“To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, require creative imagination and marks real advance in science” Albert Einstein One of the most effective ways to turn around a dwindling situation is to ask the right questions. Questions work both ways – they can help both the influencer and […]
Influence Academy Blog
How Do People Make Decisions?
It’s easy to say that we want other people to agree with everything that we want them to do, but in the final analysis, this single task would be extremely difficult to accomplish if we had no idea how people actually make decisions. Few teachers of influence will actually bother themselves to discuss decision making […]
A Crash Course in Body Language, Part 2
Body language provides an estimated 50% to 70% of the totality of human expressions. We speak not only with our words but also with our facial expressions, hand gestures, postures, etc. Only a handful knows this but we are actually revealing more about ourselves through our body language than through our words. Verbal language is […]
A Crash Course in Body Language, Part 1
To be truly persuasive, you need to have full control over all three channels of human communication. Verbal language is just one channel – although many people believe that we express ourselves solely through words. While it is true that verbal language has proven to be efficient in conveying statistics, knowledge and facts, it still […]
The One Word That Could Persuade People (In Almost Any Situation)
It is estimated that the English language has over one million familiar and frequently used words. We may not be using all of these words but when a child hits the age of four, he already has a fair mastery of the language itself. Would you believe it if I told you that there is […]
A Deeper Look at Mirroring and Matching
One of the cornerstones of NLP (neuro linguistic programming) and NLP is the process of the establishing rapport or harmony with the subject. It doesn’t matter if the subject is a man, woman or child – rapport has to be established if you want to really connect with the subject and influence him/her to do […]
How Can Similarities Covertly Influence People?
We live in a largely globalized, multi-cultural world. The United States (as well as many other large, industrialized nations) has become a veritable melting pot of different ethnicities. Guys like Thomas Friedman have acknowledged that ‘the world is flat’ and that we now live by different rules under globalization. Despite these monumental changes in the […]
Admitting Faults Can Make You Trustworthy
People usually go through life thinking that they have to be perfect in order to be truly persuasive and influential. While it might sound logical to want to be perfect, recent studies show that admitting little faults can actually help you create an image of trustworthiness and credibility. How is this possible? A study spearheaded […]
The Persuasive Power of Questions
Have you ever wondered why veteran pitch men seem to get their way when they are selling something on TV? Part of their success is their ability to use questions to their advantage even if they are in a largely one-way interaction (i.e. TV audiences can’t really respond to their questions). Questions have that unique […]
A Shortcut to Persuasion: Storytelling, Part 2
Effective storytelling can spell the difference between a captivating and persuasive dialog and a boring and energy-sapping interaction. As the influencer you are responsible not only for providing hard facts and argument; you are also obliged to be a good storyteller. Good storytellers rarely fail because they can gain rapport with their subjects more quickly […]