The Content of Your Talk
THE FOUR MAJOR GOALS OF EVERY SPEECH
Every talk, regardless of whether the speaker realizes it or not, has one of four major goals. What are they?
• To make something clear.
• To impress and convince.
• To get action.
• To entertain.
Know your goal. Choose it wisely before you set out to prepare your talk. Know how to reach it. Then set about it, doing it skillfully and with science.
HOW TO MAKE YOUR MEANING CLEAR
USE COMPARISONS TO PROMOTE CLEARNESS
As to clearness: do not underestimate the importance of it nor the difficulty. When the disciples asked Christ why He taught the public by parables, He answered: “Because they seeing, see not: and hearing, hear not; neither do they understand.”
And when you talk on a subject strange to your hearer or hearers, can you hope that they will understand you any more readily than people understood the Master?
Hardly. So what can we do about it? What did He do when confronted by a similar situation? Solved it in the most simple and natural manner imaginable: described the things people did not know by likening them to things they did know. The kingdom of Heaven … what would it be like? How could those untutored peasants of Palestine know? So Christ described it in terms of objects and actions with which they were already familiar:
“The kingdom of Heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.”
“Again, the kingdom of Heaven is like unto a merchant-man seeking goodly pearls….”
“Again, the kingdom of Heaven is like unto a net that was cast into the sea….”
That was lucid; they could understand that. The housewives in the audience were using leaven every week; the fishermen were casting their nets into the sea daily; the merchants were dealing in pearls.
And how did David make clear the watchfulness and loving kindness of Jehovah?
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, He leadeth me beside the still waters.”
Green grazing grounds in that almost barren country … still waters where the sheep could drink—those pastoral people could understand that.
Sir Oliver Lodge happily uses this method when explaining the size and nature of atoms to a popular audience. I heard him tell a European audience that there were as many atoms in a drop of water as there were drops of water in the Mediterranean Sea; and many of his hearers had spent over a week sailing from Gibraltar to the Suez Canal. To bring the matter still closer home, he said there were as many atoms in one drop of water as there were blades of grass on all the earth.
Use this principle henceforth in your talks. If you are describing the great pyramid, first tell your hearers it is 451 feet, then tell them how high that is in terms of some building they see every day. Tell how many city blocks the base would cover. Don’t speak about so many thousand gallons of this or so many hundred thousand barrels of that without also telling how many rooms the size of the one you are speaking in could be filled with that much liquid.
Instead of saying twenty feet high, why not say one and a half times as high as this ceiling? Instead of talking about distance in terms of rods or miles, is it not clearer to say as far as from here to the union station, or to such and such a street?
AVOID TECHNICAL TERMS
If you belong to a profession the work of which is technical—if you are a lawyer, a physician, an engineer, or are in a highly specialized line of business—be doubly careful when you talk to outsiders, to express yourself in plain terms and to give necessary details.
I say be doubly careful, for, as a part of my professional duties, I have listened to hundreds of speeches that failed right at this point and failed woefully. The speakers appeared totally unconscious of the general public’s widespread and profound ignorance regarding their particular specialties. So what happened? They rambled on and on, uttering thoughts, using phrases that fitted into their experience and were instantly and continuously meaningful to them; but to the uninitiated, they were about as clear as the Missouri River after the June rains have fallen on the newly-plowed corn fields of Iowa and Kansas.
What should such a speaker do? He ought to read and heed the following advice from the facile pen of Ex-Senator Beveridge of Indiana:
“It is a good practice to pick out the least intelligent looking person in the audience and strive to make that person interested in your argument. This can be done only by lucid statement of fact and clear reasoning. An even better method is to center your talk on some small boy or girl present with parents.
“Say to yourself—say out loud to your audience, if you like—that you will try to be so plain that the child will understand and remember your explanation of the question discussed, and after the meeting be able to tell what you have said.”
An all too common reason why men fail to be intelligible is this: the thing they wish to express is not clear even to themselves. Hazy impressions! Indistinct, vague ideas! The result? Their minds work no better in a mental fog than a camera does in a physical fog.
