The Back-Fire Effect - Handling Difficult Stakeholders

Interesting article on persuading your toughest customer – or your 2-year-old.
Nathan Kontny’s article on medium.com is a must-read in dealing with difficult customers and persuading them to take a course of action.  Handling the “I want a Jelly Bean for breakfast” argument with your child is a great preparation for handling a lot of conflict at work.  

What is most interesting in this article is that most people do not like to be corrected.  They have beliefs, and those beliefs are not to be challenged.  Adults don’t change with viewpoints easily on their perspective of the business.  Even to the point that when presented with undeniable evidence their belief is completely wrong or misguided, they will enforce their belief even more strongly.  No one likes to be contradicted.  It’s certainly not a comfortable situation for anyone – especially for adults.

ven for children, they don’t’ like to be told that Jelly Beans and ice cream for breakfast is bad.  This is a natural human behavior, and there are more constructive ways to engage the “Jelly Beans for breakfast” conversation.  I loved the author's conversation with his daughter on breakfast foods choices.

There are better approaches to dealing with difficult customers by acknowledgment of their frustration and pain.  Putting yourself in their shoes is an important step in empathy and acknowledgment.

The Backfire Effect — How you can persuade even your toughest customers (or two-year-olds