coming. At the end he told me that he cannot give more human resource unless he has P.O. from the client (I swear I didn’t tell him to say that). To which I bargained two days time and asked to provide my required number of people after two days.

Session 5: Some Good Persuaders

This blog will be reflecting about some of the persuading characters I have observed recently. Some of them are from the movie SKG sir had assigned us to watch: “The Devil Wears Prada”. One more character I will talk about is Rusty (“Rascal Rusty” as it is called) from the novel “Mediocre But Arrogant”.

Let’s talk about characters from the movie first. The lead character in the movie was a girl named Andy, who is appointed as an assistant to Ms. Miranda Presley (Chief of a fashion magazine). Andy is totally the reverse of what her boss wanted her to be. She is ignorant about the fashion and does not think it is necessary to be fashionable to work for a fashion magazine. The first instance of her persuasion comes when she appears for the job interview in front of Ms. Presley. The tactic she used there was Assertiveness & insistence. She used the same strategies to gauge the work assigned to her from her colleague, Emily. She has also used Friendliness, Assertiveness and collaborative strategies to get the Harry Potter books from a journalist she met in a party. She also used strategy of Coalition to extract some of the information about possible change in magazine chief.

Ms. Presley was a dominating and strong character in the movie. She used Non-Verbal communication to convey her Authority to her sub-ordinates. She was the one who made Andy wear fashionable attires by the simply scanning her from the top to bottom. She had built her credibility and personality by the knowledge she displayed and authoritative tone of voice she used. She dismissed any arguments by simply saying, “That’s all!” She used the strategies of Coalition and Bargaining when her position as the magazine chief was under a threat.

Bozo (fashion designer) was another character in the movie, which had used some of the influencing strategies. At one instance when Andy was about to quit her job, Bozo used strategy of Reasoning to influence her. He also offered her counsel and influenced her by Friendliness. The freelance journalist tried using strategies like Bargaining, Friendliness and Coalition to influence Andy.

The movie effectively showed how various psyche of people requires different strategies to be applied on them. For instance, a decision maker who is more of Controller type, strategies like bargaining, coalition and assertiveness would work. The charismatic decision maker would be more influenced by Assertiveness, reason and insistence. A thinker would be looking for reasons in the persuader. A sceptic would need a lot of reasons, friendliness and assertiveness to be influenced & the followers would be influenced by friendliness, higher authority and collaborative strategies.

I recently read a novel- “Mediocre But Arrogant”. Which is a fictional story on a campus of a B-school called Management Institute of Jamshedpur (XLRI). Rascal Rusty, who is a friend of the lead character in the book, is a very persuasive personality according to me. The character has various traits of influencing others with different strategies at different times. He has been shown to be using Reason & Logic backed by the credible sources to influence some of the professors. He used to help others in the assignments on paid basis. He showed the bargaining and coalition in those trades to extract more amounts. He used friendliness and bargaining with the Mess contractor in getting good supply of foods from the mess. In fact, he was such an influencing character that people fell into his trap many a times. His mischievous practical jokes gave him the tag of Rascal in the book.

At the end of the session-5 we ourselves performed a persuasion task (apart from the assignment). We were facing the problem of excessive sunlight in the classroom that made the projector ineffective. Three of us (Me, Shobhit & Shashank) went to Mr. Vipul for possible solutions. He told us that the curtains were ordered but somehow GERMI had cancelled the order for that. We then went to GERMI office to sort the matter out. We shared our concern with him in an Assertive way and insisted not to let our education suffer. We explained that this was a permanent problem and required urgent attention. He agreed that we required the curtains on the windows. But the same took some time to be delivered. In response to that we suggested him to give an intermediate solution till the curtain was installed. We asked him to stick a chart paper in the meantime. We gave the reasons and bargained the solution to be taken effect immediately. Next day when we walked into the classroom, we saw the chart papers stuck and some people taking measurement of the window for the curtains.

Session 4: Standard & Poor SPM Stock Exchange

The class geared up for yet another surprise (I wonder till when I’ll keep writing this word). Indeed, SKG sir put one more bundle(s) out of his bundles. He asked us to get divided into groups of 5 randomly. Then he gave various shapes badges to wear on our pocket (Square, Round & Triangle). I was under the square badge.

The game was like this: we were given some chips with each colour signifying some value. Also, the repetition of the colour also gave some bonus value. The task was that each player had to keep his chips to himself and trade it with other players. The trade, however, was to be done following certain rules and regulations. We could not talk with other players except for entering into a handshake. Once the players enter into a handshake, they have to exchange chips with each other. Also, they should not reveal which chips they hold. A player could show his/her intention of not to trade by keeping the arms folded.

The game started and after 5 minutes SKG sir asked all the people to report their points. The top five scorers were given square badge. Hence, people wearing the square badge were demoted if they were not among top five. Before the next round of trading RBI (Sir) infused some more liquidity in the market by giving some more chips. This however came with a condition that groups had to decide which members should get those chips. After the next round of trading we witnessed another twist; after listing the top performers and promoting/demoting people to the respective groups, sir termed the “Square Group” as the policy makers. He then asked other two groups to give suggestions about revision of the points of each colour. The acceptance of these suggestions was subject to the description of the Policy Makers. The policy makers could also change the values without any such suggestion.

