Ethos | Influencing with authority or reference to an authority. |
Pathos | An appeal to emotion. |
Logos | Influencing with logical arguments. |
Anticipating objections | Considering how people will react and planning to handle it. |
Asking for permission | Asking for permission to interject or to offer an opinion. |
Signaling | Trying to convey that you have social status or virtue. |
Countersignaling | Downplaying yourself as a show of confidence. |
Provoking | Designing statements to provoke a vivid response. |
Devil's Advocate | Defending an unpopular opinion you don't really believe in order to encourage productive thought and debate. |
Composure | Not allowing others to disrupt your personal presence and calm. |
Empathy | Feeling what others feel. |
Sympathy | Showing that you care without directly sharing an emotion. |
Civility | The process of politely resolving differences within the rules of a society and culture. |
Creative tension | Creating disharmony and tension in order to resolve things or spark creativity. |
Call to action | Directly requesting that the audience take a specific action. |
Nudges | Subtle suggestions that avoid being commanding. |
Active silence | The purposeful use of silence in communication. |
Active constructive responding | Providing encouraging feedback in a responsive and engaged way. |
Emotion labeling | Identifying emotions in a non-judgmental way e.g. "so you feel sad about it." |
Active listening | Doing things to show that you're listening. |
Listening with intent to understand | A more advanced technique than active listening that involves actually trying to fully understand someone including the emotions or strategies behind words. |
Half-listening | Scanning for something you need to know or respond to without really listening. Important where communication is mostly meaningless. |
Politeness | Using formal language and following norms to show consideration and respect to others. |
Compliments | Saying nice things about people. |
False Praise | Insincere compliments. |
Constructive criticism | Offering criticism in a positive way that focuses on potential improvement. |
Cross-cultural communication | The ability to communicate with people who don't share your exact cultural background and experiences. |
Small talk | Talking about minor topics simply to be social. |
Touching base | Contacting someone with small talk in order to keep a social connection alive. |
Message framing | Carefully crafting a message for some intended effect. |
Choice architecture | Carefully structuring choices for decision making. |
Calibrated questioning | Asking carefully crafted questions. |
Closed-ended question | A question that demands specific information. |
Open-ended question | A question that allows for a creative answer from any direction. |
Reframing | Repositioning or restating what you or someone else has said. |
Storytelling | Telling stories. |
Humor | The use of humor to have fun, increase engagement, build rapport and convey your personality. |
Inside jokes | Humor that references shared experiences. Used to build rapport. |
Wit | The ability to say the perfect thing at the perfect time. |
Cruel wit | The use of wit in a fearsome or unkind way. |
Criticism avoidance | Communicating with intent to avoid criticism. Often involves saying nothing specific, helpful or useful. |
Mirroring | Matching the tone of others when communicating with them. |
Taking the high road | Refusing to allow others to drag you down to their level of behavior. |
Candor | Volunteering information that might be useful. |
Anecdotal evidence | Presenting examples as proof. |
Steelman | Strengthening someone's argument before countering it. |
Straw Man | Countering an argument that your opponent did not make. |
View from nowhere | An attempt at objectivity or fairness that is detached from reality. |
Moot point | Offering unhelpful information or questions. |
Analogy | Explaining one thing using its similarities to another thing. |
Leadership | Communicating to get people moving in the same direction. |
Charm offensive | A communication campaign designed to increase good will. |
Charismatic authority | A feeling of authority that resonates from your personal presence. |
Expectation setting | Clearly communicating your expectations of others. |
Managing expectations | Directly communicating what you will and will not do. |
Visual communication | Communication with any visual means including images or body language. |
Art | Pure creative expression in a visual form. |
Music | A compelling type of artistic expression that influences thoughts, mood and emotion. |
Marketing | Using communication to sell. |
Dumbing down | Oversimplifying things. |
Plain language | Using the most general and direct words to express something. |
Paraphrasing | Summing up something. |
Nuance | Using exactly the right words often with many layers of complexity. |
Civil inattention | Ignoring others to create social comfort. |
False dilemma | The incorrect assertion that there are only limited choices in a particular situation. |
Self-monitoring | Trying to be aware of how you are perceived. |
Eye contact | Communicating with the eyes, surprisingly effective. |
Body language | Communicating with position, pose, gestures and movement. |
Social cues | Subtle communication that requires much social perception to grasp. |
Overcommunication | Dull communication with no point or repetitive communication. |
Tagline | A short catchy statement that is memorable. |
Rule of three | The principle that lists of three things are usually most effective. |
Peak-end rule | The theory that people mostly remember the start and end of a speech. |
Rhetorical Device | Well known ways to influence. |
