Up to Our Eyeballs in Enthymemes

Enthymemes. We're up to our eyeballs in them.

An enthymeme, first described by Aristotle in Rhetoric is an incomplete logical construct. It's based on an unspoken premise shared between a speaker and her audience.

Here's a familiar enthymeme:

"Make America Great Again."

The unspoken shared premise:

"America used to be great."

An enthymeme's power comes not from what's spoken, but what's unspoken, Aristotle says. When a premise is left unspoken, the audience supplies it, completing the circle. So, instead of the speaker persuading us, we persuade ourselves.

For Aristotle, self-persuasion is especially effective because we take pleasure in participating in the exchange. We're tickled with our ability to connect the dots—to "get it" without handholding.

But self-persuasion is also self-absorption, Aristotle warns.

An enthymeme helps us see a resemblance—a likeness—and we like most what is like ourselves. "All are more or less lovers of themselves," Aristotle says.

The effective speaker exploits this self-love.

She knows that—when the audience completes the circle—it chooses to hear what it wants to hear.

5 Sure-Fire Steps to Thought Leadership

Master marketer Edward Segal contributed today's post. Edward helps corporations and organizations generate publicity about their activities and shows leaders, staff and members how to deliver effective presentations.

What would you rather be: a chief or just another member of the tribe? A trail blazer or trail follower? Someone who helps determine and influence the conversation or a worker bee that waits for others to establish the agenda? 

If you’d prefer to help set the pace instead of simply run the race, then the chances are you would like to be a thought leader. Here’s how to do it: 

Be an expert

• Select topics or issues about which you have knowledge.

• Have or develop a track record of writing or speaking about your topics or issues to groups and organizations in the industries or professions in which you want to be considered a thought leader.

• Stay ahead of the curve by thinking about your field beyond today and sharing predictions or forecasts that illustrate your authority in the field.

Be a joiner

• Join or lead groups and organizations that are more likely to help establish your role as a thought leader.

• Volunteer to serve on committees or task forces that can bolster your expertise and add to your credentials as an authority.

Be visible

• Identify, create and take advantage of appropriate opportunities for you to be seen as an expert or authority, including speeches, presentations, and media, blog, and podcast interviews.

• Post on your website or social media platforms links to articles, interviews, speeches, etc. that you have done about your areas of specialty.

• Practice your ability to prepare and deliver short, pithy and memorable quotes that will be used by journalists and bloggers in their stories about or interviews with you.

Be a student

• Keep current on the trends and developments in the areas in which you are or want to be considered an authority.

• Study other thought leaders inside and outside your industry or profession. What can you learn from their successes that you can apply to your own efforts to become or stay a thought leader? 

Be persistent

• Identify or create new opportunities to position yourself as an authority and expert.

• Maintain a blog to which you post on a regular basis, and install a widget so that people can be notified about each new post.

• Reinforce your role as a thought leader in ways that you have not done before, such as writing a book, starting a blog, becoming a public speaker, or proactively seeking media interviews and speaking opportunities.

• Set monthly, quarterly or annual goals and milestones of important activities and accomplishments that can help you become and remain a thought leader.

Becoming a thought leader can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more you act like you are a thought leader, the more likely it is you will become one.

How to Handle a Hard Presentation: 22 Sure-Fire Tips

Marketing maestro Edward Segal contributed today's post. Edward helps corporations and organizations generate publicity about their activities and shows leaders, staff and members how to deliver effective presentations.

What’s the most important thing you can do if you know that you will be making a presentation to a skeptical audience, at a challenging venue, or in an otherwise difficult situation? 

In a word: prepare.

While it is impossible to ensure that every presentation will go smoothly, there are definitely steps you can take to help stack the deck in your favor.

Here’s how:

• Don’t accept speaking invitations for which you are unqualified or unprepared. Don’t let your ego get in the way.

• If you spoke to the same tough group or in the same difficult setting before, ask yourself: What did I learn from the experience?