APPEAL TO THE SENSE OF SIGHT
The nerves that lead from the eye to the brain are many times larger than those leading from the ear; and science tells us that we give twenty-five times as much attention to eye suggestions as we do to ear suggestions.
“One seeing,” says an old Japanese proverb, “is better than a hundred times telling about.” So, if you wish to be clear, picture your points, visualize your ideas. Not every subject or occasion, of course, lends itself to exhibits and drawings; but let us use them when we can. They attract attention, stimulate interest and often make our meaning doubly clear.
Make your eye appeals definite and specific. Paint mental pictures that stand out as sharp and clear as a stag’s horn silhouetted against the setting sun. For example, the word “dog” calls up a more or less definite picture of such an animal—perhaps a cocker spaniel, a Scotch terrier, a St. Bernard, or a Pomeranian. Notice how much more distinct an image springs into your mind when I say “bulldog”—the term is less inclusive. Doesn’t “a brindle bulldog” call up a still more explicit picture? Is it not more vivid to say “a black Shetland pony” than to talk of “a horse”? Doesn’t “a white bantam rooster with a broken leg” give a much more definite and sharp picture than merely the word “fowl”?
RESTATE YOUR IMPORTANT IDEAS IN DIFFERENT WORDS
Napoleon declared repetition to be the only serious principle of rhetoric. He knew that because an idea was clear to him was not always proof that others instantly grasped it. He knew that it takes time to comprehend new ideas, that the mind must be kept focused on them. In short, he knew they must be repeated. Not in exactly the same language. People will rebel at that, and rightly so. But if the repetition is couched in fresh phraseology, if it is varied, your hearers will never regard it as repetition at all.
USE GENERAL ILLUSTRATIONS AND SPECIFIC INSTANCES
One of the surest and easiest ways to make your points clear is to follow them with general illustrations and concrete cases. What is the difference between the two? One, as the term implies, is general; the other, specific.
Let us illustrate the difference between them and the uses of each with a concrete example. Suppose we take the statement: “There are professional men and women who earn astonishingly large incomes.”
Is that statement very clear? Have you a clear-cut idea of what the speaker really means? No, and the speaker himself cannot be sure of what such an assertion will call up in the minds of others. The statement, as it stands, is entirely too vague and loose. It needs to be tightened. A few illuminating details ought to be given to indicate what professions the speaker refers to and what he means by “astonishingly large.”
“There are lawyers, prize fighters, song writers, novelists, playwrights, painters, actors and singers who make more than the President of the United States.”
Now, hasn’t one a much clearer idea of what the speaker meant? However, he has not individualized. He has used general illustrations, not specific instances. He has said “singers,” not names of specific singers.
So the statement is still more or less vague. We cannot call up concrete cases to illustrate it. Should not the speaker do it for us? Would he not be clearer if he employed specific examples?
Be concrete. Be definite. Be specific. This quality of definiteness not only makes for clearness but for impressiveness and conviction and interest also.
DO NOT EMULATE THE MOUNTAIN GOAT
I recently heard a speaker, who was limited by a stopwatch to three minutes; begin by saying that he wanted to call our attention to eleven points. Sixteen and a half seconds to each phase of his subject! Seems incredible, doesn’t it, that an intelligent man should attempt anything so manifestly absurd. True, I am quoting an extreme case; but the tendency to err in that fashion, if not to that degree, handicaps almost every novice. He is like a Cook’s guide who shows Paris to the tourist in one day. It can be done, just as one can walk through the American Museum of Natural History in thirty minutes. But neither clearness nor enjoyment results.
Many a talk fails to be clear because the speaker seems intent upon establishing a world’s record for ground covered in the allotted time. He leaps from one point to another with the swiftness and agility of a mountain goat.
