It's been said before – but it bears repeating: developing the greatest case only gets you to the door of the negotiation, mediation or trial. Once you walk in, a poor delivery will slam that door shut, regardless of how well-developed the case story is. Your success depends on delivering your well-prepared stories with equally strong communication that influences the whole brain of each decision maker. That means learning to differentiate the needs of both conscious and other-than-conscious mental processes, and how to tailor your delivery of the verbal, visual and nonverbal parts of your message to meet those needs as they are expressed on front of you. This is true of all decision makers, professional or layperson alike.

 

Coined and trademarked (pending) by Eric, the tenets of brain-friendly legal communication and brain-friendly legal persuasion for the whole brain are not complicated. The challenge lies in applying it properly. That's because the parts of the mind that give us the opportunity to think, feel, react and build legal decisions are almost all outside conscious direction and reach. This means you can't just ask someone what leads them to a decision, nor can you just tell them how to do it in your client's interests. Indirect messages, elicited not just from focus group participants and potential jurors but also delivered by you to decision makers in any legal forum are the tools you want to own.

 

Nobody makes a decision by direct, conscious reasoning. We each find ourselves with a leaning – based on the story we've unconsciously built about the case – and only then make up several reasons that leaning seems to be right. Because legal decisions are built almost entirely outside conscious control, by definition, any effort to persuade someone to make a legal decision in your client's favor is going to first and foremost be an other-than-conscious appeal. If you want to succeed at persuading the whole mind of any decision makers, you have to play by their rules, not the conscious ones we'd all rather use - thus, brain-friendly communication for the whole brain. While both parts must be respected in your delivery, those parts outside conscious reach and reflection go to work first, faster and harder on your message. Appealing to each part of the mind in kind, direct messages for the conscious parts, and indirect messages for the other-than-conscious parts, is the secret to the most effective persuasion.

 

Brain-friendly communication and persuasion shows the truth behind the saying that "actions speak louder than words." The other-than-conscious mind responds first to your actions by building or resisting rapport, then seeks mental images to reference your story's major frameworks – which your deliver will either help or hinder. Then and only then will the content of your words get a fair hearing. By understanding that process, and delivering a message that presents all three properly, you can understand how to control the message – and develop a case story that communicates the precise message you want to convey.