I can’t believe they said that!

Comedians can tell truths others can’t

I heard something intriguing in a comedian’s podcast and it wasn’t what you might think. The host was interviewing a comedian and talking about her latest set. It was all about some very dark and harrowing things that had happened to her.  She’d managed to create a comedy set that enabled her to talk about those things and she explained how she’d structured her performance to do it. 

Although not as extreme, I’ve seen and heard comedians talk about some very difficult subjects. This isn’t new; famously, court jesters could speak truth to power and not be executed for it. The court jester appears in a modern form too. I’ve seen comedians at corporate events say some things that are very close to the bone and get away with it. 

(The Court Jester by John Watson Nicol, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

This poses the question: how do comedians do it?

Trust and safety

On the podcast, the ‘harrowing’ comedian explained how she made the audience feel safe at the start of her act. The audience knew the subject matter would be difficult, but they had to trust her as their guide. She talked about how she did that: the jokes she told, her use of language, how she interacted with the audience, and so on. Only once the audience were in a position where they felt safe and they trusted her did she start on her more difficult journey.

The idea of safety also applies to the court jester and his or her modern counterparts. The jester will never be king, so they’re not a threat to the established order. In fact, the king is paying the jester, and of course, the payment could end at any time. Payments set limits on how far you can go, so the court jester knows to be concerned with audience safety too.

We can gain some insight into why audience safety is important through some of the theories of comedy.

Theories of comedy: benign violation

There’s very active research into what comedy is and why it appeals to us. Researchers have developed a multitude of theories that explain why we find different types of jokes funny, but there’s no accepted grand unified theory.

The comedy theory that’s most applicable to us here is Benign Violation theory. This theory says we find things funny that violate our expectations of reality in some way but only if they don’t feel threatening to us. Threatening can mean different things at different times, but it also gets to expectation. If I go to a stage play about a difficult subject, I might expect the play to make me cry for the characters. If I go to a comedy show, I want to laugh, not cry with empathy. In comedy, I have to feel safe with the comedian, meaning they’re not going to take me to bad emotional places.

Using this theory, we can understand how a comedian can structure an act about a time they were mugged. Let’s say there were some absurdities about the robbery itself. If the comedian talks about how awful they felt during and after the robbery and how it affected them, this is all very serious and not funny; the audience will empathize but not laugh, so it isn’t benign; the audience isn’t safe emotionally. The comedian has to remove the sting somehow which they could do by letting everyone know they were OK after the robbery. Once the audience knows it’s safe, the comedian can proceed and focus on the absurdities (AKA violations). 

If you want to see an extraordinary example of this for real, see Tig Notaro’s act about her breast cancer and double mastectomy. She places the audience in a position of safety and only then talks about what happened. She focuses on some absurdities of her experience and real life and not on the harrowing side of it, so again the audience feels safe (benign) while she talks about difficult things (violation). It’s OK to laugh, because she’s OK with it and she’s laughing with us. 

(Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

Rule breaking: unsafe audiences 

This brings us to an interesting aspect of audience safety, audience interaction. 

I’ve seen comedians pick on people in the front rows and make fun of them. For example, make fun of their occupation or partner or where they’re from etc.  This goes to another theory of comedy, superiority theory, that says we laugh at the misfortune of others. If you’re not the person the comedian is picking on, it can be very funny, but if you are, it can be very threatening.

Think for a minute how the audience feels while the comedian is looking for a new target. There’s fear because some of the humor can cut deeply. Audiences know this and can be very wary. I’ve been to comedy acts where no one wants to sit near the stage and no one will volunteer anything to the comedian. The audience don’t feel safe doing so. 

Years ago, I went to see Eddie Izzard. He started his act asking the audience questions. No one answered. At the time, comedians were known to pick on audience members, so the audience didn’t feel safe. When finally someone did answer, he made fun of their home town. Later on in his act, Eddie Izzard commented about the audience’s English reserve and not interacting, but I think he was wrong and it was something else; they didn’t feel safe engaging with him because they didn’t want to be a target.

More recently, I was at a corporate event and there was a stand-up comedian. She said some very funny things about one of the c-level execs, it was cutting because it was true. When she asked for audience interaction, she got none because no-one wanted to be her next target.

Presentations and audience safety

Years ago, I was on a presentation training course. A nurse was presenting on a technical topic about the welfare of child patients. At one point, she seemed to get very upset at a memory and it was noticeable in her presentation. The class teacher called her out on it; she said that it didn't feel appropriate in the context of the presentation. By introducing strong emotion, she'd distracted the audience from her message. This seems harsh, but the class teacher was right.

Strong emotions are difficult for audiences to deal with, especially if they aren't expecting it. Strong emotions overwhelm everything else the presenter might say. This gets to audience emotional safety. My 'harrowing' comedian put a lot of effort into making her audience feel safe before discussing difficult subjects. Most presenters don't have anything like the skill level to do that, so they should stay away from expressing strong emotions.

