Why Should You Learn Ethical Influence Skills?
Ever thought about why you should learn and apply ethical influencing techniques?
The ability to ethically influence another person towards your way of thinking is enormously powerful; it can benefit your career, your relationships, your income and happiness.
With persuasion being one of the top 5 most needed professional skills year-in, year-out according to LinkedIn, it’s a skill that’s continuously in high demand.
The Cialdini Institute was created to spread the message of ethical influence of its founder – Dr Robert Cialdini, and to leave a lasting legacy of his work.
As a founding member of the institute and certified influence professional, I’m privileged to be able to boost the influence of others, through teaching and coaching the Cialdini principles of ethical influence.
What are the other options to persuade someone?
Well, you could throw a lot of money at the “influence challenge”, perhaps by paying someone an enormous sum to do something. Or you could coerce, bully or threaten them.
The money option might solve your problem in the short-term, but what if you need to influence that person or company a second, third or fourth time?
The other party will expect you to pay (again) and it’s likely that the price will increase! So this option can be punitively expensive and only practical in a one-off transaction.
The other options of coercion, bullying or by using threats are clearly unethical. No one should ever resort to deploying these self-serving, short-term and unpleasant techniques. They can destroy relationships, reputations and careers.
Understanding how to influence ethically using Dr Cialdini’s principles is the best option. Here’s why:
- It’s powerful - can move people towards you, even if facts, data and logic alone don’t speak loudly enough. In fact, knowing how to influence effectively can amplify your logical arguments.
- Applying influence has a huge ROI – just by changing how and what you say is almost costless, yet can lead to big results.
- It leads to success in the short AND long-term – because the basis of ethical influencing is to genuinely want to help the other person, they’re more likely to maintain the relationship with you long into the future.
- The principles are grounded in science. They’re not based on hunch or opinion; they’re based on scientific research from studies that have been replicated with similar results over decades.
Don’t just take my word for it. Have a look here about what business leaders say about Dr Robert Cialdini.
Thanks for reading. It’s up to you whether you think that these principles can help you grow your influence, become more successful in business and happier in life.
You’re free to get in touch with me to find out how these principles can help you.
