223: How To Be More Persuasive

<p>We run training on presentations and public speaking continuously. These three requests to be more concise, clear and persuasive, often come up from the participants, regarding the nominated areas where they want to improve.  In this Age of Distraction, if you miss the first two, you can kiss goodbye to number three.  As soon as an audience hears you rambling, they are scrambling for the mobile phones to exit your talk.  When you are mystifying your audience, they bolt for digital device safety.</p> <p> </p> <p>I am the only English native speaker in my team here in Tokyo.  My staff all have very fluent English and are skilled communicators.  One of them however, as much as I love her to death, drives me nuts.  When her brain has fixed on a topic she launches straight into the main body of what she wants to tell me.  It has become a bit of a running joke in the office, because I will stop her and ask “what is the subject of this wonderful exposition?”. </p> <p> </p> <p>We can do the same things when we are speaking.  We are so deep into our subject, we forget that the people listening are unable to follow our thread, because we haven’t set up the topic properly.  We have phases of our talk.  The opening is the dynamite, the nitro.  We light the fuse and blow everyone out of their complacency, sloth and slumber in order to get them to pay attention to us.</p> <p> </p> <p>In the main body of our talk we need to be thinking in terms of five minute blocks.  At around this frequency, we need to be switching it up, to keep our audience attached to what we are saying.  We might do this through a powerful story, an impactful slide, an insightful quotation, or a killer question.  When we make a statement in the main body, we need to make sure we are bolting on some evidence to prove what we are saying.  Data, statistics, survey results, testimonials are all excellent sources of credibility for our provocative claims.</p> <p>The arrangement of the blocks needs to have a logical flow.  It might be by theme, chronological