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As a leader, do you sometimes find that your current level of leadership development is in need of improvement when it comes to persuading people? Maybe you were thinking that when you got a title that people were going to listen to you no matter what right?

Yes, you are probably laughing at this idea now. So what is the key to being able to persuade people without having to borrow power from your title or to strain the relationships with your followers? Well, in the course of your leadership development there are a few rules which you have to learn about persuasion.

The first is that you will never be able to persuade someone to your point of view. No amount of leadership development training or techniques can change this. In reality, the only way to truly persuade someone is to convince them that something was their idea. Now this many sound tricky but it is not really as hard as it seems if you know how to apply some other basics of leadership development.

The first of these is to understand people’s motives and also how those motives are causing them to behave. You may really have to do some work to do some work for this one but it will be well worth the effort. Many times leadership development classes and trainings teach us to search out motives, but they do not often mention learning what those motives will compel people to do. Once you can understand both of these, you can predict people’s behaviors including your responses to trying to persuade them.

This is an incredible position of power when it comes to persuasion. In fact, one of the greatest tools of leadership development you can learn is how to predict people’s behavior or responses and make your choices accordingly. Once you know this you can assess people’s potential actions in any situation. The benefit is that you will be able to move into a position to present them with a different course of action before do anything. Often, this is most opportune position from which you can persuade someone.

The other position would be to wait until they are already in motion and to try and change their mind then. However people have curious way of defending the behaviors which they are already engaged in. They have a stronger sense of investment and value and thus are harder to persuade. However, if you are able to bring them a proposed set of solutions in advance you can predict the outcomes with them and make it look like you are both working to come up with a solution.

The obvious solution for you both will likely be the one you are proposing, if not you have probably developed a better one. Either way, you will never have to exhaust yourself trying to persuade another again. This kind of approach will give way to leadership development based on mutual trust and respect.