There are thousands of books and articles that will tell you How to Persuade a Potential Client, or the Three Tips That Will Engage an Audience, or What Not to Do If You Want People to Follow You.
There is no book or TED talk in the world that will guarantee that something you do = any effect on another person, except maybe kicking them in the shins. Nothing any of these people tells you, including me, ensures that you’re going to be able to apply their concepts and be 100% successful. There are simply too many variables in your audience to be able to encompass them all. So the classic Dale Carnegie book could be retitled (less snappily but more truthfully): What to Do to Have a Better Chance of Winning Friends and Influencing People.
What these writers are trying to give you is a way to think about your own communication differently. All we can control, of course, is what we say and how we say it. We can, and should, think about the potential impact our words will have on others, but there is no 100% money-back guarantee that applying steps 1 – 7 of whatever process is going to be successful.
A major league pitcher has one goal—to strike out as many batters as possible. And he works his whole career with that goal in mind. But even the best pitchers give up runs, nearly every single game. All he can control is what he throws, and to whom. He can’t control the batter’s response.
Similarly, we can control the words we use and the deliberate intention that carries them to our listener.
