Speak with Impact

by Allison Shapira

  When you are nervous before a speech, reminding yourself of your ethos is an important confidence-booster: “I’ve been researching this subject for twenty years. I’ve got this.” A lack of ethos can also lead to a lack of confidence: “I just graduated from college; why should anyone listen to me?” In that case, the third of the Three Questions, Why you?, will help build your confidence because it comes from your passion about your subject.

  Logos

  The words you use matter. Your language and argumentation matter. Logos is about your ability to craft a logical argument and present facts that reinforce your position. When your speech rambles with no end in sight and your arguments don’t make sense, you lack logos and are less persuasive. We’ve all sat through those kinds of presentations.

  To many, logos is the most obvious of the three modes of persuasion. In fact, some people think that a logo is the only mode of persuasion, but facts alone rarely persuade an audience. In fact, confirmation bias shows us that when we are confronted with facts that contradict our beliefs, we reject them and hold even more firmly to our beliefs.2 If you’ve ever tried to win a political argument with an ideologically opposed uncle, you’ve quickly learned the uselessness of facts, especially when he seems to have his own. Facts and logic are a crucial component of your persuasive argument, but they will be even more powerful when you include the third mode: pathos.

  Pathos

  If you don’t believe in what you are saying, you can’t persuade others. If you don’t care about your subject, then your audience won’t care either. This isn’t about the content; it’s about your passion for or interest in the content.

  Pathos appeals to people’s emotions, and emotion is a very strong persuasive element. I mentioned earlier that a speech is an opportunity to build a relationship of trust with your audience: we do that by showing that we are real people with real emotions. Emotions are universal. No matter which country you live in or what language you speak, everyone can relate to feelings of fear, love, hope, or loss. Telling a personal story is one example of using pathos; asking the audience to imagine a vivid scenario is another. After describing statistics to illustrate a trend, a single story can make those statistics come alive with meaning.

  Ethos, logos, pathos. How do you decide which to use? A powerful speech or presentation has some combination of all three, and the exact balance depends on your audience and your goal. Who are you speaking to and what do they relate to? If you’re speaking to a skeptical audience that doesn’t know you, focus on your credibility: ethos. If you’re speaking to a group of facts-driven scientists, include a solid argument in favor of your position: logos. If you’re speaking to a group of concerned parents, include an emotional appeal to their desire to protect their children: pathos. There is also overlap among these three modes: your facts can provide an emotional wake-up call and your credibility can come from a personal story.

  Five Elements of Persuasion

  In my fifteen years of experience in helping clients craft persuasive messages, I’ve found that an argument is persuasive when it answers five questions that your audience is thinking:

  1.Why you? Why do you as the speaker care about this subject? If you don’t care about the subject, then you can’t persuade your audience to care.

  2.Why me? Why should your audience care about this subject? Make it relevant to them.

  3.Why now? What makes this argument urgent and timely? Convince your audience to take action now.

  4.Why bother? Will we even be able to make any change? Give your audience hope for a positive outcome.

  5.Okay, so what’s next? What should we do? Give the audience a specific call to action. The easier you make it for the audience to take action, the more likely they will be to do it.

  When you craft a persuasive argument, try to answer those questions as well. You’ll find you can easily integrate them into Monroe’s Motivated Sequence or any other structure.

  In addition to answering those key questions, there are specific tools that you can use to make a speech or presentation more persuasive.

  Tools of Persuasion

  One book that opened my eyes to the power of persuasion was Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.3 Ever since it came out in 2007, I’ve kept coming back to it for its power in public speaking. The Heath brothers studied what makes ideas stick in people’s minds, regardless of their validity, and found they contained one or more of these six principles. You can use each one in a speech:

  Simplicity: Use a clear, concise message instead of getting lost in the details.

  Unexpectedness: Use a surprising quote or statistic that captures people’s attention.

  Concreteness: Use vivid descriptions that paint a picture in the mind of your audience.

  Credibility: Base your quotes or arguments on a credible source, someone the audience knows and respects.

  Emotions: Appeal to people’s hearts as well as their heads; tap into shared values.

  Stories: Tell stories to make the audience feel like they were actually there with you.

  As you read through your speech, ask yourself:

  •Does my argument have an appropriate balance of ethos, logos, and pathos?

  •Does my argument address the five elements of persuasion? What can I do to create urgency around the issue and give my audience a sense of hope? Do I have an appropriate call to action?

  •What persuasive tools will work best?

  THE POWER OF STORY

  The year was 2012; it was a warm summer day in Washington, DC. I was walking toward a building in Farragut Square, two blocks from the White House. I still remember the business suit I was wearing and the sense of anticipation I felt in my heart. I was about to start a new job in a new city, and I had my whole life ahead of me. What happened next changed everything.