• Think twice about giving breakfast speeches if you are not a morning person, or evening presentations if you like to retire early.

• Do your homework about the audience (demographics, knowledge of the subject matter, special interests or concerns, etc.); ask the sponsoring organization if there are any red flags about the audience you should be aware of (forewarned is forearmed).

• Ask others who have spoken to the organization what it was like, and what you can learn from their experience.

• If you accept the speaking invitation, know what you want to accomplish with your remarks.

• Know the basics about the speaking opportunity (format, length of your presentation, time, location, etc.).

• Arrive early so you can get a feel for the room where you will be speaking, greet and chat with people as they arrive, etc.

• Make sure that the layout of the room is to your liking and meets your needs (classroom-style, theatre-style, roundtables, etc.).

• When you arrive, check with your host to ensure the arrangements, purpose and topic of your presentation have not changed.

• Know where things are, such as lights, microphones and audio controls, AC and heating controls, water, restrooms, etc.

• Ensure that you and your audience will be comfortable by checking the heat or AC settings, microphone settings, lighting levels, extraneous or distracting noise, etc.

• Check out any that stairs you must climb to get on or off the stage. This will help you to avoid tripping over unfamiliar steps.

• Don’t tell jokes unless you’ve already proven that you can tell jokes well. There’s nothing funny about no one laughing at your jokes.

• Make sure your audience can see you. Don’t hide behind the podium.

• Do not hide your gestures. Keep your hands up where your audience can see them!

• Maintain a good posture when standing or sitting. No slouching!

• If audience members do not have access to a microphone, be sure to repeat questions before answering them. This helps ensure everyone in the room hears what was asked.

• Respond honestly to questions. It’s okay to say "I don’t know."

• Don’t allow one person to monopolize the session. ("Let’s meet afterwards to talk about this.")

• Summarize/rephrase lengthy questions for the audience. ("Let me make sure that I understand what you are asking...")

• Do not allow Q&A sessions to drag on. Signal to your audience that the session is almost over. ("We have time for one more question.")

Other People’s Audiences

Gary Slack provided today's post. He is chief experience officer of Slack and Company, LLC, a leading global B2B marketing strategy and services provider based in Chicago.

"OPA" is often what a Greek restaurant waiter will shout when lighting up a plate of saganaki.

For me these days, OPA means "Other People's Audiences."

I've borrowed the term a bit from Jeffrey Hayzlett, who talks about using OPM (Other People's Money) to do really efficient marketing.

As much as we encourage clients to create their own media platforms—and publish great original content on them—the reality is most B2B marketers will reach and influence far greater numbers of customers, prospects and influencers by tapping and leveraging OPA.

In fact, too many B2B marketers, in our opinion, have it backward.

While they should be investing in and experimenting with their own media platforms, they often are over-investing time and money here and under-investing in getting their messages across through OPA.

What do I mean by Other People's Audiences? It includes:

• Guest columns or posts in widely followed external blogs
• Commentary posted on discussion boards at relevant B2B news and media sites
• Commentary posted on online B2B community sites and LinkedIn Groups
• Quotes folded into news and feature stories
• Media interviews
• External speaking engagements, panels

If some of the above bullets sound like PR, it's intended.

How do you identify the right OPA? It's really pretty easy—or at least straightforward.

You investigate and audit where large numbers of the people you want to reach, influence and motivate—at any stage of the buy cycle—are congregating and spending their time both online and offline.

Actually, it's pretty classic media pathway and channel analysis —the stuff you should be doing anyway in building integrated marketing communications (IMC) plans.

Some B2B marketers have built huge audiences for their own media. Adobe is one. Even so, they still tap OPA big time.

But most B2B marketers aren't where Adobe is, and they should consider redoubling their efforts to better tap OPA.

And have some delicious saganaki while at it!

Abe Lincoln, Storyteller

"Humor is both a shield and a sword in politics," Ari Fleischer, press secretary to George W. Bush, recently told CNN.

