The Necessary Art of Persuasion

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23 July 2018
The Necessary Art of Persuasion
In his book “The Necessary Art of Persuasion” Conger (1998) argues that employees, nowadays, ought to be treated by their managers in a respectful manner that shows an appreciation of their intelligence, in contrast to the past when managers felt entitled to order their subordinates to carry out whatever it was they wanted them to. The “command and control managerial model” (Conger 86), is no longer effective because in our day and age, partly as a result of the lack of clear definitions of the hierarchical roles in the workplace, employees need to know the reasons behind their boss’s requirements or instructions.
Demonstrating that one is an expert in his or her field is important in the persuasion process; Conger himself hints at his own expertise and therefore has the required credibility and a good chance of persuading us with his own arguments by reference to his research results. By claiming that through research that he carried out over a period of time he had actually learned a great deal from business people and found out, for example, that managers tend to consider themselves more credible than they really are, he appeals to our logic and suggests to us that what he says must be true since it is based on his empirical observations.
Conger’s basis of his argument that employees are intelligent people who demand to be treated as such by their boss invokes our sympathy towards these employees.

His argument relies on our ethical and our emotional judgment.
The aim of persuasion in the business world is something that should be achieved both by managers in their interactions with their subordinates and by subordinates in their interactions with their bosses. By using the illustrative example of a manager in the engineering sector who wanted to persuade his boss to fund a particular process, (Conger 92) shows us that the use of a logical way if thinking, based on a good awareness of the business objectives of the person we are trying to persuade on a particular proposal is another technique that can be used effectively in the act of persuasion.

References
Conger, Jay A. 1998. The Necessary Art of Persuasion. Harvard Business Review. May-June 1998. Reprint 98304. Web. Accessed 23 July 2018.