OPN Speakers Bureau Orientation & Training

Week 2 Lesson

Plan Your Speech Strategy

After you have analyzed your audience, occasion, facility and speaking partners (see week 1’s lesson), you are ready to strategize about the best way to achieve results.

In reality, HOW you deliver your speech is at least as persuasive as WHAT you say. Even so, you need to know what you want to say before you can practice your delivery. So we’ll start by creating a plan this week; next week we’ll research for information that satisfies our plan. The following week, we’ll organize our ideas into an outline. Finally, we’ll polish our nonverbal delivery during week 5.

As a person who is task oriented, I sometimes forget that thinking IS work. But I’m teaching myself that quiet contemplation not only has many advantages, it also counts as time “on the clock.” So let’s do some thinking about speech strategy.

In this week’s lesson you’ll be thinking about strategies for:

· Responding to audience attitudes

· Defining your purpose

· Narrowing your topic

· Choosing your tentative main points

· Using persuasive tools

4Throughout this lesson you’ll find persuasive tips highlighted with italics.

After you’ve read this lesson, complete this week’s activity, which asks you to think about and plan your speech’s strategy.

Respond to Audience Attitudes

During your analysis of the speaking event, you were asked to think about your audience’s attitudes. Let’s review what we mean by attitude.

· An attitude is a tendency to judge something in a favorable or unfavorable way.

· Attitudes are learned, or conditioned, especially early in life.

· Attitudes persist over time.

· Attitudes influence how people act.

In a technical sense, attitudes are in between beliefs and values. Beliefs are narrow and are based on people’s perceptions about true and false. Values are the broadest; they are guiding principles that are learned early in life.

For example, if your audience believes commonly spouted “facts” such as: marijuana is the gateway drug, marijuana is more dangerous now than ever before, medical marijuana will “send the wrong message to kids”, then they will have an unfavorable attitude about MMJ. You might try to change their attitudes by changing their beliefs through re-education.

On the other hand, you might find an internal conflict between your audience’s values and attitudes. For example, you may know that your audience is basically compassionate, but they oppose MMJ. In this case, you could show how uncompassionate current policy is, because it harms sick and dying people.

Changing your audience’s attitudes is challenging, but possible. Your success depends on careful planning. As you think about your speech’s plan, consider using some or all of the following audience strategies.

ASSESS YOUR AUDIENCE’S ATTITUDES

Based on your analysis of the event, you may have determined that your audience would be favorable, unfavorable or neutral about your topic. I’ll use “neutral” to mean people who

· Have mixed feelings about the subject

· Don’t think the subject concerns them

· Don’t know much about the topic

CHOOSE YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE

In some cases, the audience will have some people who are favorable and others who are unfavorable. So you may be wondering, who should be targeted?

4Identify key decision makers and target your message to them.

Anyone who makes a good living in sales will tell you that connecting with the people who have decision-making power is time well spent. To apply that to your speech, you would want to discover who are the power players in your audience. For example, in a legislative hearing, the committee chair is powerful, and you may find others who hold a lot of sway.

If you are expecting much resistance to your speech goals, make sure you know who are your allies and who might oppose your message the most.

EMPHASIZE YOUR SIMILARITY TO THE AUDIENCE

There’s an old saying in the employment business that “Like tends to hire like.” Why do you suppose managers hire people who are similar to themselves? In some cases the answer is prejudice. In most cases, however, managers hire likeminded people because they share similar cultural values. So if I’m an assertive, task-oriented manager, I’m going to judge the person who shares those qualities as the best candidate.

This principle holds true when delivering a speech.

4“If there is a perceived similarity between the speaker and the listener, the audience is more likely to believe that the speaker was ‘talking sense’. This is the key to persuasive speaking, according to Kenneth Burke.” (Find out more at: http://stevefournier01.tripod.com/hist/hist-3.html)

As you plan your speech, you’ll want to emphasize things you have in common with your audience. For example, at a hearing you might plan to say: “We all want to make sure this medicine doesn’t get into the wrong hands.” At a meeting of nurses, you might emphasize: “Like you, we are most concerned about the well-being of patients.”

APPEAL TO YOUR AUDIENCE’S SELF INTEREST

We live in a me-oriented, individualistic society. Our culture teaches each of us to look after our own best interests. Likely, most of your audience holds this same value. So if you want people to act, show them how it’s in their own self interest.

4Put yourself in your audience’s shoes and answer “What’s in it for me?”

4As you plan your speech content, emphasize benefits that the audience will value.

If you want to keep your audience’s attention, talk to them about the benefits they will receive.

ANSWER YOUR AUDIENCE’S OBJECTIONS

Another great sales technique is to anticipate your audience’s objections and to address their concerns before they even have a chance to voice them. Likewise, when planning your speech material, you’ll want to address audience resistance and provide a solution.

Since you don’t want to over-emphasize objections, you should focus on overcoming them.

4Emphasize the solution to audience objections.

For example, if you identify that your audience is most concerned about medical marijuana (MMJ) potency, plan to include data from the Mississippi potency monitoring project in your speech.

If your audience is resistant to joining the OPN because they don’t have enough time, you could emphasize that the newsletter is only once a month.

Define Your Purpose for Speaking

Before you go much further in planning your speech, decide what you hope to achieve. Your analysis of the audience’s attitudes will guide this decision. Whether your goal is an endorsement, a yes vote, or a new member, your speech will be more successful if you have a clearly defined purpose.

GENERAL PURPOSES

Technically, there are two general purposes for speeches: informative and persuasive.