"Humor is a shield because if people like you they will tend to give you the benefit of the doubt. It is a sword because one of the most effective ways to make fun of your opposition is humor as opposed to direct, frontal, mean-spirited attacks."

Among the presidents who wielded humor—including Teddy Roosevelt, Coolidge, FDR, Kennedy and Reagan—none did it more skillfully than Lincoln.

Lincoln considered himself a "retailer" of other people's puns, wisecracks, japes and yarns. He had a photographic memory for funny material, and spent hours studying humorists' books and essays.

Although quaint by 21st century standards, some of Lincoln's gags can still raise a chuckle.

Lincoln told a story of a man in the theatre who put his top hat on the seat next to him. A plus-size woman sat on it. ""Madam," he said, "I could have told you the hat wouldn't fit before you tried it on."

He told another story of a professional speaker's arrival in Springfield, Illinois. “What are your lectures about?” a city official asked the speaker. “They’re about the second coming,” the speaker said. “Don’t waste your time," the official said. "If the Lord’s seen Springfield once, He ain’t coming back."

He told yet another story of a drunk named Bill, who was so wasted, he passed out in the mud. When Bill came to, he went looking for a way to wash off the mud, and mistook another drunk leaning over a hitching post for a pump. When he pumped the man's arm up and down, the man puked all over him. Believing all was right, Bill found a saloon. A friend inside said, "Bill, what happened?" Bill said, "You should have seen me before I washed."

After one grueling speech, Lincoln said of the speaker, “He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met." He called the arguments of his opponent for president “as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had starved to death.”

Once after being called "two-faced," Lincoln said, “If I had two faces, why would I be wearing this one?”

When Nebraska's governor told Lincoln there was a river in his state named "Weeping Water." Lincoln said, "I suppose the Indians out there call it 'Minneboohoo,' since 'Laughing Water' is 'Minnahaha' in their language."

His contemporaries said Lincoln's real success as a comedian was due to a talent for mimicry. He could mimic voices, accents, gestures, postures and facial expressions perfectly.

Fellow attorney Henry Whitney said, "His stories may be literally retold, every word, period and comma, but the real humor perished with Lincoln."

Watch Daniel Day-Lewis perform as Abe Lincoln, Storyteller.

How to Write a Killer Abstract for Your Next Presentation

Marketer Tony Compton contributed today's post. He is the founder and managing director of communication coaching consultancy GettingPresence.

When you’re scheduled to give a presentation, chances are you’ll have to provide a session abstract that titles your talk and describes your session.

Session abstracts enable readers to evaluate an event in advance, playing a vital role in helping them determine if the event is worth the investment in attendance.

On site, abstracts compete for attendees, as they choose which sessions to attend when multiple presentations are being given.

Unfortunately, far too many session abstracts are poorly written. Writing one is an afterthought to most presenters, and is usually delegated to a marketing manager who isn’t the presenter and who's largely unfamiliar with the presenter's content.

Writing concise and compelling abstracts for your presentations will give you a clear competitive advantage.

My recommendation is to write your abstract as a condensed case study:

• Title your session with the solution to a common business challenge; for example, “Increasing Customer Retention by 30% with Predictive Analytics." 

• When writing the session description, state a common problem your audience faces; summarize your strategy behind solution-development; and itemize supporting tools you have used to help solve the problem.

• Close by hinting at the payoff of the work, using several bullet points that quantitatively highlight results.

Remember, too, that audiences see through thinly-veiled sales pitches, and their session descriptions. Always keep in mind what the audience will learn from your presentation, and your session abstract will be a winner.

Should You Ever Talk Turkey?

According to ex-"cast members," a terminated Disney employee is never told, "You're fired." 

The employee is told instead to "find your happiness elsewhere."

Certain subjects—tough ones like death, poverty, addiction, insanity, intolerance, financial risk and job loss—are magnets for euphemisms.

Grammarian Jane Strauss detests them.

"A euphemism is a lullaby, a sedative, a velvet glove enfolding reality’s iron fist," she says.

