How do you change someone’s mind?

March 11, 2011

Influence, Integrated marketing communications, Marketing, Public relations

Change is hard. Have you ever convinced someone to change his/her mind? How did you do it?

Have you ever changed someone else’s mind? How did you do it? How long did it take you? What finally worked in the end?

Changing someone’s mind is like having sex in the ninth grade. A lot of people talk about it but few have ever tried it. And of those who have given it a shot, even fewer have done it successfully.

It’s super-easy for me to start pontificating on a blog that in order to get your point across, you need to change the way people think. Or to join a Twitter chat and tweet that you convince leadership of the value you or your team brings to the table by changing their mind.

You can also keep living by breathing air. Stay hydrated by drinking water.

It would also be easy for me to tear down those who talk about change and not offer a potential approach or solution of my own. Now I don’t pretend to have the answer to the questions I’ve proposed. But I do have a hypothesis based on personal experience and observation. It’s a start and maybe together we can fill in the blanks. So here we go…

Awareness

For someone to even consider buying what you’re selling, they have to know about it. So sharing the concept is key. But more important is how you share it. Start with research, including deep diving on who you’re trying to convince. What are the person’s beliefs? Where do his/her loyalties lie? What type of information does he/she find compelling? Try and find research or angles that align with the answer to those questions and lead with that information.

Conversation

Seems obvious, right? Of course you have to talk about your POV. But again, it’s all in how you do it. The first time you try and change someone’s mind through conversation, you are likely to fail. I don’t care if you’re Oprah. Change just doesn’t happen that fast. If you take your pail and go home after one conversation that doesn’t go your way, you might as well stick to talking it out online. You’ll find a ton of people that agree with you and very few, if any, who have actually changed someone’s mind.

Perseverance

Perseverance can be what wins people over. Ask questions. Talk to the person you’re trying to convince about why they see things differently and where they’re coming from. We don’t like to be told what to believe. But we do like to learn from each other through discussion and come to realizations and epiphanies on our own terms. Let it happen that way and don’t be overly aggressive. Nothing turns people off like a conflict. We’re stubborn. So kill them with kindness.

Influence

Realize that you may not be the one who is going to change the person’s mind. I have worked at corporations before where we never would have listened to our own people, but if a third party came in and said the same thing we’d been saying all along, that got the point across. Part of being a good communicator is knowing what your target will respond to.

Education vs Evangelism

If the person you’re trying to convince isn’t responding to you, back off the conversation and try providing examples that support your perspective. I know one PR pro who did this with her leadership team by sending them a weekly e-mail with research she believed in. She never evangelized in the e-mail, but always provided the information in order to educate. Eventually, the people she was trying to convince started mentioning this research in meetings as if they’d found it on their own.

Patience

Talking about change is easy. Making it happen…not so easy. And there is no switch or silver bullet. If it were me, I’d practice the steps above and look for small wins here and there. Then celebrate those because when it comes to change, small wins can be big wins. Have a vision of where you want to be, but also a vision of where you were with this person/people. Don’t negate any progress you do make by only settling for a perfect score. That approach will drive you crazy and make you a bitter person. But more importantly, it’s not realistic.

No one is ever going to see things exactly the way you see them. Often times changing someone’s mind is an idealistic goal when instead we should be concentrating on getting them to respect our opinions and finding a common ground where we can work together.

Getting there can be a painful process – worse than talking about sex without actually trying it, David Silver. But don’t forget that change is a process, not an item on a to-do list. And different approaches work for different people, which takes us back to the four questions I asked at the start: