Maximizing Your Persuasive Power with Gui Gu Zi Chapter 9 权篇 Power

Gui Gu Zi's Strategic Persuasion is about developing strategies and persuasion to complement each other for winning together. The strategies and tactics for maximizing your persuasive power are covered comprehensively in this Chapter 9.  The key principles are covered first and the English translations of the original text are given in mind-map forms subsequently. But studying the translations, you may be able to come out with additional principles and tips to increase your persuasive power. Hope you can share with us too.

The Overview and Key Points
The following mind-map captures the principles and key points for maximizing your persuasion. it begins by pointing out that persuasion is not just about us but more about the listener. Why should they listen to us? We must earn the rights to be heard. Please go through the map below and see if can follow them to improve your persuasive power.



Want to go further to discover for your own?
I may not have discovered all the wisdom of Gui Gu Zi and so I present my translations of his original text below for your own study and learning, please remember to share with us your additional discovery.

1 Persuasion - Earn the rights to speak


2 Knowing the Speaker


3 Listen by Watch but Speak Not


4 Use Others Strengths


5 Five Emotions and Speech
Be aware of the listeners' emotion. A person that is angry is not going to listen to anything. Need to calm them first and help them into the right emotion and mental state to listen and support what you are proposing.


6 Speak accordingly to the Types of Your Audience




7 Purpose & Qualities of Speech
A final checklist to reflect on what you want to say. Are you addressing your audience rightly? Do you have any worthy things to share with the wise or new things to teach those that know not? How are you saying it and the words you use, do they create surprises and curiosity? As an example, "The differences between male and female" is not as attractive as "Man are from Mars and Women from Venus".



Lim Liat (c) 15 Sep 2016

For more on Gui Gu Zi, and Sun Zi see Sun Zi and Other Strategists
For more on Ancient Chinese Wisdom see Ancient Chinese Wisdom

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