But euphemisms don't merely function as kindly cop-outs, Strauss says.

"A euphemism can transform a narcissist into a temperamental perfectionist, a bigot into a traditionalist, or an unhinged demagogue into a passionate idealist."

Ain't it the truth, ladies and gentlemen.

So should business communicators ever talk turkey?

To my way of thinking, 99% of the time.

Audiences prefer candor to cant. Even the targets prefer it.

And you need not be ruthless to be straightforward.

Harry Truman was once accused of giving his political foes hell.

"I never did give anybody hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell."

PS: In case you're wondering, Native Americans coined the phrase "talking turkey."

Blowing in the Wind

An inveterate blowhard, Warren G. Harding popularized the term bloviation to describe his public speaking style.

Bloviation, Harding said, is "the art of speaking for as long as the occasion warrants, and saying nothing."

While contemporary office-seekers vie for his seat in the Valhalla of the vacuous, few can bloviate like Harding.

H.L. Menken thought Harding's appeal to audiences reflected their IQ. 

 "Bosh is the right medicine for boobs," he wrote.

7 Required Reading Containers for Every Marketer

Need that perfect gift for the marketer in your life?

Try a reading container (book).

Here are my top seven picks for the year:

Daily Rituals. Mason Currey's little book delivers an enchanting look at the work-habits of nearly 200 composers, filmmakers, novelists, philosophers, playwrights, painters and poets.

Email Marketing Rules. Moses took four decades to write his laws. So we should be grateful it's taken only half that time for someone to codify the rules of email marketing. Chad White's encyclopedic treatment is a must-read.

The Content Code. Mark Schaefer makes all the other social media gurus look like chumps. Want to crack the code? Crack open this book! And if you want more social media marketing secrets, read Jeffrey Rohrs' Audience.

Communicate to Influence. Speech coach to the stars Ben Decker shares his secret method for swaying any audience. Learn why triads are the "perfect framework" for sales pitches, product launches, motivational talks and business briefings.

Trust Me, I'm Lying. Media manipulator Ryan Holiday's book does for the Internet what The Jungle did for meat packing. Trust me, you'll never read Business Insider, The Daily Beast, Drudge Report, BuzzFeed, Politico or Huffington Post with credulity again.

Writing Tools. Roy Peter Clark's advice to writers, simply put, is the best book of its kind. And if you want to really impress the marketer in your life, pair it with a copy of William Blundell's classic, The Art and Craft of Feature Writing.

Born to Blog. Blogs are foundational to social success, and Mark Schaefer's street-smart advice is priceless.

Fancy Pants

The term fancy pants first appeared in 1843 in an ad in The Bangor Daily Whig & Courier. 

In a time when most pants were coarse, the soft twill trousers advertised for sale by auction house Williams & Prince were, indeed, fancy.

Style manuals discourage writers from putting on fancy pants. Never use a fancy word, when a plain one will do.

But, as pscyho-linguist Steven Pinker says in The Sense of Style, the rule is overstated: 

"It's certainly true that a lot of turgid prose is stuffed with polysyllabic Latinisms and flabby adjectives. And showing off with fancy words you barely understand can make you look pompous and occasionally ridiculous. 

"But a skilled writer can enliven and sometimes electrify her prose with the judicious insertion of a surprising word. According to studies of writing quality, a varied vocabulary and the use of unusual words are two of the features that distinguish sprightly prose from mush."

In a 1739 letter, Voltaire offered similar advice to the 24-year old writer Helvétius:

"Beware, lest in attempting the grand, you overshoot the mark and fall into the grandiose: only employ true similes: and be sure always to use exactly the right word."

Your Speech Insurance Policy

Media and presentation skills coach Edward Segal contributed today's post. Edward has helped hundreds of executives deliver memorable presentations. His advice is based on his experience as a journalist, public speaker, PR consultant, press secretary, and association CEO.

Opportunities to speak in public can be golden opportunities to discuss or demonstrate your expertise, accomplishments, activities or opinions. 

