The
GAP Method, Part 1 - Identify Your Goals
An Excerpt from
Move the World: Persuade Your Audience, Change Minds and Achieve Your Goals
Author's note: This is an excerpt from my
forthcoming book, Move the World: Persuade Your Audience, Change Minds and
Achieve Your Goals, which will be published by John Wiley & Sons in April
2007. If you would like to be kept informed of events related to the book launch
as the publication date approaches, please send your name and email address to
Marni Lane at MHLane@TheLatimerGroup.com.
We also welcome your comments, insights and experiences. Enjoy!
Securing the Power of Persuasion is hard. Convincing someone to think differently
about a topic is no easy task. And it becomes infinitely more difficult if we don't
follow a method and prepare to succeed. What's the first step to prepare? Identify
your goals.
This first step towards successful persuasion occurs before you get anywhere near
your audience. Sometimes it occurs in your head. Sometimes it occurs in conversation
with colleagues. Sometimes you write the answers down. Sometimes you brainstorm on
a white board. No matter where it happens, this first step has to occur somewhere,
some way. You have to put yourself through the basic process of deciding what outcome
you want to accomplish. In other words, at some point, you must ask yourself, “What
do I want to achieve in my presentation (or sales call or interview or meeting)?”
The concept is incredibly simple. How can we achieve a successful outcome without
first defining for ourselves what successful means? “Success” means different
things to different people, but in a professional context, here's a good, basic definition: “An
event that accomplishes its intended purpose.”
My teammates and I spent six years training for the US Olympic Sailing Team. Obviously,
time management and goal-setting were both important to our success. Over time, we
learned the importance of setting goals for every practice session, every day. Since
time was in such short supply for us, we needed ways to gauge how well we were spending
our time. So, for example, every time we practiced, we never said we’d practice
for “five hours.” Instead, we'd say we would practice until we perfected
a certain maneuver. And if we perfected that maneuver in one hour, we were done.
If it took us eight hours to perfect it, then we practiced for eight hours.
The point of the story is that big-picture goals were never enough for us. We had
plenty of those. Having macro and micro goals is critical to long-term progress and
success. Some people advised us to “not sweat the small stuff,” and in
some ways I agree. In some parts of our lives, letting the small stuff slide is important.
But when it comes to goal-setting, the “small stuff,” such as daily goals
and communication goals for each sales call, is equally important to the “big
stuff.”
This is the primary point of this chapter. In order to give yourself the greatest
chance to persuade your audience, you must first be absolutely clear how you define
success, and what the goal for the communication opportunity is. Setting goals is
required. We all know that, and as a business culture we do a great job setting the
big picture goals - the monthly, quarterly and yearly targets. But goal-setting should
continue to trickle down into our daily lives as well. Every persuasive opportunity
should begin with a simple question: “What do I want my audience to think or
do when I walk out of the room later today?”
 Beacon Issue -
September 2006
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