Decorum: Fitting in with others is persuasive

Your audience expects you to fit into their view of the world. They expect you to talk, dress, and gesture like them. They want to feel confident that you are “one of them.”�

It’s not just a matter of manners. When you fit in with your audience you are more persuasive.

People want to feel that you are part of their group, that you understand the world the way they do. If they identify with you, they are much more likely to listen to you and feel persuaded by you.

If you meet with your bankers dressed in business attire and adopt a serious demeanor, they are more likely to believe that you are taking the use of their money seriously before they ever hear your pitch.

But attend a Friday afternoon pizza party dressed and acting the same way, your co-workers are going to ask if you are going to an interview and wonder why you are so serious all the time. Before you have a chance to say anything they will be concluding that you are not “one of the gang.”�

Before entering a situation where you want to persuade, ask yourself, what do they expect? As Heinrich says, “To move people away from their current opinion, you need to make them comfortable with you.”

I’m not saying you should pretend to be someone else. But in order to be persuasive, think about your audience and then dress and behave in a way that both meets their expectations and that is authentic for you.

If two young engineers are meeting the bankers mentioned above, they could end up looking absurd in a conservative blue suit that they were uncomfortable wearing. And by the same token, an experienced financial executive from a Fortune 500 company in that meeting would look absurd in anything but a conservative suit.

Find the right balance in your decorum between being authentic and meeting the expectations of your audience. You will go a long way toward winning the persuasive battle.

Decorum is the first step in appealing to your audience on the basis of your character. In the next post we’ll look at three other qualities of a persuasive ethos by showing the audience that you:

• share their values
• have practical wisdom in the matter at hand
• primarily have a selfless concern for the interests of your audience.

Some other related posts you might find useful:

1. Emotions vary in their persuasive power
2. Timing is everything
3. The advantageous: What’s good for the audience?
4. Appealing to emotion
5. Rhetoric: an overview