Charismatic communication demands a transaction between speaker and
listeners, and, as with most forms of fair-trading, customer satisfaction
is predicated on exchanging things of equal value. For example, in
exchange for a piece of electronic equipment at your local electrical
store, you hand over its alleged value in dollars. In effect, the salesman
buys your money with the piece of equipment.
Similar dynamics apply when you seek to buy people's commitment to your
proposals or ideas. So, what currency do you need to use to purchase
attention and a fair hearing from your audience? The currency comes in
three denominations:
1. Discovery 2. Groundwork 3. Dialogue
You can choose to spend a reasonable amount of time in discovery mode.
It's part of a process of learning about the people you intend to
influence. It enables you to gain an insight into their personal
worldviews, and the information you gather enables you to respect fully
their models of the world and talk their particular dialect.
Groundwork is also a key element, as it represents the preparation
phase, of involving others in discussion and debate on the desirability
and value of your position and ideas. It enables you to respond with
feedback and engage in a mutual search for alternatives. It also provides
you with the opportunity to informally test ideas on potential adversaries
and modify your approach as you go along.
You can test, revise, hone, and polish your message before you arrive
at a final product that incorporates the key needs of your target group.
There are many benefits in accommodating other people's concerns, ideas
and solutions into your final strategy or proposal. Your groundwork phase
can often save you from embarrassing and sometimes perilous consequences.
Dialogue is the art of talking with people rather than talking at them
or pretending to consult. It can occur during every stage of the
communication process. Formal dialogue, as in a presentation or proposal,
best occurs at the stage when you are certain of winning assent and
support.
Open dialogue encourages commitment and motivation. It alerts you to
the emotional temperature of your audience or group and avoids having an
idea or strategy stall through covert opposition and resistance at every
turn.
GROUNDWORK AND DISCOVERY
It may not always be possible to know the individual needs, values, or
beliefs of larger audiences. So, some communications, presentations, and
speeches are necessarily "catch-all" affairs where you may use other
powers of persuasion to draw listeners into shared space to discuss the
merits of your ideas. Size of crowd, media speeches and interviews,
diversity of the congregation, and other factors, sometimes make it
difficult to gain an accurate measure of your audience. Never the less, it
would be foolhardy to deliver a presentation to a group of people about
whom you knew nothing.
Consider extolling the virtues of Australian beef to a group of Vegans,
advocating Judaism to a gathering of Shiite fundamentalists, or telling
Irish jokes at a Celtic Club. The point is that if you want your listeners
to like and trust you, you must tailor your message to the people you're
seeking to persuade.
Even rudimentary knowledge about your audience is better than none.
But, the more information you have about your listeners, the better you
will be able to communicate your message using their language register.
After all, if a small or large group comes together to listen to you, it
must, by definition, have something in common.
When you align your content with the audience's belief and value
structures, you send the signal "We are of the same mind". High-order
'sameness' is one of the most important factors determining whether your
presentation will win the day or fall on deaf ears. The more your audience
views you and itself as being of one mind, the more receptive it will be
to your ideas and proposals.
People make rapid, unconscious calculations on the degree of
one-mindedness they share with others, based on finding answers to the
following questions:
· Does the speaker/leader think like I do, or think like I want to
think, and have a similar attitude and approach?
· Does the speaker/leader share and reflect my core beliefs and values?
· Does s/he share my traditions: roots, culture, education and
background?
Approach, attitude, beliefs, and values are significant elements people
apply in determining one-mindedness. In important situations when much is
riding on the success of your presentation, it would be folly to misalign
or mismatch the beliefs and values of your audience.
There are two principle ways to discover and mirror the beliefs and
values of your audience or target group.
1. research and/or elicit them
2. mirror universal values and virtues
In researching the values and beliefs of your audience, speak to the
client group before the presentation and ask questions along the lines of
"What are the things that are important to you in bringing this product to
market?" or "Why is it important to you to be seen as an independent
operator?" The key part of your questions should be what, why, or how, is
something important. If you listen closely to the responses, you will hear
words that represent values, beliefs, and deeply held attitudes. Ask
questions about:
SET ONE
1. where people stand on particular issues - their values and beliefs?
2. what are the interesting aspects of particular corporate cultures?
3. where is the group focus at the moment?
4. what the primary needs are of the group - what does the group
absolutely have to have in order to feel satisfied and fulfilled?
5. what particular challenges or special circumstance confront the
group at the moment?
6. What does the group need to have in order to achieve its goals?
If you have been invited to speak to larger groups make a point of
finding out as much as you can about the composition of your audience.
Gathering the following types of information:
SET TWO
1. What are the basic demographics of the group: age range, gender,
positional rank, social background, educational level, etc.?
2. What are the expectations of the audience? What do they expect of
you and how has your presentation or speech been promoted?
3. Ask about attitudes, schools of thought, or general political
persuasions. A group of liberal lawyers will require a different approach
than a group of CBD accountants.