HOW TO BE IMPRESSIVE AND CONVINCING
Aristotle taught that man was a reasoning animal—that he acted according to the dictates of logic. He flattered us. Acts of pure reasoning are as rare as romantic thoughts before breakfast. Most of our actions are the result of suggestion.
Suggestion is getting the mind to accept an idea without offering any proof or demonstration. If I say to you, “Royal Baking Powder is absolutely pure,” and do not attempt to prove it, I am using suggestion. If I present an analysis of the product and the testimony of well-known chefs regarding it, I am trying to prove my assertion.
Those who are most successful in handling others rely more upon suggestion than upon argument. Salesmanship and modern advertising are based chiefly on suggestion.
It is easy to believe; doubting is more difficult. Experience and knowledge and thinking are necessary before we can doubt and question intelligently. Tell a child that Santa Claus comes down the chimney and the child will accept your statements until they acquire sufficient knowledge to cause them to demur. Yet you and I, if we examine the facts closely, will discover that the majority of our opinions, our most cherished beliefs, our creeds, the principles of conduct on which many of us base our very lives, are the result of suggestion, rather than reasoning.
Not only does every idea that enters the mind tend to be accepted as true; but it is a well-known psychological fact that it also tends to pass into action. For example, you cannot even think of a letter of the alphabet without moving ever so slightly the muscles used in pronouncing it. You cannot think of swallowing without moving ever so slightly the muscles used in that act. The movement may be imperceptible to you; but there are machines delicate enough to register that muscular reaction. The only reason that you do not do everything you think of is because another idea—the uselessness of it, the expense, the trouble, the absurdity, the danger or some such thought—arises to slay the impulse.
OUR MAIN PROBLEM
So in the last analysis, our problem of getting people to accept our beliefs or to act upon our suggestions, is just this: to plant the idea in their minds and to keep contradictory and opposing ideas from arising. He who is skilled in doing that will have power in speaking and profit in business.
HELPS PSYCHOLOGY HAS TO OFFER
Has psychology any suggestions that will prove helpful to you in this connection? Emphatically, yes. Let us see what they are. First, haven’t you noticed that contradictory ideas are much less likely to arise in your mind when the main idea is presented with feeling and contagious enthusiasm? I say “contagious,” for enthusiasm is just that? It lulls the critical faculties. When your aim is impressiveness, remember it is more productive to stir emotions than to arouse thoughts. Feelings are more powerful than cold ideas. To arouse feelings one must be intensely in earnest. Insincerity rips the vitals out of delivery. Regardless of the pretty phrases a man may concoct; regardless of the illustrations he may assemble; regardless of the harmony of his voice, and the grace of his gestures: if he does not speak sincerely, these are hollow and glittering trappings. If you would impress an audience, be impressed yourself. Your spirit, ‘shining through your eyes, radiating through your voice, and proclaiming itself through your manner,’ will communicate itself to your auditors.
LIKEN WHAT YOU WISH PEOPLE TO ACCEPT TO SOMETHING THEY ALREADY BELIEVE
An atheist once declared to William Paley that there was no God, and he challenged the English rector to disprove his contention. Paley very quietly took out his watch, opened the case and showed the works to the unbeliever, saying: “If I were to tell you that those levers and wheels and springs made themselves and fitted themselves together and started running on their own account, wouldn’t you question my intelligence? Of course, you would. But look up at the stars. Every one of them has its perfect appointed course and motion—the earth and planets around the sun, and the whole group pitching along at more than a million miles a day. Each star is another sun with its own group of worlds, rushing on through space like our own solar system. Yet there are no collisions, no disturbance, no confusion. All quiet, efficient, and controlled. Is it easier to believe that they just happened or that someone made them so?”
Rather impressive, isn’t it? What technique did the speaker use? Let us see. He began on common ground, got his opponent saying “yes,” and agreeing with him at the outset, as we advised earlier. Then he went on to show that belief in a deity is as simple, as inevitable, as belief in a watchmaker.
