¶ Introduction to Persuasion & Influence
Are you unknowingly sabotaging your influence by focusing too much on yourself or worse, relying on logic alone? Welcome back to Speak Up, the number one ranked business communication podcast where we help high-performing introvert leaders, including you social introverts. Turn your ideas into influence and improve business outcomes. Because being brilliant does not automatically make you influential. I am your host, Laura Camacho, your career accelerator and executive presence.
strategist and godmother. By the end of this episode with Joshua Bandock, you will know how to instantly become more persuasive by shifting focus on what others actually care about. Why emotions, Not logic drive decisions and how to use that to your advantage. and simple practical techniques like storytelling, strategic silence, and barrier removal to win people over.
So everybody, welcome Joshua Bandok from Chicago. And listen everybody, in case you didn't read those show notes, today you're gonna learn how to get what you want. So I'll just say you're welcome. Welcome to the show, Josh. It's great to have you here. You have a very complete book on persuasion and influence. Well done. And I love your first point. And I think that's the biggest.
mind shift that too many of us worry about being impressive, right? And that's completely wrong. Is it me or what do you think most people get completely wrong about how to influence a person?
Yeah, so first of all, thank you. It's a real honor to be here. You have an also podcast, so I'm really honored to be a guest. Thank you.
¶ Overcoming Self-Focus: Persuader's Mindset
So some of the counterintuitive things like what do we get wrong? We're wired in a couple of ways that help us survive and they impede our ability to thrive, especially when it comes to persuading others. And for me, persuasion is the difference between having a good idea and having others embrace it. Big difference.
Okay, good.
We're all full of good ideas. How do we convey them persuasively? So what are some of the counterintuitive things? I'll start with I think two of the biggest ones. One was easy for me. One was really hard for me. The one that was at least for me a little bit easier, but is hard for for a lot of people is that we are wired to think primarily about ourselves.
And we therefore end up talking a lot about ourselves. The data show that we talk about ourselves sixty percent of the time. And on social media, that rises to eighty percent of the time. It feels really good to talk about ourselves. Talking about ourselves generates the same sensations as sex and money. So it feels pretty good. Oh wow.
Yeah. We are wired to think and talk about ourselves. And if we don't talk about our think about ourselves, who's going to? The problem is that that is not persuasive and it impedes thriving because if I'm talking to you all about me, that's the persuasive to you. If I want to persuade you of something, I've got to flip the script. And instead of making it about me, which is how we're wired, I've got to put you first.
So the first thing I talk about in the book is adopting what I call the persuader's mindset, which is to put them first. And by doing this, that is how you get what you want.
I wanna add to that though. I wanna before I get going, I just wanna add to that folks. I know that some of you are thinking, but Laura, I I don't talk about myself. And that may be true, but you may be talking about your thing, like your solution or your feature or your product or your financial plan. Like It's not it doesn't have to be you personally. It can be like the thing that you have invested so much in that is so amazing. like that is also like don't
Hundred percent. Yeah.
Exactly. And what was your second thing that the second that you were?
¶ Emotions Over Logic & Influencing Leaders
Oh my god, this one was so hard for me is In my previous life I was an academic. So academics are present logic, papers, peer review, all this kind of stuff and This leads a lot of folks to think that the way that you persuade people, quote unquote, is through logic. And the more logic, the better. And the best thing you can do is beat people over the head with your logic. I witnessed this in many academic seminars.
So for this book, this is a decade of research and practical experience communicating. And this is what all the neuroscience and all the psychology should We feel first. Then reason. Sometimes it's feel but reason. Sometimes it's feel, then reason. Sometimes it's feel and we and we never get to reasoning. Mm-hmm. Moreover, people who suffer.
brain damage and they lose the ability to properly emote, their reasoning is actually impaired. So emotions actually support reasoning. Oh wow. So what this means is that the logic first approach to persuasion is actually illogical. What you have to do, this is super counterintuitive, is start with feeling. Understand how your audience is feeling and understand how you want them to feel to get them to do what you want.
