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What does communication literature tell us about trustworthiness? There is a framework, as old as Aristotle, that has been consistently validated through empirical research. It shows that goodwill, competence, and communicating in a way that demonstrates aligned or authentic motives all help to build the perception of trustworthiness. We trust people who we believe have goodwill towards us: they want the best for us; they share our values; and they have an empathetic connection towards us. The perception of goodwill (and its associated qualities like shared values and motives) is a significant determiner of trust. Competence is another crucial determinant. While goodwill ensures us that someone has benign motives, perceived competence—especially in the formation and articulation of speech—has proven to be a critical factor in building trust between parties. Finally, aligned or authentic motives also help to determine trustworthiness. The basic dynamic here is that we tend to discount the claims that someone makes if the content of what they say is not aligned with some explicitly displayed affective or emotive correlate. Put simply, we don’t trust people that are, for example, sad about something if their tone and demeanor do not match up with their message. Of course, trustworthiness is based on a number of factors that entail more than just communicating well. For example, there may be institutional misalignments of motive or a record of untrustworthy behavior, either of which could undermine trust in a relationship. But increasing the frequency and competence of trustworthy communication tends to lessen the effects of those histories and misalignments. It also brings those issues to forefront, allowing us to identify and more quickly resolve them. Perhaps most importantly, organizational trust improves not only the culture of a business, but also makes that business—as a whole—more nimble and reduces transaction costs across the organization. Therefore, our assessment rubric will measure three basic categories of communication behaviors related to trust: those that enhance or detract from perceptions of goodwill; those that enhance or detract from perceptions of competence; and those behaviors which enhance or detract from perceptions of authenticity/alignment.

One question we often get at Vocable is what to do about the slide decks that have become a ubiquitous part of most professional presentations. These slide decks tend to be blamed for a rise in corporate meeting inefficiency. They split the audience’s attention across two different modes of communicating (the screen and the speaker), and we want the bulk of that attention to be on the speaker. Slide decks have also quickly evolved into a deliverable document which is expected to serve as a take-home replica of the presentation. Of course though, what a reader of the take-home deck needs is different than what is needed in the meeting itself, and both those needs might differ from the speaker’s own. How do we navigate this? You can correct some inefficiencies by designing your slide presentations with these different audiences in mind. Edit your comprehensive take-home presentation (a “read” deck) into a supportive set of components for the presentation (a “delivery” deck). This process addresses the tension between what a reader needs in order to understand your presentation and what a listener needs in order to buy-in to it. Typically, this advice results in taking out slides to reduce a deck’s “footprint” within the presentation. That’s certainly one way to shift from a “read” to a “delivery” deck, but we still need to consider how you, as a presenter, work with the slides, and how the slides work for the audience. In an ideal world, a “delivery” deck isn’t just a “read” deck with some slides removed. Instead, an expert presenter considers how the deck needs to interface with its audience differently in the room, or via video-call, or as a print-out for the folks who couldn’t make the meeting. What these audiences expect and what the presenter needs will require different information and layouts. Research shows that meaningful reflection on communication processes makes a real difference in communication effectiveness, whereas top-down policies or style-guides for slide presentations (things like slide limits or pre-approved templates) typically do little to alleviate meeting inefficiency. In other words, a communication culture that focuses on clear goals and audience needs is more effective than a list of rules about slide composition. How do you achieve this? The first and easiest change you can make is to be explicit in determining the purpose of your slides. Ask yourself what your goals are for the presentation, what the audience needs in order to support and achieve those goals, and how the slides will serve those purposes. This will lead to slide decks that are successful in the meeting room and beyond. Are you interested in learning more about our areas of expertise? Click here or reach out to us here.

By Chris Lundberg Executives, entrepreneurs, and influencers make a living by convincing the folks around them to do things. Moving people is a difficult task, and there are lots of predictable roadblocks on the way to persuading an audience. But in my experience, there is one basic underlying belief that speakers often hold that gets in the way of really connecting with an audience: it is the belief that one’s own case is compelling enough on its rational merits that the audience couldn’t help but agree. Where I grew up we referred to this phenomenon (somewhat inelegantly) as “loving the smell of your own stink”–or, something more or less along those lines. Vocable has published a series of posts about the dangers of presuming that arguments stand or fall on their rational merits, arguing that it is important to complement the rational approach to argument by engaging the values and narratives that move an audience, and with concrete strategies to counteract “motivated reasoning.” But, to really dig into the nuts and bolts of persuasion, the important thing is to understand your audience. One of the most hallowed pieces of advice in the traditions of public speaking is to know your audience. It is a maxim that goes as far back as Aristotle: when we speak, we ought to consider who we are speaking in front of: “when in Athens…praise the Athenians.” Of course, the Greek master of all things rhetoric had a much more precise definition of how to persuade: observe “the available means of persuasion in any given situation.” What does that mean? Consider president Trump’s success with his very committed base: if that is not something that you like contemplating, consider Secretary Clinton’s, or Bernie Sanders’s sway over their equally committed bases. How is it that each of these figures can seem so persuasive to some, and so utterly unpersuasive to their detractors? The problem for speakers is this: almost any public speaking or communication strategy consultant will tell you to think about your audience. But most of them won’t tell you how to do it. It is more than a matter of simple taste: the answer, of course, is that different audiences demand and respond to different persuasive strategies: Trump leveraged a combination of nostalgia and anxiety paired with a studied disregard for the pieties of civic life; Clinton worked a combination of idealism and wonkish mastery of the details combined with strong claims rooted in identity; and Sanders relied on excoriation of political and financial institutions served up alongside a strong helping of class politics. The point here is not to say any one of these strategies is right or wrong: as a rhetoric professor, I am not (professionally) interested in taking sides with candidates. I am intensely interested in analyzing if, how, and why speech strategies work (or don’t work) in front of different audiences. And once you engage the problem of different strategies working in front of different audiences–or in different situations–one basic insight emerges: there is no one universally valid way of persuading (capitals intentional) “The Audience”, there are only strategies for persuading specific audiences in specific situations. If you do not know your audience, you are unlikely to have a good strategy: and if you do not have an explicit strategy for negotiating your audience, you are unlikely to succeed. Of course, some people will succeed by blind luck, intuition, or because the hook into a message that connects with an audience for reasons that no one could have anticipated. But on the whole, the more well considered your strategy is, the more likely you are to succeed. On the other hand, if you strategize effectively, you can not only make sure your message hits home, but you can create all sorts of rhetorical wizardry. For example, data show that you can effectively build segmented messaging strategies that parts of your audience will hear and others won’t–an incredibly useful skill. Often pejoratively called “dog-whistling,” given the number of politicians who use the strategy to say nasty or racist things in coded language, for a corporate leader and who has to adapt to multiple and potentially interest-conflicted audiences, it is an indispensable technique (more on that in a later post). Making your message hit its intended target, speaking dual messages to a segmented audience, and other more advanced persuasive pyrotechnics begin with an understanding of your audience. The problem for speakers is this: almost any public speaking or communication strategy consultant will tell you to that you should think about your audience. But most of them won’t tell you how to do it. Audiences are savvy–and compelling speech requires more than simple flattery. So to move an audience with intention, a speaker needs to generate a mental picture of the audience, and then to work backwards, designing a speech around that picture of the audience, and with a determinate goal in mind. One of the most dangerous presumptions that undermines a speaker’s ability to connect with an audience is the presumption that the audience owes you their time and attention. This is the exact opposite of how most of us think about or approach the composition of a speech. Our instinct is to decide what we want to say, and then perhaps we tinker at the margins to adapt to the audience. But in the next series of posts, we are going to discuss how to best strategize a relationship to an audience. To start with, we’ll begin with one one “best practice” for designing an effective speech or presentation: start with a picture or a conceptual map of the audience, and use this starting point as a means to “reverse engineer” a persuasive speech strategy from it. More on the engineering part later–for now, we start with the elements of a conceptual map. So how do you go about reading or creating a picture of your audience? Here are the questions you might ask yourself to create such a map–and it might be helpful to sketch them out in advance: 1. What do I want to achieve with the audience as a whole–what is my end goal? A speech is a set of strategic choices, and the goal of these choices is to move the audience so that they change their beliefs or actions. At first, this usually seems obvious: you would like the audience to act on your pitch or support a proposal. The key is to make your goal for the audience increasingly specific in the light of the mapping questions that follow. 