Suppose he had retorted to his antagonist at the outset: “No God? Don’t be a silly ass. You don’t know what you are talking about.” What would have happened? Doubtlessly a verbal joust—a wordy war would have ensued, as futile as it was fiery. Why? Because, as Professor Robinson has pointed out, they were his opinions, and his precious, indispensable self-esteem would have been threatened; his pride would have been at stake.
Since pride is such a fundamentally explosive characteristic of human nature, wouldn’t it be the part of wisdom to get a man’s pride working for us, instead of against us? How? By showing, as Paley did, that the thing we propose is very similar to something that our opponent already believes. That renders it easier for him to accept than to reject your proposal. That prevents contradictory and opposing ideas from arising in the mind to vitiate what we have said.
Paley showed delicate appreciation of how the human mind functions. Most men, however, lack this subtle ability to enter the citadel of a man’s beliefs arm in arm with the owner. They erroneously imagine that in order to take the citadel, they must storm it, batter it down by a frontal attack. What happens? The moment hostilities commence, the drawbridge is lifted, the great gates are slammed and bolted, the mailed archers draw their long bows—the battle of words and wounds is on. Such frays always end in a draw; neither has convinced the other of anything.
WHAT RESTATEMENT WILL DO
Restatement is another club that we can use to prevent contradictory and dissenting ideas from arising to challenge our assertions. However, we ought to be warned that in the hands of an inexpert speaker, it may prove to be a dangerous tool. Unless he has a fairly rich phraseology, his restatement may deteriorate into an unadorned and all-too-evident repetition. That is deadly. If the audience catches you at that, they will begin twisting in their seats, looking at their watches.
GENERAL ILLUSTRATIONS AND SPECIFIC INSTANCES Used for the Purpose of Convincing
There is little danger, however, of boring people when you employ general illustrations and specific instances. Interesting, easy to pay attention to, they are extremely valuable not only in making your talk clear, as we mentioned before, but also when the purpose of your talk is to impress and convince. They help to keep contradictory ideas from rising.
People like to have a speaker give names and dates—something they can examine for themselves if they wish. That kind of procedure is frank, honest. It wins confidence. It impresses.
THE PRINCIPLE OF ACCUMULATION
Do not expect a hurried reference to one or possibly two specific instances to have the desired effect.
CALL IN AUTHORITY TO BACK YOU UP
As a boy in the Midwest, I used to amuse myself by holding a stick across a gateway that the sheep had to pass through. After the first few sheep had jumped over the stick, I took it away; but all the other sheep leaped through the gateway over an imaginary barrier. The only reason for their jumping was that those in front had jumped. The sheep is not the only animal with that tendency. Almost all of us are prone to do what others are doing, to believe what others believe, to accept, without question, the testimony of prominent people.
Their words impressed. Their influence tended to prevent opposing ideas from arising. However, in quoting authorities, bear these points in mind.
1. Be Definite.
Beware of beginning “statistics show …” What statistics? Who gathered them and why? Be careful. “Figures won’t lie, but liars will figure.”
The usual phrase—“many authorities declare”—is ridiculously vague. Who are the authorities? Name one or two. If you do not know who they are, how can you be sure of what they said? Be definite. It wins confidence. It demonstrates to the audience that you know whereof you speak.
2. Quote a Qualified Authority Your Audience Trusts.
Ask yourself such questions as these: Is this person generally recognized as an authority on this subject? Why? Is he a prejudiced witness? Has he any selfish ends to serve. But even more importantly, is this someone my audience views as a trusted authority? Our likes and dislikes have more to do with our beliefs than most of us would care to admit.
HOW TO INTEREST YOUR AUDIENCE
If you were invited to dine at the home of a rich man in certain sections of China, it would be proper to toss chicken bones and olive seeds over your shoulder onto the floor. You pay your host a compliment when you do that. You show that you realize that he is wealthy, that he has plenty of servants to tidy up after the meal. And he likes it.
