Use Passion and Stories to Persuade!

by Maureen Murray

In order to persuade our listeners to consider new concepts, embrace new material or lower resistance to change, we must touch both their minds and hearts. The “mind connection” is essentially straightforward, and results from providing interesting and relevant content. If your material is organized and delivered well, the mind will engage and learning will occur. However, if you want motivation to rise or change to happen, you must build “heart connections” into your presentation.

Expert speakers build this bridge to their audiences in many ways. For starters, here are two valuable tools for making persuasive connections that will have enduring impact on your listeners: PS—Passion and Stories.

Raise Your Energy!

Passion. You’ve heard it before because it’s true: your passion for your topic must be evident to your listeners. Whether you’re speaking to an audience, workplace team, customer, prospect, or interviewer, your listeners must know beyond a doubt that your message is vitally important to you. Your enthusiasm about your message should capture their attention as much as your words do. Your energy level should reach into the audience and capture attention from the first words you say!

Strategies

1. Raise your personal energy level on the way to your presentation by thinking of peak experiences. What scenes from nature fill you with wonder? My first glimpse of the red boulders of Sedona set against the striking blue sky left me awestruck. Simply remembering that moment elevates my energy level. (This strategy also helps to reduce anxiety). Also think about times when you felt appreciated or grateful. I recall a simple summer moment at a local park when I heard my two young daughters laughing. I turned quickly and saw the sun casting golden highlights in their hair, heard the melody of childhood mirth, and consciously thought: “This moment is perfect.” It’s a mental still life that infuses me with gratitude and positive energy.

2. After you are in “high positive” mode, shift into thinking about your presentation. What is it about the topic that excites you? How will it provide genuine value to your listeners? How will it make their lives easier? When you focus on serving your audience, you begin to generate an authentic “helper’s energy” that fuels your passion and touches your listeners. You energy level rises and you naturally become more persuasive when your heart is centered on service.

When I train groups about the essentials of public speaking, I ask partners to take turns describing a very relaxing vacation spot they visited. Everyone is quite informative. Then I ask them to pretend that their partner asked for the same description because he was under great stress from a child’s serious health problem. The volume, energy, and inflection all rise during the second round. The speakers become much more persuasive because they want to help. Determine how you will serve your audience and your PQ (Persuasion Quotient) automatically rises.

Stories also raise your PQ!

Stories. Relevant stories are powerful ways to forge a heart connection with your audience because they touch the human spirit. They inspire, uplift, and renew us, often connecting us to our own core beliefs and values. Many of us have positive memories of a parent or grandparent reading to us, so the beginning of a story sends us an unconscious signal to pay attention and open up to the experience—and to the persuasion of the speaker.

In a presentation about stress management, I relate a story about a letter that my then 15-year-old daughter wrote to my husband the night before the 10th anniversary celebration of the foundation he directs. With a former U.S. President as a keynote speaker, the preparation and run-up to the event was more intense than usual because of Secret Service requirements. Cate wrote a heartfelt letter wishing her Dad well, and telling him how she admired him and his dedication to his work. She left it with his keys. During my presentation, I share the letter (with permission) and tell the audience how my husband called me from work that morning and read it to me, commenting “No matter what else happens, this day has already been a huge success.”

As the audience absorbs the story, it’s evident from the silence that they are moved by the content. But on a deeper level, they are challenged to recollect times from their own lives when success arrived not via a conventional route, but on the pathway of the heart. And it’s an effective segue for asking the audience to reflect on the different ways that we can define success. The story is the vehicle that persuades them to consider the concept of redefining success in ways that reduce stress.

Strategies:

1. Create a story list by dividing a sheet of paper into three columns. In Column 1 list a few key words that capture the essence of the story. In Column 2 write the “moral” or truth that the story illustrates. In Column 3, list which of your presentations are the best fit for the story. Remember that many of your stories will have more than one application.

2. If you’re challenged by getting started, take another sheet and make a time line of half- decades: before age 5, ages 6 to 10, 11 to 15, and so on until the present. Give yourself the gift of one hour of quiet time to reflect on your life and list some story ideas in the time slots. After the first two or three, the ideas will flow. Then ask yourself three things:

• Is this story a good fit for any of my presentations?
• If the story is emotionally charged, am I far enough away from it to tell it effectively?
• How will it bring genuine value to my listeners?

3. Pick a story and write every word of it. Set the stage. Paint pictures with words. Adding some humor is applicable because laughter lowers defenses and builds trust. Remember that it should be written in “spoken-style,” which is more informal and conversational than “written style.” Edit it carefully. Polish it like the diamond that it is, and practice it on your trusted colleagues. Then use it to persuade an audience to take a step that will improve their jobs, relationships, or lives!

So if you want to be more persuasive—PS: Don’t forget the heart connection. You can achieve it through igniting your dynamic passion and sharing your unforgettable stories!

© 2006 Maureen Murray
www.maureenmurrayassociates.com

Maureen Murray speaks to national, state and local conferences about using
humor to reduce stress, conflict resolution, life balance, and presentation
skills (How to be Heard above the Crowd). She also trains groups and coaches
individuals to speak with power, presence, and poise - whether to an audience, team meeting, or one-to-one with a client, customer, or prospect.

She is the author of How to Sing in the Rain with a Frog in Your Throat,
stories about humor in stressful times, a contributor to the Chicken Soup for the
Soul series, and a guest columnist for the Pittsburgh Business Times.
Contact her at (412) 561-2577 or mmurrayha@aol.com, and visit her web site at
www.maureenmurrayassociates.com.

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