Suppose your boss has asked you to write a letter to a client about a problem with their order. What format of writing would you use, and what kind of style would you use to write? Justify your response.

Every day we encounter these small-scale, usually low-stakes persuasive messages, designed to influence our attitudes and behaviors, even though we don't always label them as such. Some of those messages we deflect or ignore. Others get through and are successful, sometimes despite our own best intentions.

But it's not just others who are sending persuasive messages. We are, too. Many of us send out more such messages than we get back.

We persuade our partner to see this movie rather than that one, or our co-worker to knock off a few minutes early, or the service manager to get the oil change done by 3:00 because that's when we need the car. A large percentage of our communication is consciously or unconsciously designed to be persuasive - - that is, to be instrumental in getting something we want. One might say that communication, by its nature, is supposed to be persuasive.

If you are in a leadership position, a position of authority and responsibility, you probably send out more persuasive messages than most. In fact, it's your job to send out those messages. If you didn't, your influence would suffer. Your success as a leader, or as a community builder, is directly related to the appropriateness and the effectiveness of the persuasive messages you send out.

If all this is true, if persuasion is a natural and inevitable part of the communication process, we might choose to learn how to get better at it (and we can get better!). This section focuses on understanding principles of persuasion