Chapter 3

Establishing an Emotional Connection

In This Chapter

Activating your head and your heart

Letting others speak and express themselves

Demonstrating that you care

Pursuing win–win outcomes

Years of scientific research reveals that emotion rather than rational thought propels consumer behaviour. Emotions similarly guide you to establish connections with people and things. Your feelings drive you to act on your decisions, and then your intellect kicks in to justify your behaviour. As I note frequently: People buy on emotion and justify with fact.

Pure logic, dogged persistence and personal enthusiasm are not guaranteed persuaders. While adopting a top-down authoritative approach – where privilege and power are conferred on those in senior positions – may work in the armed forces and bureaucratic organisations, you can have more success in a commercial environment – as well as in any environment where you need to persuade others – if you make an emotional connection with the people you want to win over by demonstrating that you care about them as individuals and not just as a means to an end.

Establishing an emotional connection requires getting to know the individuals you want to influence. By knowing what excites them, what offends them and what entices them to take action, you’re more able to persuade them to do what you want than if you hadn’t taken the time to connect.

In this chapter I show you ways of making emotional connections with the people you want to persuade and influence. In addition, you discover how to effectively balance the needs of the head and the heart. By treating people like responsible adults and respecting their feelings, you gain their trust as well as their commitment to you.

Demonstrating Your Emotional Commitment

Although you may shy away from the E-word, without emotional commitment you never connect with your colleagues, customers and constituents – let alone your family, friends and other significant people. No matter what industry, profession, religious group or political party you belong to, when you reveal your emotional commitment, others are more likely to come on board than if you hold back on your own commitment. If you’re not willing to put yourself on the line, you can’t expect anyone else to put themselves out there.

You create emotional connections and show your emotional commitment when you

Engage with your heart, mind and soul

Invest your emotions in a relationship

Share your feelings with another person while seeking to understand his feelings

Revealing too much emotion is just as disturbing as displaying too little. On the one hand, you’re engulfing the other person with an overwhelming abundance of feeling – on the other hand, you’re starving them of all sensation. When you’ve the ideal blend of emotion and intellect, you feel wise, evolved, balanced and in control.

The following sections explore ways to effectively get in touch with others’ feelings while making the most of your own.

Conveying empathy

When you’re establishing an emotional connection, you need to demonstrate a bit of empathy. When you empathise, you recognise and share the feelings that others are experiencing and you anticipate their reactions. You take your lead from the emotions on display, engage with your heart and invest yourself in your relationships. For more about building relationships, see Chapter 2. For more on empathy as a tool for active listening, flip to Chapter 7.

When you engage at an empathetic level, you’re able to pick up on the emotions behind the words someone speaks, as well as the feelings someone displays through non-verbal behaviour. Chapter 13 talks more about body language when conveying and deciphering feelings, while Chapter 14 examines the power of your voice beyond the words you say.

After you know how others are feeling and can respond in ways that make them feel valued and understood (see the next section ‘Engaging with other people’s feelings’), you’re in with a chance when the time comes to persuade them to adopt your point of view.

The word empathy is derived from the Greek word empatheia, meaning physical affection and passion. At the end of the 19th century, the German philosophers Theodor Lipps, Hermann Lotze, and Robert Vischer adapted the term, creating the German word Einfuhlung, meaning ‘feeling into’, which was eventually translated in 1909 by British psychologist Edward B. Titchener into the English term.

The word ‘sympathy’ is often incorrectly substituted for the word ‘empathy’. While both terms describe acts of feeling, empathy is feeling with the person, and sympathy is feeling for the person. When you feel empathetic, you can put yourself in someone else’s place, gain a sense of what he’s experiencing and attempt to understand his reactions. When you feel sympathetic, you may feel for the other person, but you don’t necessarily relate to what he’s experiencing.

Showing too much empathy – or empathising with lots of people, often and intensely – can wear you out. If you’ve limited time to listen to someone, tell them upfront. Your time is valuable and you don’t have to give it away if you don’t want to. Don’t try to fix someone’s problem. Be there to listen and ask questions and let the other person come up with his own solutions (See Chapter 7 for tips on listening).

Engaging with other people’s feelings

Emotional intelligence is a person’s belief in their ability to recognise, calculate and control their own, and others’, emotions. If you doubt that emotions impact on your choices, look at the people, objects and experiences in your life. You choose who you do business and are friends with, which contracts you sign and even how you decorate your home and office largely based on how you feel about the people, subjects and places you’re interacting with. For example, my husband’s office is filled with pictures and models of sailboats not just because they’re attractive, but because they remind him of the challenges and good times he shared with his father when they sailed in the cold and windy Baltic Sea.

