I’m going to make the assumption here that what you are really talking about is people who come into a meeting with a closed mind when you’d rather they read like an open book.

You will learn at our Presentation Skills Seminars that the easiest way to open a person’s mind is to figure out why they closed it in the first place. Most people will only open their mind if you can show them how they will gain rather than lose. Here is the easiest way to do this:

1. Quickly figure out the communication style of the individual. Is he a Connector, Networker, Producer or Analyzer?

2. You can also open your meeting by using Outcome Thinking® and by giving an example of something in the past that people said wouldn’t work and today we couldn’t live without. You would then correlate this to what you are about to talk about so you shift the group’s mind from focusing on the way things are to focusing on the way things could be.

Keep the group focused on the possibilities and not the problems.

GET FREE TIPs—Find out more about how to handle COMMUNICATION STYLES and PAST TO PRESENT challenges.