Here’s my checklist of items to keep in mind before you accept any speaking invitation, and suggestions on how to prepare for and get the most out of your presentation. 

Consider it, if you will, your speech insurance policy.

Invitations

• Don’t accept speaking invitations for which you are unqualified or unprepared (don’t let your ego get in the way).

• Ask the organization if there is anything special you should know about the audience or the group (forewarned is forearmed).

• Know the basics of the speaking situation (format, length, time, location, etc.). 

Appearance

• Dress appropriately (usually one level above the audience). 

• Remove any distracting jewelry, name tags or badges before you start (it’s all about you). 

• Stand out from your backdrop (dress in contrasting colors so you don’t disappear).

• Check yourself in a mirror before you go on (lipstick, food in teeth, straighten tie, check zippers and buttons, etc.). 

Equipment

• Test out the mike beforehand to know how far to hold it from your mouth. 

• Adjust the mike so it does not hide your face.

• Do not assume that just because you may a have a loud voice people will be able to hear you without a mike. 

• Assume nothing will work the way it should and plan accordingly (Murphy’s Law). 

Content

• Prioritize and limit your messages (limit them to 3 or 4).

• Customize your presentation to meet the needs of the audience or organization. 

• Answer the two key questions every audience has for every speaker and topic: Who cares? and Why should I care? 

• Make sure they understand you (refrain from using jargon, buzzwords, and technical terms and phrases your audience may not understand).

Rehearse

• Practice your presentation, but not to the point where it sounds memorized.

Don’t Talk to Strangers

• Greet people as they arrive (this will guarantee that you will not be speaking to strangers, but to people you’ve just met). 

Waiting to Go on

• Take one last bathroom break (better safe than sorry).

• While waiting to be introduced or, if on a panel, do not look bored or distracted while others are speaking (pay attention!). 

Delivery

• Know your stuff (your material, arguments, facts and figures).

• Know what you will say to open and conclude your remarks, and eliminate any unnecessary information in between. 

• Be sure to thank them for inviting you. 

• Tell them why you are there (don’t assume they know).

• Show your story, don’t just tell it (find and use charts, slides, props, etc.).

• Keep the audience awake (don’t bore them).

• Don’t get rattled if you forget some of your points; the audience will not know what you forgot to say. 

• Arrange for someone to give you a two-minute warning (don’t speak longer than scheduled). 

• Do not thank them for listening (it’s demeaning to you and to them).

• Give the audience the gift of time (end early).

6 Energy-Saving Tips for Communicators

Self-taught his trade, Jack London said he discovered how to "transmute thought, beauty, sensation and emotion into black symbols on white paper" from Herbert Spencer's now-neglected 1852 essay The Philosophy of Style.

From Spencer, London "learned that the right symbols were the ones that would require the expenditure of the minimum of my reader’s brain energy, leaving the maximum of his brain energy to realize and enjoy the content of my mind, as conveyed to his mind.”

Foreseeing today's attention-deficient audiences, Spencer preached "the importance of economizing the reader's or hearer's attention, to so present ideas that they may be apprehended with the least possible mental effort."

"A reader or listener has at each moment but a limited amount of mental power available," Spencer says. Most of that energy is consumed when the brain takes in the written or spoken symbols, leaving little to spare for comprehension.

Spencer insists, "the more time and attention it takes to receive and understand each sentence, the less time and attention can be given to the contained idea; and the less vividly will that idea be conceived."

To compensate for audiences' sparse mental energy, writers and speakers should economize; or, as Spencer suggests, follow "the law of easy apprehension."

I've boiled his law down to six tips:

1. Avoid long, Latinate words. Use instead the short Anglo-Saxon ones we learned as kids. Use Latinate words only to express big ideas, because "a voluminous, mouth-filling epithet is, by its very size, suggestive of largeness or strength," and "allows the hearer's consciousness a longer time to dwell upon the quality predicated."