Expectations and safety

There’s something that’s kind of obvious but hidden and that’s audience expectations and safety. If you go to see a late-night comedian after the pubs have shut, you might expect an expletive ridden show with all kinds of adult humor, and that’s OK because you know what it is. On the other hand, you have very different expectations for a comedian performing in front of 10-year-old children. Where the safety boundaries are varies depending on the audience.

In the case of my ‘harrowing’ comedian, she made it very clear in her show’s publicity material that her show contained very difficult material. On the Tig Notaro show I saw on TV, the channel made it clear it was an adult show covering difficult themes. In my view, this is responsible and also helps the audience to feel safe.

What all this means

As a presenter, if you want the audience to interact with you, they have to trust you. Don’t demean people who volunteer, it discourages everyone else. I suggest positivity. Let’s say an audience member tells you they come from a very run down town. You could riff on crime in that town, or you could tell a benign story about the town like losing your car in a huge parking lot there. Rewarding people for engaging with you encourages more engagement.

Audiences have to feel safe with you if you’re going to push any kind of boundary, and this is especially true if any of your material is difficult. You have to let your audience know that you’re OK and they’re OK, and they’ll be OK if they go on a journey with you; you’re going to make them laugh, not cry. 

Finally, you can speak truth to power through humor, but you need to know what you're doing and what the limits are. 

Speaking in voices: pitch, volume, and speed

How you say it is important

As a speaker, you have two instruments to influence an audience: your voice and your body. In this blog post, I'm going to talk about how you can use your voice to become a more engaging and compelling speaker. 

To be successful on stage, you need to be more you, which means exaggerating who you are through your voice. It doesn't mean being manic, but it does mean being more expressive than you usually are. 

Everyone knows that speaking in a monotone can put audiences to sleep, which means it's important to have meaningful variation in your voice. You can use the need for variation to your advantage: you can use your voice to grab attention (in at least two different ways), to soothe an audience, or to rile them up.  

Let's look at three techniques you have at your disposal: volume, pitch, and speed.

(Margaret Thatcher was an expert in her use of voice pitch. Image source: Wikimedia Commons, Photographer: Rob Bogaerts / Anefo, License: Public domain)

Volume

This is the most obvious method; you can vary how loudly you speak. You should do it mindfully and be aware that you can use softness and loudness for the same goal.

Obviously, speaking loudly, or very loudly, grabs an audience's attention, but it quickly becomes tiring for both the audience and the speaker and the effect rapidly wears off. You should use louder speech as you might use bold text in a document - to draw attention to a point. For example, a CEO might say something like:

"...our results for 2020 were at the lower end of expectations, in 2021, we changed our approach and saw a 10% improvement, in 2022, we must continue to focus on our core business."

The CEO would say the words in underlined louder than the other words, and the italicized word louder still.

I was at a comedy club when the compere had to revive an audience after the previous comic had died on stage. He used various techniques to do it, but the most obvious one was loudness; he spoke closer to the microphone which had the effect of amplifying his voice. At times, it was so loud it was almost painful. However, it worked, he got the audience's attention and he continued with his set at a more reasonable volume. If you're the first speaker on stage after lunch, you can do the same to get your audience's attention, but don't do it for too long.

You can also use a softer voice to get attention. One power move I've seen is for executives to speak softly to force people to listen more closely. Of course, this only works if the room is right and there are no background noises, but when it works, it works really well. But once again, don't over do it.

The ultimate in speaking softly is silence. I've used silence in my talks to powerful effect and I've seen others use it too. Mostly, it takes the form of a longer-than-usual pause in the lead-up to some crucial part of the talk. The silence works to build audience tension to a reveal and it serves to amplify the message. I've seen comedians use it to add power to a punchline - some comedians can get a huge laugh from weak material by the effective use of silences to build anticipation. Of course, you have to use silences judiciously and not drag them out too long; extended silences can become excruciating for audiences. My suggestion is to use silences that last no longer than a count of 3 or 4.

Let's imagine you're VP of Engineering and you wanted to grab your audiences' attention during a talk on 2021 objectives. Here's how you might emphasize a point using silence:

"In 2020, we had a problem that plagued several teams. It caused us to miss deadlines. It caused us additional expenses. It caused us all greater personal time and effort. The problem was..." <SILENCE FOR A COUPLE OF BEATS>"... staff retention."

Silence draws attention to your point.

Volume control is also partly dependent on your microphone technique. Very, very few speakers practice using a microphone and working with the sound team, and that's a shame. Although lapel mics are easy and very popular, a handheld mic enables you to play sound games, for example, to increase volume by moving the microphone closer to your mouth. This has the advantage of increasing volume and not distorting your voice in the way that shouting does. If you intend to use the microphone like this, for heaven's sake, practice and speak to the sound person if there is one. A sound person will immediately drop your volume if you use the microphone like this - you have to tell them what you're going to do so they don't work against you.

