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BY Jay Conger

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Here’s the bad news: The deeper your understanding of an issue and the stronger your conviction about the solution, the worse you often become at persuasion.

It’s due to a cognitive trap that the fields of behavioral economics and neuroscience have spent decades documenting: the curse of knowledge . In other words, your knowledge has fundamentally altered your perception of what you believe others are experiencing. It applies to your persuasion—especially when you are the well-informed expert in the room.

Here’s how this curse blindsides you in persuasion. You’ve spent weeks developing a proposal to solve a complex problem. You’re now completely convinced of the way forward. By the time you present your proposal to decision-makers, you’re already deep in the curse of knowledge.…