If you want to be more successful, invest in face-to-face relationships versus email.
Harvard recently proved that participants had 34 more chances of attaining their objective when they made their request face-to-face rather than when they sent an email. Curiously, or not that much, before the experiment, participants thought that email would be the best way of communicating allowing them to be able to convince with a well-thought argumentation.
Are you also privileging email versus face-to-face communication? It might be because of a social belief that ignores the science of happiness and, instead of helping you, is drawing your chances to sell your arguments. Let me explain why.
Our society values rationality over emotions. It is so since Descartes, a French mathematician, and philosopher of the 17th century, formulated the "Cartesian method" that praised the mind as the solution for knowing the truth and that can be summarized in his famous quote "I think, therefore I am." Although this approach has enormous benefits, believing that individuals are rational beings and that we take decisions based on facts can prove us all wrong. Rafael Nadal won Roland Garros despite coming back from injuries and being technically over the age where tennis men retire. You probably dated this man or girl that your mother gave you reasons not to. You might even be married to him/her!
When we use or pretend that others take decisions solely based on rational criteria, we are scientifically wrong; Neuroscience has discovered that our mind uses both emotions and real observations to take a decision. If we persist on using solely rational argumentation, we will not be using our full potential of persuasion, forgetting that emotions also play a critical role in decision making. We should say: "I feel and think, therefore I am."
Now, coming back to the Harvard research. How do you think we can achieve to arise more positive emotions to influence others: by email or face-to-face?
Face-to-face interviews offer the perfect moment for anyone to send our interlocutor a lot of emotional information. How friendly we are, how much we care for them, how truthful we are, and much other relevant information. Our interlocutor will use, aware or unaware of it, all these emotions together with more rational information, to decide whether to say yes or no to our request.
So next time you want to harvest a YES from someone, think of meeting face to face and be mindful of the whole potential of the positive emotions partnering with your thinking!
The science of happiness has proven that those individuals who are happier are also more successful. It is not that they are successful and that makes them happy. It is because they are happy that they are more successful.
I created Feel:)Logic to help companies measure happiness, and set the conditions for their employees to thrive. Within six months, they achieve higher customer satisfaction, employee engagement, retention and, get better bottom line results.