April 28, 2009 : Archives
Persuasion IQ (The 10 Skills you need to get exactly what you want).
By: Kurt W. Mortensen
Kurt Mortensen sure knows how to persuade me that he knows what he’s talking about. He’s very persuasive -- on a number of levels.
First, he sets the context of evaluating the latent persuasive skills of an individual. He then builds a case for making the reader incrementally build their ability to be skillful persuaders. And follows a logical path to get to his main point.
I still feel that perhaps he’s selling a little too hard. One of identified obstacles to being an effective persuader is “overpersuading” – with an avalanche of information – and he just about reaches that point – but doesn’t. I figure if he’s made me a better communications trainer and communicator – he’s succeeded.
I particularly like his “Five C’s of Trust”:
- Character
- Competence
- Confidence
- Credibility
- Congruence (words matching actions)
Mortensen maintains quite simply, if there’s no trust, there’s no chance of persuasion.
I also like his abridged “persuasion IQ test” in the back of the book.
The chapter headings outline his simple approach to building persuasion skills – ranging from “understanding how your audience thinks” to “how to motivate yourself and others”. And his chapter on “the secret formulas of the pros” is a useful, one-stop shopping centre for the book in brief.
Mortensen’s website has some useful checklists and tools for building persuasion skills too – check it out: http://www.persuasioniq.com/tools.html The AMACOM website contains useful excerpts too (see below).
If you need to make presentations at any level, this is a useful book to have on hand. And it’s available at discounted prices.
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Rating: 4.8 Stars (out of 5)
Reference: AMAMCOM, New York, 2008
ISBN-10: 0-8144-0993-8
Publisher’s Website: http://www.amanet.org/books/book.cfm?isbn=9780814409930&TextID=1005199
Comments? E-mail Bruce Rozenhart
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