Persuasive Presenting

• logic: the logical construction of argument, as outlined above
• pathos: the psychological or emotional aspect of persuasion
• ethos: persuasion arising from the pre-existent reputation and influence of the speaker
• style: influence derived from the power of language

Logic: the Structured Argument

Aside from the simple exercise of authority, in which you demand compliance to your wishes, you may well have used logic or argumentation most frequently in presentation situations. A logical explanation of your outlook will state your interpretation of the facts, and construct an argument bringing these to a conclusion that matches your expectations of the audience. You will assume that your audience will comply with the rules of logical thinking, follow your argument, and hope that they reach the conclusion you were aiming for.

However, logic, as shown above, is only one of the four central elements of persuasion that can be used when presenting an argument or outlining your thoughts and beliefs. In fact, using logic alone may leave your audience aligning with your thinking grudgingly, rather than being fully persuaded of the cogency and relevance of what you have said. As the old adage has it: “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.” The secret to presenting your thoughts in the most influential manner, and to create lasting change and compliance, is therefore to ensure that your logic is willingly accepted.

Pathos: the Appeal to Emotions

Appealing to the emotional or psychological responses of your audience can be a particularly potent method of influencing, and there are many aspects to consider. To gain and hold authentic attention, you should consider the following advice:

• Avoid topics too foreign to the audience, as they may feel alienated by the unfamiliar.
• Introduce conflict, perhaps in the form of clashing opinions or problems posed, which you can subsequently resolve.
• Antagonize the audience in a controlled manner, for example by making a radical statement in your opening paragraph. You can either refute or substantiate this in the rest of your remarks.
• Make use of humor where appropriate, but avoid the creation of an appetite for humor through overuse. In this instance, your audience may lose interest when the tone becomes more serious. Humor can easily undermine the importance of your message if used unwisely.
• Inject suspense and create many small climaxes within your speech to generate the feeling of tension and resolution, which will draw the audience along with your flow.
• Dramatize/illustrate your ideas with specific times, places and protagonists. The recent rise of storytelling within business interventions is testament to the power of dramatization when speaking.
• Make use of visual aids/display objects to encourage your audience to use senses other than hearing, and so remain engaged with your message.
• Use words that are emotionally charged within your organizational culture. These appeal to group identification, cultural heritage, and social assumptions. To take a historical example, ‘homeland’ and ‘father’ have often been invoked by speakers to rally troops to war. In this way you can tap into a pre-established pool of influencer phrases.
• Appeal to the sentiments broadly valued in society, such as honesty, sincerity, fair play, and justice to invoke a positive audience response.

When arguing a case different from that of the majority of your audience, you can use pathos skillfully by establishing an emotional appeal in your opening sentences. This should not be too dramatic, as you have not as yet had an opportunity to outline your rational argument. This method works in a similar attention-grabbing way to antagonism, but appeals to the underlying emotional consensus of the group, rather than challenging it. Your subsequent argument can be drawn back repeatedly to this emotional core. The dramatic emotional appeal must be reserved for the final climax of the presentation.

Ethos: the Power of the Speaker

Your influencing power of the speaker is derived from:

• status, in terms of position within an organization, market, or sector
• reputation, in terms of honesty, integrity, and intellectual capacity
• power of personality, in terms of character traits
• deployment of voice when addressing an audience
• deployment of stance and movement when addressing an audience

Notes on Voice

To retain the attention of an audience, and thus influence their thinking with the full extent of your argument, your voice must be both pleasing to the ear, and engaging. A pleasing voice has confidence, an even and deep breathing pattern, projection, an open throat, and articulate use of the mouth. An interesting voice uses a varied pitch to clarify sentences, a varied rate to clarify and add drama, varied volume to suggest intensity of feeling, and a varied quality in terms of resonance and depth.

Whilst making use of all these features at once can make your presentation more comedic than clarified, variation can grab attention to drive points home. It can also be used to ensure understanding. Try reading this sentence aloud:

“The teacher says the pupil is a fool.”

Now, read the following sentence aloud:

“The teacher, says the pupil, is a fool.”

Given that an audience is unlikely to have the benefit of seeing the sentence written down, it is obvious that your reading could obscure the true meaning of these sentences. Consider the way you spoke the second sentence. Most likely you lowered the pitch, and perhaps the volume, of the central clause ‘says the pupil’ and as a result altered the meaning carried by the sentence. In this way, your manner of speaking can prove pivotal in influencing an audience effectively.

Notes on the Body

You can make use of stance and gestures to enhance your ability to engage an audience, and to drive home key points, in the following ways:

• develop a confident and erect speaking posture
• maintain eye contact with a variety of audience members to keep them engaged and alert, rather than declaiming to the back of the room
• use facial expression to emphasize your emotions, and modify your speech
• use confident head and arm gestures to hammer home points, and draw the eyes of the audience
• move in a way that is meaningful to your speech. For example, you can take a few paces from one side of the speaking space to another when moving to a new section of your argument, or a new topic of discussion

Style: Creating a Lasting Impression

Whilst presentation engages the audience, you must have an energized and effective line of argument to offer once their interest is drawn. Given the natural liking for dramatized speech noted above, your ability to influence is often closely related to your ability to dramatize, energize and engage through the power of language.

Effective Words

• Image-bearing words. Try to evoke a particular image in preference to a general one. For example ‘great man’ may be less effective than, say, ‘Winston Churchill’ or ‘Abraham Lincoln.’ Avoiding the arbitrary or confusing, specific examples can be much more powerful.
• Personal pronouns. Providing that they are appropriate to the situation, the use of ‘I’, ‘you’ and ‘we’ can hammer home the relevance of your subject matter to an audience.
• Active, rather than passive, verbs. These make use of the sense of action to give your presentation momentum.
• Simple words. Great speakers through history have made an art out of high-impact speeches crafted from simple words comprehensible by their entire audiences. Of course, a monotonous drone of simple, short sentences will decrease your capacity to hold attention and influence. However, complex words and technical terminology should not be used unless necessary to explain your point, as they could result in an audience lagging behind your thoughts.

Rhetorical Devices

These can be used to regain the attention of a drifting audience, or to lift certain points out of your argument with greater force.

• direct questioning of an audience member, which you subsequently answer on their behalf
• rhetorical questioning, addressing all listeners in an abstract fashion designed to provoke thought
• use of dialog, which can help to dramatize emotional aspects of your topic
• figures of speech, which should be used sparingly at key points, rather than as embellishments
• use of a long illustration, perhaps in the form of an anecdotal story, which can tie together the strands of your argument
• repetition of your key message or request for change
• restatement of your key message in various ways relevant to the various sections of your audience

In addition to the above stylistic considerations, you must ensure that your presentation is highly structured, and draws the audience towards layers of understanding. Deploying all the recommendations of this document at once will not only confuse you as speaker, but will alienate the audience. However, careful use of some of the described features and manners of presentation will certainly help you in unlocking the influencing power inherent in spoken language.