  That’s the beginning to one of my own personal stories, from a defining moment in my life. Storytelling is one of the most powerful tools you can use to connect with an audience. Our brains react differently to stories than to facts and figures. When you describe smells, sights, or sounds, your audience’s brains light up in those sensory areas. Your audience’s imaginations actually feel the emotions you describe in your story. Annette Simmons, storytelling expert and author of the book Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins, says if a story “changes the emotions of the group, it changes what happens next. Emotion changes behavior.”

  Professor Paul Zak, a neuroeconomist at Claremont Graduate University, found that hearing emotional stories releases oxytocin, a chemical that increases trust and empathy in the minds of listeners.4 If you are speaking to an audience who is skeptical about you, then by hearing a story, they can feel what you feel and relate to you as a person. They start to trust you.

  How did your family members form your values? Probably by telling stories about when they were young. My family stories shape who I am and how I perceive myself. Take the story about my grandmother as a young woman taking a bus alone from New York to Florida, or my mother learning to fly a plane while she was nine months pregnant with me. These two stories are part of our family lore and shape my independence and love for travel.

  In my experience, the most powerful stories are not the ones where everything goes according to plan: the most powerful stories show a struggle and highlight your failures instead of your strengths. It could be a humorous story that tells the audience you can laugh at yourself, or a story of shame that shows your vulnerability. Through our own failures, audiences see us as human beings and relate to us on a deeper level.

  Several years ago, I worked with a group of public school principals in Washington, DC. They were a group of dedicated, driven leaders trying to provide a safe, nurturing learning environment for their students, many of whom came from disadvantaged backgrounds. We brainstormed ways they could win the trust of their students whenever they spoke at school assemblies or even one-on-one. Rather than sharing the stories of their leadership successes, which put them up
on a pedestal, these principals instead looked for stories of struggle and loss that made them relatable to their students.

  Stories don’t have to be overly personal. As a business executive, you can tell a story about when you first started working in your organization and what you learned in that junior role. If you’re a sales manager, you can tell your junior salespeople what it was like to open a new office and have to build your own book of business, without any guidance along the way.

  And if storytelling is personal, that’s okay. We are not robots doing business with other robots; we are human beings connecting with other human beings, even if we’re talking about finance or policy or supply chain. When we connect on a personal level, we build trust, which leads to better working relationships. If you’re pitching a new client, a personal story about how you learned the value of customer service is an incredibly powerful way to say to the client, “I will be here for you.”

  A caveat: this doesn’t mean that the story should be too personal. Subjects such as disease or dating or divorce can feel like too much information and can make your audience feel uncomfortable.

  Sometimes an international student in my class at Harvard will suggest that using stories is something “you Americans” use. But stories are universal. Using them in a speech or presentation may not be as commonplace in business or politics in your country; but even so, it is still a powerful tool that you can use in your own way. Let’s talk about how to find and choose a story.

  How to Find a Story

  Start with the end in mind. What point are you trying to make? What value are you trying to impart? How do you want your audience to feel? Think about an anecdote from your professional or personal life that illustrates that point. For example, if I were giving a speech about the importance of gender parity in the workplace, I could tell a story about being the only female at a conference.

  I picked up a few great exercises from international keynote speaker Olivia Schofield: Make a list of all the pivotal experiences in your life, from childhood through adulthood. Next to each one, write the lesson you learned from it. Or make a list of the important people in your life. Write down how you met them and one story that happened with them. These anecdotes become your story database; the next time you’re writing a speech, look through that database to select a story that fits your message.

  In Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins, Annette Simmons talks about six different types of stories you can use; I highly encourage you to read her book, which walks you through crafting each one.5 She also uses the following storytelling prompts: tell us about a time you shined; a time you blew it; a mentor; or a book, movie, or current event. Those four prompts reveal rich examples of stories you can share.

  How to Choose a Story

  When you ask the first of the Three Questions, Who is your audience?, you’ll know which stories to use. Will your audience relate to stories of perseverance, or failure? Are they more analytical, or emotional? Will your story resonate across borders and across age groups? If the story personally embarrasses you or someone in your audience, it may not be the right story. If you are afraid you’ll break down in tears telling the story, it might be too raw to use. If the story references another person, check with that person to make sure you have their permission to use the story.

  Don’t make up a story: if the purpose of a speech is to build trust with your audience, then you destroy that trust by lying to them. You can make up a parable, but be clear that it’s not a true story. Similarly, don’t use someone else’s story as your own. You can reference their story with attribution, but check with them first.

