Brain in Business

Hi all,
Thank you very much indeed to the group who helped me on Friday come up with some great new ideas to get across Cialdini's 6 principles of persuasion/ influence.

We alreaady do this regularly on longer courses but my colleague Beth and I are running a lunchtime seminar for scientists in the Oxford area (if you know anyone who'd like to attend then here's the info www.stellarlearning.co.uk/cms/index.php?...ew=article&id=73

So I wanted something that would take less than an hour to explore the principles.

The team got me thinking about how to incorporate the senses rather more explicity so I've now come up with an exercise that will allow people to:
hear the 6 principles - verbal explanation
see the 6 principles - in words and pictures
touch the 6 principles - using physical objects to represent them
walk the 6 principles - walk to designated corners of the room to share info
explore the 6 principles in their own work - generate their own examples
and as they are scientists they will also get experimental evidence of the 6 principles.

Thank you for making this a much more creative session for me - and also for a large group of scientists who are going to be far more actively involved than they will imagine.

Who thinks this experience and knowledge will stick with them longer than if I lecture for an hour?

The power of the Mastermind Clinic strikes again.

warm regards,
Stella COllins

Hi all,
we ran our 'Science of Persuasion' session yesterday and it went down really well thanks to all your great ideas.

We only had about 45 minutes to get the 6 principles across to a group of 18 scientists so that they could understand and remember them, relate them to their own experiences and come up with some ways they could use the principles at work.

Most of the group had not met before so we had the potential challenge that they would be hesitant about each other as well as the topic.

However, we broke the ice over a very informal and fast light lunch, there was plenty of information in the room for people to look at, books, posters etc, salsa music to encourage an active, positive mindset (one person did volunteer to dance for us) and everyone did name badges as they arrived so they didn't need to worry about forgetting names as soon as they were introduced.

We had a quick explanation from Beth and me of the principles with a poster and illustrative story for each principle. We'd created 6 'islands' to represent the principles. Then we handed out 18 props and asked people to go and find the island that related to their story, picture or physical prop. once they'd created little groups of 3 they had to discuss what they had and then come up with some ways they could use the principles (ethically) at work.

Lots of fantastic discussion, great ideas generated and many people left saying they had learnt something new.

So thanks for the inspiration from the group at the last BFLG meeting! And if you know anyone who wants to find out more how to get better at influencing in a very interactive way then let us know.

Stella