How To Write To A Skeptical Crowd

The Golden Rule Of Communication

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There is a Golden Rule in persuasion or any type of communication. When you violate the Golden Rule, you not only fail to persuade, you often make matters worse. You portray yourself as the attacker, the victimizer. It gives your recipient cause not only to dismiss you but dismiss your entire message, no matter how righteous, logical or fact-based.

A mentor of mine shared this with me fourteen years ago. I’ve tweaked it over the years to improve on it.

I had come to see him after a sales call. I was feeling dejected over a missed opportunity. I sat down with my mentor to triage what had happened.

“There was nothing I could do,” I said. “He just wasn’t getting it.”

He chastised me for violating his axiom which had been drilled into my head before. I now call it the Golden Rule of Communication.

It is ALWAYS the communicator’s responsibility to ensure her message is received, understood, incorporated into the recipient’s belief system and acted upon promptly. It is NEVER the recipient’s responsibility.