2. Use words that sound like their meanings. "Both those directly imitative, as splash, bang, whiz, roar; and those analogically imitative, as rough, smooth, keen, blunt, thin, hard, crag; have a greater or less likeness to the things symbolized; and by making on the senses impressions allied to the ideas to be called up, they save part of the effort needed to call up such ideas, and leave more attention for the ideas themselves."

3. Use specific, instead of generic, words. "If, by employing a specific term, an appropriate image can be at once suggested, an economy is achieved, and a more vivid impression produced.

4. Watch your word sequence. The order of your words should allow readers' or listeners' brains to process each as it arrives, with minimum effort. Put subjects in front of predicates, and give priority to big ideas by placing them at the front of the sentence. "The right formation of a picture will be facilitated by presenting its elements in the order in which they are wanted; even though the mind should do nothing until it has received them all."

5. Place subordinate parts of a sentence ahead of the main part. "Containing, as the subordinate proposition does, some qualifying or explanatory idea, its priority prevents misconception of the principal one; and therefore saves the mental effort needed to correct such misconception."

6. Place related words and expressions near one another. "The longer the time that elapses between the mention of any qualifying member and the member qualified, the longer must the mind be exerted in carrying forward the qualifying member ready for use. And the more numerous the qualifications to be simultaneously remembered and rightly applied, the greater will be the mental power expended, and the smaller the effect produced."

Don't have the energy to read Herbert Spencer's The Philosophy of Style?

Good news: there's a free audiobook.

How to Present Perfectly

Great speakers love triads.

Gaelic bards loved them—because they can be readily memorized.

Roman orators loved them—because they structure ideas.

Modern leaders love them—because they inspire.

In their new book, Communicate to Influence, speech coaches Ben and Kelly Decker urge execs to use triads whenever they prepare a presentation, calling triads the "perfect framework" for sales pitches, product launches, motivational talks and business briefings.

In three short strokes, triads create patterns and rhythms, which makes them inherently more intelligible than longer lists of things.

Triads are also more persuasive and memorable than long data dumps. Just think of the many you remember:

• Veni, vidi, vici
• Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears!
• Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
• Liberté, égalité, fraternité
• Government of the people, by the people, for the people
• The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth
• Truth, justice and the American way
• Stop, drop and roll
• Wine, women and song
• Location, location, location

As writing instructor Roy Peter Clark says, "In the anti-math of writing, the number three is greater than four. The mojo of three offers a greater sense of completeness than four or more."

Watch Those Weasel Words

Weasel words—defaults for bureaucrats and politicians—are qualifiers that nervous speakers and writers bank on for cover.

Avoid them, because the more you water down thoughts with weasel words, the less clear and certain your speech and writing become.

For example, instead of saying, IT possibly seems to have suggested that Aptly may no longer be supported after December 31, say IT may no longer support Aptly after December 31.

At the same time, avoid absolutes like always, never, will not, cannot and nothing is worse than.

Avoid statements like, Nothing is worse than displaying your password. Really? What about your company's recent job-cuts, the drought in California, or Syria's civil war?

How Did We Function before Autocorrect?

Before autocorrect made us all morons, there was the malaprop.

Named by Lord Byron after the fictional character Mrs. Malaprop (as in "inappropriate"), the malaprop is a familiar brand of verbal slip.

Malaprops are funny because, though unintended, they seem to work.

Mrs. Malaprop, for example, advised a woeful Lydia Languish to illiterate him from your memory.

Rick Perry once called state governments lavatories of innovation, while an anonymous office worker called a colleague a vast suppository of information.

Speaking of which, Richard Daley once praised Chicago's members of Alcoholics Unanimous.

Boston mayor Thomas Menino called his city's parking shortage an Alcatraz around my neck.

Comedian Norm Crosby worried when he misconscrewed what you said.

President George W. Bush warned we cannot let terrorists hold this nation hostile.

And my boyhood pal Mookie called the corroded faces in monster movies decroded.

But that was just a pigment of his imagination.

