The Currency of Speech is Emotion

A couple of years ago, my wife and I were shopping for a new car. I remember clearly my response to the salesman who showed us the model we were interested in. It wasn't, "Gee, that is a fine car!"(for I already knew that before I visited the lot). What I said was, "He's a really nice guy" . . . just before I asked my wife, "Did you bring the checkbook?"

And Mrs. Merchant, the 4th grade teacher that I remember so fondly? I can say with certainty that I've never mused to myself, "Gosh, I loved the way she folded culture into that unit on South American geography. And her grasp of pre-algebra? Outstanding!"

No, my memories prompt me to think: "That woman changed my life--because she believed in me and showed me what I was capable of."

In both these situations, my emotional response was what mattered.

It's the same with the audiences for your speeches and presentations.

Human beings make important decisions because those choices feel right for them. They will justify their decisions with data and logic. But it's EMOTION that turns people on, and drives the choices in their lives.

Persuasion begins with trust, not with information. Every time you talk to a customer, prospect, colleague, or stakeholder, an unvoiced understanding takes place: you (the speaker) are seeking to influence your listeners. You're trying to change them in some way--positively and ethically, we hope. Change isn't easy for anyone. It only occurs when the person to be changed trusts that you are worth listening to and believing in.

As speaker, you are modeling the way: "Hear me and see me," you are saying. "You can see I am trustworthy, and therefore what I have to say is valuable."

By speaking in the realm of emotion, you open the door for positive influence. It isn't influence that computes right--for our brains are not machines that subsist on logic--it is change that feels right.

Author and playwright George Ade, Mark Twain's contemporary, said it this way:

"In uplifting, get underneath."

He didn't mean crawl down into the bogs of raw data, or dig into foundations long since excavated. He meant get into the things that matter. As a speaker or presenter, that means reaching across the real space of your speaking venue to touch people's hearts.

You do it with the story you tell, and the way you tell it, of course. Inexperienced speakers buckle the load of information they have to convey onto their backs, and then dump it into the laps of their listeners. To an audience, that feels heavy and unwieldy, and it's not something they want to take home with them.

Instead, your story--the one you're telling to change people's lives--must begin and end with people, and the things that move people deep inside. It's only to support that narrative that you bring in your information--your content. This is so whether you're presenting return on investment, your nonprofit's mission, or the marketing tools your company specializes in. All the information you convey is important; but you must convey it in terms of the satisfaction and benefits to be gained. The more you can link those benefits to an emotional response in your listeners, the stronger your content will appear.

How does this knowledge impact the practical necessity of developing a successful message? It's a reminder that we have to get the order right: Know your audience and what matters to them. Then tell them your story in human terms, relying on emotion, and using your content to help you make your case.

You'll feel good about that way of proceeding. And by the time you're finished, your listeners will not only be moved, they'll be persuaded.

For Transparency and Trust, Make It Face-to-Face

Hard-boiled police detectives love using web-cams for interrogating suspects, don't they?

Customs officials ask suspicious travelers to dial into conference calls.

And you probably asked your spouse to marry you via an e-mail message--flagged, of course, with a red exclamation point.

Why do these three scenarios sound ridiculous? In high-stakes communication situations, we depend upon the cues (and clues) provided by a face-to-face encounter.

No other dialogue offers such a rich environment for getting to the truth regarding people's motives and trustworthiness.

It's a lesson worth bearing in mind, when recession-battered budgets sing the siren song of virtual meetings rather than the real kind.

Webinars, product demos, video conferences, and social media offer tremendous opportunities for personal and business growth, at a fraction of the cost of corporate travel. But in make-or-break situations where maximum trust and credibility are called for, there is simply no substitute for the personal touch.

The Wall Street Journal made this argument recently, in a special advertising section on global business travel. Clearly, author Joe Mullich in "The New Face of Face-to-Face Meetings" (WSJ, September 22) and the section itself were encouraging corporate travel rather than the virtual kind. Yet it's difficult to argue with the viewpoint that companies need to appreciate the effects of certain kinds of cost-cutting. This sentence in particular, from a spokesperson of Oxford Economics USA, is hard to ignore: "The research informs us that when a company reduces its travel budget, it loses both revenue and profits, giving competitors a real advantage."

