The Power of persuasion

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Andy
on January 27, 2009
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[UPDATE Feb 11 2010] I now have a dedicated blog about public speaking. You can and read an updated version of this article and read more write-ups of workshops I have attended.

Last night I attended a workshop called “The Power of Persuasion” lead by Simon Bucknall, twice winner of the Toastmasters Great Britain and all Ireland public speaking championships. The course contained lots of insightful advice about persuasion in public speaking.  Furthermore there were two prepared speeches (both number nine in the CC manual: “Persuade with Power”) followed by group discussions to analyse what worked and what didn’t.  Overall it was a fantastic workshop and I extend my thanks to everyone involved in the organisation.

I took lots of notes during the workshop.  To further familiarise myself with the content, and for the benefit of others, I’ve typed up some of the key points that were made.

First Half: Audience Buy-in

Passion - Simon asserted that that passion for what you are selling is the most important aspect of persuading effectively.  He described how, in previous jobs, he found his ability to sell was hindered by his lack of enthusiasm for the products.

Emotional Response - If you win the heart then the mind will follow.  The most powerfully persuasive speeches illicit an emotional response.  A previous international speech winner’s method for creating passionate speeches: take your inspiration from books/films/media and think about your emotional response to it - then try and recreate that emotional response within the audience.

Audience Buy-in - The audience should have a reason for listening to you - a “buy-in” for your speech.  He suggested using the following three steps:

  1. Establish the mindset of the audience. Identify the emotional state of the audience by doing research or asking directly.  Are they already sympathetic to the cause? Are the bored and don’t want to be here? Many people are too keen to focus on the end result or make assumptions about the audience’s situation.
  2. Reference/address what that might be. Empathise with the audience situation “Who doesn’t want to be here?”.  This will help to make a speech a “shared journey” rather than one person ordering the other.
  3. Setup and incentive. Why they should listen to you?  Why they should join you on this journey? What they can get out of it?

Use of the stage.  Use different parts of the stage to make the story a physical journey.  An area of the stage may represent a goal; you can point towards it when you refer to it then move into it when you describe achieving it.

Avoid inviting a response to a question - The prepared speaker proposed a question to the audience and an answer was shouted out that did not support his point.  It was suggested that rhetorical questions should be open question that invites the audience to reflect on a topic rather than prompting them for an answer. “What gives you the right to …?”

Leading a debate - At one stage Simon was asked “What is the difference between persuasion and selling?”, rather then attempting to answer he asked for a show of hands for “they’re the same” and “they’re different” then asked members of each group for their thoughts before inviting the original questioner to comment. What an excellent technique for answering questions that you don’t know the answer to, or tackling a question with a subjective or non-existent answer.

Second Half: Demonstrate your points effectively

Stories - Simon reminded us that Stories are an effective way of making points.  He suggested that powerful stories “place our audience in the scene”, meaning that the audience should imagine themselves in the situation you’re describing.  He describe some points for doing this effectively:

  • Use the word “you” - A reactive word that causes the audience to take note
  • Give your characters dialogue - You can be a lot more forceful or critical when you are “repeating” what someone else has said.

Branding your idea - Can your point be distilled into a single sentence of less than ten words?  Can you repeat this phrase three or more times during the speech? Like Obama’s “Yes we can”.

At the end of the presentation Simon asked two questions (I badly paraphrase). “Which ONE of the points discussed tonight will you incorporate into future speeches?” “What would be the result of not taking notice of any of the points?” Those two questions were very persuasive in their own right and I would invite you to reflect on them now.

Buying Books

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on January 23, 2009
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When I was in India last year I read The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, a fantastic book that won the Man Booker Prize in 2008.  I had brought my copy from a street seller who laid out a collection of books on a pallet on the pavement, most of which looked a bit worse for ware: the text was miss aligned or faded and the colours on the front coveres were poorly saturated. Initially I thought it was a rejected run from a printing press, books that wouldn’t make the grade of western bookshops.  I had selected the best quality book but even that had the odd missing letter or faded type face.  After coming across handwritten notes and arrows I was convinced the entire book had been photocopied

So all in all a successful purchase - a fantastic book, “stuck it to the man” by buying a pirated book and spent £1.50 on something that would cost me £12.99 in Waterstones.  Books are getting so expensive in the UK that I have been exploring other avenues for obtaining books (despite their relative value for money).