You can be reckless with the remains of your sumptuous meal in a rich man’s home; but in some parts of China the poorer people must save even the water they bathe in. To heat water costs so much that they must buy it at a hot water shop. After they have bathed in it, they can take it back and sell it second hand to the shopkeeper from whom they purchased it. When the second customer has soiled it, the water still retains a market value, although the price has softened a bit.
Have you found these facts about Chinese life interesting? If so, do you know why? Because those are very unusual aspects of very usual things. They are strange truths about such commonplace events as dining out and bathing.
That is what interests us—something new about the old.
There lies one of the secrets of interesting people. That is a significant truth, one that we ought to profit by in our every day intercourse. The entirely new is not interesting; the entirely old has no attractiveness for us. We want to be told something new about the old.
THE THREE MOST INTERESTING THINGS IN THE WORLD
What would you say they are—the three most interesting subjects in the world? Sex, property, and religion. By the first we can create life, by the second we maintain it, by the third we hope to continue it in the world to come.
But it is our sex, our property, and our religion that interests us. Our interests swarm about our own egos.
Remember that the people you are to talk to spend most of their time when they are not concerned with the problems of business, in thinking about and justifying and glorifying themselves. Remember that the average man will be more concerned about the cook leaving than about Italy paying her debts to the United States. He will be more wrought up over a dull razor blade than over a revolution in South America. His own toothache will distress him more than an earthquake in Asia destroying half a million lives. He would rather listen to you say some nice thing about him than hear you discuss the ten greatest men in history.
HOW TO BE A GOOD CONVERSATIONALIST
The reason so many people are poor conversationalists is because they talk about only the things that interest them. That may be deadly boring to others. Reverse the process. Lead the other person into talking about her interests, his business, her golf score, his successor, if it is a parent, her children. Do that and listen intently and you will give pleasure; consequently you will be considered a good conversationalist—even though you have done very little of the talking.
THE KIND OF SPEECH MATERIAL THAT ALWAYS HOLDS ATTENTION
You may possibly bore people if you talk about things and ideas, but you can hardly fail to hold their attention when you talk about people. Tomorrow there will be millions of conversations floating over fences in the backyards of America, over tea tables and dinner tables—and what will be the predominating note in most of them? Personalities. He said this. Mrs. So-and-so did that. I saw her doing this, that and the other. He is making a “killing,” and so on.
The average speech would be far more appealing if it were rich and replete with human-interest stories. The speaker ought to attempt to make only a few points and to illustrate them with concrete cases. Such a method of speech building can hardly fail to get and hold attention.
If possible, these stories ought to tell of struggles, of things fought for and victories won. All of us are tremendously interested in fights and combats. There is an old saying that all the world loves a lover. It doesn’t. What the entire world loves is a scrap. It wants to see two lovers struggling for the hand of one woman. As an illustration of this fact, read almost any novel, magazine story, or go to see almost any film drama. When all the obstacles are removed and the reputed hero takes the so-called heroine in his arms, the audience begins reaching for their hats and coats. Five minutes later the sweeping women are gossiping over their broom handles.
Almost all magazine fiction is based on this formula. Make the reader like the hero or heroine. Make him or her long for something intensely. Make that something seem impossible to get. Show how the hero or heroine fights and gets it.
The story of how a man battled in business or profession against discouraging odds, and won, is always inspiring, always interesting. A magazine editor once told me that the real, inside story of any person’s life is entertaining. If one has struggled and fought—and who hasn’t?—his story, if correctly told, will appeal. There can be no doubt of that.
Even though we have already covered the importance of being definite and concrete in previous sections, this principle is so important that we are going to cover it again in this section to try to lodge it firmly in your mind. We hope you will never forget it, never neglect it.
Is it, for example, more interesting to state that Martin Luther, as a boy, was “stubborn and intractable,” or is it better to say that he confessed that his teachers had flogged him as often as “fifteen times in a forenoon”?
Words like “stubborn and intractable” have very little attention value. But isn’t it easy to listen to the flogging count?
