Applying Persuasive Skills in Formal Presentations

will be undermined. One test of your persuasive skills is your ability to present a logical argument. 8. Use emotional appeals. Presenting clear, rational, and objective evidence in support of your view is often not enough. You also should appeal to a person’s emotions. Try to reach inside the subjects and understand their loves, hates, fears, and frustrations. Then use that information to mold what you say and how you say it. The persuasiveness of most television evangelists lies in their ability to understand their audience and to structure their oral presentation’s appeal to their audience’s emotions.

Applying Persuasive Skills in Formal Presentations

People in organizations often find themselves making formal oral presentations to others. Some examples are sales presentations, requests for project funding, running for office, and supporting a proposal. A study conducted by AT&T and Stanford University revealed that the ability to make effective presentations is the top predictor of success and upward mobility in organizations.15 Given their importance for your interpersonal effectiveness, personal satisfaction, and career progression, the question is, “How can I make effective formal presentations?” The success of your public speaking is determined primarily by the time you spend preparing before you step in front of your audience. You want to avoid speeches that are too long, detailed, confusing, vague, boring, or veer off-track. The first step is to determine the purpose of your presentation and the outcomes you want to achieve. Next, you need to mold your message to clarify how what you want will match the needs of your audience. Finally, you want to ensure that the audience will act on your suggestions. Figure 13.2provides some tips for making formal presentations.

PLANNING AND PREPARING

• Identify your purpose. What is the outcome you want to achieve? Whyare you giving this presentation: to persuade, explain, instruct, or report? Whatdo you want the audience to know or do? • Analyze your audience. Mold your presentation to fit their specific characteristics. Find out their needs, concerns, and preferred format for presentations by talking to the audience or people who know them. • Organize the presentation. First, clarify your focus or main point. Second, develop an outline of the presentation’s three main parts: the introduction, body, and conclusion. Third, plan the visual aids you need for the audience to understand your points. Following are some guidelines for making each of these components effective.

a. Introduction

• Get the audience’s attention. Grab the audience with something vitally interesting to them and convince them to listen to you. Give them an interesting story, an example that ties into your focus, a meaningful quotation, a startling statistic, or appropriate humor that makes a relevant point. • Increase your credibility by relating something about your background and experience that makes you an expert on the topic you are speaking about. • Present your agenda, keeping in mind the familiar slogan: “Tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you just told them.” • Share what you expect of the audience. Tell listeners about the decision, commitment, or actions that they will be expected to perform at the end.

FIGURE 13.2 Tips for Making Formal Presentations.

b. The main message. Because of the short attention span of most audiences, you need to make your points in the shortest, most interesting way possible. Some suggestions are: • Change your pace by including appropriate humor, stories, or exercises requiring people to raise their hands or respond verbally. • Use repetition to make sure the main ideas get through accurately and are remembered. You can talk about them and show visuals, as well as have your audience read handouts and ask questions. • Use stories and analogies to associate and connect your ideas to something the listeners already understand. • Change the intensity in the pitch, tone, and loudness of your voice to focus audience attention. • Get audience involvement. Use brainstorming, questions, sharing of experiences, or anything that gets the audience involved. c. The conclusion. Your conclusion should repeat your main ideas to reinforce your objectives and expectations for the audience. • Practice and visualize success. Rehearse aloud at least four or five times in order to check your timing and to make sure your presentation flows and sounds the way you want it to. Then visualize yourself presenting successfully. This will allow you a chance to feel success and become more confident in your delivery.

DELIVERY OF THE PRESENTATION

• Be enthusiastic. Your interest in your topic tends to be contagious. Speak as if you are in a lively conversation with friends, but avoid shouting or preaching. • Maintain eye contact. Eye contact enhances audience involvement. It makes the audience feel that they are being spoken to personally and that you are sincere. It is most effective to rotate looking at audience members one at a time on a random basis. • Use proxemics. Use physical space to enhance your presentation. Don’t hide behind a podium.

Eliminate distracting items from the area. Use a variety of body movements to emphasize key points, build rapport, and signal transitions. • Never apologize. Don’t apologize for anything! The minute you apologize, your ability to influence your audience is decreased.

AFTER THE PRESENTATION

• Evaluate how you did. Immediately after the presentation, ask others who were there to debrief you what went well and where you need to improve. This can help you fine-tune the presentation for future audience, or provide tips for putting together other ones later on. • Follow up. Send materials you promised the audience as well as reminders of what they have committed to, or you have asked them to do.

FIGURE 13.2 (Continued)

CONCEPT QUIZ

The following 10-question, true–false quiz is based on the previous material. If you miss any of these questions, go back and find out why you got them wrong. Circle the right answer. True False 1. Authority is an effective means of influencing superiors. True False 2. Oral persuasion seeks to induce others to take action. True False 3. The evidence demonstrates that age and credibility are positively correlated. True False 4. An effective argument should include every possible reason you can find. True False 5. Oral persuasion works best when it focuses on logical reasoning and avoids appeals to emotions and feelings. True False 6. Persuasion encompasses active and passive approaches. True False 7. An understanding of persuasion tactics ensures success. True False 8. You have nothing to gain by talking down to a person you are trying to persuade. True False 9. If a well-thought-out argument works with one person, it is likely to be effective with most people. True False 10. You should rely more on emotions than on your formal position when attempting to persuade nonauthoritarian types.

