Guest Post - Mengze Li

Mengze is one of Chris' Spring 2012 Professional Speaking students at Carnegie Mellon. Here he writes about communication.

My understanding about secret of communication - Persuasion

I have a habit of reviewing all the notes taken during the class and then go through all of them again during the weekend. This always helps to let me reconsider our interactions with the professor and my involvement in it. Thus I can make amendments accordingly.

In the first lecture, the professor opened the course by “being late” on purpose which brought in the discussion about first impression. Then the usual introduction section once again exposed different inappropriate behaviors of everyone who presented on the stage in front of 20 people, more or less.

I couldn’t help thinking about my first public presentation in front of hundreds of campers in Li Yang Crazy English Summer Camp as a Teaching Assistant back in main land China. I thought I could easily nail a simple class self-introduction. But I was terribly wrong.

     1) I kept my hands on the table while I was talking and lean towards the audience.

      2) I spoke lengthy, complicated sentences without pauses or stress.

      3) I ended with a “That’s it” which did leave a positive impression to the listeners.

After the explanation of professor and seeing the video myself, the question “How to be a communicator” pondered in my brain and I immediately got some answer from Lecture 2. Among all the great words “confidence, connect, relax, knowledge, enthusiasm, direct, persuasiveness, patience, respect, passionate, simplicity, prepared and polite”, I will definitely go with persuasiveness. Because in my perspective, all other factors contribute to the fact of persuasion and the final result of all good communication lead to one result – people understand and agree with what you are saying.

Then how can one be persuasive in general? Through Internet research, among all the articles I read, I found one extremely intriguing and somehow naughty that I want to share with you (http://www.rinkworks.com/persuasive/).

“To be persuasive, you must make use of a number of different tactics. The more you can utilize in conjunction with each other, the more persuasive your argument will be.” The author said.

The techniques are consisted of verbal techniques and physical techniques. Some of them are obviously messing around and I laughed out loud when I read the examples, but all of them have an element of truth worth considering. In the video shown at the very first in Lecture 3 on Monday, we can also see some examples of the following strategies.

Verbal Technique:

·      Stubbornness: never concede that your opponent might ever possibly be right and repeat what    

        you say all the time.

      Strategic Compromise:  Never compromise your main point. Introduce points that you don’t    care, compromise on them later and trick your opponent into conceding.

·      Big Words: Use big words several times over to make other people look stupid and taking   

       longer means more convincing.

·     Forgetfulness: In the middle of the argument, forget what you are talking about which show your   

       component that he is so utterly wrong.

·     Interruption: Talk and interrupt your component relentlessly, especially when your opponent is  

      also trying to talk.

·     Lies: If facts don’t prove your point, make something up.

·     Rhymes: make up a nonsensical rhyming word to go with your response.

·     Taunting: intimidate your component into submission

·     Random Comments:  last ditch effort used in an emergency by saying something irrelevant

       “Clearly”: suggesting that a particular thought is obvious to you and come across as a daunting force of intelligence difficult to reckon with.

·     Subliminal Messages: whispering under your breath quietly enough so that your opponent does not consciously hear.

·     The Last Word:  have the last word and your side will be the most likely to be remembered.

·     Name Calling:  By encouraging your opponents to doubt their competence, you can undermine a contrary argument from the inside.

·     Yelling: The louder you yell the more respect you incur and be real loud when yelling.

·     Swearing: Swearing is a sign of great articulation, vocabulary, and bravado.

Physical Techniques

·     Flailing Arms:  express surprise and reinforce your arguments. It's very hard to disagree with someone who waves his arms in confidence

·     Being Tall: Physical stature is an important intimidation tool.

·     Biting: Absolutely last ditch effort and if you have to bite, go for an important artery or organ.

I believe that you must be laughing too when you scan through all the tactics.  

There are 6 key factors of persuasion mentioned in the Lecture 3: liking, reciprocity, social proof, consistency, authority and scarcity. There is a long way to go before you can master even a few of them.

As to more practical side if you are about to present, from my perspective, one should prepare and get to know your stuff well so that you are confident and relax enough to even talk with others about the topic or product. Then keep practice whenever you have chance: in front of the mirror, in front all your classmates, colleagues and in the conference etc. Communication is an art which needs a gift as well as continuous practice.