The old method of writing a biography was to deal in a lot of generalities, which Aristotle called, and rightly called, “The refuge of weak minds.” The new method is to deal with concrete facts that speak for themselves. The old fashioned biographer said that John Doe was born of “poor but honest parents.” The new method would say that John Doe’s father couldn’t afford a pair of over-shoes, so when the snow came, he had to tie gunny sacking around his shoes to keep his feet dry and warm; but, in spite of his poverty, he never watered the milk and he never traded a horse with the heaves as a sound animal. That shows that his parents were “poor but honest,” doesn’t it? And doesn’t it do it in a way that is far more interesting than the “poor but honest” method? If this method works for modern biographers it will work also for modern speakers.
PICTURE-BUILDING WORDS
In this process of interest getting, there is one aid, one technique, that is of the highest importance; yet it is all but ignored. The average speaker does not seem to be aware of its existence. He has probably never consciously thought about it at all. I refer to the process of using words that create pictures. The speaker who is easy to listen to is the one who sets images floating before your eyes. The one who employs foggy, common-place, colorless symbols set the audience to nodding.
Pictures. Pictures. Pictures. They are as free as the air you breathe. Sprinkle them through your talks, your conversation; and you will be more entertaining, more influential.
Did you ever pause to observe that the proverbs that are passed on from generation to generation are almost all visual sayings? “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” “It never rains but it pours.” “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.” And you will find the same picture element in almost all the similes that have lived for centuries and grown hoary with too much use: “Sly as a fox.” “Dead as a door nail.” “Flat as a pancake.” “Hard as a rock.”
INTEREST IS CONTAGIOUS
We have been discussing so far the kind of material that interests an audience. However, one might mechanically follow all the suggestions made here and speak according to Cocker, and yet be vapid and dull. Catching and holding the interest of people is a delicate thing, a matter of feeling and spirit. It is not like operating a steam engine. No book of precise rules can be given for it.
Interest, be it remembered, is contagious. Your hearers are almost sure to catch it if you have a bad case of it yourself. A short time ago, a gentleman rose during a session of this course in Baltimore and warned his audience that if the present methods of catching rock fish in Chesapeake Bay were continued the species would become extinct. And in a very few years! He felt his subject. It was important. He was in real earnest about it. Everything about his matter and manner showed that. When he arose to speak, I did not know that there was such an animal as a rock fish in Chesapeake Bay. I imagine that most of the audience shared my lack of knowledge and lack of interest. But before the speaker finished, all of us had caught something of his concern. All of us would probably have been willing to have signed a petition to the legislature to protect the rock fish by law.
I recently went to hear a speaker in London: after he was through, one of our party, a well-known English novelist remarked that he enjoyed the last part of the talk far more than the first. When I asked him why, he replied: “The speaker himself seemed more interested in the last part, and I always rely on the speaker to supply the enthusiasm and interest.”
Everyone does. Remember that.
HOW TO GET ACTION
If you could have the power of any talent that you now possess doubled and trebled for the mere asking, which one would you select to have this mighty boon conferred upon? Wouldn’t you very likely designate your ability to influence others, to get action? That would mean additional power, additional profit, and additional pleasure.
Must this art—so essential to our success in life—remain forever a hit and miss affair with most of us? Must we blunder along depending upon our instinct, upon rule of thumb methods only? Or is there a more intelligent way to set about achieving it?
There is, and we shall discuss it at once—a method based on the rules of common sense, on the rules of human nature, your nature and mine, a method that the writer has frequently employed himself, a method that he has trained others to use successfully.
The first step in this method is to gain interested attention. Unless you do that, people will not listen closely to what you say. How to do this was dealt with at length above.
The second step is to gain the confidence of your hearers. Unless you do that, they will have no faith in what you say. And here is where many a speaker falls down. Here is where many an advertisement fails, many a business letter, many an employee, many a business enterprise. Here is where many an individual fails to make himself effective within his own human environment.
Win confidence by deserving it. The prime way to win confidence is to deserve it. I have noticed time without number that facile and witty speakers—if those are their chief qualities—are not nearly as effective as those who are less brilliant but more sincere.