Okay, so let's say that somebody listening is going to have a meeting with senior, senior people in in his or her company that he doesn't or she doesn't know very well. And the person is saying, Laura, I don't know what Mr a C E O or what Miss C F I don't know them well enough to focus this on them. What would you say in that scenario?
So I think you are in two different situations. A situation where you can ask questions beforehand or during the meeting, and then situations where you just have to present and then you get their feedback. So when you get to ask questions beforehand or at the start of the meeting, ask them what their priorities are. Don't just assume what they are. Ask them.
Ask them what their goals are. Ask them how they feel about things. So if you have some ideas, you can say, you know, how would you feel about, you know, moving our company in this direction? But also just understand where they want to take things and understand why they wanna go there. Because once you understand them and what they care about, then you can frame things in their terms.
Like they're not thinking that you're gonna have all the answers and know everything right off the bat.
They're senior. They don't want you to have all the answers. They're senior for a reason. So then when you ask those questions, here here's the hard part. You kind of go in thinking you have answers. And this is where probably your more introverted listeners will will probably thrive: is you got to listen. Once you ask those questions. Right. Dial in and then demonstrate to them that you understand and then appeal to those things and then put things in their terms.
And then
probably again, if you can start the meeting, ask questions. But if you just have to present then Here are a couple of things. I would be for something. So you're trying to generate positive emotions and you're gonna be for things you you know resonate with the company. So whatever you're you know, we're in a Southwest or Ford or Whole Foods or whatever.
Right. Be things that you know the senior leadership are for and kind of frame this as a good starting point. So you're going to try to generate positive emotions around things that you know resonate. And you're going to as best as you can try to put things in their terms.
¶ The Art of Listen First
There was one scenario in your book that I felt that Joshua got me because you talk about listening a lot. But I always think and tell me audience, this is for you, tell me if I'm wrong, but I think that we're better listeners than average because we're introverts and part of our problem is that we listen so well that we don't speak up enough.
And some conversations and you alluded to one, I think they feel like interrogations after a while because the other person doesn't ask anything. And I'm like, are you that? self absorbed that you're not remotely curious, you're not throwing the ball back. So What are we doing wrong in that scenario?
I I think I know exactly the passage you're referring to. It's probably towards the end of chapter one where I think maybe the section is called like What About Me? So listen first. does not mean listen only.
I love that.
There's a difference there. So the default should be listening. And there are missionary and mercenary reasons to listen. The missionary reason is that it's a great way to authentically connect with the person you're talking to. And the mercenary reason is that
we think that whoever is talking is in control. No, no, no. Right. When you're talking to a client, dental client, and you're asking questions and then listening, they're giving you boatloads of information that you can use to decide if and how you can You can make a deal with them.
So that's the mercenary reason. So listen, listen, listen, and then I go through a couple of different kinds of listening. So what happens if you're too good of a listener? And this has happened to me before where I'll listen for like two hours and then I feel like Nothing happened. One of two things can be the case. I used to work in fundraising and I once had this meeting where it's like ninety minutes and it was just
The guy talked like ninety plus percent of the time and I left that meeting, we're about to end and I thought, failure. I was I was new to fundraising and I I I totally messed up. And then he said Oh my God. I feel so connected to you and your organization. And I first thought to myself, I said, That you don't? And then I thought, wait a minute It doesn't matter that I didn't say all the brilliant things I knew I had to say because he felt connected to
So it's possible that simply listening forms that connection. But sometimes you're totally left out of the equation. Then you've got to find ways to insert yourself into the equation. That might just be, you know, do you mind if I share some things from my perspective? Or how would you also feel about X? Remember, going back to feelings, but insert some of your interests.
into that or at least make sure that your interests are on the table in a sort of like way that is appropriate, but kind of firmly puts them there. So it listen first can't be listen only. And if the person has no interests whatsoever, well, that's also kind of a good indicator that maybe they're not gonna be the best partner in the world.
Yeah, and in the social context. I believe I want to know if if you agree that there are just some people that are not socially sophisticated enough to know that they're supposed to ask question back. So they sincerely believe you were just fascinated by them. Yeah. And so you say, Oh, and and you go refresh my coffee and then you go to Venezuela and Go talk to somebody else.
