Persuasive Speaking: DVD Course

I just bought the DVD course from The Teaching Company called Argumentation: The Study of Effective Reasoning, which is taught by Professor David Zarefsky of Northwestern University. If you want to take a deep dive into presentation skills, take this one.

These lectures make you realize that human beings have been trying to figure out what makes one person more persuasive than others for at least 2000 years.

Presentation skills count the most where there is uncertainty–where there is no mathematical certainty that the speaker’s idea is the right one.

For instance, when a brand director introduces her new marketing plan, there is no guarantee that it will work.  She has to convince her audience that there is a reasonable degree of certainty that it will work.  She’s got to give reasons to do this.

When a pharmaceutical company needs to partner with another company, it will consider the presentations of the various candidates and make a decision.  There is no certainty in such a decision.  They will listen to the reasons presented and make their decision through dialogue and discussion.

Professor Zarefsky says that argumentation is the process of “giving reasons” and that the goal of argumentation is better decisions through collaborative dialogue.

And for arguments to be effective, the speaker must be open to being persuaded in addition to being eager to persuade.