Does Your Energy Level Play A Role In The Art Of Persuasion?
Posted Nov 14 2008 7:25am
Does your energy level play a role in the art of persuasive communication? Absolutely. When you have energy to spare, you don’t just walk into a room, you make an entrance. You look around, make eye contact, move just a little quicker than everyone else. When you extend your hand, you reach out with confidence and determination.
But where does the energy come from? It doesn’t depend on the people around you. And it doesn’t come from trying. Energy comes from caring.
Maybe your persuasive energy comes from the way you care about people in general, or certain people in particular. Maybe you care about having a rich and full life and are willing to live such a way as to get that result. Maybe you care about not wasting your time or the time of others, so you make your moments count. Whatever it is you care about, it is obvious you care, because you are careful instead of careless with others, with what they say, and with what you say.
When you know why you care, when you know what matters to you enough to make clicking with people important to you, it’s easy to be passionate about the difference your energy makes. It is only natural that, rather than walking like gravity is bringing you down, you walk with a spring in your step that indicates you have the momentum in your life to go forward. When you talk with people, you have the energy to be in a good humor, which lets you laugh at others’ jokes, even bad ones. If you seem to have a knack for making friends and building relationships, it’s because you have the energy to pay attention. And wherever you go, no matter who is around or what is going on, you have the energy to act as if you are always in the right place at the right time, even when it doesn’t seem that way at all.
You can do this. You have done this. Any time you care, really care about something, it recharges you and compensates you for your engagement with it. When you put energy into something, you get energy back from it. It’s useful in life to keep this in front of you, to work it out before you engage, to attend to your energy level ahead of time instead of after the fact. Knowing why you care about clicking means you don’t have to wait until it’s too late, until you’re exhausted, backed up, buried or gone. Opportunity knocks, but you need enough energy to get up and respond, or it passes along to a more welcoming door. To have energy, you must care.
Consider my client, Denise. When she first contacted me, she was a low energy and low effectiveness person. As she described it, she used to drag herself to work and back, day after day, always one step behind and never quite able to catch up with herself. When she had opportunities to make a connection, or get her ideas across, she was too tired to act in her own interest. Instead, her low energy became a set of reasons to say and do nothing when saying and doing something might actually count.
How did she turn it around? Yes, we made some adjustments in her nutrition and activity level. But the big change came when s he answered a few basic questions, and then based her subsequent behavior on the answers. Questions like, “Why should I care about me, even when others don’t? Why should I care about the people I meet, even when they are difficult or annoying? Why should I care about what happens today more than any other day? Why should I care about how I respond to this day’s challenges and opportunities?”
With a little encouragement, she was able to make up answers that were satisfying to her, because they gave her an energetic connection to the way her life was unfolding. And by caring about herself and taking good care of herself, she was able to make a few simple adjustments in the way she put herself together, organized her day, and worked with other people.
It was only natural at that point that she began eliminating the activities that drained her energy, or finding alternative ways to do those activities that gave her more energy. She learned to make time for a little peace and quiet to begin every day, and to use that time to plan, not just the day, but the little breaks she would take later on to recharge her batteries.
Because she knew why she cared, she was motivated to be strategic in her dealings with all kinds of people, including the challenging ones, by developing her communication skills and increasing her understanding of human behavior. Because she knew why she cared, she was no longer willing to run herself down, or put herself down, or leavie herself out of important conversations where decisions would be made that could impact her work, her health, her life. Most importantly, because she knew why she cared, this mattered enough to her to help her make these changes. Instead of waiting to be ground down by changing circumstances, she chose to have the energy to shape her circumstances.
The result? The change began to show in her energy level immediately. Far more often than before, she now has more than enough energy and more than enough time to reach out, help out, and build relationship. And when she walks into a room, it shows. The people around her can’t help but respond when she is around. She is considered an important voice in the room, and a persuasive person in her circle.
How’s your energy level? What do you care about? Your comments are welcome! Next post, we’ll explore another characteristic of persuasive people.