Engage with someone at an emotional level and you can feel the levels of rapport rise (See Chapter 13). By caring for and understanding other people, you confirm their sense of themselves and make them feel they’ve something of value to offer. You also significantly raise the likelihood that they’re going to join your league of champions and do whatever they can for you. For more detailed information about emotional intelligence and its impact on persuasion, see Emotional Intelligence For Dummies by Steven J. Stein (Wiley).

For inspiration on how to connect with someone at an emotional level, think of courtroom lawyers. These keen observers of human behaviour and psychology know that in order to win juries to their sides, they have to engage with both their own feelings – and their listeners’ feelings. They have to demonstrate intellectual and emotional belief in what they’re advocating through both their words and their actions. And they must do so without appearing phony and manipulative. The moment courtroom lawyers come off as fakes or frauds, they lose their credibility.

Your credibility is equally important when you’re looking to make an emotional connection. If someone doubts your honesty and trustworthiness, you can kiss your chances of persuading him to accept your point of view goodbye. For more about the importance of credibility when seeking to influence others, see Chapter 5.

Establishing an emotional connection requires that you’ve a clear and correct sense of how other people feel. Your proposition has to make sense to them as well as appeal to their interests. In addition, you may have to adjust your tone or approach to find a common ground for creating rapport. For detailed information on the part rapport plays in the process of establishing an emotional connection, turn to Chapter 2.

While connecting with your own emotions and the emotions of others may sound a heavy order, you can practise the following techniques to connect emotionally with your listeners:

Look others in the eyes when you’re speaking to them or when they’re speaking to you. The eyes are the mirrors to the soul and reflect their owner’s emotions and feelings. You can tell whether people are interested in connecting with you by the way they catch – or don’t catch – your eye. Avoid staring though, because doing so can make you look creepy and make the other person feel uncomfortable! If someone refuses to connect with you visually, offer something you both can look at together, such as a picture, a graph or an object that’s relevant to what you’re talking about. If he still refuses to look at you, just keep talking and ask him questions to engage him in the discussion. For more about eye contact, turn to Chapter 13 or have a look at Neuro-linguistic Programming For Dummies by Romilla Ready and Kate Burton (Wiley).

Match your postures and movements to your message. When you want to connect emotionally with another person, ask yourself: What does the way I’m standing, sitting and moving say about me and my emotions. Slouched and slumped doesn’t convince people that you’re interested in them (or in much of anything, really). Sit tall and demonstrate your alertness by focusing all your attention on the other person – and watch your ability to connect improve.

Make your gestures and facial expressions clear and appropriate to your message. Avoid an overabundance of motion and intense looks, which can become distracting and dilute your message. On the flipside, too few gestures and expressions leave your audience wondering how much you care about what you’re saying. If you’re uncertain about your gestures and expressions, practise in front of your bathroom mirror to see what you look like. In addition, observe the gestures and expressions of other people and add them to your toolkit.

Speak in terms your listeners can understand. Avoid jargon and expressions that can cause confusion. While you may know what you’re talking about, you can’t count on your listeners understanding unless you communicate using words and phrases they comprehend. See Chapter 8 for more tips on holding people’s attention.

Pay attention to your appearance. What messages do you potentially transmit through the state and style of your clothes, hair, teeth and nails? What do you smell like? People take in meaning through all their working senses and make judgements about people based on what they look, sound, smell and even feel and taste like.

Vary your voice. Using the same pitch or speaking at the same speed is dull and monotonous. Putting purpose and intensity into your voice convinces your listener that you’re emotionally connected to yourself, your message and your listener.

Add humour. One of the quickest ways to establish emotional connections is through laughter. As long as your humour is audience appropriate, use it to swiftly establish connections.

Ask for feedback. Getting your listeners to participate in dialogue makes them feel that they and their opinions are valued. When you make someone feel valued, they want to connect with you. Statements like, ‘I’d like you to tell me how well I’m addressing you . . .’ or ‘I’d appreciate feedback on how I’m . . .’ show that you welcome their input and make them feel appreciated.

Enjoy the process. Connecting with other people at an emotional level takes you into a territory where sharing feelings is a fun and productive place to be.

See Chapter 13 for practical advice on how to practise and successfully implement many of the preceding recommendations into your presentation style.

Balancing head and heart

All feeling and no intellect can make a person tiresome – as can the opposite. While I encourage you to establish emotional connections with other people as a part of the persuasion and influence process, I also advise you to add a bit of logic, rationality and objectivity to the mix.

While all people have feelings that are primal to who they are, tidal waves of emotion can destroy your chances of forming relationships with others, as much as dull, dry, intellect can deaden the desire to connect. The key is to strike a healthy, useful balance between expressing what’s going on in both your heart and your head.

If your experiences are anything like mine, you’ve been in situations where another person’s passions bubbled over like a giant cauldron of feelings that left you staggering in its wake. Although the other person shared a great deal of emotion, you were unable to connect with any of it.

Conversely, you may have found yourself in situations where the other person was so detached from his emotions that you wondered whether any feelings existed inside the suit in front of you. Try as you may to tease out a hint of personality or feeling, you gave up on the prospect of connecting.

In Chapter 13 you can find ways of establishing rapport with other people. By meeting someone where he is, whether his emotions are high or low, you can engage with him, establish his trust and then take him to a place that suits your style better.

Respecting Others’ Feelings

Feelings and emotions are tied to values, attitudes and beliefs. And values, attitudes and beliefs impact on the choices people make. To argue with or judge people’s feelings is counterproductive at all times, especially when you want to persuade the person to see your point of view, accept your proposals or agree to your suggestions. In Chapter 2 you can find out how to identify other people’s values and spot their attitudes.

Respect is fundamental to establishing an emotional connection. To paraphrase the great African-American baseball player Jackie Robinson, ‘I don’t care whether you like me or not as long as you respect me as a human being.’

If you think that someone’s feelings are silly, stupid or un-supportable, think again. People’s feelings come from their own experiences, not from yours. Based on your skills and knowledge, you may struggle to understand how others can feel the way they do. But you must also realise that they may struggle to understand how you can harbour your attitudes and opinions.

Accept that people have the right to feel as they do – even if their feelings are different from yours. Of course, accepting other people’s rights to their feelings is sometimes much easier to say than to do. In a world where blame is rife and judgement is ubiquitous, people often divide into opposing camps of who’s right and who’s wrong. While seeing beyond your own perceptions of truth may be difficult, you must work to realise and accept that everyone’s truth is true for him.

Letting it out – without judgement

If you want to establish an emotional connection with other people, begin by encouraging them to express their feelings. Grant others the right to say how they feel without judging them in the process.

If you judge others’ feelings, you’re likely to alienate them and cut off any chance of establishing an emotional connection. Telling someone that he’s wrong for feeling the way he does, or that he shouldn’t feel a particular way or that his feelings are stupid are signs that you’re criticising him and his feelings. Even if you really don’t think that you actually are belittling someone, listen to what he tells you and defer to his point of view. If he’s feeling judged, you need to change the way you’re speaking and behaving if you want to improve the situation.

Respecting someone’s feelings means treating others with consideration and allowing them the right to express themselves without interruption. It means leaving your judgement at the door.

When you respect someone’s feelings, you make the other person feel valued. You open the door to a relationship filled with trust and goodwill. In Chapter 7, I give you techniques for making other people feel valued and how to respond to their feelings.

Letting others put their points across

Rid the world of conversational bullies, and the world will be a better place. You’ve seen it happen countless times and may have experienced the treatment yourself: just as you’re about to make your point, your nemesis comes barging into the conversation, usurping your place in the dialogue and relegating you to the edge of the debate.

In spite of your good intentions and desire to understand someone’s point of view, you can get carried away with your own thoughts and ideas. Or you may be so excited by what you hear that you interrupt without meaning to. At this point, you’re no longer finding anything out. You can’t discover anything when you’re speaking, and in order to establish an emotional connection, you have to find out about the other person.

In addition, when you interrupt someone, they’re going to think twice before sharing their thoughts with you again. Interrupting and failing to let other people put their points across inhibits communication and reduces your chances of establishing a productive relationship.

Avoid falling into the interruption trap by following these simple strategies:

Remain silent. You can’t interrupt if you’re not talking. You may have to make a conscious effort to refrain from speaking while another person converses. However, making the effort and allowing others to finish their thoughts pays dividends in the end.

Close your mouth. When you open your mouth while someone else is speaking, you signal that you’ve something to say and indicate that you’re done with listening. If you struggle to keep your mouth shut, imagine a drop of glue has been placed on your lips. When your mouth is closed, you can’t interrupt.

Open your mind. If you’re forming opinions while the other person speaks, you’re not listening. Let go of your instinct to come in with a ‘Yes, but’ and simply hear them out. Save your comments until you’ve taken in everything the other person is saying.

Take notes. One of the reasons people interrupt is because they think faster than others speak. Ideas naturally sprout into your head while someone’s holding forth. In order to combat the urge to interject your thoughts while someone else is speaking, keep brief notes of your thoughts so that when the time comes for you to speak, you still have the points you want to make.

