Listen First, Then Use This Trick To Influence Someone

Tyrion Lannister is a genius. Despite being a mutilated dwarf whose family hates him,

he manages not only to stay alive, but to become one of the most powerful players in

the Game of Thrones, and that is because his genius is with people. He's able to get people

to do exactly what he wants them to do. How? He is constantly asking one question of the

people around him.

What do you want? That is the question. Because people act like homing missiles towards their

deepest desires. Tyrion finds a way to put the strength of their own desires directly

in line with his goals. And if you understand the subtleties of this art, you can begin

to influence people in the way that Tyrion does.

So, in order to figure out what people want, Tyrion uses three major tools.

First, cold reading. And, by the way, spoilers through season five for the rest of this video

At this point, Tyrion has not spent much time with this character, Bronn, who's a mercenary,

originally hired to guard him. How does he know all of these about Bronn? How does he

know what he wants? It's by paying attention to the clues that he gave during their short interaction.

Tyrion has heard Bronn talk about women and he sees the look, right here, when Bronn hears

about a reward, plus, he knows that Bronn is a sellsword. So it isn't a huge leap for

him to know that riches and women are what motivate Bronn. This might seem so simple,

but many of us do exactly the opposite.

Rather than cold read someone else's desires, we shout how they should do exactly what we

want or how they should do what is fair. We ignore all of the evidence that would tell us the

truth, that they just do not care about what we want or what we think is fair.

So watch now how another character, Lommy, a boy who's just been injured in a battle

completely ignores the fact that he is speaking to a soldier, who just killed some of his friends.