How To Persuade Hostile PeopleÂ
- Analyze your target before persuading them!
- Persuade hostile people slowly.
- If you can neutralize hostility, that can still be a good result.
One of the biggest mistakes you can make when attempting persuasion is to treat all people the same. Because as you already know, people are different, and therefore different people require different forms of persuasion.
Some people may already support your ideas, and require little or no persuasion.
Others may be neutral or undecided, and require some extra effort to win over.
And finally, some people may strongly oppose your ideas, making persuasion either difficult or impossible to achieve.
Recognizing your “persuasion starting point” (i.e. whether a person already agrees, disagrees or is undecided) is therefore an essential assessment that should be made before attempting to persuade.
By recognizing and identifying this starting point, you can then choose the most effective persuasion strategy to give you the best chance of a successful persuasion.
In this article, we shall take a look at some these persuasion starting points, and how you can identify them.
Analyze Your Target
As a general rule, there are 3 main areas that you should assess before attempting persuasion:
1 - What Does Your Target Already Know?
Ask yourself what the person you wish to influence already knows about the topic or subject you want to talk about.
2 - What Are Their Interests?
Ask yourself how interested the person is in your subject and what you have to say. For example, do you love golf but they want to talk about football?
3 - How Much Do They Already Agree With You?
Make an assessment of how much support you are likely to receive from that person. In other words, what is your persuasion starting point? Are they obviously hostile to your ideas, or holding up banners supporting you?
Of these three areas, the most important is assessing your persuasion starting point. In this, and the next few articles, you will find a list of the most likely groups of people you may encounter.
Persuading Openly Hostile People
This first group involves people who obviously oppose your ideas, and hold their own opposing views.
Such examples could include different religious groups, different cultural groups, different political groups, different sporting teams and groups with differing moral opinions (i.e. pro gay rights v anti gay rights or pro animal testing v anti animal testing).
Because of your differences to the other person, they are likely to question your credibility, evidence and open-mindedness.
They will believe they are right, and you are wrong. In addition to this, because we tend to dislike people who hold viewpoints that oppose or challenge our own, you may even experience some verbal or physical abuse.
Persuading an openly hostile opponent must be done extremely carefully and with caution. Use the wrong tactic, or persuade too quickly, and you will only succeed in entrenching them in their original belief.
Remember, they believe you are wrong and they are right, so you need to persuade them in a simple and convincing way.
Breaking The Ice
To begin persuading a hostile person you first need to warm them up to the point where they will listen to you, and consider your points. If you can’t get them to listen to you, you won’t be able to persuade them.
A good tactic for establishing rapport is to begin with a neutral joke or story, something that is not offensive and does not challenge their views.
This serves as an “ice breaker” lowering their defenses and getting them to see you as a person, rather than just someone who represents another point of view.
This is important, as you will often find that when people are openly hostile to you, they see you not as a person, but rather as just an anonymous member representing an opposing group.
It is a lot harder to be hostile to someone when you can personalize them as an individual.
Once you have broken the ice, your next step is to dip your toe into the water. Start by talking about the areas you already agree on, or things that you may have in common.
The purpose here is not to persuade, but to further create rapport by getting them to see you as a person who also shares similar views to their own. The more similar they think you are to them, the more they will like you and be willing to listen to you.
Starting To Persuade
When you begin your persuasion attempt don’t start with a direct attack, such as by telling the person they are wrong or why you think they are wrong. And also don’t begin by stating that you are going to change their mind about an issue.
If you do any of these, you will quickly loose any rapport you have already established, and they will quickly raise their defenses becoming hostile again.
Establishing CredibilityÂ
The best way to approach a hostile person is to try and establish some degree of credibility. You can do this by stating the negatives about your point of view, whilst at the same time mentioning the positives about their point of view.
This is a good way to approach a subject because you are not attacking it, but instead telling them what they already know and agree with.
Remember, any hostility you experience will come not from discussing the subject itself, but when two opposing views clash.
Challenging Their Views
Now that you have approached the subject, you can now begin to challenge their point of view, and perhaps, get them to change their mind.
When stating opposing points of view, always ensure that your statements are supported by a credible source. This could include experts, people you both know or sources such as the news or scientific papers.
The important point to remember is not to over-exaggerate or make claims that are obviously unsupported, unbelievable or from untrustworthy/unreliable sources.
The evidence you present in support of your argument must be recognized as fact and indisputable. Hostile people will look at your evidence very closely, and if they can find holes in it they will exploit them.
When presenting your evidence, try to stress that you are looking for a win-win solution. Often people will become defensive when they are loosing something, but when they feel they have something to gain, they will be much more willing to consider what you are saying.
Outcome Of Persuasion
The ideal result is for you to persuade someone to your point of view, by convincing them their original view was incorrect.
However, what you will find with openly hostile people is that this very rarely occurs. It is far more common to neutralize a person to the point where they are no longer hostile, than to completely win them over.
This occurs because some people just don’t like to admit they are wrong, especially if they have held a particular belief for a long period of time.
They have become entrenched in a particular viewpoint, and do not want to change it no matter what you say.
When presented with convincing solid evidence that challenges their viewpoint, these type of people will choose to ignore the information, make fun of it or pretend it doesn’t exist.
This is called cognitive dissonance (or cognitive discidence) and describes how people become extremely reluctant to change their views, because it would mean changing their entire belief systems.
Very rarely will you change this type of person. But it is possible over a prolonged period of time with lots of hard convincing evidence or personal experiences.
You will find these people in everyday life, although they are especially common in cults and religious groups. The fact that people leave cults, and change religions, does show that cognitive dissonance can be overcome.
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