The Persuader
From original Beauty of Styles video by Effectiveness Institute founder, Tom Champoux
Guess which style wants to go next? Guess which one? Persuaders. Tell about the nice one, I’ve been waiting a long time, tell about the good one! Ohh, they’re going to talk about me now. This is going to be fun!
The primary thrust for this style is that they LOVE PEOPLE and people love them. I use 5 words to describe Persuaders
- Positive—the glass is half full not half empty
- Optimistic—cmon, we can do this
- Positive, optimistic, 3rd one is intuitive. People ask, how’d you get that info and they say “I picked up the vibe” Now that drives our Analyzer friends crazy
- Positive, optimistic, intuitive, and energy providers—they swoop into a room and give energy away…oh you look good, isn’t this great… and the fifth one, you’ll love this one
- With a smile…they’re happy people! In fact every Persuader has heard this at some time..people come up to them and say “Somethings the matter with you, you’re too happy…the world isn’t that good” And the Persuader goes “here, let me give you a hug, you look like you need a hug,” as if cookies and milk were going to take care of it. Persuaders want to hug the whole world. They always want to hug a Controller and the Controller says..you hug me and I’ll drop you in your tracks!
Okay, so how can they be positive, optimistic, intuitive, energy providers with a smile unless they have great verbal skills? Persuaders, they just open their mouths and words come out. They can present anything. And, you get a Persuader with their back up against the wall and there’s no way out without dignity…Persuaders can answer questions about which they know nothing! They quote sources that don’t exist. They make up things on the spot. Do they lie? No they do not lie, they speak FIGURATIVELY. They say, sorry I’m late, but I missed EVERY light on the way here. Now, they didn’t miss every light. The Analyzer says—that can’t be, I know where you live and there are 17 stop lights between here and there and lights 9-13 are synchronized, so you can’t miss all of them. Persuader didn’t mean he missed every light. I missed more red lights than usual, there was more traffic than usual, and I left later than usual, and I got here as fast as I could. Know how they summarized that? I missed EVERY light. Isn’t that fascinating?
Okay, let’s talk about their strengths, because remember we have strengths for every style.
Strength number one, literature says they are impulsive. Persuaders didn’t like that so we changed it. Persuaders are Extremely Flexible. I’m working on something over here, and now I think I’ll go over here, and here, and oh..someone’s laughing over here. Wherever there is laughter, they go. How could you be laughing without me?
Okay, so that’s their first strength, they’re very flexible, very impulsive and with their verbal skills they can actually pull it off, they can convince you that it’s okay. Strength #1.
Strength #2, this is their magic, strength #2, they GIVE AWAY TRUST. They start with the glass full…and if you break trust they take some away…the other three styles say No, No, No. you start with an empty glass and every time someone demonstrates trust, you put some in.
That’s why Persuaders are so easy to be around. They automatically see your good qualities, they automatically see your strengths, they expect that you’re going to do what you say you’ll do. See how easy they are to be around? So you ask them: Don’t you get hurt doing that? They all say the same thing: Yeah, see the scars…and they say, It was worth it. They needed someone to believe in them.
Okay, listen to me very carefully. You will not find a nicer human being than a Persuader. And any team that doesn’t have a Persuader is doomed to failure over the long run. You gotta have a Persuader. They breathe the life and energy into the team. Ask not what your country can do for you. They’re the dreamers…I have a dream that one day our children will live together in a world….I have a dream…They’re the ones that give us that spark to see something different in ourselves.
So I’ve got my IDEA GENERATOR…that’s a Controller, and I’ve got my IDEA PROMOTER, that’s a Persuader. Sometimes I have to generate an idea, so I put on my Controller hat. Sometimes I’ve got to promote an idea, so I put on my Persuader hat. I’m not one — I’m all 4. Next week we’ll discuss Stabilzers.