Second hand books are a great way to go.  There is a great open-air bookshop on the South bank, London, next to the British Film institute, which has a vast selection of second hand books for about £3 a paperback. Second hand book shops always seem to have the classics, but are also overstocked with last year’s blockbusters (Dan Brown etc.).  Another great resource for second hand books is Amazon market place, most ot the classics are available for 1p + £2.75 shipping, but often the shipping price will cancel out the saving if you’re buying in bulk.

Borrowing books from friends is a great way to get hold of books.  Personally I feel I’m getting more value for money, out of a book, the more friends I can persuade to read it, and I enjoy being able to discuss it with them afterwards.  I think most people are the same, and as long as you don’t crack the spine or fold the pages, most people will be very willing to loan out their personal library.  However I’ve now reached a point where I avoid looking at friends’ bookshelves as I have shuch a backlog of borrowed books to get through.

Pirate books, with the exception of the few I brought in India, haven’t really featured in my personal library that much. I’ve downloaded the odd ebook or audio book from the piratebay but neither are ideal. I find ebooks are only suitable for reference material, in fact the ability to quickly search through them gives them adavantage over “traditional” paper books; as for novels I don’t like staring at a screen for hours.  And audio books just take too long, I’m not the fastest reader but I can always go faster than someone reading it out loud.

I’m sure the local library would be a great resource.  I’ve not taken the time to find one close to me.  I think I’m seduced by developing my own personal book collection and not having to commit to a return date.

In 2009 I’m going to do my best to read fifty two books.  I have got about twenty unread, or unfinished books gathering dust on my bookshelf, so they’ll be the ones I’ll tackle first.  The rest I’ll try and source as cheaply as possible.

Taking notes

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on January 22, 2009
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Last year I read lots of books and I intend to keep up the momentum this year.  One thing I have learned over the last year is that after reading a non-fiction book, however interesting or inspirational, the knowledge seems to seep away very quickly.  Even if I have found the content fascinating it just doesn’t stick after a single read through.  I’m often able to recall general topics or memorable anecdotes but the specifics just aren’t there.

I’ve started making notes in books that I own, usually underlining a quote that I Iike or a concept that I find particuarly insightful.  Any page that I mark I will draw an astrix in the top corner of the page so I can flick through the book and quickly locate anything of interest.

But I’ve realised that this isn’t an ideal solution.  I can’t write in borrowed books.  I’m unwilling to lend my own annotated books as I might lose the notes.  But most of all underlining and brief margin notes aren’t sufficient to recall large topics without re-reading large sections.

“Information is useful only to the extent that you can find it when you need it” - Tim Ferriss

Tim Ferriss seem to be on the right track with his note taking system.  He takes handwritten notes while reading, and when he fills a page he writes a brief description of its contents on a index page.  When scanning or revising the information the index page can act as a distilled version of the book with pointers to more detailed notes. One thing that strikes me about the examples he has posted is that they do not look very accessible.  They are a monotone scrawl of dense handwriting.   I think  a useful complement to to an index page would be a mindmap of the key concepts.

I have been using mindmapping quite a bit over the previous year mainly so that I can quikly revise materials for a course I deliver, but also for brainstorming ideas.  I’ve attempted to create a mindmap of a book after I’ve read it, but it usually lacks detail as I haven’t taken notes throughout.

Mindmaps are great for quickly revising information due to the use of colour, space, images and the emphasis on logical connections.  Creating mindmaps is fantastic for forcing you to think about the logical flow between topics.  Unfortunately they are time consuming to draw, but I always seem to understand the topic better after competing one.

 

So for 2009, a semi-resolution, I intend to practise and develop a note taking system and possibly re-read some of the better non-fiction books from last year and create some easy-to-revise summaries.

Toastmasters speech no.1: Icebreaker

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on December 16, 2008
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[UPDATE Feb 11 2010] I now have a dedicated blog about public speaking. You can and read an updated version of this article and watch more of my speeches.