Answers: (1) False; (2) True; (3) False; (4) False; (5) False; (6) True; (7) False; (8) True; (9) False; (10) False

BEHAVIORAL CHECKLIST

Look for these specific behaviors when evaluating your oral persuasion skills and those of others. An Effective Persuader:

•Establishes credibility. •Uses a positive, tactful tone. •Presents ideas one at a time. •Presents strong evidence to support a position. •Tailors arguments to the listener. •Appeals to the listener’s self-interest. •Makes a logical argument. •Uses emotional appeals.

ATTENTION!

Do not read the following until assigned to do so by your instructor.

MODELING EXERCISE

The Grade Change

After reading the situation, two students need to volunteer to be actors in the following grade change role-play. The actors should not read the other person’s role. The rest of the class will be observers using the observer’s rating sheet to provide feedback to the actors after the exercise.

Actors. Professor Hatch (college instructor) and Dale Dillon (one of Professor Hatch’s former students)

Situation. Dale Dillon has come to Professor Hatch’s office. Dale took the professor’s course last semester and just received the grade report, which said that Dale earned a C. Dale has come to Hatch’s office to persuade the professor to raise the grade to a B.

Dale Dillon’s Role. You are a senior, majoring in management. You carried four courses last semester and also worked 20 hours a week. Your 87-year-old grandmother died last term, and attending her funeral required you to miss a week of class. Your grade-point average, with the C in Hatch’s class, is 3.65 (out of 4.0). Hatch’s C is the only C on your record. You’re disappointed with the grade. You made a B on the midterm and on the final, and a B– on the term paper; however, participation accounts for 20 percent of the grade and Hatch gave you a D in that category.

Professor Hatch’s Role. You pride yourself on being a fair instructor. If you make a mistake, you’re willing to correct it. However, you don’t think grades should be a political process. In the past 5 years, you’ve taught about a thousand students and have changed only three grades. In fact, on occasion, you’ve openly criticized colleagues who make a frequent practice of changing the grades of students who complain. You perceive Dale Dillon as an exceptionally bright student who wasn’t committed to your class last term. You gave Dale a B on the midterm and on the final, and a B– on the term paper; however, participation accounts for 20 percent of the grade and you gave Dale a D in that category. Dale missed 4 of the 30 class sessions, two of them in one week. In contrast, no one else in the class missed more than two sessions. The quality of Dale’s in-class contributions was at about the 75th percentile, but the quantity of those contributions was significantly below the class average.

Total Time. 25 minutes (preparation, 5 minutes; role-play, 10 minutes; debriefing, 10 minutes)

OBSERVER’S RATING SHEET

Evaluate Dale Dillon’s oral persuasive performance on a 1 to 5 scale (5 being the highest). Insert examples for feedback in spaces between behavioral criteria. Establishes credibility. _____

Uses positive, tactful tone. _____

Presents ideas one at a time. _____

Gives strong, supportive evidence. _____

Tailors argument to listener. _____

Appeals to subject’s self-interest. _____

Makes a logical argument. _____

Uses emotional appeal. _____

GROUP EXERCISES

Three different types of exercises are presented in this section. The first is a chance to practice and hone your skills in personal persuasion in a one-on-one situation. The second allows you to practice formal oral presentations to larger audiences. In the third exercise, participants need to persuade others to trust them.

Group Exercise 1: Personal Persuasion

Instructions. Break up into groups of three. Each group will perform three role-plays, allowing each member a chance to be the persuader, subject, and observer. As the observer, you are to evaluate the persuader’s skills using the behaviors identified in the observer’s rating sheet. Group members should discuss current issues until they find several that they disagree on. Then determine two people who disagree on an issue. For the first exercise, one of the two has 10 minutes to try and change the other’s mind. The listener should not argue with the persuader, but just actively listen to understand the persuader’s position. After 10 minutes, the listener tells the persuader why he or she was or wasn’t persuaded to change his or her mind on the issue. Then the observer gives the persuader feedback on the skills identified in the observer’s rating sheet. This debriefing from the listener and observer should take about 10 minutes. Group members need to switch roles until each has been the persuader, listener, and observer.

Total Time. 60 minutes (three persuasion attempts, 10 minutes each; three debriefings, 10 minutes each)

Group Exercise 2: Making Formal Persuasive Presentations

Many students steer clear of classes and situations requiring formal presentations. The problem is that most management jobs require them. There is no substitute for experience in honing your formal presentation skills. Consequently, this exercise consists of everyone making and evaluating formal presentations to gain confidence and feedback to become better presenters.

Instructions. Each class member is to prepare and deliver a 3- to 5-minute persuasive presentation to other class members. Use the following observer’s rating sheet as a guide for preparing and delivering your presentation. The topic can be any controversial issue you feel strongly about. After the presentation, the listeners tell the persuader why they were or were not persuaded to accept the presenter’s position on the issue. Then they give the speaker feedback on the skills identified in the observer’s rating sheet.