A psychologist who analyzed research in this area found that "group processes and outcomes that require coordination, consensus, timing and persuasion of others" benefit from in-person communication. And a survey of business publication subscribers reveals that meetings are particularly effective in negotiating contracts, senior job interviews, and listening to customers. "Anything with new customers, closing sales, and improving the top line is still done face-to-face," according to Fay Beauchine, president of the National Business Travel Association Foundation.

Given today's tightened budgets, more emphasis is being placed on measuring the impact of meetings, conferences, and trade shows. That makes perfect sense. Going completely digital to the detriment of human contact, trust-building, and long-term relationships, however, doesn't.

When Your Presentation Encounters Hostility

If an audience appears to be hostile or agitated, you need to act fast, says Dr. Gary Genard, president of Public Speaking International, who offers training on presentation and speaking skills worldwide.

"First, you should have seen this coming," he says. "Don't be like a deer in the headlights. Prepare yourself by knowing the political climate, how much to share, who will be in the room, and how they like to receive information. Know your audience's need and expectations, otherwise you'll be flying blind."

If you understand your industry, your clients, their cultural biases, and their needs, you should be able to deal with anger, resistance, or hostility with confidence, he says. Genard provides these seven tips for overcoming resistance:

1. Understand the type of resistance you're facing. "The more information we have at our fingertips to counter the resistance, the more accurate we'll be in the action we take. Is the resistance institutional? Fact-driven or cultural? Is it a flaw in your logic or an ego-trip for the questioner? In other words, you should be alert to what's coming your way and respond honestly. Look below the surface; look for subtext – the real action beyond the scene. Does the audience need an emotion validated? If they do, show them you understand."

2. Listen for emotions. "Even in an emotional storm, there may be subtle differences as to what you are hearing and what you can respond to," says Genard. "Emotions, not your message, may be making your audience hostile toward you. You may represent a point of view or a company to them; therefore, you provide a convenient target for the audience to attempt to redress a recent problem or vent after decades of resentment and anger. You don't have to change your message; instead, deal with the audience's emotional response."

3. Recast erroneous assumptions. "The more serious the assumption, the faster it must be countered," says Genard, saying that you may even interrupt (politely, of course) the erroneous statement. Why? Because the more time that goes by before the error is countered or corrected, it starts to set like cement."

4. Welcome unclear or fuzzy arguments. "If an argument is unclear or fuzzy enough, it's a gift to you," says Genard. "You can go anywhere you want with it. It's your golden opportunity to express your critical messages all over again in a different way."

5. Go low-key and conversational. "The more someone rants and raves at you, the quieter you should become," says Genard. Why? Because everyone else in the room will quickly realize that the person ranting is out of line. They will see the contrast immediately between the raving person and the considerate, soft-spoken, and reasonable person (you).

6. Be aware of your tone. "Watch how are you saying what you are saying," says Genard. "The best arguments in the world will fail if they sound defensive or angry. Audiences will remember a presentation’s tone far longer than they will recall the facts and statistics."

7. Disagree neutrally. "There will be many opportunities for you to demonstrate your rapier wit and responses when you are faced with skepticism and hostility. Resist every one of them, for the reasons given above," says Genard.

In summary, Genard says to think in terms of shaping the issue. "In other words, frame your message in ways that work to your advantage," he says.

More information on these tips can also be found in Genard's book, How to Give a Speech: Easy-to-Learn Skills For More Successful and Profitable Presentations, Speeches, Meetings, Sales, and More! (Cedar and Maitland Press, 2007). You can find the book at amazon.com or at PublicSpeakingInternational.com.

Salespeople and Others: Recognize a Nibble When You Feel One!

Earlier this month, an executive delivered testimony before the House Financial Services Subcommittee, and rose from the witness table with a dozen daggers deeply embedded in his chest, neck, and back. Well, not literally.

But I wonder if it felt that way for Edward Liddy, the caretaker head of American International Group or AIG. As you'll recall, Mr. Liddy testified about the $165 million in retention bonuses paid to employees of AIG's troubled Financial Products unit. By the time he was finished, there didn't seem to be a pair of dry hands among the panel members. As Macbeth may have put it (as he did in Shakespeare's play that bears his name), "All great Neptune's ocean won't wash this blood clean from my hand."

I would guess that you or I wouldn't be willing to face Mr. Liddy's ordeal for one dollar a year--the salary he has agreed to accept for his work. But what about instances in our own presentations and speeches when we face skepticism or hostility from our audiences? Resistance that's expected, the kind Mr. Liddy faced, at least advertises itself beforehand. But how do we deal with challenges to our position or ideas that we can't anticipate, the kind that only rear their heads during our presentation?

The most important thing to remember about "push-backs" like this, is that we shouldn't fear them. Resistance is a natural element of a thinking and attentive audience. Listeners who question, challenge, and play the devil to your advocate, are people who are engaged in what you are staying. Salespeople recognize such questioning and skepticism as nibbles at the bait. Why would this person take the time and trouble to engage in such a dialogue with you if they weren't interested? The audience member who resists you completely will stop listening, and probably leave to boot.

We should therefore continue to reach out to audiences, whatever the resistance, and not shift to defensiveness. Once our responses become defensive, we've lost control of the situation and shifted into a "siege mentality." From that point on, we're only dodging flaming arrows coming over the battlements--not advocating effectively for our product, service, or message.

So stay positive when you speak on behalf of your company, your organization, or your ideas. Audiences respect a speaker who stands up for his or her beliefs, even, and sometimes more strongly, in the face of determined resistance.

In my next post, I'll discuss 7 specific tips for overcoming audience resistance. Now, that is, that you're ready to welcome some rough-and-tumble as a speaker.

Use Emotion to Persuade Your Listeners

This week, the Guardian newspaper in the U.K. published an amazing piece about a recent discovery in human brain activity. The findings contain information that anyone who gives speeches and presentations had better pay attention to.

Scientists have recorded "the gentle flicker of activity that lights up the brain" when we form our first impressions of someone. Volunteers underwent brain scans while forming opinions of people, and activity was recorded in two specific regions: the amygdala and posterior cingulate cortex. The scientific labels aren't important. But the findings are highly significant with regard to public speaking. They remind us that audiences make judgments about us within the first 30 seconds of our presentations. And those judgments attach not only to us, but to our message and the people and organization we represent as well.

"Okay," I hear you saying, "so ancient brain circuits in our listeners light up when we give a speech. So what?" It may sound like news from the Cro-Magnon equivalent of Twitter, yet it has enormous implications for how we persuade our listeners.

We all know that human beings make critical decisions at a gut level, then justify those decisions with logic. "Gut level" equals emotions. That means that unless we're speaking to audiences in emotional as well as intellectual terms, our persuasiveness will have a great gaping hole in the middle.

To understand why, let's take another look at the human brain. The earliest part of the brain to evolve was the brain stem, where basic functions like breathing and heart rate reside. Next came the limbic system--the seat of our emotions. Last to develop in evolutionary terms was the prefrontal cortex, the region in our brains where complex logical thinking occurs. Think about that (and feel its power): our emotional brain came first--followed by our thinking brain.

The emotional brain and the thinking brain not only share beliefs, judgments, and feelings, then--there are actually anatomical links between the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex. So the thought that "business is business," and we shouldn't get all emotional about it, is exactly the wrong kind of thinking if persuasion is your ultimate goal.

To put all of this most simply: audiences use their emotions to receive what we say, to judge whether it's true, and critically, to decide about how to respond to it. The conclusion is inescapable: We had better give emotions a front seat when we're driving our essential messages home.

Do so, and your listeners will judge you all the more positively--not only for the honest self you're showing them, but for the emotional and entirely human approach you're sharing with them.