Mankind are governed more by their feelings than by reason. – Samuel Adams
From the boardroom to the bedroom, if you wish to influence someone, the safest bet is to appeal most strongly to their emotions.
What does that mean?
This quote is from the guy that the beer is named after. This quote is interesting to me, as an engineer, because it reminds me that I am the exception within the ranks of humanity. Sometimes I forget.
Most people, as the quote states, are governed by what they feel about an issue. They are more easily swayed by emotional appeals to their feelings than by logical appeals to their sense of reason.
Logic and cold hard facts rarely inspire people. On the other hand, soaring rhetoric and emotional appeals can be immensely inspirational. Look at any number of dictators in the last century, and most were good with the rhetoric and the emotional parts.
Unfortunately, logic and cold hard facts have a tendency to not simply go away. No amount of rhetoric can alter the facts. Logic does not bend to emotion. Logic and cold hard facts have led to the downfall of nearly as many dictators as rhetoric and emotion had raised up.
Why is knowing how to inspire people important?
Whether it’s your kids, your friends or a stadium full of campaign supporters, you have to reach them emotionally to get them motivated. No matter what it is you want them to do, if you don’t make the emotional connection, their motivation will be somewhat lacking.
This is where knowing your audience is important. No matter who we are, we have to be able to influence other people. From the person you hope will hire you, to the person taking your order at a restaurant, it helps to make a good impression. While logic, facts, and numbers have a place, the emotional connection is what gets you hired or gets you better service.
If two equally qualified candidates are interviewed for a job, do you think the one who simply sat there and didn’t connect will get the job over the one who connected emotionally with the people they talked to? I’ve been that other person too many times, and (hopefully) learned my lesson.
Knowing what they want to hear, how you can influence their emotions, is a powerful advantage when you’re trying to influence someone. If you yell insults at the police officer who pulled you over, you are definitely helping them make a decision based on the emotional connection, right?
Where can I apply this in my life?
Besides the examples of being hired or annoying a police officer, the emotional connection applies to pretty much every human on the planet. Family, friends, people at social gatherings, people at work, all are governed more by their feelings than reason.
By remembering this, you might have better luck getting someone off the treadmill at the gym. If you try an emotional plea, saying that you have to get your workout done by a certain time because you have an appointment to keep, you will likely succeed. If you point to the sign that says “maximum time is 30 min,” you probably won’t be as successful, right?
And so it goes with everyone else. By crafting an argument that relies on a mix of facts and emotions, you are far more likely to succeed than if you were to strictly use facts. I’ve been bit by this so many times it wasn’t funny. I just didn’t understand this quote (or more precisely, had never seen it).
Now that I am familiar with the quote, and understand what it means, I can more easily make my point, and hopefully influence others with greater success than before. The indications in my life are that it works fairly well. Can you think of times when you’ve used different methods, and how they have worked for you?
Can you think of someone you will need to interact with in the near future? What tends to influence this person? Are they a numbers person, or a people person? Most are somewhere in-between, so try to come up with a guess as to which they are more strongly, and a ratio between them.
If they’re two-to-one numbers over emotion, you’re going to want to craft an argument that is heavy on the numbers, but still have some emotion. If they’re two-to-one emotions over numbers, then you might want to have a few numbers for them, but craft a story line that shows them the emotion that will sway them to your favor.
Knowing who you are talking to, and how to reach them is a very important part of influencing people. One on one, it can be fairly easy, but in large numbers, this quote says bet on emotion to win the day for you. The same would go for people with whom you are unfamiliar.
We need to influence other human beings multiple times each day. If you are aware, and heed the advice of this quote, your day may go better than you thought it could. And the other people may have their day improved by your skill in wielding influence. It could be a win-win situation, and that’s always good!
From: Twitter, @guncai
confirmed at : http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/s/samueladam134182.html
Photo by HumongoNationphotogallery
Happy Birthday, Samuel Adams, born 27 September [O.S. September 16] 1722.