2. What are the relevant subsections of the audience? This part can be tricky, but careful attention here will pay off in the long run. There are a number of questions that you should ask to define the relevant subsections (listed in ascending order of importance, in our experience): a) Demographics: what, if any, are the relevant subsections of the audience defined by characteristics like age, gender, race, time with an organization, etc. None of these may be directly relevant in a given setting, but it is useful to tick through each of the categories to see if there are any relevant demographic threads to develop a strategy around. b) Personalities: we often advise clients to consider the types of personalities that are present in the room, particularly in smaller settings. It is often helpful to anticipate the objections of the hard nosed types, and to think about ways of engaging comparatively introverted or passive folks in conversation. c) Roles and Interests: you have to assume that each person, particularly in a corporate setting, is acting not only on the basis of their personality and demographic characteristics but also on the basis of an institutionally defined position. And with that position comes a specific set of interests. You should account for those interests and roles, preferably by thinking about what creates a benefit or a “win” for people in different positions, or if necessary, by minimizing the potential for resistance from positions that are unlikely to support you, and maximizing the potential to build a coalition based on folks with whom you have aligned interests. One important rhetorical distinction here: there are two kinds of interests bound up in institutional positions, as any good executive knows: functional interests and role-identity interests. In other words, some segments will be more persuaded by how you present a case on the basis of a benefit to their subset of the organization (“HR will benefit from this proposal”), and others may be more persuaded by affirming the identity bound up in their role (“the sales force will appreciate the show of confidence in granting them more autonomy”). 3. What is the audience’s motive for listening on this specific occasion? One of the most dangerous presumptions that undermines a speaker’s ability to connect with an audience is the presumption that the audience owes you their time and attention. While we’d like to presume that our colleagues and people on either side of us on the organizational chart are interested listeners, the truth is that you should presume that you need to solicit the attention of the audience: a speech should be understood as an answer to a question that is pressing for your audience. Defining in advance what the audience needs, expects, or is likely to be skeptical about in a speech is a crucial for establishing value commonality with your audience. Again, some may do this out of reflex or speaking a common organizational language, but being intentional about understanding and responding to the audience’s motives for listening is a crucial way of creating value alignment, and ultimately value consensus–which data from political psychology shows is a core component of a persuasive message. 4. What are the potential constraints or objections that the audience (or sections of it) harbors? Sometimes it is painful to do, and it certainly takes mental discipline, but listing the most robust and charitable presentation of your opposition’s objections is critical to mapping an effective persuasive strategy not only because it gives you insight into your audience’s attitudes, biases and motives, but also because it sets the basic parameters for what argumentative maneuvers are likely to be logically effective. 5. What are the audience’s stylistic expectations? In other words, how do you think that the audience imagines that you will deliver the speech. In certain instances, conformity with those expectations establishes credibility (you should, for example, be celebratory or somber when the situation calls for it) but in other instances breaking stylistic conventions can redefine your relationship with an audience (for example, when a speaker establishes rapport by being unexpectedly frank). Data show that, done effectively, stylistic deviation can essentially design the character of your audience and change the conditions of their response. If you need to a strategy for a specific audience, please e-mail us at info@vocablecommunications.com