Distinct attributes of the people with varying wealth were witnessed here.

The Rich Capitalists: The policy makers, the rich people were seen to dominate, protecting their own wealth and at times also self-centred.

The inactive Middle Class: The middle class meaning people midway in the wealth were passive in their approach and body-language. They were also tending to protecting what they had with not ready to take more risks.

The aggressive Low Strata: People having the lowest wealth were aggressive and unhappy about their position. They were also adamant on their point and also seen to put everything at stake to prove their point.

Phew! What a game that was. In fact it was a great learning experience. How difference in position of people can affect their bargain power in the deal was the most important lesson to be learnt. Psychology of people entering the negotiation affects their performance to a larger extent. In fact, we can use the information about the person in front of us to judge his action in the negotiation. As I have discussed earlier as well, today the information plays pivotal role in the Persuasion.

The second half dealt with the spill-over of my group’s presentation. We discussed the Maslow’s needs of hierarchy with the help of a sound clip of Martin Luther King (MLK). We also explained importance of initial credibility, gaining credibility showing own experience and emotional appeal. The videos we had shown belonged to the movies Men of Honour & JFK.

Session-3 It’s all about Credibility

The third session was an example of Doing-And-Learning. SKG sir started with reading some phrases and asking us to repeat them in the same tone. While we were still puzzled about what it meant, sir told us that he would be dictate a passage and we needed to write it. Sir would stop if we would interrupt using the phrases he made us repeat.

The task looked simple until he started the dictation. We stopped him three-four times and ended up writing the way we understood (I thought I wrote it correctly). He then asked one of the participants to read out what he had written but he could not complete. He then played a clip which was about the similar dictation and the writer had asked the speaker to stop numerous times in a variety of ways. Next we were divided in the pairs to learn it ourselves. It took us a great effort to write it correctly and still we made various mistakes.

Well, the intention of the exercise was simple: Show us that we do not ask questions even if we do not understand. Is it not ironical that we aspire for top career in a sector very vital to the Indian Economic development? When we do not have knack of going in-depth of an issue, we just cannot analyze and solve the problems we face. It was indeed and eye-opener for me. In fact I have learnt two important lessons for personal development. First is about challenging the frame and second is about clearing the doubts.

We were shown a video of an insurance seminar where a speaker was motivating the Agents. The intention was not about following or copying the speaker. We needed to observe the pattern in which he speaks. I had made some of the observations for the speaker which I am noting down.

1.       The speaker was introduced with a long list of achievements which established his Initial Credibility.

2.       The speaker (Mr. Santosh Nair) then took his time to adjust and deliberately delayed speaking by having a glass of water and adjusting the mike. This was meant to increase the anticipation in the audience.

3.       He started very energetically with walking the whole podium several times. He then engaged the crowd by making them shout “Good Morning”.

4.       He narrated his own experience of salesmanship describing the hardships he had faced. Whereby, he builds his own credibility and at the same time he gained sympathy.

5.       He kept enhance his credibility by giving example of successful persons he has been tracking, books he reads & so on.

6.       He then went on to raise an Emotional Appeal by reminding about their dreams and desires.

As SKG sir rightly said that it may not be necessary for us to agree with his content but his method of speaking and presentation of content was indeed commendable.

In the theory part my group presented the Presentation on Process of Persuasion. We showed videos from Movies like Men of Honour, Flight of the Pheonix and JFK. We also played a sound clip of an excerpt from a famous speech “I have a dream!” by Martin Luther King.

Note: All the Views, Interpretations, Descriptions and Depictions in the blog are entirely from Author's View-point. Differences in terms of Actuality, Accuracy and Point of View may exist depending upon the person-to-person.

Session 2: Persuasion within the team, challenging the Frame & Elements of Persuasion

The session two was also a bag full of surprises! First of all, SKG sir asked all of us to remove the chairs from the centre & asked us to assemble in the centre. The class was only half of what was in the first session thanks to Diwali & Drop-outs. We were than divided in two teams. The task was to de-activate forty mines (Numbers) in a certain manner (by stamping with both feet). But we also needed to follow the order meaning it should be in sequence from 1 to 40. Each team had to bid for the time they were going to take & the lowest bidder would get the opportunity.

We were 9 members in the team. We first thought of strategy that we will get eight persons to search mines & one person monitoring the order. Each person was given numbers to search in the gap of eight (1, 9, 17...). The logic was simple: Considering that each number will take 2 seconds for the search, the time-gap between two numbers for a person was 16 seconds which was sufficient. We thought that we should keep 20 seconds buffer, then thought the other team must be thinking the same. So we kept only 10 seconds as buffer plus the 80 seconds for the mines, which came to 90 seconds. And lo, we won the bid by 10 seconds. What happened next can be termed in a single word: CHAOS!

