So let's cut to the chase...

You may be a great consultant, one who effectively applies his or her wisdom and experience to help his or her client solve some tough business problem.   That's all fine and well.  When it comes to facilitation, though, it's a different ballgame and a very different approach to problem solving.  I like to think of the difference as follows:

In Part 3 of Persuasion Atrophy, I delved into the importance of connecting with your audience. Professionals now and in the future need to be intentional about how they build and exercise the persuasion muscle. This will ensure the skill doesn’t give way to equating persuasion to shaming—and thinking critical copy/pasting is in and of itself persuasive.

To continue with my case, I’ll use The Four C’s of Compelling Presentations as the roadmap for exercising the persuasion muscle and avoid persuasion atrophy. This installment focuses on securing credibility.

Some years back, one of my assignments was to research potential business process offshoring (BPO) partners we could potentially use for some finance and administration functions. A vendor caught wind of the initiative and asked to meet with me to discuss his company’s BPO capabilities.

The vendor came to my office, pulled out a presentation, and started reading the slides to me. I was genuinely interested in learning more about their capabilities and asked a number of questions. With each question, he responded, “I need to get back to you on that.”

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Several years back a colleague of mine (I'll call the colleague "Nellie") was managing a very high-visibility project. This project was high on the radar of key executives all the way up to the CEO of the company and any major mis-steps would send fireworks up the chain faster than lightning.  This was one of those "thrill-seeker" projects; definitely high risk but also of high reward if the project was successful.  Nellie was up to the challenge and willingly accepted the assignment.

In Part 2 of Persuasion Atrophy, I did a deep dive on the importance of choreographing your content and delivery. Professionals now and in the future need to be intentional about how they build and exercise what I call the persuasion muscle. This will ensure the skill of persuasion doesn’t give way to equating persuasion to shaming—and thinking critical copy/pasting is in and of itself persuasive.

Continuing to use The 4 C’s of Compelling Presentations as the roadmap for exercising the persuasion muscle and avoid persuasion atrophy, my focus is now on connecting with your audience.

In my freshman year of college, I took a class on giving speeches. Aside from helping me meet core requirements, I also thought it would be an interesting class. The instructor was opinionated, potty-mouthed, and yelled at the students if they did something he didn’t agree with. It was required that we prepare and present two speeches to him and the entire class. The class would provide feedback, then he was supposed to provide his feedback.

The purpose of my first speech was to educate the audience on a topic of my choice. I decided to do the speech about musical notes using a pie as an illustration. The entire pie equated to a whole note. I sliced the pie in half to create half notes, then sliced each half to create four quarter notes, then sliced each quarter to create eight eighth notes. Pretty safe topic, right?

Not according to my instructor.

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Typically, career choices are made based upon responsibilities, compensation, or prestige where a businessperson makes a change to get a higher salary, more responsibility, or greater prestige. What about the situation, though, where the driver behind a career choice isn’t any of these; where it’s the needs of a child that drive the change? My choice was precisely that.

Trevor was a happy, normal, active baby. He was able to laugh, coo, cry, and do all of the other normal things that his big sister, Briana did at that age. To my wife Patty and me, everything seemed to be just fine. At about age two, we noticed that Trevor was hardly saying any words and was very into his own world with puzzles, coloring, and videos. 

In Part 1 of Persuasion Atrophy, I introduced how I see social media and artificial intelligence not only impacting how we work and play, but also how they can fundamentally impact the skill of persuasion. Professionals now and in the future need to be intentional about how they build and exercise what I call their “persuasion muscle” to ensure the skill of persuasion doesn’t go the way of long division by hand.

To apply a layer of practicality to my argument, I’d like to use The Four C’s of Compelling Presentations as the roadmap for exercising the persuasion muscle. This installment in the series focuses on choreographing your content and delivery.

The most challenging and consequential talk I’ve ever given wasn’t to a large group of people or a room full of executives, and it wasn’t even a business presentation. It was when I eulogized my sister Lori, who died of lung cancer in 2012 at age 54.

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There are two seismic-shifting technologies that have already changed just about every aspect of our lives, and will continue to in the future. The first is social media. It’s enabled the rekindling of old relationships, the building of new ones, and the end of others. Anyone with a phone, tablet or computer and internet connection can participate in discussions with others anywhere in the world.

The second is artificial intelligence. Using the internet and its 150 zettabytes of information (that’s 150 followed by 21 zeros), AI can search, analyze and present information that is either humanly infeasible or impossible in no time. It’s changing the way we work and play.

Before going further, I am a fan of both technologies and do not in any way advocate a head-in-the-sand position on either one. I firmly believe that, as leaders and project managers, it’s incumbent on us to learn about these technologies first-hand and weave them into what we do.

I do, however, want to sound a warning bell about both technologies and how they can inhibit development of a crucial business skill.

Persuasion.

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In my article 9 Ways to Be a Better Feedback Receiver, I discuss nine points that a feedback recipient should consider when accepting feedback. Gracefully and constructively receiving feedback is a skill some master, but many never seem to learn.

Sometimes it’s about the receiver’s unwillingness to accept feedback, but it could also be about the sender doing a poor job of creating a conducive environment to complete the feedback sender-receiver exchange. The sender plays a crucial role in the exchange, which is vital if the sender has aspirations of attaining trusted advisor status.

Core to being a trusted advisor is internalizing the following:
My job is to tell you what I think, yours is to decide what to do with it.

A trusted advisor not only provides helpful advice that a recipient can put to use, but also recognizes that her role is to allow the receiver the freedom to decide what to do with the feedback. There are four paths a receiver can take:

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