By Chris Lundberg A good bit of the conventional wisdom regarding pitching–especially in the entrepreneurial context–has solidified around two goals: 1) tell a good story, and; 2) pitch with passion. It is hard to argue against either of these things: a compelling narrative is always helpful, and showing passion can boost a pitch. Storytelling–not “if” but “how” Storytelling has ascended rapidly as a staple of business talk–so much so that large firms like Nike and Google have hired “Chief Executive Storytellers”, and Linkedin is virtually awash in people who describe themselves as storytellers of various stripes. Of course, the proverbial devil is in the details: scholars who study communication have long argued that almost all communication has elements of storytelling, because human communication always has a specific context and (almost) always has specific audience that it attempts to move from point A to point B–from a beginning state to an intended end. If all human communication is a kind of storytelling, the question is not whether you should tell a good story: rather, the question is: “what is the best way to communicate so that you are employing the crucial elements of storytelling that help you to persuade people.” Those elements include things like relating experiences that people can connect with, foregrounding values, and signaling aspirations. It is not enough to simply tell people to tell stories, good communication practice requires a both a theory and concrete practices that make the stories pop. But more on that in a later post. Pitching and the Passion Trap Passion, too, has been a staple of entrepreneurship–even before our current obsession with storytelling took hold. “The Nature and Experience of Entrepreneurial Passion” (Cardon et. al.) points out that passion was one of the earliest categories that folks used to talk about what made entrepreneurs unique–why they would take on high risk, why they would so often buck conventional wisdom, etc. And undoubtedly, the things that an entrepreneur can do to demonstrate passion in a pitch can make a difference. Showing positive affect (“I LOVE my work,” or signaling enthusiasm for the “fun” of the enterprise), self-consciously identifying with one’s role as a founder, signaling excitement and/or focus, and telling stories about persistence; can all help to solidify the perception that an entrepreneur is committed and worth investing in. But the research around passion is much more complicated than the straightforward claim that if an entrepreneur shows passion, they will automatically pitch successfully. For example, there is a good argument that entrepreneurs fail not only when they show too little passion, but when they show too much. Research shows that sometimes investors take too fiery of a pitch as evidence that the entrepreneur is not coachable, not a flexible problem solver, or is prone to confirmation bias. Cardon et. al. also point out that given that each of us has a limited amount of cognitive capacity, energy, and time, signaling too intense of a passion around specific roles or tasks can also signal that an entrepreneur is likely to either over-invest time and energy in their preferred tasks at the expense of day-to-day operations, or that they potentially lack persistence in areas that, though potentially mundane, are crucial to the success of an enterprise. And, of course, when VCs are asked to rank the top factors that influence their decisions to invest, passion doesn’t crack the top three, which overwhelmingly favor the management team, market factors, and having a disruptive concept. Of course, passion could fit in to the evaluation of the management team, but again the data are mixed on this account. While there is strong anecdotal data that passion matters, the empirical data are not entirely clear here. One study of VCs’ criteria for evaluating teams puts “personal motivation” on par with industry experience as a top category–though not at the exclusion of other factors that were highly relevant, like prior experience in a start-up and leadership acumen. Without parsing the categories too finely it is important to note that motivation and the external display of passion, while related, are not the same thing–passion is one indicator of motivation, but so are persistence, investments of time and personal capital, and so on. So what does matter most in a pitch if you want to shore up the all-important perception of the management team? The data say that preparedness soundly beats passion as a signal for the quality of the team, and by extension, the enterprise. In fact, the study hyperlinked immediately above (by Chen, Yao, and Kotha) found the subjective perception of passion to be a statistically insignificant factor in VCs’ decision to invest or not to invest. Perceptions of preparedness, on the other hand were often decisive in estimating the talent of the team, the strength of their analysis, and the viability of the concept. The best indicators for preparedness, according to Chen, Yao, and Kotha were: rigorous analysis of the market, well articulated product/market match, and careful segmentation of the market. Of course, this does not mean that passion is irrelevant. There are a number of good studies that show that demonstrating passion has an important knock-on effect on the perception of the veracity of your claims, likability, and so on. But the more interesting point is that “soft-skills” in presenting are more–not less–relevant in this model. In this light, coaching for good presentation means so much more than learning to convey passion–it means learning to make rhetorical moves in pitching that highlight your engagement with data and that control your audience’s perception and interpretation of the data. It means building in a narrative structure that progressively highlights the logical force of your claims, and it means using transitions and structure in your content that highlight the coherence of your movement between the various points of the presentation. And, finally it means making adjustments to your delivery that help you “speak for command” and demonstrate authority, as opposed to simply demonstrating excitement. In other words, if you want to nail a pitch, you need to engage the data on how to present data, and you need to know how rhetorical choices in your pitch strategy can boost or detract from the perceptions of your credibility and preparedness. If you would like to start a conversation today about how best to achieve these goals in your pitching, email us at info@vocablecommunications.com or call us at 919-421-7100.

