How Do You Prepare For Challenge To Your Ideas?

Leaders are in the business of communication and as you’ve seen me write on numerous, previous occasions, that means mastering the skills of concise, effective, persuasive messaging which serves the conversation and drives decisions.

My conversations with clients this month have focused on the guaranteed reality of challenge, scrutiny, disagreement and how to prepare successfully for it. Challenge is always good in business; it stretches our thinking, encourages creativity and supports increasing the rigour of decisions made. However, it’s surprising how little effort is put into preparing for it.

Being persuasive means demonstrating grace under pressure, active listening, managing emotions, ‘taking the space’ in the conversation to gather thoughts, and then delivering a clear, crisp, compelling and non-emotional reply.

Sounds easy doesn’t it? Of course it’s not in practice… and indeed it’s practice that we need to complete as part of our preparation. Note the most common challenges that will come your way, organise an answer in three parts, making clear the ‘why’ and then rehearse and record on your phone to hear how you sound.

Too often leaders ramble on… it’s not engaging, and it never persuades.