For the past few weeks I’ve been busy working on my first speech for my public speaking club: London Cardinals which is part of Toastmasters International.

I mentioned that I have been preparing in my previous post.

Now that I have written and performed my speech I would like to reflect on some of the things that I have learned from the experience.

But before I do that here is a recording of the speech.  I cringe when I watch it, but I’m glad it’s been recorded for posterity. (Bofore watching understand that this speech is intended to introduce yourself to the other club members and most Toastmasters speeches begin with the greeting “Mr Toastmaster, fellow Toastmasters and most welcome guests”).

Choosing the topic

The purpose of your first speech in toastmasters is to introduce yourself to the club.  The best icebreakers I’ve seen have contained personal stories.  The worst icebreakers I’ve heard have listed timeline of events starting at their birth.

I chose to talk about my experiences living in a student house in the second year of university.  This period of my life is rich with amusing stories and the topic provides scope to introduce plenty of personal background.

Writing

I wrote an initial draft in DarkRoom. I love this program as it allows you to write without being constantly distracted by incorrect spelling notifications, word count, or opening “print-preview” to see how much you’ve written.

After a couple of disjoint drafts I realised that I wanted a “point” to the speech rather than a collection of loosely related anecdotes.  This basically involved retrofitting a “moral” over the top of the stories I already had.  I eventually decided on “…therefore you should try and make friends with your neighbours” (thanks to Martin Smith for that suggestion).  Streamlining became much easier after this: if the story was unrelated it was cut.

I found that writing for a speech is very different to normal writing.  Things that looked fine on the page would sound really confused and too verbose when read out loud.  And the stuff that sounded the best was invariably short, simple sentences.

I found it was important to experiment out loud before commiting to the page.  Initially I was just reading back paragraphs after I had drafted them on the screen.  This would lead to clunky, unnatural tongue-twisters.

I received some extremely helpful feedback in a long phone call with my mentor after sending him a draft:

  • Lots and lots of positive enforcement.
  • He pointed out a couple of uses of inappropriate language: “sexually frustrated” and “Turn your f-ing music off” (”f-ing” doesn’t really conceal the non-shortened word well enough).  So I reworked those.
  • Some pure gold advice: if you ask the audience a question, ask the inverse as-well to make everyone feel included.  ”Who here is friends with their neighbours?” was paired with “Whose relationship with their neighbours has room for improvement?”.  And raise your left hand when you ask the question makeing it more likely that all those right handed people in the audience will “mirror” your gesture and raise their own hand.
  • We discussed the art of telling a good story, specifically “The Hero’s Journey”: a commonly used story structure.

Learning

Using notes in a speech doesn’t look impressive.  Having index cards is better than a piece of A4 flapping around, but you still have to break eye contact to read them and it restricts what you can do with your hands.  My intention with this speech was not to use notes.

It only took a day to commit to memory.  I was quite surprised by this, I had started learning it two weeks in advance.

In the morning I decided to see how far I could get through my speech without referring to my notes.  If I couldn’t remember something I skipped on to a part I could remember. And I recorded myself, then listened back to it while checking it against the original text. (Top tip from my mentor: listen back at twice the speed to save time.) At this stage I edited a few sentences to make them simpler and easier to remember.  After doing this a few times I was able to recite the whole speech without notes.  Initially there were some long pauses as I struggled to remember the next line, but these went away the more I practiced.

Presenting in front of someone was a different matter entirely.  I presented it to my girlfriend over skype, with my heart beating twice the speed the whole way through.  Then I presented it to my friend (thanks again Martin!) in my living room, after three false starts I managed to get through the whole thing.  I realised that as long as I could recall the first few paragraphs the rest would flow.

On the night

I went through the speech about six times while walking to the club, attracting some odd looks.  Sitting through the table topics section helped to keep my mind off the speech, and get me in a happy mood.  Then during the break I went outside and ran though the entire speech again.

Waiting to be introduced and walking up to the front seemed to take forever, and as the clapping died away and I knew I had to say something I just hoped for the best and got on with it.

The feedback afterwards was fantastic.  I had a spot on and really funny evaluation (”first recommendation: don’t ever admit you were born in Liverpool”), and lots of people took the time to give me their feedback slips amidst a torrent of positivity.