Speak out of your own experience. The second way to gain the confidence of the audience is to speak discreetly out of your own experience. That helps immensely. If you give opinions, people may question them. If you relate hearsay or repeat what you have read, the thing may have a second-hand flavor. But what you yourself have gone through and lived through, that has a genuine ring, a tang of truth and veracity; and people like it. They believe it. They recognize you as the world’s leading authority on that particular topic.
As an illustration of the efficacy of this sort of thing, go to the newsstand and purchase a copy of any popular magazine today. You will find these packed with articles by men relating their own experiences.
Be properly introduced. Many a speaker fails to gain the attention of his audience immediately because he is not introduced properly.
An introduction—that term was fashioned from two Latin words, intro, to the inside, and ducere, to lead—ought to lead us to the inside of the topic sufficiently to make us want to hear it discussed. It ought to lead us to the inside facts regarding the speaker, facts that demonstrate his fitness for discussing this particular topic. In other words, an introduction ought to “sell” the topic to the audience and it ought to “sell” the speaker. And it ought to do these things in the briefest amount of time possible.
That is what it ought to do. But does it? Nine times out of ten—no—emphatically no. Most introductions are poor affairs—feeble and inexcusably inadequate.
And what are we going to do about it? With all due humility of soul and meekness of spirit, go to the chairman beforehand and ask him if he would like a few facts to use in his introduction. He will appreciate your suggestions. Then tell him the things you would like to have mentioned, the things that show why you are in a position to talk about this particular subject, the simple facts that the audience ought to know, the facts that will win you a hearing. Of course, after being told only once, the chairman is going to forget half of them and get the other half all mixed up; so it is a good plan to hand them to him, just a sentence or two, hoping that he will refresh his mind before he introduces you. But will he? Probably not. And that is that.
Earnestness. The power of it is incredible—especially with a popular audience. Very few people have the capacity for independent thought. It is as rare as the topaz of Ethiopia. But all of us have feelings and emotions, and all of us are influenced by the speaker’s feeling.
After you have won the audience’s interested attention and their confidence, the real work begins. The third step then is to state the facts, to
EDUCATE PEOPLE REGARDING THE MERITS OF YOUR PROPOSITION
This is the very heart of your talk, the meat. This is where you will need to devote most of your time. Now you will need to apply all you have learned in the section about Clearness, all you have learned in the section about Impressiveness and Conviction.
Here is where your preparation will count. Here is where the lack of it will rise up and mock you.
Here you are on the firing line. Here is where you need to know a score of times more about your topic than you can possibly use.
If you are addressing a business group on some proposal that affects them, you should not only educate them; but you should let them educate you. You should ascertain what is in their minds—otherwise you may be dealing with something entirely beside the point. Let them express their minds; answer their objections; then they will be in a more placid state to listen to you.
SETTING ONE DESIRE TO FIGHTING ANOTHER
The fourth step in this method is to appeal to the motives that make men act.
This earth and all things in it and on it and in the waters underneath it, are run, not haphazardly, but according to the immutable law of cause and effect.
Everything that ever has happened or ever will happen has been, or will be, the logical and inevitable effect of something that preceded it, the logical and inevitable cause of something that follows. This principle, like the laws of the Medes and Persians, changed not. It is as true of earthquakes and the honking of wild geese and jealousy and the price of baked beans, and the Kohinoor diamond, and the beautiful harbor in Sydney—it is as true of those things as it is of putting a nickel in a slot and getting a package of gum. When one recognizes this, he understands, once and for all, why superstition is unspeakably silly—for how can the unchangeable laws of nature be stopped or altered or affected in the slightest by thirteen people sitting at a table or because one breaks a mirror?
What causes every conscious and deliberate act we perform? By some desire. The only people to whom this does not apply are incarcerated in insane asylums. The things that actuate us are not many. We are ruled hour by hour, dominated day and night, by a surprisingly small number of longings.
