Persuasion and Influence

I finished my last final today and turned it in via email~ I have officially finished my first year of grad school!

Andrei came in to congratulate me on finishing my last exam, and when I told him it was for my Influential Communication in the Marketplace, or persuasion, class he got really excited. He asked if I could teach him anything from my class, and I jokingly said we could have an influence tactic of the week. We decided we should do it, and throughout the day he would ask when our class was going to be. When we told others in the office we would do it, and I said weekly, he said, and why not daily? So I said, yes, let's do it daily, after all, I'm not going to be here that long...

So at around 3:45, we took off for the conference room for our first influence class! He called in Acia, and then went and announced to some others who were still around (most of the leadershp had left by this point for various meetings) that class was beginning. We got another recruit in Lydia.

So, I started out with the basis of influence, and I drew a scale for them of different influence tactics, from ones that build relationships, down to those that break relationships, explaining that the first are better for interpersonal, long lasting relationships, and that those at the other end of the scale were more like compliance tactics for impersonal, short term relationships.

Our first tactic was likability. The lesson took about an hour, and I was afraid it was getting a little long by the end, but we finished up everything on the tactic, complete with examples. All three of them were great students, commenting and taking notes. I tried to bring in examples from journalism to politics to office relations to dating. Andrei even made a crack about which tactics he thought his wife used.

Andrei said he really liked the class, especially the examples. He apparently had taken four different seminars on influence, but had hated them--he said they didn't use any examples, and he didn't write down one thing. No notes?! I asked. He said no--it was too boring, and unusable. So I'm glad we found a format that will be usable and interesting to them. And it's great for me--I've always loved teaching, and it helps me to solidify what I learned in class this last semester from Kelton Rhoades.

So, I'll head home tonight and start working on tomorrow's lesson :)