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How Do I Work With Someone Who Has An Ego?
Written by Kurt Mortensen   
Monday, 08 February 2010 09:42
Ego kicks in anytime someone challenges your abilities, especially your abilities to do your business, your immediate and instinctive reaction is to prove them wrong! When employing this tactic, be careful to avoid damaging the ego. VERY IMPORTANT: When you cause damage instead of producing a challenge, you will create an air of indifference from your prospect.
by KurtMortensen


Ego kicks in anytime someone challenges your abilities, especially your abilities to do your business, your immediate and instinctive reaction is to prove them wrong! When employing this tactic, be careful to avoid damaging the ego. VERY IMPORTANT: When you cause damage instead of producing a challenge, you will create an air of indifference from your prospect.

Sports coaches use another challenge to the ego in a team environment. For instance during football practice one of the players is not giving it 100%, doesn't make meeting on time, or makes the same mistake over and over, the coach has the perfect ego based solution. He call a team meeting explains to the teams what been going on with this particular player. He then has every one on the team except the guilty player run some laps. The punishment is a challenge to that football player's ego. Situations like that only have to take place once to be persuasive for each member of the team.

We face many challenging messages geared toward our egos. For instance a multilevel marketing meeting, managers might say they are only looking for "go-getters" and "people who know how to take action." A teacher may say to a student, "I'd like you to do these advanced assignments". I have witnessed sale reps make a subtle attack on their prospect's ego when they felt they were not making the sale. They said something like, "I guess you do not have the authority to make the decision." You should see how quickly the ego kicks in!

Another way is to give people credit for things they don't know. When you do this they will generally say nothing and allow you to believe them to be smarter and more aware than they really are. Then they will try to live up to the undeserved credit you have just bestowed upon them, just so they can lead you to believe they are really smart. Here are a couple more phrases that are direct challenges to our egos, "You probably already know...." or "You will soon realize..."

In persuasion, we are faced with the difficult task of building the egos of our listeners while placing our own egos on hold. In order to effectively persuade, you have to let go of your ego and focus on your objective. You don't have time to mend a bruised ego. Check your ego in at the door and remember your overriding purpose. Focus on persuasion, not on yourself.

About the Author:

Want to find out more about persuasion skills, then visit Kurt Mortensen's site. Take Kurt's FREE Persuasion IQ test and see where your strengths lie and where you need improvement.