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April 01 2001

Principles of Persuasion

Michael Watkins

Michael Watkins

Michael Watkins is an associate professor of management at the Harvard Business School, 285 Baker West, Soldiers Field, Boston, Mass. 02163. Among his publications is the recently published book (with Mickey Edwards and Usha Thakrar), Winning the Influence Game: What Every Business Leader Should Know About Government (New York: Wiley, 2001).

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Author and Article Information

Michael Watkins

Michael Watkins is an associate professor of management at the Harvard Business School, 285 Baker West, Soldiers Field, Boston, Mass. 02163. Among his publications is the recently published book (with Mickey Edwards and Usha Thakrar), Winning the Influence Game: What Every Business Leader Should Know About Government (New York: Wiley, 2001).

First Publication: July 02 2007

Online ISSN: 1571-9979

Print ISSN: 0748-4526

© 2001 Plenum Publishing Corporation

2001

Plenum Publishing Corporation

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For a full description of the license, please visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.

Negotiation Journal (2001) 17 (2): 115–137.

https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1571-9979.2001.tb00231.x

Abstract

Drawing on the literatures on negotiation, communication, and persuasion as well as his research on organizational transformation, the author proposes a framework for understanding and enacting the persuasion process in organizations. He lays out key goals of persuasion and ways that skilled leaders can manage the process. The framework focuses attention on the ways leaders shape perceptions of interests and alternatives, as well as how they persuade one‐on‐one and from a distance. He also highlights the importance of gaining acceptance of ough, unpopular decisions, nothing that the way leaders manage the process can have a major impact on outcomes in such situations.

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© 2001 Plenum Publishing Corporation

2001

Plenum Publishing Corporation

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For a full description of the license, please visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.