Pitch (frequency)

In normal speech, you vary the pitch of your speech for different reasons:

• high pitch represents energy and excitement and high emotion
• low pitch represents calm seriousness

You also vary pitch within sentences; you use increasing pitch to indicate a question at the end of sentences.

Even business speeches have emotional content if you play them right. One company I worked for had a meaningful commitment to Corporate Social Responsibility and people spoke about their experiences in disadvantaged communities around the world. The best speakers used high pitch to give a forceful power when talking about their experiences and coupled it with lower pitch to talk about the effect it had on them. More generally, executives can use a higher pitch for energetic parts of a speech, for example, talking about beating the competition or exceeding quota, and then use a lower pitch for serious parts, like discussing training and staff development.

Like all abilities, your vocal range is limited, which is why certain types of speech may suit your voice better than others, but there are things you can do to extend or even change your vocal range.

There's a famous story about Margaret Thatcher and her voice training. Before she became Prime Minister, one of the criticisms she faced was that she sounded like a shrill housewife. Obviously, this was a long time ago and it's a deeply sexist comment, but even today, it's a criticism of female politicians. Margaret Thatcher dealt with it by lowering the pitch of her voice. She had voice training and performed voice exercises to speak more deeply. It worked for her; if you get time, listen to some of her speeches, they're masterclasses in the use of voice for oratory. 

If you do have a higher-pitched voice, you need to be careful about your vocal range in speeches. Yes, it is deeply unfair that women are labeled shrill, but the labeling occurs. At the very least, you should be aware it will happen.

Speed

Speed is similar to pitch:

• High speed represents energy, excitement, high emotion
• Low speed represents seriousness

in fact, speed and pitch often work together to emphasize a point. 

If you need to represent urgency or energy, speak more quickly. The risk is that some of your audience might not catch every word, especially non-native speakers, but there is a way around this that can work to your advantage. Many rhetorical devices use repetition in some form or other (e.g. anaphora, epimone, epistrophe etc.) - using one of these devices plus speed means some members of your audience can miss words but still take away the meaning. Very few audiences and speakers can maintain a high level of energy for extended periods, as a consequence, you need to use higher speed with consideration.

If you need to convey seriousness, speak more slowly. The classic case is a national leader speaking during a time of crisis; they all tend to speak more slowly and deliberately to convey gravity.

Of course, you can overdo speaking slowly. The risk is, you put your audience to sleep, so use it sparingly.

Putting it all together

You should use these techniques like spices in cooking; use them to bring out the features of your talk but not as the main element. You want people to remember your message, not your technique. Some techniques, like silence, are very powerful and should only be used sparingly. Others, like speed, you can use to add variety and interest and to emphasize your point. To keep your audience engaged, you need variety.

To see masters of voice control at work, I suggest you listen to the speeches of Martin Luther King or Margaret Thatcher, two people with very different styles and very different politics, but both very, very effective.

There are other voice techniques that I haven't gone into here. I haven't talked about communicating emotion or using rhythm in speeches. These are more advanced topics I might write about in the future. 

Like any physical skill, you need to practice to get good at using these techniques. The next time you're giving a talk, try to add volume, pitch, and speed to add variety and emphasize the important points.

Other blog posts in the series

This post is part of a series of posts on rhetoric for managers. Here are the other posts in the series:

• Presentation advice from a professional comedian
• How to be a compelling speaker: creating applause and tricolon
• How to be more persuasive when you speak: using ‘catchphrases’
• Being more persuasive in speech: anaphora
• The art of persuasion: pathos, logos, and ethos

The art of persuasion: pathos, logos, and ethos

The art of persuasion is ancient

In this blog post, I'm going to talk about three high-level approaches to persuasion that people have used for thousands of years: pathos, logos, and ethos. Aristotle codified them, hence their Greek names, but despite their ancient origins, they pop up in modern sales methods, in the speeches given by politicians, and in preachers' sermons. Understanding these basics will let you craft more effective speeches and emails.

(Martin Luther King was one of the best rhetoricians of the 20th century. King used pathos enormously effectively in his 'I have a dream speech'. Image source: Wikimedia Commons. Photographer: Rowland Scherman.)

Logos

Sadly, this is the weakest of the three, it's the appeal to logic; the use of facts and figures, and inference and deduction to make an argument. For example, if I were trying to make the case that the economy was great under my leadership, I might talk about high employment numbers, pay rises, and business growth. My chain of reasoning would be: the numbers are great due to my leadership, so you should vote for me. Let's look at a couple of real examples.

My first example is Winston Churchill's "Their finest hour speech" (you can read more analysis of this speech here):

"‘Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.’"

Note there are no numbers here, it's a chain of logic linking one idea to another, in this case, an if-then piece of logic.

John F. Kennedy also used logos. Here's an excerpt from his famous "We choose to go to the moon..." speech:

"Within these last 19 months at least 45 satellites have circled the earth. Some 40 of them were made in the United States of America and they were far more sophisticated and supplied far more knowledge to the people of the world than those of the Soviet Union."