By Christian Lundberg One of the most hallowed pieces of advice that public speaking and presentation consultants give their clients is to slow down. The advice makes intuitive sense: when you are speaking in a high-stakes situation, you are likely to be a bit nervous, and when we are a bit nervous, we tend to speak more quickly. So, the conventional wisdom goes, you should slow down to make it easy for your audience to follow you. Data suggests otherwise. The average conversation in English runs around 110 to 150 words per minute. Some of that range is based on regional differences and some of that range is based on personal differences. What is interesting is that audiences have a much greater capacity than we might expect to listen to high rates of speed. Work as far back as the 1960’s established that whether a speaker was speaking at a plodding 100 wpm or 400 wpm, comprehension of the material did not change significantly (Voor and Miller, 1965) . Recent work in neuroscience has demonstrated that speech remains comprehensible at rates much higher than 150 words per minute. In one experiment (Peelle & McMillan et. al. Brain and Language, 91 (2004): 315-325) researchers compressed speech fragments to 50% of their original length by taking out the pauses between words in conversational speech. They found that even at this admittedly frenetic rate, comprehension did not change significantly. When the same researchers conducted fMRI imaging on listeners’ “brains on speed,” they found that higher rates of speed in speech forced listeners’ brains to compensate by recruiting more areas to process speech. But the recruitment of more areas of the listeners’ had a surprising side effect: it increased listeners’ attention and made them more prone to goal-oriented behavior (convenient side effects if you want to persuade an audience!). But, some might say, just because an audience can follow you does not mean that it is aesthetically pleasing to listen to a quick speaker. Not so fast, say the data. In one study, social psychologist Norman Miller and his colleagues found that “fast talkers” (those speaking at about 200 words per minute) tended to be perceived by audiences as more persuasive, more credible, more objective, and more intelligent. Two researchers from the University of Georgia (Smith and Shaffer) found that fast talking was especially effective when the message ran counter to the listener’s attitudes: an intermediate rate was less effective, and a slow rate was the least effective of all. Anecdotal evidence supports the insights of these studies in communication, social psychology and neuroscience when it comes to speed. Some of the most persuasive speakers in American public address delivered speeches that hit blistering speeds. John F. Kennedy holds the world record for words per minute in a public speech, hitting 327 words per minute. Martin Luther King was measured at over 300 words per minute at points. Does this mean that you should aim for a uniformly rapid fire rate of delivery? Far from it. Kennedy also had a number of stretches (including famously in his inaugural speech) where he spoke under 100 words a minute. So what is a speaker to do? Well, you don’t have to focus on slowing down: focus on using speed to your advantage by pacing your speech with intention. The keys to speaking well at any rate of speed require you to focus on: articulation of individual words, planning points of emphasis that highlight important content with changes in tone and or volume, utilizing effective pauses, and most crucially varying your rate of speed. The best evidence on persuasive speaking available to us today says that it is not rate (or tone, or volume for that matter) in the abstract that matters, but rather that a speaker modulates their speed to signal their intended emotional state or “verbally underline” their content. When you are addressing a matter of grave importance, you should turn the rate down–and when you are signaling passion or excitement for an idea, turn the rate up a bit. But whatever you do, don’t plod or aim to speak “just below your conversational rate.” A good speech, full of intentional pauses, variations in rate, volume, and tone, may well clock in above conversational rate in the aggregate, or in absolute terms: but if you use vary your speed with intention, and if you match your rate (and style) of delivery to your material, your audience will reward your efforts.