All that means just this: if one knows what these motives are and can appeal to them with sufficient force, he will have extraordinary power. The wise speaker attempts to do precisely that. But the blunderer gropes his way blindly and to no purpose.
The man skilled in getting action sets one motive to war against another. This method is so sensible, so simple, and so utterly apparent that one might imagine that the use of it was all but universal. Far from it. One often sees exhibitions that make him inclined to suspect that the use of it is very rare.
To cite a concrete case: the writer recently attended a noonday luncheon club in a certain city. A golf party was being organized to play over the country club course of a neighboring city. Only a few members had put down their names. The president of the club was displeased; something he was behind was about to fall; his prestige was at stake. So he made what he imagined was an appeal for more members to go. His talk was woefully inadequate; he based his urge very largely on the fact that he wanted them to go. That was no appeal at all. He was not handling human nature skillfully; he was merely unloading his own feelings. Like the irate father with the cigarette-smoking son, he neglected entirely to talk in terms of the desires of his hearers.
What should he have done? He should have used a generous supply of common sense; he should have had a little quiet talk with himself before he spoke to the others; and he should have addressed himself somewhat in this fashion: “Why aren’t more of these men going on this golfing party? Some probably imagine they cannot spare the time; others may be thinking of the railway fare and various expenses. How can I overcome these objections? I will show them that recreation is not lost time, that grinds are not the most successful men, that one can do more in five days when he is fresh than he can in six when his batteries need recharging.
Of course, they know this already; but they need to be reminded of it. I will play up things that they ought to want more than they want to save the small expense connected with this party. I will show them that it is an investment in health and pleasure. I will stir their imaginations, make them see themselves out on the course, the west wind in their faces, the green sward under their feet, feeling sorry for those back in the hot city who live for nothing but money.”
Would such a procedure, in your opinion, have been more likely to succeed than the mere “I-want-you-to-go” appeal that the speaker used?
THE DESIRES THAT DETERMINE OUR ACTIONS
What, then, are these basic and human longings that should mold our conduct and make us behave like human beings? If an understanding of them and a playing upon them is so essential to our success, then out with them. Let us have the light upon them, let us examine and dissect and analyze them—and tell a few stories about them. That, you will agree, is the way to make them clear, the way to make them convincing, the way to engrave them deep upon the walls of your memory.
One of the very strongest of these motives is—what would you say? You are right: the desire for gain. That will be largely responsible for a few hundred million people getting out of bed tomorrow morning two or three hours earlier than they would otherwise arise without this spur. Is it necessary to discourse further upon the potency of this well-known urge?
And even stronger than the money motive is the desire for self-protection. All health appeals are based on that.
To make the appeal to this motive strong, make it personal. Don’t, for example, quote statistics to show that cancer is on the increase. No. Tic it right down to the people who are listening to you, e.g., “There are thirty people in this room. If all of you live to be forty-five, three of you, according to the law of medical averages, will die of cancer. I wonder if it will be you, or you, or you over there.”
As strong as the desire for money—in fact, in many people it is far stronger—is the wish to be thought well of, to be admired. In other words, pride. Pride with a capital P. Pride in italics. PRIDE in capital letters.
We are creatures of feeling, who long for comforts and pleasures. We drink coffee and wear silk socks and go to the theater and sleep on the bed instead of the floor, not because we have reasoned out that these things are good for us, but because they are pleasant. So show that the thing you propose will add to our comforts and increase our pleasures, and you have touched a powerful spring of action.
There is another powerful group of motives that influence us mightily. Shall we call them religious motives? I mean religious, not in the sense of orthodox worship or the tenets of any particular creed or sect. I mean rather that broad group of beautiful and eternal truths, of justice and forgiveness and mercy, serving others and loving our neighbors as ourselves.
No man likes to admit, even to himself, that he is not good and kind and magnanimous. So we love to be appealed to on these grounds. It implies a certain nobleness of soul. We take pride in that.
Such is the power of the appeal to the religious emotions and convictions.