Change your goal. A conversation is made up of talking and listening. Make listening your goal for the conversation rather than talking and watch your urge to interrupt fade.

Focus on the other person. If you approach the conversation with the thought of making yourself look good or getting your point across first, you may as well give up on establishing an emotional connection. Seek to understand the other person first and watch their desire to connect with you heighten. When you focus more on someone other than yourself, you interrupt less.

Don’t justify your interruptions. You may want to jump in during a conversation to show you support the other person, perhaps by providing critical information, emphasising his point or demonstrating your enthusiasm. Don’t. The most helpful behaviour you can adopt is to let the other person speak.

Show signs of agreement. Head nods and non-verbal sounds (like ‘mmm, uh huh’) lets the speaker know you’re paying attention without interrupting their flow. You can gain more pointers about how to show these signs in Chapter 7.

While I’m all for letting others have the floor and present their views, you need to be strategic about how you do so. If you have points you want to make, be sure that you do. Saying something along the lines of, ‘I’ve heard what you’ve said and would like to comment’, ‘I’d like to build on your ideas’ or ‘What you’re saying ties nicely into my point about . . .’ acknowledges the other person’s agenda and lets you address yours, too.

Suppressing your emotions

Tamping down your own emotions gives others the space to express their feelings without being judged, interrupted or out emoted – all of which helps you build rapport and trust.

I’m not suggesting that you shut down your feelings or withdraw your emotional connection. In fact, research shows that turning off or taking away emotion is often disastrous for relationships and leads to tension and agitation. Instead, I suggest that you put your feelings on the back burner while other people are speaking and allow them the opportunity to express theirs so they feel heard and acknowledged. When you get your turn to speak, make sure that you let others know how you feel about the subject so you don’t become a martyr to your own emotions. For more information about the positive impact of listening to others, see Chapter 7.

Whether someone’s overjoyed, annoyed or just at the end of their tether, an appropriate response is to engage with the person’s mood. Don’t try to change it or turn it into your own. Simply allow others the chance to express their feelings and hold yours at bay. You show respect and consideration by allowing others to express their feelings without getting in their way. Any other response is selfish and plain insensitive.

Chris’s boss Kevin invited him to his office to voice concerns about the latest sales initiative, which Chris was having trouble getting his team to subscribe to. Every time Chris started addressing his unease about the programme, Kevin interrupted, saying things like, ‘I know how you feel’, ‘When this happened to me’, ‘It’s not as bad as you think’ and ‘You’ve got to make this work regardless of how you feel about the decision’. At no point did Kevin ask to hear more about Chris’s feelings or acknowledge that he understood why Chris was feeling as he was. Chris felt that his emotions were secondary to Kevin’s and that Kevin had paid no attention to anything he was saying. Chris left Kevin’s office feeling defensive, disrespected and uncommitted.

People mostly communicate their emotions through voice and body language. When you let your emotions rule you, whether at work, in public or during family discussions, you can lose your cool and behave in ways that do you more harm than good. In order to keep this from happening when your emotions are about to burst forth, concentrate on speaking in your regular tone of voice and give rational arguments. Never say anything insulting or sarcastic. Breathe deeply from your abdomen and if you’re tempted to burst forth with a stream of expletives, silently count to ten. (For more about breathing techniques, turn to Chapter 14.)

Showing That You Care

If you want to persuade someone to accept or adopt your position, you need to show that you care about the other person. If you don’t, you offer no incentive for others to follow you. When you care about people, your thoughts and behaviours are in their best interest. By considering their position, you demonstrate your awareness and concern for them and their issues. Showing that you care is one way of establishing rapport and rapport is the way to a person’s heart.

In order to care about someone, you have to know:

What are his interests, issues and concerns?

What motivates, inspires and keeps him up at night?

What are his goals and ambitions?

What is his greatest triumph and his biggest regret?

What is his greatest strength and his greatest weaknesses?

Without crossing boundaries, find out as much as you can about the people whose buy-in you seek. The more you understand what makes someone tick, the more you’re able to engage. While you definitely don’t want to come across as a stalker, you do want to know what matters to someone.

When Romey was looking for volunteers to support the local church, she asked the parishioners how they felt about the current state of the church, what changes they wanted to see, what traditions they wanted to keep, what they wanted to leave as their legacy and other questions that gave her insights into their beliefs and commitment. By getting to know the local congregation, she was able to approach those whom she believed would be the best volunteers for raising the church’s profile in the community.

When people feel they matter to you, they’re more willing to open themselves to you than if they feel their presence, thoughts and contributions are of no consequence. For more about recognising and identifying what motivates and matters to individuals, see Chapter 9.