Total Time. 30–50 minutes (persuasive presentations, 5 minutes each times the number of group members; debriefing, 5 minutes each)

OBSERVER’S RATING SHEET

For the exercise in which you were the observer, evaluate the persuader on the key oral persuasion behaviors on a 1 to 5 scale (5 being the highest). Write comments in the spaces between checklist items to explain your ratings. Establishes credibility. _____

Uses positive, tactful tone. _____

Presents ideas one at a time. _____

Gives strong, supportive evidence. _____

Tailors strong, supportive evidence. _____

Appeals to self-interest. _____

Makes a logical argument. _____

Uses emotional appeals. _____

Group Exercise 3: Trust Walk

Allowing yourself to be totally dependent on someone else for your physical well-being is an exercise in trust. In this exercise, you will be asked to close your eyes and allow someone else to take you on a 10-minute walk to experience your environment without sight.

Instructions. Class members should pick a partner that they do not already know very well. Designate a leader and a follower. The leaders have 5 minutes to convince the followers that they can trust them to lead them safely for 10 minutes around campus with their eyes closed. After the 5-minute persuasion session, the followers close their eyes and the leaders lead them around the campus for 10 minutes before returning to the classroom. During that time the leader’s job first and foremost is to maintain the safety of his or her partner at all costs, and second to provide a meaningful experience. When the dyads return to the classroom, they discuss what they experienced and what they learned about behaviors that enhance or decrease trust. After everyone has returned, the total class shares what they learned about behaviors that enhance or decrease trust. Then the partners switch roles and repeat the exercise.

Total Time. 35 minutes (preparation, 5 minutes; first trust walk and debriefing, 15 minutes; second trust walk and debriefing, 15 minutes)

Summary Checklist

Take a few minutes to reflect on your performance and look over others’ ratings of your skill. Now assess yourself on each of the key learning behaviors. Make a check (✓) next to those behaviors on which you need improvement. I establish credibility. _____ I use a positive, tactful tone. _____ I present ideas one at a time. _____ I present strong evidence to support my position. _____ I tailor my argument to the listener. _____ I appeal to the subject’s self-interest. _____ I make logical arguments. _____ I use emotional appeals. _____

APPLICATION QUESTIONS

1. In what ways do television advertisements draw on the concepts in this chapter? 2. In what ways do effective persuasion skills parallel the skills necessary to be an effective salesperson? 3. Explain the differences between authority and persuasion. 4. Explain in what situations, and why, you would use each of the four persuasion tactics.

REINFORCEMENT EXERCISES

The following suggestions are activities you can do to practice and reinforce the oral persuasion techniques you learned in this chapter. 1. Persuade a person you know only in passing to lend you $20 for a week. 2. Convince a friend or relative to go with you to see a movie or play that you know the person doesn’t want to see. 3. Go into a small retail store. Convince the proprietor, as a condition of purchase, to accept a price below that marked on an item.

ACTION PLAN

1. Which behavior do I want to improve the most?

2. Why? What will be my payoff?

3. What potential obstacles stand in my way?

4. What specific things will I do to improve? (For examples, see the Reinforcement

Exercises.)

5. When will I do them?

6. How and when will I measure my success?

Endnotes

1.Otto Lerbinger, Designs for Persuasive

Communication (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice

Hall, 1972). 2.H. Steensma, “Why Managers Prefer Some

Influence Tactics to Other Tactics: A Net Utility

Explanation,“ Journal of Occupational and

Organizational Psychology (2007), pp. 355–362;

Kathleen S. Verderber and Rudolph F. Verderber,

Inter-Act: Using Interpersonal Communication

Skills, 4th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1986), pp. 163–169. 3.J. Kouzes and B. Posner, The Leadership

Challenge (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1987). 4.Tony Alessandra and Phillip Hunsaker, Communicating at Work (New York, Simon & Schuster, 1993), p. 169. 5.Stephen R. Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly

Effective People (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), pp. 188–189. 6.R. B. Cialdini, “Basic Social Influence is

Underestimated,” Psychological Inquiry, Vol. 16,

No. 4 (2005), pp. 158–161. 7.G. M. Vaughan and H. A. Hogg, Introduction to

Social Psychology, 5th ed. (Frenchs Forest, NSW:

Pearson Education, 2008), p. 196. 8.A. Shankar, M. Ansari, and S. Saxena,

“Organizational Context and Ingratiatory Behavior in Organizations,” Journal of Social Psychology, 134 (1994), pp. 641–648. 9.Ibid., pp. 190–199. 10.Kathleen S. Verderber and Rudolph F. Verderber,

Inter-Act: Using Interpersonal Communication

Skills,4th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1986), p. 168. 11.Kenneth E. Hultman, “Gaining and Keeping

Management Support,” Training and Development

Journal (April 1981), pp. 106–110. 12.Ibid., p. 108. 13.Ibid. 14.Ibid. 15.Robert E. Coffey, Curtis W. Cook, and Phillip L.

Hunsaker, Management and Organizational

Behavior (Burr Ridge, IL: Austin Press/Irwin, 1994), pp. 210–211.