Can Teachers Persuade?

Do you feel you need to persuade your students/trainees to study, implement, review, attend classes, make the effort to use the language that they have been trying to acquire?

If so, you might be interested in an interesting video I recently came across. The video is a talk on Persuasion which Dave Lakhani gave at T. Harv Eker’s Peak Potentials Master of Influence workshops in 2008. Lakhani is a noted speaker on persuasion and influence, as well as the best selling author of several books, such as, Persuasion: The Art of Getting What You Want and How To Sell When Nobody’s Buying: (And How to Sell Even More When They Are) , etc.

At the beginning of his lively, interactive talk, Lakhani explains how he got into the field of persuasion – he was brought up in a cult which he left in his late teens. As a result of this experience, Lakhani studied everything he could on the subject of persuasion, manipulation, cult behavior, etc.

In fact, he starts his talk off by making a clear distinction between ethical and unethical persuasion, that is, between persuasion and manipulation – and in this video he only talks about ethical persuasion (in his book on Persuasion, Lakhani goes much more into manipulation).

“Persuasion,” Lakhani explains, “is helping a person come to their own best conclusions, but which happens to be one you share.” Manipulation (getting the outcome you want no matter what the cost to the other person) is very similar to persuasion, the main difference, Lakhani points out, is the intent of the person doing the persuading or manipulating.

In this video, Lakhani presents several good points that I feel as ESOL teachers/trainers/coaches we could find useful in our work, such as, the importance of story, peak experiences and its role in helping memory, making the language group unique for the students, encouraging our students/trainees to find the solutions for which they are trying to acquire English.

Take a look at his video (it is a bit long: 90 minutes) – but well worth the time, so you might want to put aside a chunk of time to see it or see it in stages. Let me know what you found useful for your own teaching….

Two books by Dave Lakhani:

Persuasion: The Art of Getting What You Want

How To Sell When Nobody’s Buying: (And How to Sell Even More When They Are)