4. Discover as much as you can about the group or organization that has
invited you to speak. What is its history, what are its aims and
objectives and what is its main thrust at the moment?
5. Find out if there are any specific issues the group is lobbying for
or on which they have taken a strong position
6. Who are the group's patrons and senior membership?
Once you have created a map of the nature of your audience, you have an
excellent starting point around which to structure the content of your
presentation or influence strategy.
Inclusion and consensus-building are vital in gaining attributions of
charisma and developing followers. Followers in the workplace are people
who subscribe to your vision; who will invest energy, patience, trust,
emotion and dedication in you and your goals. Emotional attachment to your
vision and supporting values is essential if you want people to work as a
team towards the missions you establish.
Charisma and influence are the result of quid pro quo's. In discovering
the values and needs of your stakeholders, your part of the bargain is to
do unto them as they would be done unto. You do unto "them" by
establishing congruence between their needs and aspirations and your
mission; by finding ways to share high-order values; by respecting
individual differences you encounter, and linking beliefs and interests
with your activities and goals. Your stakeholders' response will be
greater emotional and motivational arousal, higher self-esteem, more
cohesion and greater confidence in you.
DIALOGUE
Successful dialogue meets four fundamental tenets of effective
communication:
1) credibility
2) emotional affiliation
3) 'live' evidence
4) common ground and shared benefits
The first issue you can choose to reflect deeply on when seeking to get
people on board is that of credibility. Your own standing with
individuals, groups, and audiences marks the initial barrier to be
overcome.
Credibility is paradoxically both durable and fragile. It requires
constant nurturing during the dialogue phase, particularly in the
workplace. Once earned and maintained it can usually withstand the
occasional expression of human frailty.
Many leaders, managers, and public figures imagine they enjoy greater
credibility than they actually do. They often assume that position and
authority is all that's required in shifting opinion, motivating people,
and getting others to do what they want.
As any reputable leadership tome will tell you, the 'Pharaoh' era of
getting results or attitude change through naked power and proclamation is
long dead. And yet, the corporate world and public life are teeming with
latter day Tut's and Cleo's who imagine they can shape people's opinions
and behaviors with a wave of their royal scepters and threats of public
executions.
Today, authority and credibility do not come with the leadership
territory. The trend in most of the western world over the last three
decades is that of distrust towards, and challenge of, authority. If you
want people to follow your wishes in the twenty-first century, you may
like to choose the leadership tools and language of today in place of the
quaint relics of the past. Credibility maintenance at close quarters, such
as the workplace or within smaller groups where contact is ongoing, is in
essence no different to that of public credibility. It is earned from two
principal sources.
Firstly, if you have established a reputation of competency or
knowledge in a particular field, your colleagues or listeners will
generally endow you with an appropriate degree of credibility within that
specialist field.
Looking the part and mirroring sameness are also important factors in
establishing credibility. But, an essential element in both workplace and
public credibility is continuous maintenance. Personal credibility is a
quality that must be ceaselessly affirmed.
Secondly, if you have demonstrated over time that you can be trusted to
serve mutual interests over personal interests, your personal credibility
will be higher. If you're generally considered to be a person who doesn't
close the door on your morality and ethics when you leave home for work,
you will have a significant persuasion advantage.
Professional ability and work-based relationships are key factors in
credibility in the workplace, whereas appearance and demonstrations of
expertise are important to public credibility. In mapping out a workplace
or public persuasion plan, the issues of professional expertise and
personal relationships form a critical part of any strategy.
You would be well advised to evaluate your ratings in both categories
prior to embarking on any major persuasion undertaking. The questions you
need to answer as objectively as you can are as follows:
Professional Expertise:
1) What are my target audience's perceptions about my knowledge and
track record in the area in which I will seek to influence them?
2) Is my expertise acknowledged and accepted?
3) What other sources of knowledge and expertise can I reference and
apply to enhance the credibility of my proposal, strategy, idea, etc.?
4) Who else can I recruit to enrich the credibility of my idea,
project, etc.?
Personal Relationships:
1) Does my target audience trust me? Have I shown trustworthiness over
time?
2) Do those I'm seeking to persuade view me as someone who shares kudos
with them?
3) Do they view me as one of them and one who listens to them?
4) Am I in political accord with the group on this issue?
5) Am I in tune with them intellectually and emotionally
Workplace persuasion often goes awry when inexperienced managers seek
to use the force of their position to effect change without attending to
the above elements. Public and work-based credibility can be monitored and
managed, and is the end result of what you are, what you say, and what you
do.
If you desire to be a person of high credibility in the eyes of others,
you can choose to conform your words and deeds to templates of
trustworthiness embraced by your target audience.
Future articles in this series will explore 'live evidence'. See
previous articles for developing emotional affiliation with audiences.
About the Author
Author of three books on charisma, impression management and influence.
'The Charisma Effect' has been published in seven languages. Author
advises politicians, CEOs and media performers on imagistics, profile
building and media savvy. Can be contacted at Mondodec@tpg.com.au