Right. It's not wrong to insert yourself into a conversation. Part of what you do when you say, like, you know, do you mind if I share some things from my perspective? Or you're talking to a friend. I If you don't know somebody, then part of what you're doing if, you know, it's an hour where they're just talking, you're asking questions, they're talking, talking, talking, you're looking for that overlap. But then also when you try to insert your interest
into the conversation, if they brush them off, that's a good indicator. Or if they say, oh my God, thank you for asking that. Right. Or yeah, absolutely. Please share your perspective. It since you started with listening, they're gonna feel more connected to you. And then you share your perspective on things. You say, okay, well, here are some things that I would need to also make this work for me.
How do you feel about this? And you lay it out there. And then you're sort of testing their response. And then if they say that. You know, sorry, I'm not interested. Okay, well, better to have done that. But if you forget to insert yourself into the equation. Then you're going to have things that are unanswered. And maybe they're expecting or not expecting things that you're expecting. So you do need to find a way to insert.
your interests. You don't need to leave with that. But if you don't at least end with that somewhere towards the end, then you're going to set yourself up for some trouble because you think, oh my God, I formed this great connection. But you didn't put things on the table that they might love or they might hate.
So another aspect that you
¶ Vision, Positivity, and Happy Warriors
talk about in your book that I found I was like, Oh my gosh, yes I have so many clients that they they like the vision. Like they they're so used to like implementing and operating and executing with excellence. And then they're they're director or senior director of something and they haven't developed
a vision of where they think things oughta go. So where do you think of the good starting place for someone in a company to work on their vision? You give a lot of tips in the book, but just generally speaking, where would you start?
Vision is super important because vision is what animates action. And for me, persuasion is shared action. It's shared because it's voluntary and it's action because it's something that we do. It's not just about speaking pretty words. So how does that happen in the big, big picture way for individuals and for groups? is vision.
You need a vision for your own life. Whatever it is, whatever you do personally and professionally, you need that vision. That's your North Star. One way you do that is by making sure that you can share your ideas persuasively. Otherwise, they stay on a shelf. So... If you're a manager or a leader at a company, what's gonna motivate dozens or hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of people to continue day in and day out to be excited to do what they're doing and that
The vision. That's what animates action. So that's your North Star. Ask yourself what's your North Star and what's going to be something that resonates with others too? Because you gotta, even if you share a vision in a sense, it has to appeal to whoever your audience is.
Right, right. It has to go beyond, oh, I wanna be able to retire by certain age at in a certain lifestyle or take care of my mom or it has to be something bigger. That's absolutely true. So I want to segue to another topic in your book. That coincidentally, I'm reading a book, my fun book is by Victor Davis Hansen. And I just read about this battle of salamis or salamis, like 500 years BC, and now it's the
the battle between Alexander the Great and Xerxes, I believe, the Persians, right? And so the the Greek the Greek So I read that last night. And then this morning, what do I open up to in the book about persuasion is the modeling of happy warriors. And I think that's such a Unusual juxtaposition. So how did you come up with that for persuasion and influence?
Thank you. This is actually one of the most fun things because I think it's a really powerful thing. Yeah. What is it? So we talked about how we feel first. Then the question is, well, what kinds of feelings are persuasive? We are wired to be negative. We have something called negativity bias that attunes our attention to negative things. So it helps us survive. And if you look around, you know, go on to cable news for half a second and you're a wash in negative.
I I think we're in a really challenging age of just toxic polarization. And whenever I ask audiences when I I talk about this, who were some of the most persuasive Americans of the 20th century, those three that I just mentioned, JFK, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ronald Reagan, come to mind. Why? Because they were positive. They were positive in how they persuade. So what kind of feelings are persuasive? Positive feelings.
How do you generate positive feelings? You have to be for something. And so these happy warriors, they were for things. Martin Luther Gang Jr. had a dream that his children would be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
That's an amazing beautiful thing. He was a happy warrior for racial equality. Amazing. Mm-hmm. You have to be for something, whether it's just in a conversation with your spouse or a friend, or whether you're talking to the boss or whether you are the boss. You have to be for something and be a happy warrior.
