How to Change Minds (Without Losing Yours)
Change minds by understanding how people think. It’s not about your ideas. It’s about their way of seeing the world.
Get out of your head and into the heart of others to learn how to change minds.
1. Change Minds by Connecting with Their Reality
You can’t lead people to a new perspective until they feel seen in their current one. When someone is upset, don’t tell them to calm down. Validate their emotion. Say, “That’s frustrating!” or “I’d be mad, too.”
Match their emotional state first. Then guide the shift.
2. Change Minds by Getting Curious, Not Critical
Don’t assume someone’s beliefs are irrational. Ask yourself, How are they making sense of this? Find the reasons behind beliefs.
Get to the point you can argue for someone’s position, even if it isn’t yours.
3. Influence by Shifting from “Should” to “Could”
“Should” creates resistance. Asking what they could do opens possibility. Explore options together.
Ask, “What needs to be true for you to consider this alternative?”
4. Influence by Crafting Solutions Together
People adopt ideas they help shape. Ask questions that guide reflection:
- “What would success look like for you?”
- “What’s the risk if nothing changes?”
Create ownership by letting others do the work.
The ideas in this post are inspired by the new book The Difference that Makes a Difference by, Josh Davis, PhD, and Greg Prosmushkin.
5. Change Minds by Co-Creating a Desirable Future
Help people define what they want, not what they want to avoid. Change is easier when the path forward is energizing, specific, and attainable.
Bottom line: Changing minds starts with understanding people. Influence grows not through pressure, but through empathy, clarity, and partnership.
Which idea in this post can you apply to your leadership?
What is essential to influencing the way people think?
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I am very strong in the empathy department. I could definitely do a better job of clarity. I tend to think everyone “knows” what I am talking about or asking them to do when I need to provide more clarity around it.
You know Brandi, things can be so clear to me and I can be so confusing to others. I can give people the benefit of my conclusions while not mentioning the path to get there. This is a place to check with others. What are you hearing me say? Could you tell me what you think I said in your own words. I know from experience that it can be quite surprising.
“The great enemy of communication, we find, is the illusion of it.” William Whyte
Dan, we see this each day serving our hospice patients. As you mentioned above, one of the ways we validate their position is through pure l-i-s-t-e-n-i-n-g. Without this key ingredient, their pain (physical or existential) remains. Our goal is not so much to change their minds, but to assist them in coping with their illness, assuring them they still have the ability to have a purpose. When they recognize this, that’s when you see “change” in them.
Thank you, Dan.
Thank you for your wisdom today, Paul. It seems working with the dying teaches us about living.
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