ILTA White Papers

ILTA White Paper Firm University 30 If this idea is completely foreign to you, or you are having trouble figuring out how to be more persuasive, don't fret. An enormous amount of research is available about the psychology of persuasion, and much of it is easily adapted to giving presentations. At the forefront of this field is Arizona State University's Robert Cialdini, who holds a doctorate and has spent more than 30 years studying the reasons people comply with requests in business and other settings. His research has led him to identify what he calls "weapons of influence" that each of us can use to persuade others to do what we want. These six weapons of influence are: reciprocity, liking, social proof, scarcity, consistency and authority. Even if you don't typically read business books, consider picking up a copy of Cialdini's "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion," which provides practical examples of how persuasion works. DeveLopIng the Content If you do have a clear reason to gather people together for a live presentation and you know how you want to persuade them, congratulations! Now you can get to work on developing your ideas and content. But please resist the urge at this moment to fire up PowerPoint and start constructing slides. Even though it's common to refer interchangeably to any talk and the slides that accompany it as the "presentation," it's important to remember that your slides (if you choose to use them) are only there to support what you have to say. They are visual aids and should never serve as the script for your talk or as a replacement for you. If those props can replace you, just give the audience a document instead of a live presentation. Great presentations are built on great presenters, not slides. Would Winston Churchill or FDR have been more effective if they'd used PowerPoint? It's unlikely. When we're asked to help other people with their presentations, they're frequently shocked when we suggest as a first step they take out a piece of paper and start brainstorming. They hear the word "presentation" and their first instinct is to start cranking out bullets. But PowerPoint (or Keynote, for that matter) is a terrible place to develop your ideas. By design, a slideshow is a linear progression of ideas. While this might very well suit your purpose when it's time to present, it's not the tool to help you brainstorm. It doesn't give you a good way to envision the relationship between your ideas and your audience, otherwise known as the context. While PowerPoint can be very good at displaying information, it's not very good at telling a story, which is extremely important as you attempt to persuade your audience to see things your way. To be convincing, you need to be able to answer the questions your audience will be thinking, "Why is this important?" "How did we get into this situation?" and "What are we going to do next?" As you brainstorm the focus of your message, you can use a variety of tools and strategies to develop both "an enormous amount of research is available about the psychology of persuasion, and much of it is easily adapted to giving presentations."

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