It was great fun and I’m looking forward to my number two speech.

One week until über-noël 2k8

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on December 13, 2008
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With über-noël 2k8 fast approaching (the yuletide equivalent of über-fest) I find myself getting into lots of conversations about american TV shows.  Such debate has provided me the opportunity to revise my opinions and place into context many of the great TV shows of the late nineties and early “naughties”.

For me the key to a great TV show is a  compelling ongoing storyline.  Surprisingly few programs engage with this style - and the ones that do often run out of ideas after the first season (Desperate Housewives, The O.C.).  I think the episodic style only really suits sitcoms, in fact TNG is the only counter example that sprang to mind during my rigorous scientific research.

With such ideas in mind please enjoy the following preview of my upcomming Nature article:  An Analysis of some TV show’s awesomeness vs. Time, A.P.M. Smith Et Al.

TV shows: Awesomenes vs. Time

Figure 1: TV shows: Awesomenes vs. Time

Breaking the Ice

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on September 26, 2008
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Having been the member of the London Cardinals Toastmasters‘ club for a couple of months now I’ve had the opportunity to watch several accomplished public speakers including a UK and Ireland champion.  I’ve done a couple of table topics - short impromptu speeches - however the dreaded “icebreaker” is approaching (booked for December 15th).  The icebreaker gives toastmasters the opportunity to introduce themselves to the club in a five minute pre-prepared speech which is timed, evaluated and will likely be delivered in front of an audience of 30+ people.

The standard of icebreakers I have seen so far has been pretty spectacular.  I think the general skill level within the club encourages members to go the extra mile.  And for that reason I have been wracking my brain for ideas and searching for good resources to help me out.  The kind of speeches I have most enjoyed (and most want to copy) are ones that tell stories that draw the audience in and have them hanging on every word.  Thankfully, as the internet has advice about everything in the world ever, there are some good resources to hear stories and get advice about how to tell them:

 

This American Life - has become an addiction of mine recently.  Each hour long podcast contains a selection of esoteric stories, loosely related to a theme.

 

Ira Glass discussing story telling on YouTube - Ira Glass, the presenter of This American Life, discusses what makes a good story.

 

The Moth - A performance venue in New York which has a podcast of recorded short stories delivered on-stage, live, without notes.

 

I’ve been busy writing an speech about the flat I lived in during my second year of university and the people who lived next door (specifically “Psycho Guy”).  Some funny stuff happened that year.  My main approach so far has been to unload all my ideas into Gmail and add to them whenever I have a flash of inspiration - but by far the biggest problem I’m having is deciding what details to leave out to give the story better structure and pace. I’ll post it up here when I’m done - and it will be filmed so if you’re lucky there may be some YouTube action too.

Über-fest

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Über-fest is usually met with a reaction of hilarity when I describe it to someone for the first time. People usually assume it’s an ad hoc affair with a cool name. They couldn’t be further from the truth. Over the course five years, five über-fests and five über-noëls the event has been refined over a foundation of tradition, stamina and an enduring friendship.

A brief history

Mr James Ricketts and Mr Andrew Smith met while selling extortionately priced foam cubes in their Young Enterprise company “Sandstorm”. Throughout sixth form evenings at the boarding house usually consisted of watching downloaded movies and episodes of Buffy, Futurama and Family Guy. Such inactivity and decadence continued into the summer after A-Levels. Frequent visits to the Ster Century Cinema in Cardiff (knick named “The Mall” - don’t ask), where the purchase of a single ticket could yield an entire day of surreptitious film watching. The following Christmas break on an extended visit to the Ricketts household Andrew managed to watch 15 episodes of Buffy back-to-back while Ricketts was at work. After several days of continuous American tv James suggested that we should repeat the event the following summer. The event would be dubbed “Über-fest” as we had spent some time discussing how the concept of the übervamps in Buffy season 7 may relate to Nietzsche’s über-mensch.

Routine and Tradition

Über-fest takes place every summer. The festivities consist of a day of films at the cinema in Cardiff followed by a selection of TV and movies in Breacon, usually requiring 4-5 days to watch. We can be sure the line up is going to be good as the selection is vetted at über-noël, a similar, but more experimental fest, held over Christmas.