By Carolyn Hardin and Christian Lundberg Implementing and managing organizational change is crucial for the success of any organization. But how can leaders produce the change that they desire in contexts where tendencies towards group-think and inertia make it difficult for new ideas to get off the ground? Paying attention to the stories that your employees tell themselves about the character and values of your organization is a crucial first step to figuring out how to create meaningful and durable change. Those stories, and the values that they contain define the members of your organization’s relationship to leadership, to one another, and to your organization–in other words, they are the glue of what social psychologists and communication experts call “social cohesion.” Paying attention to the dynamics of social cohesion in your organization can dramatically improve results when you want to drive organizational change. But why does this matter for communication within an organization? We often think that what persuades people is the facts–that if we make the case for why one choice is superior to another that people will automatically fall in line. Much of the time organization communication virtually presumes this pattern: make the case for a change on the merits, and people will see the value. But research tells us that this way of approaching communication puts the cart before the horse. People typically do not decide on the rational value of a case first: rather, if they believe in the underlying values that a case for change embodies, they will likely accept the facts behind the case. If you unearth the values that motivate commitment to the organization and frame your case for change in the context of those values, agreement on the facts will follow. If you make a case on the basis of facts without an accompanying value frame, you will likely encounter resistance. Why? Researchers have known for some time that when people are presented with facts that contradict their strongly held beliefs, it often reinforces, rather than challenges, those beliefs (Skurnik, Ian. “How Warnings About False Claims Become Recommendations.” Journal of Consumer Research, vol. 31, March 2005, pp. 713-724.). But the reason for this phenomenon points to better ways to communicate with people on contentious issues (such as performance review or changing strategies). Pascal Boyer, professor of sociocultural anthropology and psychology at Washington University, St. Louis explains that shared knowledge is a strong determinant of social support, meaning that what we believe is intimately related to the social inclusion we experience and the social support we depend on. It isn’t difficult to imagine how this plays out in the workplace. A group of employees has a set way of approaching their tasks; they have built up a level of agreement and justification—through past experience and social habit—about why their way works. If one member of the group tries to buck convention, they might get an icy response from everyone else or even be openly challenged or excluded from the group. The social context of work isn’t inconsequential. Social cohesion impacts the effectiveness of all employees, not just those who are on the outs. This presents a significant organizational problem when managers or other “outsiders” ask people to think differently or approach a task in a new way. Because humans are social creatures, and values are the common bond that ties us with others, instituting changes in an organization will almost always meet with resistance if not done in a way that preserves or strengthens social cohesion by drawing on or affirming the values that motivate them to work for the organization in the first place. This approach requires tying proposed changes to the shared knowledge and values that already serve as the foundation of the social system in the organization. “Buy-in” for new strategies doesn’t mean getting people to change their long held, socially determined opinions about how to do things, but instead means finding ways to persuade people that their values will be better served by doing things in a different way–the challenge is to convince your stakeholders that by adopting a change they are not giving up on the values that tie them together, but that in making a change they are becoming a better version of what they already were. Taking the time to excavate those values, relate changes to them, and nurture social cohesion in the process can dramatically improve organizational climate and the results of organizational change.