Persuasion workshop - time-effective learning experience

Kim Hoh, the founder and head coach of THE LAB h, talks to Business Focus. / Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul

By Kim Da-ye

Many office workers choose self-development as a New Year’s resolution, but most miserably fail to achieve it. They strive to gain new skills or knowledge by reading books, registering for classes or even starting a night-school degree program. A relatively new option is attending workshops that often last just a couple days but can cost millions of won.

When encouraged to join the Principles of Persuasion (POP) workshop created by the author of the best-selling psychology book “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion,” this reporter wondered how reading a book and joining a workshop would be different. However, the workshop turned out to be a very time-effective learning experience.

The book, by Robert Cialdini, a psychology professor at Arizona State University, is intended for a general audience. The workshop deals with the same subject from the perspective of decision-makers in the workplace.

In Korea, the workshop is facilitated by Kim Hoh, the founder and head coach of THE LAB h. Kim said that analysis of 226 participants in the POP workshop between 2008 and 2012 shows that 35 percent of them were CEOs and high-level executives.

Companies that have invited Kim to facilitate a workshop for their staff include German chemical and pharmaceutical firm Merck, oil refinery GS Caltex and Elka, parent company of the Estee Lauder brand. Kim said that the staff of Louis Vuitton’s Korean division also plans to host the workshop this year.

The workshop runs from 9 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. for two days. In the workshop, Kim does not spend much time explaining Cialdini’s theory. Instead, he uses various cases, plays video clips and encourages group discussions in order to help the participants learn how to apply the principles of persuasion at work.

Kim is an experienced crisis management coach to CEOs and a former managing director of PR agency Edelman. His communication skills are evident throughout the workshop. Kim uses many domestic current affairs issues and his own experiences to make the workshop relevant to Koreans as he explains Cialdini’s key teachings.

Kim himself is a constant learner. He attends a myriad of lectures, workshops, seminars and conferences at home and abroad, and incorporates new findings into the workshop.

For instance, Kim participated in the LEGO Serious Play workshop in Tokyo earlier this year. During the workshop, he encouraged participants to describe their persuasion-related problems by using LEGO blocks.

One of the perks of attending the workshop is interacting with other participants. Among the participants in the workshop I attended were officials from the German pharmaceutical firm Boehringer Ingelheim, a professor, a founder of a startup and the chief of a rehabilitation center for the disabled. Attendees get to hear what kinds of problems others face at work and how they try to solve them. As well as being educational, the process promotes mental healing.

An interesting aspect of the POP workshop is that it isn’t just about learning how to get what you want but how to do it ethically. The workshop teaches you to be a kind person with good intentions.

Throughout the workshop, Kim stresses that one must persuade with facts, and that the purpose of the persuasion should be beneficial to both parties.

Kim became interested in the POP workshops when he was vacationing in Arizona in 2005 and attended a workshop there. The workshop was so influential that Kim decided to become a certified trainer of the Cialdini Method. In January 2008, he spent four days with Cialdini, Gregory Neidert (another psychology professor at ASU) and six other trainers.

Kim is now one of 29 POP workshop trainers across the world, and one of only two in Asia — the other is based in Malaysia.