Saturday, October 21, 2006


Hi dude! m back again , but this time i`m gonna bring out a different side (other than movies in order )to be happy.. and things thats gonna help us in our future.
I`ve just finished reading a book, PERSUASION, a book to help us to persuade others to get our points-of-view, and at the same time understand others, which will lead to the benefit of both, and, yeah, more to ourself. This book is penned by James Borg. In our day-to-day lives, we always come across situations where we need to persuade the other person to get out point, and here he says that persuasion shouldnt mean negatives for both sides, but just moving a person(his attitude and thinking) from a point A to point B, which is our point-of-view. He quoted Aristotle as," Persuasion is the art of getting people to do something they wouldn`t ordinarily do if you didn`t ask".
In this , Borg enumerates seven main points necessary for an affective persuasion. they are:
1.Good listening skills.
2.How to hold attention.
3.Appreciation of body languages.
4.Memory skills.
5.Knowledge of the impact of words (psycholinguistics).
6.Skills with the telephone.
7.Negotiating skills.

Now, let me just brief you on these points. regarding listening, the first point, he wants us to listen more. and yeah, the beautiful point he makes is that there is a difference between Hearing and Listening as the former doesnt guarantee understandings pf words that enter our ears, while the latter means absorbing the words we hear and understanding what the speaker wants to mean.

In the next two points he says that we need to speak with proper eye contact and to hold the attention of the listener by keeping the interest high and not doing disturbing things and at the same time listen properly when its our turn.

Well, about memory and impact of words, it is really useful if we remember the names of the people we deal with , and things related to them as it pays in the long run to still sound familiar to them which in turn help us to get them our views, and using the right words at the right time is really important to make people really get what we wanna say to them.

The last two points, tells us to speak on the phone as if we are speaking to the person face to face. This help to give "non-verbal" meanings to our words adding weight to our points and the last point is really important as this is the point that finishes off things. Here we try some "give and take" such that the points we have introduced is agreed to both sides.

I may or may not have cited all the basic points but what i really wanna tell is that this book is really worth reading, and you should give a try if you wanna get ready for the future , which i know will involve lots of persuasions, both personal and official.

So guys go pick it up and hope you persuade lots of people for the benefit of this World at large...
See you!

No comments: