The Difference Between Persuading Someone and Manipulating Them

For anyone whose day includes getting someone else to say yes — a customer deciding whether to buy, a client agreeing to a bigger scope, an interviewer deciding to hire you, a landlord agreeing to a lower deposit.

A Harvard Business Review interview making the rounds this month asks a question most sales, service, and negotiation advice skips over: can you change someone's mind without manipulating them? Colin Marshall, a philosophy professor at the University of Washington, argues yes in his new book Just Hear Me Out: How to Change Minds Without Lies, Bullshit, or Moral Compromise — but only if you rethink what you're doing the moment you try to persuade someone.

Marshall's answer isn't a script to memorize. It's a short list of questions to ask yourself before you open your mouth.

The tactic isn't the problem — the intent behind it is

Marshall told HBR that classic persuasion techniques — starting with a small request before a bigger one, or slowing someone down with open-ended questions — aren't wrong by themselves. Context decides. Use the small-ask-first approach while genuinely respecting the other person, and it can lead someone toward something they'd have otherwise turned down. Use it without any regard for what they want, and Marshall says they will likely resent you for it once they notice.

Before trying to change anyone's mind, Marshall suggests asking whether persuasion is even the right move. Sometimes explaining your position, listening to understand theirs, or stepping back altogether serves you both better. If persuasion really is the right call, the next question is whether the setting gives you enough trust and attention to work — a tense group meeting rarely does; a calm one-on-one conversation usually does.

Two people who pulled it off with nothing in common but the outcome

Marshall points to Fred Rogers testifying before a Senate subcommittee in 1969, defending public broadcasting funding to a skeptical senator who had never seen his show. Rogers didn't oversell himself or claim expertise on the federal budget. He spoke about what his program did for children, opened by showing the senators some consideration for the hours of testimony they'd already sat through, and changed the room in under ten minutes — by coming across as both warm and competent, not by running a tactic.

The second example is Daryl Davis, a Black musician who has spent decades in conversation with Ku Klux Klan members, several of whom have since left the group. What stands out isn't politeness toward people with abhorrent views — it's that Davis showed respect without conceding anything morally. His first meeting with a Klan leader started from genuine curiosity about how someone could hate him over his skin color. That willingness to listen, sustained over repeated conversations, is what eventually moved the other person.

What this looks like in your next sales call or hard conversation

Rogers shows that respectful persuasion can work fast, if you lead with warmth and competence. Davis shows the slower version: sometimes it takes a relationship and the discipline to keep treating someone as capable of reasoning, even when you disagree with everything they believe. Both point to the same two questions worth asking before any customer conversation, negotiation, or pitch: How does this person see me — as someone trying to help them, or as a threat? And am I offering my real reasons, or just what I think will move them?

That second question is exactly what Daily Influence and Negotiation and Good With People are built to sharpen. Neither workshop hands you a script. You practice reading the room, adjusting your approach, and holding your ground under real pushback — the kind of judgment a script can't give you, because every customer, client, and interviewer is reading you back.

One more thing worth carrying into your own work

Marshall also had a note on AI worth keeping in mind: he calls it an “ethical amplifier.” Asking a tool to invent an argument for a conclusion you haven't thought through hollows out the persuasion — you're no longer offering your own reasons. Using it to say something you already believe more clearly and with more consideration for the other person is a different use entirely. The tool doesn't replace the thinking. That's the same line NextReady draws around using technology efficiently in the workshops: a support for your judgment, not a substitute for building it.

None of this makes persuasion easier. It makes it something you can do without wondering afterward whether you owe someone an apology.

Ready on purpose.

Common questions

What is the real difference between persuading and manipulating someone?

Persuasion offers your real reasons and lets the other person decide for themselves. Manipulation offers whatever will move them regardless of whether it is true, or withholds information they would want. The test is whether you would be comfortable explaining your approach to the person afterward.

Does ethical persuasion work, or does manipulation win more often?

Respectful persuasion can work fast when it leads with warmth and competence. It can also take longer, built on a relationship and the discipline to keep treating someone as capable of reasoning even when you disagree with them. Neither is slower than manipulation in every case, and manipulation carries a cost when it is discovered that a straight approach does not.

Should I use AI tools to help persuade a customer or client?

As a way to say something you already believe more clearly and with more consideration for the other person, yes. As a way to invent an argument for a conclusion you have not thought through yourself, no, because that hollows out the persuasion. You are no longer offering your own reasons.

Sources

• Harrell, E. (2026). When Persuasion Is (and Isn't) Manipulation. Harvard Business Review, September 14, 2026.