And that is long-term persuasive. Like nobody ever says Malcolm X, right? That was largely a a more negative way to approach things. They always say Martin Luther King Jr., no one ever says Barry Goldwater. They say Ronor Reagan.
You know what I'm saying? Wild, yeah.
Whatever your politics, they were model positive perspectives. They were happy warriors.
Wow, this has been I I was not planning to bring up my reading about battles that affected the development of the West, but you put happy warriors in your book, so I couldn't help. Yeah. What are the things that we do in speaking up in meetings that we we sabotage ourselves by giving too much information?
¶ Effective Impromptu Speaking & Barrier Removal
Impromptu speaking is something that I think everybody listening struggles with. And so they either tend to not say anything or go too much into detail. Do you have any frameworks that would help us to speak more cogently in a meeting.
simple actionable techniques for if you're put on the spot, you gotta speak.
Yes.
First, if you get a little nervous, calm yourself down. There's a great tactic called the parasympathetic sigh. Two inhales and an exhale, it goes. Okay, calm yourself down. And then the steps that I go through in the book. Mm-hmm. Step one, adopt the persuader's mindset. So understand your audience. And if you're listening really carefully, you know who they are and what they care about and you're prepared to frame what you say in their terms.
And then use step two knowledge of how the brain works to your advantage. So what's the psychology? It's to know that people feel first, generate persuasive feelings. Okay, so ask yourself, how do I want my audience to feel? And how am I going to get them to feel that way? And this comes with practice And then tactically probably the two most important things you can do.
are tell stories and be likable. So have stories ready. So that when you get up and talk, you don't have to literally say, let me start by telling you a story, but start by telling them a story. Because stories are infinitely more persuasive than data and logic and reason. So if you're sitting there listening and you're figuring out a story from the company or from some personal experience or whatever, be ready to start with that because you're going to be way more persuasive.
And then be likable because when we dislike somebody, even if we like what they're saying, if we find them aversive, we don't want to work with them. If by contrast you like somebody, you're willing to tolerate so much more. So if you're sitting there tactically, tell stories, be likable. And probably the last thing I would say is ask about and then figure out how to work around barriers.
'Cause most people think and I think extroverts probably suffer from this more, the more you talk, the more persuasive you are. And all you have to do is talk more and you're gonna get somebody to do something. And one of the biggest things that I've learned about persuasion, like top three insights probably, is that persuasion is much less about getting somebody to do something and it's much more about removing barriers to them doing that thing.
So as you're listening, identify those barriers or simply as the introvert, you know, the one who's quiet and raises questions.
Thinking and thinking.
Period, one of the best questions you can ask. What would stop you or what would stop us from moving forward? And then process that and then figure out how to remove those barriers. And I think introverts are in a much better position to pause and calmly ask those kind of questions because here's what an extrovert's want to do. They're gonna wanna talk first. And then when they say, Okay, what are the barriers?
And then they're going to immediately want to just talk over the person, listen to their barriers, understand them, and then on their terms address them. Because once you can remove those barriers, boom, persuasion, shared action happens.
I love that reframing of persuasion through removing barriers. You have a guidance in the book about stories, but just high level An example, right? A customer example or just an example of your point usually makes a a quick and easy story. Do you have any other like shortcuts for quick and great stories?
¶ Storytelling, Silence, and Making a Difference
Well so we're told all the time, you just had a guest recently, it was a great episode on stories, and it sort of based the question, what kinds of stories? So this was I think one of my my kind of bigger insights really just understanding this in the book and so I have a whole chapter on this.
You have to tell morally motivating, emotionally intelligent stories. Cause remember, you're trying to get your audience to feel something and making moral appeals. We are moral creatures. So I dive into this in chapter six of the book. It's not just tell a story, but think about what you want your audience to feel and then what are their values and how does what happens in the story, how does that appeal to their values?
Not necessarily your values, but their values. So that they're like, oh my God. And they're feeling ideally something positive. Or maybe it's something that's like, ooh, I don't like that. Okay, well, here's how we make that better.
