The word “persuasive” is increasingly showing up in job listing because employers, particularly in tech, have realized that it’s not enough to do the work—we need to be able to persuade others about why we should do the work, how we should do the work, or why the work we did was important. The scenarios in which we might need to be persuasive are nearly endless. Here are some key concepts and strategies.
Persuasion is in the eye of the beholder
It means something different to be persuasive to a VP of product, the Executive director of a nonprofit, a dissertation defense committee, a family member. Each of these stakeholders brings a different set of conditions that inform the kinds of evidence they find important and credible. They probably prefer different forms of data and different ways of having it presented. And they belong to different discourse communities, each with its own “dialect.”
What to ask about your stakeholders
What kinds of evidence do they value?
What are the pressures on them or their role?
What specific words and phrases do they use?
How do they want evidence presented?
Show AND tell
If you’re communicating with a group, speak to multiple communication styles by including different forms of information. For example, include a graph or chart along with a short paragraph about how you arrived at that data. Nothing drives me crazy faster than getting quantitative data without qualitative context, but that’s certainly not true of everyone. As a UX researcher I’ve learned that I can pull user quotes I think provide compelling evidence, but if I don’t have numbers to back them up, my results will not be as persuasive as they could be.
Why
The most common mistake I see people make when trying be persuasive is expecting the what to explain the why. In other words they expect the data to speak for itself. In a job letter that looks like this:
Instead of saying I have five years experience managing large teams,
use something like, Five years experience managing large teams means I’m well equipped to take on substantial projects right out of the gate.
Make the case
When appropriate, make a direct case for your idea:
The case for this is…
This is important because…
The upside to doing it this way is…
This will lead to the following improvements…
Describe outcomes
Sometimes I see people get more focused on describing processes than describing the outcomes. To take a page out of Amazon’s book (so to speak), write the press release for the idea you want people to embrace—no matter where you are in the process.
Who owns this sentence? (I/we/the team)
Pronouns are important since they communicate agency and ownership.
If you want to play down agency, it may be useful to use passive voice where there is no active agent (the classic example: mistakes were made).
But there are good reasons to avoid passive voice. Verbs of being (is, was, were) create weak mental images, so whenever possible use active verbs to evoke clear images of your work (created, built, synthesized, discovered).
Pro tip: when writing a document as a team, make sure the pronouns match across different sections or authors.
Be direct
In general, people have an easier time visualizing what you’re talking about if you keep subjects and verbs close together.
Use We found that…
instead of What we found was that…
Regardless of whether you’re pitching to a VC, trying to get your features prioritized, reporting to your boss’s boss, or trying to seal the deal on a job, use these strategies to go forth and persuade.
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