Persuasive Speaking: Trust is the Cornerstone of Presenting

A professor in Nanjing, China had the bright idea of getting his students to put on a play with Japanese students.

This was a bright idea because most historians tell us that the Japanese army massacred 300,000 civilians in Nanjing during WWII.

When the students got together, they first planned to put on a 20-year-old Japanese play, but the Japanese students soon realized it was anti-Japanese, and withdrew their support.

Then the students decided to create a play using the stucture of the Indian folk-tale in which six blind men feel an elephant and describe it from their own experience–one from the trunk, another from the ear, etc. But this became unsatisfactory as a drama.

Finally, they wrote a play about themselves struggling to write a play.  They put it on in Nanjing, and the audience was deeply moved.

One of the Japanese students said of the experience, “We couldn’t even talk about the war until we got to know eachother and became friends.  You have to build trust first, then you can talk.”

Build trust first, then talk. Well…for presenters, that recipe could work if they are presenting to people who know them AND they (the presenters) have previously earned the trust of those in the audience.  But what about those of us speaking to strangers, prospects, others in our industry, and the general public?  How do we speak first, then earn trust, especially when a presentation is one-way communication?

1.  Be genuinely interested in helping the audience.  Genuinely.  Actually. Shall I say that again?  Really interested in helping! Want more for them than you want for yourself.

2.  Structure your presentation so that it approximates conversation.  When you raise a point that some in the audience might disagree with, give voice to their point of view, and address their concerns.  And of course, invite questions either during your talk or at the end.

3.  Display humility.  Humility is profoundly appealing and inspiring of trust  It speaks of wisdom, perspective, depth of feeling, sensitivity.  Humility is not lack of self-respect.  It is the zenith of self-knowledge.  Any young hotshot can display cockiness.  It takes true character to approach an audience with humility.

4. Display confidence. This does not contradict the display of humility.  If this does not make sense to you, I can’t help you–not here anyway.  The easiest way to display confidence is to be confident.  And the easiest way to be confident is to know what your audience needs and how you can help.

5. Reveal something about yourself that is personal.  Open the kimono.  Speak from your experience.  I’ve written elsewhere about a woman at an executive meeting who spoke of her experience working as an exotic dancer to pay for college.  She made her point that we all come from somewhere–and we can get where we want to go if we keep our eyes on the prize.

6. Speak to the audience as an equal.  Do not put yourself down or put yourself above them.

7. Don’t show off and don’t fail to show up.  Show-offs are hiding their insecurity, and those who can’t “be here now” in front of an audience are more interested in their own feelings than they are in their defined outcomes.

8. Make them laugh.  Those who are funny have an unfair advantage.

9. Make your talk audience-centric–all about them, not all about you, your company, your research, or your product.  You do that by understanding how the information you posess can help them get something they want.  So you talk about what they want and how they can get it–with your fabulous information, idea, product etc.

10. Display a balanced approach to the issues.  Howard Dean, Don Imus, and George Bush have all paid the price for intemperate speech.  The power of words is not to be underestimated.   Use them with care.

Persuasive presenting requires trust between speaker and audience.  A presentation is most often an attempt to influence the thinking of the audience–with new information and new ideas.  And a person’s thinking is often near and dear to them.  Your presentation may require your listeners to adjust their thinking, which is difficult for them.  All change is difficult.  We know this ourselves.  It is hard to lose weight, change a habit, or buy a product,  service, or idea from someone we’ve never met before.

Those of use who can build trust with an audience have great influence.  The ten tools above should help you build that trust.