The principal focus of Practical Eloquence is how to communicate your ideas persuasively to others and drive decisions favorable to yourself. But in this post I’d like to switch roles and look at things from the point of view of the recipient of persuasive messages.
In business and indeed in daily life we are often compelled to make decisions based on specialized information provided to us by others. These people have their own persuasive intent when they present their material, so it behooves us to apply certain tests when we listen to them.
There are two ways to approach the question. One is to apply your critical thinking skills to evaluate the content of the presentation: the facts, logic, premises and conclusions. This is of course much easier to do when you are very familiar with the material yourself.
Sometimes, though, you are in the position of listening to an “expert” who knows far more about the subject than you do, and it can be very difficult to evaluate claims and statements that deal with unfamiliar and specialized knowledge. You may be in this position as a business leader who has to make a decision based on a presentation by a technical expert. Of course, as a reasonably informed member of society, you face this challenge daily when you read opinion or editorial pieces in the newspaper or magazines.
Since you can’t always have the luxury of educating yourself thoroughly on the subject matter, is there an alternative to taking what they say on faith alone? I believe there is: you can pay attention to how the presenter goes about their argument, and gain some valuable clues that can supplement your gut feel. There are four things that I believe you should listen and look for when someone is delivering a persuasive presentation—that is, when they are trying to make the case for a specific investment or decision.
Empiricism: There are a lot of excellent books on the market that tout the importance of stories and passion in presentations, and I do believe that most business presentations can benefit from more of both—as long as they are not substitutes for solid content. Do they have facts and measurements to back up their statements, or is their presentation a tissue of unsupported assertions? Like all other listeners, I respond to stories and passion, but when these two are present, I make an extra effort to look a little closer just to make sure I’m not getting carried away by the presenter’s enthusiasm. Stories are great vehicles for presentations, but never forget that the plural of anecdote is not data. Because our minds give disproportionate weight to vivid details, we need to take special care to listen for hard facts when the story is good. And because emotions can be contagious, we also need to take special care when the speaker is especially passionate about their topic. While passion is a very good quality to have, it may also be a sign of emotionalism unsupported by logic.
Precision: This goes hand in hand with empiricism. How well defined are their terms? Can they give real examples? Beware of those who wield long words like decorations, as if to say, “Look how smart I am.”As an example, one of the least precise terms I hear people use a lot during sales presentations is productivity, as in: “My proposal will increase productivity.” What is the precise definition of productivity? It is basically outputs divided by inputs, and therefore is specific to each situation. What outputs will increase or improve, and which inputs will decrease and how will those be measured? In a recent presentation in one of my classes, the salesperson gave real examples of how their customer’s sales force could eliminate specific steps in their processes and accomplish more in every sales call. He showed impressive knowledge of his customer without expressly calling attention to the work that went into acquiring that knowledge.
Humility: I’ve said before in this blog that projecting confidence can have a significant impact on your persuasiveness as a presenter. For that very reason, if you’re on the receiving end of the presentation, you need to be on guard against excessive confidence on the part of the speaker. Sometimes people are very sure of themselves because they haven’t bothered to pay attention to evidence that contradicts their point of view. Researchers who studied over 2000 corporate executives’ estimates of their own knowledge levels found that over 99% were overconfident[1]. That’s why as a listener, you should also want to see if the presenter’s confidence is tempered with humility. Humility is a badge of intellectual honesty. Those who are open to question, who admit that they don’t have the perfect answers, may just be the ones who have arrived at their conclusions after deep questioning and looking at opposing points of view.
Completeness: Your final responsibility as a listener is to think about what the speaker is not saying. Effective presentations are incomplete by design, because good practice dictates that you choose a particular focus and stick to it. So, if you need to make an important decision based on their presentation it’s your responsibility to consider the larger picture. What questions are raised by their presentation? What did they leave out? How does their proposal fit into the bigger picture? If this is an internal presentation, how well does the proposal align with the company’s strategies and initiatives? Have they considered unintended consequences? Have they considered the full range of possible outcomes from worst to best case?
I first started thinking about this article when one of my students asked me for tips on how to listen to a presentation. In this article, I’ve tried to improve that initial inadequate answer I gave him, but in the spirit of humility and completeness, I welcome your suggestions for things to look for while listening to a presentation.
[1] Research by Paul Schoemaker and J. Edward Russo, cited in Why We Make Mistakes, by Joseph T. Hallinan.