The first Fest began with a day of films at “The Mall”, then back to James’ for four days of Jack Bauer and Captain Jonathan Archer. Many of the traditions were born out of this first event. An official quote (in this case a line from family guy) was recorded for posterity. The traditional über-fest breakfast of pizza and garlic brad was consumed daily. And our annual squash game took place (James always wins).

Other traditions have developed throughout the following fests…

Time passes in blocks of 42.5 minutes, the length of an hour long American TV show stripped of adverts. We call this unit of time an “ep”. Über-festers become very attuned to this temporal unit. Once, when the show Rome was introduced to the über-fest line up we felt that the show was running on far to long. It turned out that the show lasted 50 minutes and only 44 minutes had expired.

The official quote should be a funny line from a show we’ve watched or something hilarious that either James or I have said. The quote contenders are recorded in über.txt, a text file on James’ computer and then voted on at the end. The current list of quotes stands as…

über-fest 2k3: Put down the fork…FACE!
über-noël 2k3: What’s next? Hinduism?
über-fest 2k4: Faux Shizzle
über-noël 2k4: Park and Ride
über-fest 2k5: über-sweats, über-shits, über-wit
über-noël 2k5: Who’s Tapping Whom?
über-fest 2k6: Rock on, Rock the FUCK ON!
über-noël 2k6: More or Snore?
über-fest 2k7: Dude, these are some perfectly good neck patches we’re wasting
über-noël 2k7: Don’t be such a vagine

While this file still exists for the quote documentation of each event is now recored in a leather bound book called: El Tomos Übero, or “The Tome” for short. The tome also contains a tally of 24 and lost predictions (btw, James’ long term prediction for Lost is that the island is purgatory), ratings for each film we see, and some lengthy pros written while drunk.

El Tumos

Recently the participant who has demonstrated himself as the most über has been recognised with the title of über cum lade. The inaugural award was bestowed on James Ricketts as Andrew fell asleep during The Matrix. James was also recognised the following year for organising tshirts. The title of El Tumos Übero Scribe is also awarded for excellence in documentation of the event, however this is usually considered to be a consolation prize for those who haven’t achieved über cum lade.

On official song for the event may be chosen. Past choices include Laidback - Backerman, Thom York - Black Swan, James Rickets feat. Andrew Smith - Bakerman (The Pool farm sessions ep) and Superman Lovers - Starlight.

This Year

Üf2k8 is fast approaching. We will be watching season 4 of Lost, season 5 of The Wire and Season 4 of Battlestar Galactica. I think this is by far the best line-up we have had for an individual über-fest. All of the shows are quality and have matured over several seasons. Considering that the writers’ strike took place this year, I think we’re extremely lucky.

Self Portrait

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on May 28, 2008
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How to eat a kiwi fruit without a spoon

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One of my more disgusting habits…

kiwi

While eating a selection of snacks I realised that my lack of a spoon would require me to get up an miss at least thirty seconds of TV. In a flash of inspiration a new method for clean and utensilless kiwi consumption was born.

Rather than use a knife, or any other sanitary cutting tool, use your thumb nail to make a small incision half way down the fruit. Using the same method extend the the incision until the skin is broken all the way around. Some tongue action may be required to prevent any stray drips getting on your trousers.

Twist each half in opposing directions along the central axis. This will break the kiwi in two. Each half should be orientated so the exposed flesh is pointing upwards, this will prevent drips.

The next step is to eat the kiwi by placing ones lips around the circumference of the exposed region then suck and squeeze simultaneously to retrieve the glorious payload.  Repeat for the second half then dispose of the spent skins during the next advert break.

New Year’s Resoloutions

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on May 14, 2008
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I don’t usually make new year’s resolutions. But around new year’s eve I was regularly attending Toastmasters and the topic of new year’s resolutions was dominating the speeches. I spent an hour, or so, creating a mind map of resolutions that I thought were achievable. I ended up with a lot. Most, however, were simple and required building better habits rather than doing anything off the wall.

Now five months on I think it’s time to re-visit them and make sure I am on track to actually achieving something.

