Comments on: Knowing When To Keep Your Mouth Shut

By: Breian Malupa

Breian Malupa — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 06:07:12 +0000

Knowing when to keep your mouth shut is very important (and not just in persuading others, but in all aspect of your life). There is always the proper time and place, things need to be said and things that shouldn’t even be mentioned.

Part of persuasion is assessing the listener as you talk. You need to be aware on the subtle body language or response every second. Everything could be going good and it would take just one word to change your prospect from good to disappointment. Hence the term “pushing the button”. Are you pushing the right buttons or the wrong buttons? Because if you are pushing the wrong buttons, isn’t it smart to stop at that moment and change your approach?

In my opinion,… knowing when to open or close your mouth is as powerful as the ’3 sec pause/silence’ rule – as well as being the most important.

By: Brennan Kingsland

Brennan Kingsland — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 20:47:07 +0000

Poor girl! It was so uncomfortable to watch her rambling, my heart just went out to her. And not because of her apparent beauty (I’m a happily married grandmother), but because it is part of the human condition to feel empathy. She will suffer horrible and excruciating embarrassment for a long time to come. Teenagers haven’t had an opportunity to develop a good frame of reference for human frailties, and castigate themselves even more than adults do. I hope this experience hasn’t ruined her self-confidence and that she will learn valuable lessons from this.

It reminds me of the old saying you alluded to: “It’s better to stay silent and be perceived as dumb, than to speak and remove all doubt.”

Poor girl!

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 16:38:26 +0000

Being able to sound clear and coherent is a rare trait in the world today. When I recognize that someone isn’t making much sense and they appear to be fumbling or bumbling for the words to express themselves, I realize that it’s not particularly their fault and they are not alone. In my opinion, it a lack of being prepared; whether it is being out of the person’s subject matter or being caught off guard, it makes even the smartest of people difficult to listen to.

When I am in the middle of a persuasion setting and I hear someone fumbling, I realize the need to either take charge or really listen to them if they are working to process their thoughts into words, or of course they may be bs’ing me. And that is the beauty of learning language skills; the ability to determine if someone is searching to give their criteria words or um, … ya know, … just trying to bs me, or in the best scenario: showing me that they want my leadership.

Now if I could only be in a situation where people thought I was so gorgeous and I had even a small amount of language skills, …