One of the central themes of Practical Eloquence is that content is king. If you take your responsibilities as a persuader or a decision maker seriously, then Blur is an important book for you because sound decisions depend on sound knowledge. Paradoxically, there is so much information available today, from so many sources, that knowledge is harder to come by. As Blur tells us: ”When information is in greater supply, knowledge becomes harder to create, because we have to sift through more data to arrive at it. Confusion and uncertainty are more likely.”
Besides the sheer volume, another complication is the tension between fact and faith. So much of the information we rely on for informed decisions has to be taken on faith. In a simpler age, most of what had an immediate impact on our lives happened close by, so we could rely on observable fact in making decisions. When companies were smaller, we knew the people involved or we knew our customers personally, so we either had a chance to see things firsthand or had a reliable sense of the trustworthiness of our source. As the world has become larger, more complicated and more connected, more of what affects us happens further away, so we have to make more decisions based on what someone else tells us—in other words to take their information on faith.
“Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.” Alfred North Whitehead
Dr. Atul Gawande wrote The Checklist Manifesto to make a case for increased use of checklists by surgeons, and I’ve written this article and book recommendation to endorse his idea and recommend it for sales professionals as well. When I first heard of his book, I avoided buying it because his premise seemed too simple for a full-length treatment and I didn’t think there was too much to learn. I was wrong.
How are airline pilots and surgeons similar? They both lead teams engaged in highly complex tasks that involve many different steps; they generally are highly individualistic with large egos; the processes they engage in are usually routine with the occasional chance of fatal mistakes. One major difference? Pilots routinely use checklists and surgeons don’t. (Well, there’s one more: pilots usually suffer the full consequences of their mistakes.)
Not the best way to prepare for a presentation, or is it?
Sometimes article ideas just fall into your lap, such as when you see something that sets you off. I’ve just viewed this video which is an MSNBC interview with Assistant Professor Amy Cuddy of the Harvard Business School, in which she explains the importance of appearing confident when presenting your ideas.
I actually agree with most of what she says: it’s helpful to use your posture and gestures to convey confidence and authority during a presentation. You can also “fake it ‘til you make it”: by adopting an expansive pose for two minutes (such as sitting with your feet on a desk and your arms behind your head) before a presentation or an important meeting you can increase testosterone levels (women too) and decrease cortisol levels which will cause you to feel more powerful and reduce your stress, helping you present a more confident and relaxed demeanor to the listener.
Where I totally disagree, however, is in the excessive and unwarranted claims made in the video, that “what you say is less important than how you say it and “style trumps content”. People have tried to get away with this thinking for a long time, which is why Lincoln stressed that you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. Yes, presentation is important, and yes, people make snap judgments of your competence based on how you present yourself, but in the end, as I’ve written before, content is still king.
I thought that maybe the video misrepresented Cuddy’s ideas, as the press has been known to do from time to time, so I dug a little further. I found this article on a Harvard Business School website which goes into further detail. In it, she describes the experiment which involved 42 people asked to adopt either “high-power” (HP) or “low-power” (LP) poses for two minutes, after which their testosterone and cortisol levels were checked. For the HPs, testosterone increased 19 percent and cortisol decreased 25 percent. The low power posers decreased testosterone 10 percent and increased cortisol 17 percent. (Cortisol is a hormone associated with stress.) The HPs also reported greater feelings of power and being in charge.
So far, so good (notwithstanding the small sample size and other questions about the experiment design). It’s been known for a long time that physiological changes can lead to psychological changes, and here’s some additional support. I’m OK with that and I also teach this in my classes.
Here’s where she goes too far, though:
“It does appear that even this minimal manipulation can change people’s physiology and psychology and, we hope (my emphasis), lead to very different, meaningful outcomes, whether it’s how they perform in a job interview or how they participate in class.”
“We hope”…Two words that speak volumes about the factual support for her ideas. There is no additional evidence adduced for this further claim.
Here’s another quote that makes me want to scream:
“People tend to spend too much energy focusing on the words they’re saying—perfectly crafting the content of the message—when in many cases that matters much less than how it’s being communicated. People often are more influenced by how they feel about you than by what you’re saying. It’s not about the content of the message, but how you’re communicating it.”
Let’s follow what she’s saying here: instead of putting in long hours thinking about your content and making sure you have sufficient data to back up your conclusions, just make sure you practice your posing for two minutes and you’ll have better results.
First, why does it have to be either/or? I would have no problem with it if the statement were to read: “It’s not only about the content of the message…”, which would lead to serious exploration of the relative weights of the two factors. Second, I would submit that if you had to choose, there is a huge difference between the type of confidence born of conviction and the type of confidence born of posing.
If you’re a poser, you will be found out.