The Big Short

Potent speakers and writers lean on lively—and fewer—words.

I once heard Lew Ranieri, perturbed by a long-winded attorney for Freddie Mac, ask her, "Could you please talk faster? I'm having a bad day."

Emerson wrote in his Journals, "All writing should be selection in order to drop every dead word."

Emerson wondered why more speakers and writers didn't edit themselves, erasing all the "flat conventional words and sentences."

"If a man would learn to read his own manuscript severely—becoming really a third person, and search only for what interested him, he would blot to purpose—and how every page would gain! Then all the words will be sprightly, and every sentence a surprise."

Lively speaking and writing is short and concise. 

Conciseness will keep your audience.

But don't go overboard, and prune vital information.

The Ancient Roman poet Horace said, “In trying to be concise, I become obscure.”

Want to be concise, without becoming obscure? 

Bookmark this guide.

Ideas Once Spreading

One hundred and fifty years before TED revitalized the chalk talk, lecture halls known as "lyceums" flourished across the U.S.

At their peak in the 1850s, the halls drew more than a million people a week—nearly 5% of the country's population.

Attendees brought their 19th century attention spans to hear itinerant speakers like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Dickens, Daniel Webster and Theodore Parker.

Unlike other public gathering spots of the day, lyceums welcomed women and, north of the Mason Dixon Line, African Americans. 

Tickets, sold by subscription, were cheap (about 25 cents).

Most speakers delivered "instructive" talks about science, travel, and the arts; but lyceums also hosted proponents of hot political ideas, especially early feminists, prohibitionists and abolitionists.

The latter aroused so much animosity as the decade progressed that audiences, afraid of violent outbreaks, eventually stopped going to lyceums, and the phenomenon lost much of its steam.

Following the Civil War, many of the once-heady halls were converted to venues for vaudeville acts.

Both Sides Now

Social science shows that power—even in small doses—triples our likelihood to be self centered, and therefore blind to others' points of view.

Imagine what large doses do.

So if you want to persuade people in power of your opinion, it's essential that you learn how to empathize; or, as Daniel Pink says, improve your "attunement."

Philosopher Blaise Pascal explained why succinctly in 1670:

"When we wish to correct with advantage, and to show another that he errs, we must notice from what side he views the matter, for on that side it is usually true, and admit that truth to him, but reveal to him the side on which it is false. He is satisfied with that, for he sees that he was not mistaken, and that he only failed to see all sides."

Want to Boost Sales? Let Others Toot Your Horn.

Want to convince skeptical prospects of the value of your proposal? 

Get an intermediary to present your credentials first.

Persuasion research shows an introduction by a third party improves the odds your audience will buy your message far better than a self-introduction.

The third party need not be a trusted source.

Researcher Steve Martin examined the effect on sales of a third-party introduction. 

He arranged for a receptionist to introduce a real estate agent's credentials to first-time callers before connecting them to the agent, instead of simply putting callers through. 

The agent booked 20 percent more appointments as a result.

"Arranging for others to tout your expertise before you make your case can increase the likelihood of people paying attention and acting on your advice," according to Martin.

Watch Your Language

The father of phrases like death tax (a.k.a. estate tax) and climate change (a.k.a. global warming), Republican strategist Frank Luntz employs focus groups to examine words’ emotional content.

His goal is to find words that will change people's visceral reactions to hot-button issues.

In a 2012 speech to the Washington State Chamber of Commerce, Luntz advised business executives to revise some of their pet phrases. He recommended they replace :

• Free enterprise with economic freedom; 
• Middle class with hardworking taxpayers; and 
• Business climate with healthy economy.

Luntz also recommended executives strike understand, accountable and important from their vocabularies, because listeners no longer have faith in these words.

You need not agree with Luntz's politics—I, for example, would replace his death tax with fairness reset and his climate change with planetary meltdown—to agree with his theory.

The emotional content of words makes them powerfully persuasive.

Novelist Joseph Conrad once wrote, "He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense."