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I’ve been teaching Chinese managers who use English as a second language advanced techniques in persuasion, speeches and negotiations for over half a decade now. Although these skillsets can be taught separately, I have found over the years how much more closely interdependent these skills are. I will demonstrate in just a moment the key elements in persuasion and speeches, which you may or may not be familiar with already, and further how to fit all these separate elements into a framework that works extremely well in speeches with a few examples from famous speeches.

First, why do I focus so much on persuasion and not influence? After all, influence is a powerful tool that we can use to get people to follow our lead. However, influence if not used correctly can also have a negative impact on the people you are leading. Influence is also a very direct form of leadership that a lot of people may not be comfortable with.

The main purpose of persuasion is to give people a direction so that they can then make their own decisions in a matter. Empowering others to their own right to make a decision allows them to create more trust in you (good for negotiation), and if they are persuaded by what you have said, they feel best when they make their own decision to follow the direction you suggest, not because you told them to, but because they’re doing it out of their own free will. In other words, I can still ”influence” others, but I use an indirect approach, one that I believe is at least 20% more effective than the direct one.

Now let me introduce some basic elements of persuasion.

The first element: According to the Harvard Business Review, there are four key factors for persuasion:

1. Credibility

2. Know your audience

3. Speak with authority

4. Effective communication

For Chinese speakers who are not only using a foreign language to communicate, but also dealing with a different culture, I add the following two factors to the list:

5. Use advocates

6. Use the scientific method

In order to more fully understand how to use these in your daily life, it’s necessary to practice them through various workshops and seminars. No amount of reading will help until you actually start doing. Practicing with a professional trainer in a controlled environment gives you the training needed to perfect these skills.

The second element: This is a psychological element dealing with people’s wants, desires, needs, fears, etc. I maintain a large list of key words for each category. This has a direct impact on the Direction we want to take our speeches in. This is an extremely important element that surfaces in marketing campaigns, print advertising, producing more effective sales results, and in the basic leadership skills that managers possess.

The third element: Part of understanding your audience, mentioned above, is understanding five decision-making styles. If there are decision makers among your audience, make sure you understand the criteria they use to make decisions. Most notably, there are:

1. Followers
2. Charismatics
3. Skeptics
4. Thinkers
5. Controllers

As I teach in my seminars, there isn’t a way that we can convince or persuade controllers to do much of anything, but that’s why advocates play such an important role.

The fourth element: Speeches are inherently different than presentations. The key difference is that presentations are to present information and speeches are to move people to action be it through boosting morale, integrity, motivation, will-power, what have you. Most importantly, don’t forget the idea of decision.

The fifth element: AIDA. Advertisers are familiar with this acronym which stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action. As we learn to fit persuasion into a speech framework, the letter D will start to represent Direction and Decision as well.

This simple, four-letter acronym aids us in remembering the steps necessary to lead people to an action. We can’t get people to take action without first getting their attention. And even then you have to get them interested in what you’re talking about, and so on. So this is a logical method that the majority of sales and marketers understand.

Now, we’ll take a look at speeches. As public speakers and even students who write essays know very well, a well-prepared speech (or essay) has three parts: an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. Some common patterns used in many speeches is the combination of the time and problem-solution patterns. Presenting information in your speech in more or less chronological order makes effective use of the time pattern. More about the problem-solution pattern below.

There are necessary elements in each of the sections of the speech format, however, let’s not focus on speech elements today but rather more on developing a framework in which to integrate the elements of persuasion.

Introduction   
• 1a. Attention
• 1b. Suggest you have a Solution to an existing (compelling) Problem

Body   
• 2a. Introduce Problem / Discuss the Past and Present situation / Interest / Focus on Psychological elements
• 2b. Discuss the Possible Terrible Future / Use dramatic Story-Telling / Focus on Psychological elements
• 2c. Introduce Solution / Discuss the Possible Better Future / Focus on psychological elements of 3rd (larger) party / Use scientific method for proof / Use advocates and examples of successful implementation of solution / Emphasize the audience’s right to make a Decision

Conclusion   
• 3a. Recap the problem and solution
• 3b. Call to Action
• 3c. Memorable statement

That’s a lot of information to remember and integrate into one speech and harder to describe it all in one small blog. But it might make better sense if we see how some famous, or maybe some not so famous speech givers have used these elements in their speeches.

Many people are familiar with Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech during his campaign for civil rights in the United States. Did Martin Luther King use the elements discussed above? You betcha, maybe not exactly the same way but we can definitely find the ingredients there.

In the middle of the speech Martin Luther King uses the psychological phrasing of “being satisfied”. Speech givers have to be careful not to divide an audience and so the words must be chosen carefully to maintain full 100% agreement with the speaker. He explains that “we can never be satisfied as long as…” certain conditions continue. In this way, Martin Luther King is addressing a troubled past and present, and how the people feel about it, especially if it continues into the future. At the end of the section, using a parallel wording technique, he states, “No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until…”

Then focusing on his proposed solution, he draws a picture about a better future, with his famous parallel wording, “I have a dream that one day…” He then takes the psychological elements and focuses them not on the audience but on a larger 3rd party, that is, of the nation and what the nation needs. He describes a nation born in freedom, and sings the familiar song of freedom My country ’tis of thee, and goes on with parallel wording again from that song repeating over and over, “Let freedom ring from …!” finally shouting “Free at last!” to a frenzied audience.

There isn’t necessarily a direct call to action in this speech; it is implicit and understood.

Some other larger 3rd parties that we can use in some of our own compelling speeches are the city, the company, the family, the school, society, the state, the nation/country, the world. Use specific words like need and must, and always avoid “should”. The word “should” for some reason creates a natural tendency in people to defend or argue their position, because the word assumes an obligation on others without showing them how they are needed. Also, if your audience is already willing to help, and then you use the words “you/we should”, they may change their minds because that’s what you expect of them. On the other hand, emphasizing the needs of larger 3rd parties creates a crowd of willing volunteers.

Now, let’s take a look at Abraham Lincoln’s speech A New Birth of Freedom delivered at the battlefield near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on November 19, 1863. In the introduction, he uses the words “a new nation, conceived in Liberty” which he repeats again near the end of the speech reworded as “that this nation…shall have a new birth of freedom”.

He touches the hearts of the people there mourning the losses of their loved ones (psychological interest). In this short speech, he really gets straight to it, by not telling the audience of a possible bad future, but what they just cannot do, that being to continue mourning their dead here or add any amount of consecration to the ground where they stand than the soldiers have already done themselves. His call to action is to get up and finish their work that they worked so hard to do and to devote themselves to that mission.

John F. Kennedy’s speech at Berlin was a speech that, although without an implicit call to action, really rallied the people up. At that time he was addressing the first audience coming of age after WWII, in other words it was 1963, 18 years after the end of the war. He addressed a new generation of youngsters confused about their roles in society and their future. What did it really mean to be a citizen of Berlin?

He starts with explaining the past and current situation. West Berlin was really a special place, a stronghold of western ideology surrounded by communist threat and his job was to tell them how great an icon they are for the rest of the world. People elsewhere might think we can work with the communists, or that they don’t understand the big deal. Thus his parallel repeated throughout the speech: “Let Them Come to Berlin!” and they shall see for themselves the ugly truth of the matter. He goes on to emphasize that no wall has been erected in the west to keep people from leaving. Their freedoms, and giving the people the right to make decisions for themselves was a compelling message in this speech.

He talks about a possible, brighter, future for Germany, a united Germany. He doesn’t say it’s going to take another 30 years, but we can see today that his prophecy “when this city will be joined as one and this country and this great continent of Europe in a peaceful and hopeful globe” has come true today, [pause] …except for that “globe” part. As a great orator, we can feel the massive amount of energy projected in his speech, and that alone, like Martin Luther King, is enough to rally a huge crowd of people or even a nation.

Finally, to bring closure, he mentions that these citizens of Berlin are connected with all those around the world who share their ideology while defending their island of freedom by saying all free men can call themselves citizens of Berlin. Again, uproar from the audience.

A few years later in 1968 Bobby Kennedy was giving a presidential campaign address in Indianapolis in which he makes good use of all the elements discussed here today. To set the stage for the events of the day: as the public was arriving to hear the younger Kennedy speak about his aims as president, a shocking event occurred some miles away in the town of Memphis, Tennessee. Kennedy having just been informed of the news decided to change his address for that evening. Primarily because once the audience heard the news, they’d probably forget everything he had said anyway, so he might as well address the turn of events.

As you can guess, it came as a shock to everybody in the audience when he started with: “Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m only going to talk to you just for a minute or so this evening because I have some very sad news for all of you and I think sad news for all of our fellow citizens and people who love peace all over the world and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight at the Mem…[shouts and screams from the audience].

What follows in this speech however is not the speech of a presidential candidate. Instead it is the speech of a president leading his people and giving them a renewed boost of strength. He follows the natural progression, from interest to decision, portraying a dark future with the graphic words stain and bloodshed spread across our land. He portrays the pain through a favorite Greek poem of how pain drops on the heart and only through time does wisdom and understanding come. He describes the pain of losing a loved one from personal experience and implores the people to make the right decision in continuing the love between people that King taught us to do. Like Lincoln, he uses the words “dedicate ourselves to”. He wasn’t giving an empty promise by saying if we do this that it will be the end of violence, but that it will take an effort in this country. He talks about the needs of the nation and the needs of the people, not what people should do, but in reference to a 3rd larger party.

He unites the audience by choosing his words carefully, because even those people who do not want what he’s talking about can still agree with his words: “the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to improve the quality of our life and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land.” Who can argue with that statement? Who cannot be in agreement? He follows this up with a call for action.

His call for action is a prayer for the country and a prayer for King’s family. Why a prayer? Well, for one, a prayer is mighty contagious, and if you get a few people praying for something, a lot of others will recognize its peaceful cause and join in. It’s an infectious way to get more and more people beyond the walls of the auditorium in which he spoke to get involved in that cause, the cause being to continue King’s love permeating through the country.

Now, when the people walked out of there and heard the news of King’s death when they got home, they knew in their own hearts what to do and probably spread that word around with others close to them. They knew better than anybody else what to do because of the power of Bobby Kennedy’s speech. Bobby Kennedy’s speech that night was not one from a presidential candidate, but was one from a great leader, a president indeed.

As a businessperson, there are a great number of things we can learn from these speeches, not only in leading our companies and employees, but instilling great expectations for the future of the products and services we produce for the benefit of society, in that pursuit of “improving the quality of our lives”. As businesspeople we have a responsibility to society to uphold those expectations morally and ethically.

Unfortunately, the four men, those great orators I have presented here today, all died by the hands of other men. So, if you decide to become a great orator yourself, remember there may be a health risk involved. However, becoming a great public speaker has its rewards, and just remember that the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks!

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