  How to Write a Story

  I received the following guidance from professor Marshall Ganz at the Harvard Kennedy School, who teaches leadership courses on public narrative and community organizing.6 He explains that a story has a character, a plot, and a moral. Within the plot, there is a challenge, a choice, and an outcome. As you write your story, here are some questions to help you flesh out the story. If you weren’t the character in the story, use “you” below to refer to the character.

  •Where were you? Focus on one moment in time: set the scene by explaining where you were and what you were doing. Be as descriptive as possible so the audience feels like they were right there with you.

  •What happened? What was the challenge that confronted you? Describe what was at stake and how you felt.

  •How did you respond? What choice did you make? Your action results in an outcome.

  •What was the outcome? Paint a vivid picture of what happened as a result of your action.

  •What was the moral? As a result of the story, there is a moral or teaching lesson. Match that moral to a point you are making in your speech.

  Mistakes People Make When Telling a Story

  1.They don’t tell a story. They simply list a number of events. A story is something that happened at one point in time.

  2.They skip crucial details. You were there; you know what happened. But those of us in the audience who weren’t there need more details. Make sure your story walks us through what happened without skipping a step—or if you’re condensing a long story, make sure the critical transitions are there.

  3.They describe too many details. It’s important to provide context in the story, but don’t get carried away. Many people reveal so much background that they start to distract from the story itself.

  4.They don’t talk about how they feel. The power of a story comes from creating a feeling in the hearts and minds of your audience. And if you don’t share how you feel, the audience won’t feel anything—about the story or about you.

  5.They don’t connect the story to the message. Some people will tell a story without connecting it to the message of their speech. The story and its moral should be relevant to a point in your speech.

  Test your story on others; it’s a good way to make sure you feel comfortable telling the story. Sometimes we choose a story without realizing that it feels too personal. If you’re telling a story about a family member who passed away after a long battle with disease, and you cannot tell the story without dissolving into tears, then the story might not be ripe yet. It’s okay if you show emotion while telling a story—in fact, it’s critical—but if it distracts you from the message of the speech, then it might be too personal. Test this out on others before using it in front of an audience.

  How to Tell a Story

  So you’ve written a story. How do you use it in your speech? Where do you put it in your speech?

  There are three particularly effective ways to use stories: to open your speech, to close your speech, or to illustrate a point. You could do all three, but that depends on the length of your speech and the makeup of your audience. If you’re giving a technical presentation or pitch and are concerned that the audience will spend all their time reading the slides instead of looking at you, you can add professional stories to get them off the slides or handouts. Once you start to tell the story, your audience will stop looking at the slides and start connecting with you.

  Don’t introduce the story. Many people will get up and say, “Good morning, I’m going to tell you a story about something that happened in my life and how it shapes who I am today.” Just tell the story. One of my students demonstrated this approach brilliantly when she started her speech with this sentence: “The shooting started at five thirty in the morning.”

  Don’t read the story from notes. The beauty of a story is that you know what you’re talking about. You don’t need to memorize statistics or background information. Don’t worry if it doesn’t come out exactly as you practiced—it never will. Trust that, as a result of your practice, you will tell a good story.

  Pause after you tell the story, both before and after you reveal the moral. Many times, people will rush through their story and then move to the rest of their speech without giving the audience time to absorb the moral. In the audience, we are experiencing this story for the very first time. We nee
d time to think about what it means for us. Give us time to do that. Make sure your facial expressions and voice match the emotion of the story. If you’re talking about a personal tragedy, let your face and tone reflect it.

  If you’d like to hear other people’s stories, check out TheMoth.org. The Moth’s mission is “to promote the art and craft of storytelling and to honor and celebrate the diversity and commonality of human experience.” They host live storytelling events around the world and their tagline is True Stories Told Live.7 Some of The Moth’s storytellers are famous, but most are not. They are regular people who want to share something that happened to them in their life. I’ve spoken at one of their storytelling events in Washington, DC, and I’m a devoted listener to their weekly podcast.

  Professor Ganz says that “stories, strategically told, can powerfully rouse a sense of urgency; hope; anger; solidarity; and the belief that individuals, acting in concert, can make a difference.”8 Stories help you speak with impact.

  Once you’ve written your speech or presentation, take a step back and ask yourself where you can add a story to illustrate your point. Think through events in your life that have shaped who you are, and turn those into the stories you share going forward.

  THE POWER OF HUMOR

  Do you think of yourself as a naturally funny person? Are you able to tell jokes that leave people rolling around on the floor in laughter? That’s not me. And that’s not the kind of humor you need in a speech.