“Continue going to Toastmasters and improve my public speaking”

Toastmasters is an international public speaking club. I started attending a club in Holborn in December as a guest. Unfortunately this was about the time when a whole load of other people decided to start going as well. Just as I decided to join I was told the club was full. After a couple of months on the waiting list they emailed me to say they would not take on any new members and I was removed from the waiting list.

Oh well. I’m on the look out for another club as I thought the few times I went were very worthwhile.

In the meantime I have been improving my public speaking at work by teaching a course, that I have now presented in five countries. I’ve also presented a seminar to my team and am presenting another later this week.

15% achieved. Fail!

“Read at least two hundred pages a week”

I borrowed this resolution from Tyler of Real Social Dynamics.

TV really pisses me off. I rarely sit down and watch a broadcasted program all the way through. I’ve caught snippets here and there when I’ve happened to be in the same room as a TV, but I’ve generally managed to avoid broadcasted programming almost entirely. Saying that I do watch a fair bit downloaded TV and films, but somehow I think on-demand is less mindless.

Instead I’ve been kicking it old school and reading books. I try to alternate fiction and non-fiction, as well as reading some of my unread books that have been gathering dust for years. Recent highlights have included Vernon God Little, Fight Club and Brave New World.

On average I think I’m hitting the page quota, although I’ve barely touched some of the classic texts that I listed on my mind map.

80% achieved - I think I’ll start maintaining a proper reading list to motivate me to read more.

“Run twice a week, and try running at least once before work”

An extremely common resolution is “do more exercise”, which I don’t think this is very easy to keep as it has no measurable progress or indication of how it will be achieved. My resolution was to build an excercise habit. I chose an exercise which could be performed solo without the need for gym membership or special equipment. I chose a frequency that I thought I could maintain.

Running twice a week isn’t amazing, but it’s not bad either. And I’ve stuck to it pretty well. I’ve introduced some interval training and pullups in Kennington park’s fitness trail. I’ve also entered into this year’s JP Morgan Chase around Battersea Park. I always let it slide if it’s raining, but if it’s sunny I find myself looking forward to spending some time outside and getting some exercise.

The “running before work” part was an experiment to see if I could build a habit at a time that would consistently be free of commitments. I have been out running at 7am twice, but I find it very difficult to drag myself out of bed.

75% achieved - Keep at it, it will be easier now it’s summer.

“Make maximum cash ISA contributions”

It’s all automatic so I don’t have to do much. I remembered to raise the standing order to £300 a month in April. I’m actually on the lookout for a good equity ISA at the moment as my HSBC ISA is pretty lame (I think it’s 4.75%).

90% achieved - I could find a better account.

“Buy a digital SLR and find a good photography blog”

I used to do a lot of photography back during my GCSE years. It was my “skill” for bronze and silver Duke of Edinburgh awards. Unfortunately I let it slide when I changed school and never got back into it.

Well now I have a Canon 400D which I got just before flying out to Bangalore. It’s pretty sweet, but I need to find more opportunities to use it. Sometimes I’m loathed to use it as I’ve started to associate DSLRs with the mass of tourists next to where I work.

Digital Photography School is the best photography blog I’ve found so far. Stumble upon is great for interesting pictures. I’ve also discovered that The Camera Club is about ten minutes walk from my flat.

49% achieved - Got the camera, now use it.

“Keep in better contact with friends”

I am particularity bad at keeping in touch with people. Throughout university I would never plan my social life in advance as people were always in the same places I was. I’m beginning to realise I need to make much more of an effort to maintain friendships with people. So far this year I haven’t done so well at this and my social life seems to revolve around an elite group.

20% achieved. Try harder. Again, now that it’s summer this should be easier. Pimms in the park any one?

“Program in my spare time”

There’s nothing like a degree in computing and a job doing C++ all day to put you off doing any programming in your spare time. However a frequent trait of successful technology startup founders, as pointed out in the Y Combinator Library, is that they are programmers themselves (not MBAs) productising a tool they’ve created for their own personal use. I’ve had a couple of ideas for tools I would like to write, and I would also like to experiment with interesting programming languages like Python or Processing. Unfortunately I haven’t done anything this year.

0% achieved.