Some of my team members did not follow the order & kept on running from one place to another. We finished in 78 seconds but made 7 mistakes which took our time to 183 seconds. The team-B had a case-study of mistakes ready. They applied a different tactic, allocating the area of the room to the members. They had seen the result of panicking & worked calmly with Joy & Suyog monitoring the process smoothly. They finished in 93 seconds. We tried to challenge with much better accuracy but reached to 130 seconds. In all, the few things were clear. Many of us did not work according to the plan. They broke the sequences, panicked too much and stamped in a wrong way. I still think we could manage in 90 seconds. Anyways, what are the take-away? It’s the following:

1. Aggressive bidding may not be a good strategy always.

Well, I had to put this first as it was my instant reaction. We panicked, made mistakes because we were under-pressure. Pressure exerted by ourselves by bidding too aggressively.

2. Building consensus was easy, but ensuring that people have convinced is also a part of persuasion.

This may not have been discussed in the class but I feel it’s relevant as it came as an after-thought. People who did not stick to the plan may not have been convinced but they were oppressed by the majority. So, at the time of execution they could not perform. Had they cleared all their doubts, there would have been a different story.

3. Simpler the plan, easier the execution.

I think explaining this is an insult of the statement!

Next was an exercise where a sheet full of instructions was given and we had to work on it individually in 3 minutes. In essence, we had to read the instructions first & then work on it. But I started working on it from the start & when I reached the last one, I came to know it wasn’t required! This gave me two useful insights:

· Challenging the Frame- Asking the Questions.

· Patience

After that the theory session was conducted by Suyog, Shobhit, Shashank & Joydeep. It started with three videos epitomising Ethos, Pathos & Logos (We could connect at the end). The significant discussions were done on the order of importance of the three elements of the persuasion. I would list the insights drawn by me:

1. The order of importance for the elements depends on two things: The target audience & the skill matched by the persuader.

2. Credibility has taken over the leadership from Logic mainly due to the ease of information available.

3. Un-ethical means of persuasion (bribing) & Carrot-stick techniques are not the part of persuasion.

All in all it was another action packed session with a lot of interaction. Next session is the presentation by my group so stay tuned. Fellows, do post comments.

Note: All the Views, Interpretations, Descriptions and Depictions in the blog are entirely from Author's View-point. Differences in terms of Actuality, Accuracy and Point of View may exist depending upon the person-to-person.

Session-1: Persuasive Communications & Negotiations

The first session of PCN started with a surprise with SKG sir bringing out Playing Cards and announcing that we will be playing a game with it. Indeed, we were expecting something fun coupled with some key take-away from the course, but cards were a bit of surprise. The game was somewhat like this: we were divided into six groups of five members each. Each of us were handed a deck. We needed to form Five Hands after taking 25 cards randomly from the deck. We could take help of two other groups located on the same side by exchanging the cards. Let's see how it turned out to be.

Group of Suyog & Joydeep finished first after they had distributed the work evenly and went to Shobhit's group and Arjit's group for a card. Shobhit's group handed them the required card and they ended up making the required formations. Finishing next was our group. We had Jatin who was very fast with cards and Vinay who could think fast. We made as many hands as possible with available cards (resources!). Then we thought that we needed two cards from other groups and in return we could give two of them. We went to the group next to us (Shubham's) and asked what they had in extra for the swap. But they were still not sure about it. Then we moved on to the next group (Vikram & Mukesh). What happened here can be interpreted in many ways; I would put it in the way we had intended (or saw) it should happen!

We told Gauraw & Vikram about the cards we needed and what we could give them in return. They also needed one of the cards we were offering. In fact Mukesh took us the card he needed. They were ready to give one of the cards to us but not the other. Vinay told him that either we would exchange both of the cards or not a single one. I also asked them to return our card if they cannot give us both of the cards. Several things happened together; someone from the group behind us started interfering which distracted their attention. Secondly, they were not ready as yet to strike a deal or to put it simply, they were not sure if the other card we were offering was entirely Useless. This gave us advantage in Negotiation and we demanded our card back. Mukesh at the other hand was completely confused and he ended up giving the two cards we needed and we made the hands.

What all we learnt from this? I would summarise in the following points:

1. When entering the Negotiation you should know your vulnerabilities and requirements.
   

   This happened to us. We knew which card we needed & we were vulnerable if we got only one of them. However, Vikarm & Co were not exactly sure if they could make it with or without a particular card. They finished last.
   

2. There is a "First-Mover's Advantage" in the Negotiation.
   

   Like we saw, both my group & Suyog's group went first for the Negotiation and ended up striking the deals. In fact we had an upper hand just because we went to them.
   

3. You have to Optimise between using your own resources to the end and Outsourcing.
   

   This one is a bit out of the way but it is my analysis. I think that we all could make all our hands entirely from our cards. But we crashed the activity to the point we could do fast. Then, we went to the other groups (Outsourcing). Arjit's group, on the other hand, had made it entirely from their cards and they finished third. Had they done it our way i.e. making as many hands possible and then going to other teams, they could have won.
   

All in all, it was a fun-filled session. I hope for more learning coupled with fun in next sessions.

Note: All the Views, Interpretations, Descriptions and Depictions in the blog are entirely from Author's View-point. Differences in terms of Actuality, Accuracy and Point of View may exist depending upon the person-to-person.