The One Key to Being Persuasive

Table of Contents

• What is the key to being persuasive?

• Seven Primary Types of Trust Table

• Fifteen Trust Triggers & Biases Table

What is the key to being persuasive?

As my readers know I am a big fan of asymmetrical techniques and returns and am also a fan of systems theory. There are certain things in live that act as levers giving disproportional benefits for the effort one puts into them. There are certain other things which are bottlenecks, where having additional control and ability unlocks or improved different things across a system. For what I am talking about today it doesn’t matter whether you are a fan of holism or a reductionist, the conclusion is the same - the key to having people do what you suggest, ask, want, request or require is ‘trust’.

Trust. Trust is one of the most important, useful and misunderstood psychological phenomena on the planet. Almost everything that people teach about trust is vague and based on misunderstandings. Trust is a set of fast-acting, energy-saving, neuro-cognitive heuristics, triggered by overlapping feedback loops whose purpose is to reduce decision-making cost under uncertainty. Which is a funky way of saying trust is a reflex.

The key to being persuasive is identifying the context of the situation, they type of trust you want to trigger and then utilizing the correct emotional or behavioural levers to establish it.

Most trust types are determined by a combination of 3 factors:

• (perceived) intent

• (perceived) competence and

• (perceived) predictability

The first 2 largely influenced by the third.

We’ll be putting out a lot of information on Trust Engineering and how to rapidly create trust in the next few weeks. In this email I am attaching two tables. If you understand them you will instantly have the power to be more persuasive than 90% of people. This doesn’t mean you’ll become Svengali overnight (though you may) however it does give you the tools to strategize and develop relationships quicker and faster.

Remember, it doesn’t matter that you’ve been told that trust is something you earn. That it takes time. That it requires sacrifice. Or character. Or luck. Bullshit.
Trust is not something you give. It’s not a moral quality. It’s not logical. It may not even be rational.

Trust is a fast-acting, energy-saving, neuro-cognitive heuristic, triggered by overlapping feedback loops which is designed to reduce decision-making cost under uncertainty and it is a fundamental part of every decision a human ever makes.

Here are tables with the 7 primary trust types and 15 biases or psychological triggers to develop them.