How to Become a More Persuasive Speaker: A Systems Approach

There is no surer way to get ahead in business than to be a persuasive speaker. However, because public speaking is normally found at the top of lists of fears in the United States, many business people, especially engineers and other technical specialists, fail to make the effort to become better speakers, and thus fail to reach their potential.

In my judgment, as one who has delivered hundreds of presentations and trained thousands of business and government executives, there is no skill easier to learn, with greater payoff, than mastering the art of persuasive speaking.

So how can business people and technical specialists add the weapon of persuasive speaking to their business skills arsenal? By developing a systematic, not haphazard, method to plan, practice and present--the same systematic method they use in their day-to-day work.

A systems approach is the ideal way to draft and deliver a presentation or speech.

Surprisingly, however, few people apply the very discipline they use in their business when it comes time to stand and deliver. In this article, I want to share with you the systematic method I teach in my executive workshops and in my book, "The Shortcut to Persuasive Presentations."

Why should engineers, IT specialists and other technical experts bring the same systematic approach to speaking that they bring to their work projects? For the simple reason that being able to express yourself is the best way to stand out from the crowd. The famed management expert Peter Drucker once wrote that

"The ability to express oneself is perhaps the most important of all the skills a person can possess."

Effective, persuasive communication is the transferring of information from your brain to the brains(s) of your audience in such a manner that this audience - one or many - accepts your information as its own, and now realizes the benefits of accepting the information you are presenting.

This requires focus and an in-depth knowledge of what motivates your audience so you can direct your message to hit these hot buttons. It also requires the ability to anticipate objections and questions the audience may have, and the discipline to practice realistically.

An imperative for any oral presentation is structure. The presentation must be logical and easily followed by the audience. Thematic unity, useful in a written essay, is absolutely necessary in an oral presentation. The young Winston Churchill, in his 1897 essay,