Develop Your Intuition Intelligence to Persuade
Intuition plays an important role in persuading others. If we sense a receptive audience, our energy levels rise. When our energy levels rise, so do those of our audience members. Positivity is contagious. It’s growing the connectivity pie, not dividing us into zero sum slices.
I thought about intuition this past weekend when, despite my “spider sense,” that feeling of imminent gloom, I popped an almost hardboiled egg into the microwave for thirty seconds. To my dismay, but not necessarily to my surprise, this high-protein snack exploded into stinky bits of yolk and albumen. Yuck! (Note: No, I do not know why my AI generated video ends with the image of a soft-boiled egg. Yes, what a puzzle.)
Intuition comes in handy in situations where data is incomplete, things are changing quickly, or the environment is characterized as high pressure. It’s easy to think of circumstances that fall outside the traditional communication process. Consider how hard it would be to try motivating already stressed members of your sales team to improve their performance or being tasked to convince time-burdened employees to enter details about their daily activities into a new compliance reporting system. You could be asked to address a large (and barely known to you) audience at the last minute when your client fails to appear at a conference you are attending at her request. You might be given a tight schedule to create marketing collateral for a previously underserved target niche without the benefit of a comprehensive buyer profile.
As much as we depend on proven techniques to persuade others, we can’t discount the proverbial self-check when deciding what to say, when to say it, and how to say it. After all, persuasion is part reason and part emotion. According to Eugene Sadler-Smith, a professor of organizational behavior with the University of Surrey and author of Trust Your Gut: Go With Your Intuition and Make Better Choices (Pearson, 2024), you should strive to develop your intuitive intelligence. One way to strengthen this skill is to draw on past experiences when you successfully acted according to what you thought made sense. Be alert to patterns as to when and why you won by relying on your intuition instead of a surfeit of facts. What characterized your innate calmness and willingness to overcome adverse situations?
Building your intuition muscles when you are trying to persuade others in a face-to-face situation differs from long distance attempts to connect. An in-person event allows you to look for bodily cues. Are your audience members falling asleep or sitting straight up, leaning forward to better hear you? How do you get precious feedback when your persuasion campaign is delivered online or through direct mail in the form of sales brochures or an added-value library of white papers that resides on your website? Begin by measuring Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) such as the number of people who download files, fill out a contact form to request a meeting with you, and/or share your content with their social media followers.
Albert Einstein said, “The only real valuable thing is intuition.” If you agree, don’t discard empirical evidence or data-driven forecasts. Simply recognize you are smart in more ways than one. If your goal is to do what’s best for you and the audience you are trying to reach, mix it up. Combine hard facts, when available, with the sensory wisdom you possess.
I help business, finance, and investment executives and innovative companies turn wisdom and insights into actionable thought leadership that can move markets and minds. Schedule a complimentary discovery call to talk about growing your brand with the kind of content your clients want and need.
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Susan Mangiero
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