There are many ways you can do this, but maybe it's a customer experience where you're telling a story about this consistent problem you're seeing as a company. You tell the story of Jane or Laura or whoever. And then it's like, oh man, yeah, that is a problem. This is what she experienced. Here's how we're gonna fix that, right? This is a big barrier to our success. We're gonna fix that.
And then ideally you maybe conclude with a story, you know, we've tested this out and we tested this on Josh and it was really effective. Right. And tell Josh a story that it was a different experience for Josh. And so like this is our way forward. And they're gonna remember what happened to Laura and what happened to Josh. And then like that's what they're gonna remember. I think the
The guest you just had one said that we only remember like five percent of data but sixty five percent of stories. That's incredible. So I don't know, sixty sixty five or five percent. Which one which one do you prefer?
And that's true even if even if it's like, Oh, I'm a data driven guy like some people think that they're these big bosses, oh no, Laura, they only want data. I'm like, do they?
What does data driven guys do when they come home? They watch Netflix, they watch stories.
Save it.
Exactly.
Josh, I have one more question. You mentioned using silence. So before you leave, please tell us
Yeah.
How we can use silence in our favor.
dynamic silence is extremely powerful. I think introverts are much better positioned than extroverts. And a lot of times what happens is we'll ask a question and then we have to immediately fill the void. So even if you ask, you know, two of the top questions I recommend asking and I explain why in the book or how do you feel about something or what would stop you from doing something. Right. We just talked about this stuff. So I'll recap those. So when you ask those questions.
Or, you know, you ask, what's your vision for this? What are your goals? Instead of telling them what their goals are, how they should feel, or what their barriers are, you've got to pause and you've got to let them think. Sometimes people need a couple of minutes and you just sit there and if you start talking, you're negotiating against yourself. So you just gotta calmly wait. And they will talk. Now, if it's like twenty minutes, that's a little bit awkward and say, you know, like
longer do you need and you know sometimes people just need time to think and then when you give it to them they appreciate it and then listen. Don't be afraid of silence. I used to in my previous life I was an academic and I would teach and I would ask students questions And then I would literally in like a seminar room just go and sit on the window sill and I would say, Look, I I have all day. Well, I have I have three hours, right? So eventually one of you's gonna answer.
Right.
And 60 seconds of awkward silence ensued. And then people can't really endure more than that. So just count in your head. This is just a simple thing. Count one. To probably by the time you get to fifteen or twenty, they're gonna talk. So don't be afraid of just counting twenty in your head. Don't be afraid of that.
I love that.
Give them a chance.
Right. But we're stronger than that. So I hope everybody's taking away the introverts are way better than extroverts. So just a little takeaway there. He did actually write that in the book, but that's what I'm taking away. Is there anything else you want to leave our audience of high performing, highly attractive introverts? It's been so good. And I'm gonna link the book in the show notes, of course. It's f hot off the press.
I'll leave with this closing thought, which I I think just kinda helps frame things at the end of this conversation. Uh in every interaction throughout our personal and professional lives, we're faced with a decision. Do I want to be right or do I want to make a difference? Being right is really easy. Beat somebody over the head with your logic. Post something on Twitter and feel good about how right you are. Making a difference. That's what persuasion is.
That is upfront, it requires a bigger investment, and the returns on that investment are enormous. So I recommend focusing on making a difference.
Love it. Thank you so much. All right, everybody. Goodbye.
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Well that was so packed with helpful information about influence and persuasion. I really love Joshua's framework on impromptu speaking, which is something that's challenging for a lot of us. and storytelling. I want to remind you that May 4th we start the six-day executive presence reset. Six short episodes revealing six small shifts that can change
How top levels of leadership perceive you. So if you're l listening to this episode and you're thinking, wow, I need to become more persuasive. I'm really focusing on the wrong things. That's why I built the Executive Present Scorecard. It's an assessment so that can give you clarity on where you're losing impact and what context. If that sounds like what you need,
Go to the show notes, click on the link in the second paragraph and you will instantly access that scorecard. It's a quick way to understand what's really holding you back.
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