Clarifying issues

In any relationship, what matters to one person may not matter to another and issues inevitably arise. A similar dynamic occurs in groups – one person or sub-group may feel one way, while the rest feel another. The sooner you clarify these differences, the better. If you leave issues to fester, they soon become rancid, poisoning the emotional connections you aimed to establish.

Verbal and non-verbal signals are clues to possible issues. The tone in people’s voices, their rates of speech and the expressions on their faces reveal feelings and emotions below the surface. Watching and listening for tell-tale signs give you a head start in understanding and clarifying unresolved issues. For example:

A low, slow voice indicates that not much energy is pushing or pulling a person’s engine.

Lowered eyes and a scowling expression tell you someone’s probably not well pleased.

Hands waving in the air and a voice pitched at a glass-breaking decibel mean someone’s pretty excited about something.

When people speak, they’re providing you with information, including what they’re thinking and how they’re feeling. By paying attention to a person’s tone of voice, pace of delivery and body language, you’ve valuable data that you can use to clarify issues. Flip to Chapters 13 and 14 for more on gathering this data.

If you genuinely want to clarify issues, you have to understand them first. Getting to know what the issues are takes time, care and genuine interest. Consider these approaches to working out what’s on people’s minds:

Clear your mind of all distractions and give your full attention to the other person.

Make an effort to meet face-to-face with the people you want to persuade. If that’s not possible, because of the nature of international business, schedule conference or Skype calls on a regular basis. Make sure that you consider time zones and see to it that everyone’s schedules are respected. If someone always has to take a call at 4 a.m., he’s not going to be happy or emotionally engaged.

Ask others about their opinions, concerns and perspectives. Then listen to their responses to your questions.

Share your own views with them and illuminate the plus points of your position.

If your mind wanders onto other matters, or if you react with moral judgements and start planning how you’re going to respond, stop and refocus on the speaker. If you’ve lost the course of the conversation, you don’t need to apologise or explain yourself. Simply ask the other person if he can repeat what he said, showing that you want to understand his concerns and issues.

During this process, take time to summarise or paraphrase what someone else says and ask for confirmation that you understand correctly. Doing so verifies that you grasp the outstanding issues. In order to understand someone’s point, you have to listen for the feelings behind the spoken words as well as the message itself. See Chapter 7 for tips on effective listening.

Demonstrating your interest in another person makes them feel worthwhile and appreciated. If they feel that their issues matter to you, they’re much more likely to engage and build rapport with you.

Striving for mutual benefit

After both sides share their views, invite discussion and debate – and then seek shared solutions. Revising your ideas in concert with others’ needs and concerns reflects your desire to reach mutually beneficial solutions. Not for one moment must you think that if you compromise or revise your opinions and ideas you’re being weak or are in the losing position during a tough discussion. Instead, you’re showing strength when you recognise that changing conditions require different approaches than those you originally thought would work. As you prepare to become a master persuader, focus on clear goals and behave as though everyone can come out a winner. Someone who’s in it for himself is quickly spotted as a self-server, which doesn’t go down well when you’re not the person being served.

Include positive language to encourage cooperation and interaction, increasing the likelihood that you can all reach your goals. Use expressions like ‘win-win, cooperation, benefit, gain, encouragement, trust, team effort, equality, flexible and enthusiastic’. The more positive the language, the more chance you stand of reaching a mutually satisfying conclusion.

People are willing to make sacrifices if they believe you genuinely care about their views and are ready to modify your position in response to their needs and concerns. But be prepared to compromise and adjust your viewpoint as well, if necessary.

Others perceive you as trustworthy and flexible when you come into a relationship with an open mind and a willingness to incorporate others’ suggestions. Over time, you may become known as someone who listens and works in the best interests of others, which in turn makes others more trusting and flexible in their attitudes toward you.

You can’t engage people and gain their commitment without highlighting the shared advantages of your proposal (see the nearby sidebar ‘Burger buy-in’ for a compelling case). Sometimes clear benefits exist and you can easily point them out. However, when mutual benefits aren’t obvious or meaningful, you have to adjust your position to make the proposition appeal to their needs and concerns. Always go into the discussion knowing what the other person wants and always be prepared to compromise to reach a mutually satisfying outcome.

The best persuaders connect with the people whose buy-in they need by speaking with them, studying the issues that matter to them and listening to their problems and concerns with an open mind. Without a solid understanding of your audience, you don’t stand a chance of engaging with them and gaining their commitment.

Study the issues that matter to the people you want to persuade. Test your ideas with trusted confidantes and ask questions of the people whose buy-in you want as a means of collecting essential data. Taking a thoughtful and inquisitive approach leads you to the best way of appealing to your listener.