Note the use of numbers to make the point that the United States was ahead of, and more advanced than the Soviet Union. Logos isn't just about making cold scientific claims, it can be about bashing your opponents with logic. 

Margaret Thatcher was a master speaker, and she used logos to batter her opponents:

"If the Labour Government is no longer able to act in the national interest, is there no alternative to the ruin of Britain? Yes, indeed there is - and that alternative is here at Brighton today."

(Leader's Speech, Brighton, 1976)

The point is, logos isn't about a mathematical deduction, it's about creating a chain of arguments to lead the audience to the conclusion that your point is true. 

In sales situations, logos is used in several ways, for example, a salesperson might say something like: "Our solution costs less on a yearly basis than competitor Y but has features A, B, and C that Y does not."

Ethos

This is an appeal from authority, the idea is that the speaker has some kind of position that gives them special knowledge. The most obvious example is the old quote: "Trust me, I'm a doctor". Speakers use this device a lot to establish credibility, for example, you might hear people talk about years of government service, or their qualifications, or their awards. 

One of the best examples of ethos I've come across is Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement address of 2005. Pretty much, the whole speech is ethos, establishing his credibility with the audience. Here's a small extract:

"I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents’ garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30."

There are several ways speakers establish ethos. Sometimes, they talk about their education, or they talk about their experiences, or they talk about their awards. But how do you establish ethos if you have none of those things? The answer is, you can co-opt it from other people and organizations.

A salesperson might co-opt ethos by talking about the awards and success of their company or product, for example, "Product X was the biggest selling product in category Y, it's the industry standard." They also use external references from trusted sources. Gartner's magic quadrant analysis is widely used for a reason, it lends external credibility and is a great source of ethos. Success stories serve similar purposes too; you can use a quote from an industry figure to boost your credibility.

Pathos

This is an emotional appeal to do something. It's is one of the most effective persuasive techniques, but it has to be used carefully; it's a blunt instrument that can undermine your argument. One of the clearest examples of pathos also illustrates the problem: "do as I ask or I kill this kitten".

I'm going to return to Winston Churchill and another of his famous speeches for my first example, here's a famous extract:

"I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this government: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”"

(Blood, toil, tears, and sweat)

Churchill's goal was to get the politicians and the people to join him in an existential struggle against fascism. He used vivid imagery to illustrate the struggle ahead. If logos is the use of facts and figures, pathos is the use of adjectives and adverbs.

One of my other favorite speakers is Martin Luther King, here's an extract from his most famous speech:

"I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice."

King is using evocative language to appeal to his audience, to motivate them to appeal for change.

I've seen salespeople use pathos in a clever way when they ask a prospect what the success of product would mean for them. The crude example here is telling someone they would look good in a sports car. Less crudely, the success of a product could lead to promotions. This has to be artfully done, but I've seen it used very effectively.

Using them in a speech

Not every speech uses all the elements of persuasion, but many of them do. Let's imagine you're promoting your company's product at a convention and had a short slot to do it. Here's how you might use pathos, logos, and ethos.

Speech	Commentary
In 2020, Gartner placed us in the leader quadrant of their X magic quadrant for the fifth year running. Ms A, Vice-President for Important Things at Big Company B said that Product Y was a game-changer for them.	Ethos.
She said it reduced design costs by 20% and reduced time-to-market by 15%. Her experience is common, which is why we have the largest market share and we're growing more rapidly than any other company in the sector. We're becoming the industry standard.	Logos.
But it's not just about money. Because we reduce design flow issues, we reduce low-level re-work and rote work, so we free up engineers' time to be more creative and use their skills in more engaging and interesting ways. Our software enabled Dr S to design H, which won the industry design award and got him on the cover of Trade Publication.	Pathos

This is a little crude, but you get the general idea.

Churchill, Kennedy, and King did not just make up their speeches. They knew very well what they were doing. Churchill and King in particular were master rhetoricians, adept at using words to change the world. Knowing a little of rhetoric can pay dividends if you're trying to be more persuasive.

Reading more

A lot of books on rhetoric are unreadable, which is odd given that rhetoric is about communication. Here are some of the ones I like:

• Thank You for Arguing, Fourth Edition: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion - Jay Heinrichs
• Words Like Loaded Pistols: Rhetoric from Aristotle to Obama - Sam Leith

Rhetoric for managers series

This post is part of a series of posts on rhetoric for managers. Here are the other posts in the series:

• Presentation advice from a professional comedian
• How to be a compelling speaker: creating applause and tricolon
• How to be more persuasive when you speak: using ‘catchphrases’
• Being more persuasive in speech: anaphora
• The art of persuasion: pathos, logos, and ethos

Being more persuasive in speech: anaphora

There are a host of rhetorical techniques known since antiquity to make you more persuasive and compelling as a speaker. Anaphora is one of them and it's in my top three convincing rhetorical techniques. It’s been used by everyone from Charles Dickens to Winston Churchill to Chance the Rapper. I’m going to tell you what it is and how you can use it.

Anaphora is the repetition of the same phrase at the start of adjacent clauses in a sentence or paragraph. Here’s an example from Charles Dickens' ‘A Tale of Two Cities’. The anaphora is in bold.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…
-Charles Dickens – A Tale of Two Cities

Another good example of anaphora is the poem ‘If’ by Rudyard Kipling, here’s an extract:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
   If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
   And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
   Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,…
-If – Rudyard Kipling

Pretty much the entire poem is anaphora which he uses to build towards his point at the end.

Anaphora works by the repetition of the same words to link ideas into a coherent and memorable flow. It reinforces the point in an elegant way.

As you've seen, anaphora is effective in writing, but it also works well in speeches too. It can have a compelling and convincing effect as we’ll see. I’m going to play you an example of one of the most famous examples of anaphora. This time, I’ll give you some context for the speech before providing the audio link.

The year is 1940. France had fallen to the Nazi hordes and the disaster at Dunkirk had just occurred. The British people expected Hitler’s armies to cross the channel and invade imminently. Britain stood alone.

The place is the House of Commons in London. MPs too expected an invasion and expected Britain to fall. They knew many of their constituents, families, and friends would die.

And the person is Winston Churchill, the new Prime Minister. His job was to rally the nation and prepare the country for invasion and an existential fight.

Here’s the most famous piece of his speech - YouTube. Listen to the anaphora.

(Image credit: WikiMedia Commons - open source)

We shall fight… we shall never surrender.

The effect of this speech was electrifying. A friend told Churchill his speech was worth 1,000 guns. Opposition politicians openly wept and pledged support for Churchill. And this speech changed the national mood from one of defeat to one of defiance in the face of disaster.

So how might you use anaphora? Let’s imagine you’re giving a talk where you’re trying to persuade your company to spend resources on training, you could say:

The research shows that investing in training gives returns on staff retention, recruitment, and efficiency.

Or you could use anaphora to say:

Investing in training leads to higher staff retention and greater employee engagement,
Investing in training makes it easier to recruit good-quality people,
Investing in training lets us do our jobs more efficiently,
It’s time to invest in training.

I’ve used anaphora in speeches and in writing. You can too. It’s a great device to use when you have multiple points you want to make and you need to link them together.

Let’s listen to how Chance The Rapper used anaphora to link his points together: YouTube. The 'Oh now' anaphora allows him to construct a series of lyrical points and link them together with the same structure to make them work together in a catchy way. (As an aside, rap and hip-hop artists make incredibly inventive use of language - something they never get credit for.)

If anaphora is good enough for Charles Dickens, Winston Churchill, and Chance The Rapper, surely, it’s good enough for you too?

Reading more

This blog post is one in a series of posts on practical rhetoric. Here's the series:

• Presentation advice from a professional comedian
• How to be a compelling speaker: creating applause and tricolon
• How to be more persuasive when you speak: using 'catchphrases'

(De)motivational speakers

I’ve heard motivational speakers give messages completely contrary to company values and I’ve heard a motivational speaker encourage people to resign. I’ve heard speakers that made me feel good to be a part of the company and I’ve heard speakers that made me think. 

It might seem like a good thing for a company to bring in a motivational speaker, but it needs thought as we’ll see. Let’s start with the bad because that’s always more fun.

(Motivational speaking, old school. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons)

At one company I worked at, we had a talk given by a mountaineer who had climbed Mount Everest. They vividly described the struggle of the team to get to the top; the cold, the physical demands, the oxygen deprivation. The expedition got close to the summit, but some of the team were struggling and it was difficult to move forward together. The leadership made the decision to leave some of the team behind and make for the summit with just a handful. The small group made it to the summit and took their pictures at the top of the world. They celebrated their glorious achievement and the speaker spoke movingly of the elation they felt. Then they started to make their way down, meeting up with their colleagues they’d left behind. The speaker told us how bitterly disappointed the people who were left behind were. The leadership had to carefully manage relationships with those they’d left behind to get everyone off the mountain and safely back to base camp. Once they were back at base camp, it didn’t matter anymore because everyone dispersed.

It was a great talk delivered well, but…

The company I worked for at the time had a big thing about teamwork and carrying everyone with you. It was all about the collective way forward. But the talk seemed to have a couple of underlying themes; you need a big team to get to the top and if people are holding you back, you cut them loose so the high performers can achieve their goals. It seemed to me that the talk was completely at odds with the company’s values. Was the company now advocating that we leave people behind? As I heard this story, I wondered about the people in the audience, did they all identify with the group that made it to the summit, or did they think they might be in the group left behind? What does it mean to work in a company where you might be left behind so others can get to the summit?

A different company I worked for was having some trouble retaining staff but wanted to grow. At a company meeting, we had a speaker who had sailed in a major race. The speaker was great, he spoke about his impoverished background, how he stumbled across sailing but loved it. He told us how he sacrificed a great deal to afford to sail and how after years of struggle, he qualified for a major sailing event. He told us how hard the race was and the deprivations he suffered during it. But he also told us how elated he was when he finished and achieved his life’s ambition. His closing message was, you should never be content with where you are and that you should stretch yourself to achieve new goals, do new things, and go to new places. But...

One of my colleagues turned to me and said “did he just tell us to leave the company and go somewhere else?” I said that he’d just told us we could do better elsewhere. Both of us left the company within six months to get better jobs.

Let’s turn to more positive speakers.

I had the great fortune to hear Mark Cuban and Adam Savage (from Mythbusters) speak at a company event for customers. They didn’t say anything that supported the company’s values but they didn’t say anything to contradict them either - they talked about their own subjects, Mark Cuban spoke about innovation and management and Adam Savage spoke about Mythbusters and what happened on set. It was great to hear them speak and great to get some insight into who they are. I left the event with a good feeling about the company - I was happy I’d had this experience and felt gratitude to my employer for providing it for me.

Recently, I heard a speaker talk about how their family had built a clothing company chain of stores around exemplary customer service. Their stores are extremely high-end, serving CEOs and others at the top of their professions. He told stories of associates driving to customer’s houses to deliver items, of clothing shipped out overnight across America so a CEO could give a TV interview looking his best, of tailoring services provided free to high-end customers to win their business. It was an awe-inspiring talk and fascinating to see how the family had consistently built their business. As you can tell, I loved the talk. I was fascinated by how well they’d aligned their tactical activities towards their strategic business goals; for me, it wasn’t about customer service, it was about aligning incentives and actions towards a clear end goal.

I’ve had the opportunity to think about the motivational speakers I’ve heard and the effect they’ve had on people. On the face of it, it seems like a great idea to bring in a compelling speaker, but as we’ve seen, it can go wrong. I recommend motivational speakers, but with qualifications.

• Listen to them speak and hear the entirety of their talk. Does it support your company values? Is there anything in the talk that might encourage behavior you don’t want (leaving people behind, encouraging people to quit)?
• Brief your speaker on your company values and ask them to avoid undermining them. Speakers can choose to focus on parts of their story, and they could choose the parts that support your values.
• Understand why you’re bringing in a speaker and the effect you want to have on your audience. Bringing in celebrities is fun and makes people feel good. Bringing in business people can make people think. Bringing in people who have a powerful story to tell can be moving. But what’s your goal?
• Reinforce the message by having an executive point out the pieces they want the audience to take away. Never leave it to the audience or the speaker to decide the takeaways.

How to be more persuasive when you speak: using ‘catchphrases’

One of the most famous speeches in history used ‘catchphrases’ for incredibly powerful effect; you’ll know the speech by its catchphrase alone. I’ve seen modern American politicians use the same rhetorical technique to heighten energy and to unify and drive home their message. You can use it in your speeches too; I’m going to show you how and why.

Like many rhetorical techniques, this one relies on the considered use of repetition. Specifically, it’s the repetition of a phrase or sentence throughout a speech as a kind of catchphrase.

Let me give you an example. Let’s say you’re an engineering leader and you’re trying to convince your team to take data security seriously. Using this technique, your speech might look something like this (catchphrase in bold).

If we lapse in securing our data, our company can be fined large amounts of money, putting our livelihoods at risk. By being secure, we prevent this from happening.

Security is our security.

If we have a data breach, our reputation will be sullied and it’ll be harder for us to win new business, with all that entails.

Security is our security,

Companies have suffered data breaches of employee data too, putting social security numbers and other personal information out on the web for the highest bidder.

Security is our security,

Speakers use this approach to draw the audience’s attention to a key theme again and again and again, they use it to unify and focus a speech. It drives the point home in a forceful, but elegant way.

My real example is by an influential African-American Christian preacher. He repeats one of the most famous lines in rhetoric as a catchphrase again and again. You’ll know it as soon as you hear it – in fact, you already know the words. Here's the YouTube link to the appropriate section.

(Image credit: WikiMedia Commons, open-source)

Here’s part of his speech, the catchphrase is in bold.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

Martin Luther King repeats ‘I have a dream’ to bring the listener back to his point and to reinforce his message. ‘I have a dream – paragraph – ‘I have a dream’ – paragraph – ‘I have a dream’ - paragraph. He unifies his speech and drives home his point. (King’s speech is rhetorically interesting in other ways too; he uses a wide variety of techniques to make his points.)

I’ve done my homework on rhetoric and searched for this method in the books on techniques from antiquity. As far as I can tell, this technique is known as epimone. It's not one of the famous techniques and I think it's very underrated.

It seems to be used a lot in African-American Christian preaching and has spread to American politics from there. (As an aside, I've looked for resources on the analysis of rhetorical techniques used in African-American churches, but I've not been able to find any good ones. If anyone knows of some good analysis, please let me know.) I've heard a well-known American politician use it and I suspect we'll be hearing it more as we head into election season. Bear in mind that politicians use techniques like this deliberately because they know they work.

Here’s my recommendation for using this technique; if you’re trying to persuade or emotionally influence an audience, use it to hammer home your message and provide a simple unifying concept for people to take to heart.

Reading more

This blog post is one in a series of posts on practical rhetoric. Here's the series:

• Presentation advice from a professional comedian
• How to be a compelling speaker: creating applause and tricolon
• Being more persuasive in speech: anaphora

How to be a compelling speaker: creating applause and tricolon

You can learn how to be a compelling speaker and, with practice, you can learn how to trigger an audience to applaud when you make your points. The techniques to grip an audience were known in antiquity and speakers have used them throughout history to great effect to further their interests. You too can learn these techniques and apply them in your talks.

In this blog post, I'm going to focus on one very powerful technique: tricolon. This is my absolute favorite of all the rhetorical devices. It’s almost magical how well it works; in fact, it’s closely related to something called an applause trigger that I’ll come to later. Tricolon has been used by almost all the major political orators of the last 50 years as we’ll see.

At its simplest, tricolon is a three-part list. Here’s an example:

Government of the people, by the people, for the people.
-Abraham Lincoln

(Image credit: WikiMedia Commons. Public domain.)

Tricolon is literally just a list of three phrases with similar grammatical and word structure. Here’s another example:

We can help all peoples to see it, to draw hope from it, and to move irresistibly toward it.
-John F Kennedy

Putting your points in a list of three seems to elevate your argument and make it much more memorable. Three-part lists are everywhere for a reason. In western cultures, three seems to have a magnetic effect – for example, we give gold, silver and bronze medals; we say snap, crackle, and pop; and we learn of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In fact, tricolon is so powerful, sometimes speakers even add ideas to lists to make three-part lists, or chop down lists of four to three.

Orators have figured out that by using three-part lists (tricolon) and managing their voice and gestures, they can sometimes trigger an audience to applaud. That’s what’s called an applause trigger. There are a handful of rhetorical techniques known to be applause triggers including tricolon, puzzle-solution, and two-part contrasts [Atkinson, Heritage]. It’s extremely hard to pull off an applause trigger and not every tricolon can work as a trigger, but the method can be taught. 

A few years ago, I was at a talk on analytics and the topic turned to Microsoft PowerPoint. The speaker introduced his speech coach to make a point. The point was anodyne, but the speaker phrased it as a tricolon, He increased the intensity of his voice to reach a crescendo on the last of his three points and the audience burst into a strong round of applause as soon as he made his last point. I knew of this technique at the time and I spotted what he was doing as he was doing it; it was really impressive to see him deliver his lines and get the applause he was looking for. Stop for a minute and think about this, a speaker got a strong round of applause by talking about PowerPoint. Do you think you could be trained to do something similar?

I know my audience for these blog posts is well-educated, intelligent, and perceptive. I’m sure you’re thinking, ‘how could something so straightforward and so simple and so easy work so well’? Because your doubt is valid, we’re going to do an exercise.

Barack Obama’s speech to the 2004 Democratic National Convention ignited his presidential campaign. In the extract below, I’ve outlined the tricolon and you can listen to the audience's response. Watch the YouTube video and read the extract below - I've structured the text to highlight the tricolon.

When we send our young men and women into harm's way, we have a solemn obligation 

1. not to fudge the numbers or shade the truth about why they're going, 
2. to care for their families while they're gone, 
3. to tend to the soldiers upon their return, 

and to never ever go to war without enough troops to 

1. win the war, 
2. secure the peace, 
3. and earn the respect of the world.

Listen to how Obama uses his voice as he goes through his tricolons. He manages to build up the audience reaction so they applaud at the end of his list. He clearly signals to the audience when it's time to applaud by his use of tricolon and his voice.

Of course, Barack Obama used this speech to propel him from senator, to candidate, to President.

My final example is, in my view, one of the finest political orators of the twentieth century. She didn’t get this good by accident, she was intensively trained and coached – which is an interesting story all by itself. The speaker is Margaret Thatcher. The occasion is her party conference in 1980. Let’s hear a brief burst of her using tricolon (1:34 on the audio on this page).

This week has demonstrated that we are a party united in 

1. purpose, 
2. strategy 
3. and resolve

And later on (27:24):

Soviet Marxism is 

1. ideologically, 
2. politically 
3. and morally bankrupt. 

If you have time, I recommend you listen to some of Margaret Thatcher's speeches regardless of whether you agree or disagree wither her politics. She was a master of rhetorical set pieces and she knew how to use tricolon and other techniques to trigger applause.

It's very hard to deliver a tricolon in a way that triggers applause, but even if you don't use it that way, it's still very much worth your while using it. It makes your arguments sound much more compelling.

In your writing and presentations, you can use tricolon to link ideas together and build an argument. For example, if I were the CEO giving a speech to rally the company, my theme might be the need to perform better than the competition.  I could just say:

The competition exists to take our market from us, we need to perform better than them.

Or I could say:

The competition exists to take our market from us, 

1. we need to out-innovate them, 
2. we need to out-deliver them, 
3. and we need to out-sell them.

Which sounds better to you?

References

[Atkinson] "Our Masters' Voices: The Language and Body-language of Politics", Max Atkinson, 1984

[Heritage et al] "Generating Applause A study of Rhetoric and Response at Party Political Conferences", http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/heritage/Site/Publications_files/APPLAUSE.pdf

Reading more

This blog post is one in a series of posts on practical rhetoric. Here's the series:

• Presentation advice from a professional comedian
• How to be more persuasive when you speak: using 'catchphrases'
• Being more persuasive in speech: anaphora

Presentation advice from a professional comedian

In 2019, I heard a piece of presentation advice I'd never heard before. It shook me out of my complacency and made me rethink some key and overlooked aspects of giving a talk. Here's the advice:

"You should have established your persona before you get to the microphone."

There's a lot in this one line. I'm going to explore what it means and its consequences for anyone giving a talk.

(Me, not a professional comedian, speaking at an event in London. Image credit: staff photographer at Drapers.)

Your stage persona is who you are to the audience. People have expectations for how a CEO will behave on stage, how a comedian will behave, and how a developer will behave, etc. For example, let's say you're giving a talk on a serious business issue (e.g. bankruptcy and fraud) to a serious group (lawyers and CEOs), then you should also be serious. You can undermine your message and credibility by straying too far from what people expect.

One of the big mistakes I've seen people make is forgetting the audience doesn't know them. You might be the funniest person in your company, or considered as the most insightful, or the best analyst, but your stage audience doesn't know that; all they know about you is what you tell them. You have to communicate who you are to your audience quickly and consistently; you have to bend to their expectations. This is a lesson performers have learned very well, and comedians are particularly skilled at it.

If they think about their stage persona at all, most speakers think about what they say and how they say it. For example, someone giving a serious talk might dial back the jokes, a CEO rallying the troops might use rhetorical techniques to trigger applause, and a sales manager giving end-of-year awards might use jokes and funny anecdotes. But there are other aspects to your stage persona. 

Let's go back to the advice: "you should have established your persona before you get to the microphone". In the short walk to the microphone, how might you establish who you are to the audience? As I see it, there are three areas: how you look, how you move, and how you interact with the audience.

How you look includes your shoes and clothing and your general appearance (including your haircut). Audiences make an immediate judgment of you based on what you're wearing. If I'm speaking to a business audience, I'll wear a suit. If I'm talking to developers, I'll wear chinos and a shirt (never a t-shirt). Shoes are often overlooked, but they're important; you can undermine an otherwise good choice of outfit by a poor choice of shoes (usually, wearing cheap shoes). Unless you're going for comic effect, your clothes should fit you well. Whatever your outfit and appearance, you need to be comfortable with it. I've seen men in suits give talks where they're clearly uncomfortable with a suit and tie. Being obviously uncomfortable undermines the point of dressing up - to be blunt, you look like a boy in a man's clothes.

How you move is a more advanced topic. You can stride confidently to the microphone, or walk normally, or walk timidly with your head down. If you're stressed and tensed, an audience will see it in how you move. By contrast, more fluid movements indicate that you're relaxed and in control. What you do with your hands also conveys a message. Audiences can see if you have a death grip on your notes or if you're using your hands to acknowledge applause. Think about the stage persona you want to create and think about how that person moves to the microphone. For example, if you're a newly appointed CEO, you might want to establish comfortable authority, which you might try and do by the way you walk, what you do with your hands and how you face the audience.

The moment the audience first sees you is where communication between you and the audience begins. How and when you look at an audience sends a message to them. For example, your gaze acknowledges you've seen your audience and that you're with them. Your facial expression tells the audience how you're feeling inside - a comfortable smile communicates one message, a blank expression communicates something else, and a scowl warns the audience the talk might be uncomfortable. You can also use your body to acknowledge applause, telling them that you hear them, which is an obvious piece of non-verbal communication between you and your audience.

In short: think about the seconds before you begin talking. How might you communicate who and what you are without saying a single word?

Where did I hear this advice? I've been listening to a great podcast, 'The Comedian's Comedian' by Stuart Goldsmith, a UK comic. Stuart interviews comics about the art and business of comedy. In one podcast, a comedian told the story of advice he'd received early in his career. The comedian was saying that after five years of performing, he'd managed to establish his stage persona within a minute or so of speaking. The advice he got was: "You should have established your persona before you get to the microphone."

A good presentation is a subtle dialog between the presenter and the audience. The speaker does or says something and the audience responds (or doesn't). Comedians are the purest example of this, they respond in the moment to the audience and they live or die by the interaction. If communicating your message to your audience is important to you, you have to interact with them - including the moments before you begin speaking. Ultimately, all presentations are performance art.