Informative speeches cover topics that the audience will accept without resistance. The audience is neutral or favorable, so they are likely to believe your “facts.” When you plan an informative speech, you’ll plan based on your analysis of what the audience does and doesn’t know about your subject.

You are persuading when you attempt to change the audience’s attitudes and/or behaviors. So when you are planning a persuasive speech, you’ll focus heavily on your analysis of the audience’s attitudes about you and your subject.

In reality, there is no clear line between informing and persuading. This is especially true with MMJ because so much misinformation has been spread as fact. While your goal may be to educate nurses, you may need to overcome resistance from your audience. If they’ve been exposed to the campaign of lies, then your information may not ring true to them.

SPECIFIC PERSUASIVE PURPOSES

In effect, almost all OPN speaking events will warrant a persuasive purpose, at least in part. So let’s look at two of the most common specific persuasive purposes.

Specific Purpose	Explanation	Best Use	Example
Convince	Attempt to change your audience’s attitudes	Neutral to mildly unfavorable audience	Convince state officials to think favorably about MMJ
Actuate	Guide the audience to act in a desirable way	Favorable to neutral audience	Recruit patients to sign up for OPN newsletter

Getting the opposition to act favorably will be hard unless you first convince them to change their attitudes. Luckily, you usually won’t be speaking alone, so you can work with your group to achieve both results. If you are speaking at a hearing, your group’s purpose could be “To convince these officials that MMJ is effective medicine and actuate them to vote yes on the bill.”

On the other hand, trying to convince a favorable audience that MMJ is good medicine is a waste of energy. Since they already believe this, you would want to focus on getting them to act. So your purpose should reflect this goal. For a speech at a rally, you could use a specific purpose such as: “To actuate my audience to sign up for OPNews.” You can then measure your results – at least in part – by the number of people who join.

Choose a goal that is as specific and measurable as possible. Sometimes, you may have more than one goal, such as “To inform my audience about my experience as a patient and actuate them to sign our petition.”

4Set a realistic goal for your speech.

4Make it easy for your audience to comply with your request.

If you want your audience to act, plan to tell them exactly what you want them to do. Plan on bringing any supplies (sign up sheets, endorsement forms, etc.) that might be needed.

Narrow Your Topic to Fit the Event

At about the same time that you are clarifying your purpose, you’ll need to define your topic. When speaking for the OPN speakers bureau, your subject will most likely be medical marijuana. But could you talk for hours, even days, about the subject? What exactly do you want to say about MMJ?

You’ll need to narrow down your topic to fit the speaking event. Give special attention to:

· What the event planners requested

· Expectations from the audience

· Your area of expertise

· Your time limits

Your topic should cover information that you know a lot about. Whether you are a patient, caregiver or health professional, stay within your area of expertise.

4Choose a topic that you know a lot about and have the most experience with.

Because most speaking events are on a schedule, time is a key issue. You should plan carefully so that your speech fits within the time limit (a little under is best). Start your time planning now. If you choose a topic that is too broad for the time limits, you’ll probably have to cut out material later. Save all that hard work by focusing your topic in the beginning.

For example, if event planners asked for 10-minute patient testimonies, then each of the speakers could focus their topic on their own conditions. Topics might include “how MMJ helps me fight AIDS wasting syndrome” or “managing chronic pain with MMJ.”

Choose Your Tentative Main Ideas

You need to have an idea of what you want to talk about before you research and organize your speech.

Once you know your topic and purpose, you can pencil in some main points you think you want to talk about. Don’t stress too much about the exact points, because after your research, you may change your mind.

Your main points should be broad categories, so only choose a few.

4For a ten-minute speech, three main points are ideal.

However, you could discuss two to five points. Seven is considered the maximum number if items that most people can remember. Even if you’re speaking for an hour, break your ideas into no more than seven main points.

For example, if a speaker chooses the “managing chronic pain” topic, s/he might select main points such as:

· Story about my accident

· All the medications I’ve tried

· How MMJ has benefited me

Even though your points are still tentative at this time, planning and sharing them with your fellow speakers will help your team strategy.

Plan to Use Persuasive Tools

Aristotle wrote his famous public speaking text, Rhetoric, over 2300 years ago, yet his words still hold true today. So without going into the Greek terminology, let’s borrow Aristotle’s persuasive tools: credibility, logic and emotion. How you balance these tools will depend on your audience.

CREDIBILITY

Speaker credibility means authority and respectability. It’s based not only on a speaker’s experience and reputation, but also on how well a speaker delivers the information. To maximize your credibility with an audience, it helps to dress and act like them.

4The more credible your audience perceives you to be, the more they will be swayed by your speech.

The credibility of your speech is also enhanced when you choose sources that your audience respects. The audience at a MMJ rally will most likely believe a MPP or NORML study; however, most other audiences require more “impartial” sources.

Plan to clarify your credibility with all audiences. Maximize your credibility by picking a topic you know a lot about. Unless you are thoroughly introduced or well-known to the audience, plan to explain your credibility during your speech.

LOGIC

Building a logical argument will strengthen your speech’s results. Strong logic is needed with all audiences, but this is especially true with unfavorable audiences.

4An effective argument depends on respected evidence and sound reasoning.

In order to plan a strong argument, you need to find the latest, most respected evidence. Then you need to combine your information in a logical way. If your evidence is sound but your reasoning is unclear, then the argument will not succeed. Even the clearest reasoning will fail if the argument is based on outdated or contested evidence.

While you are planning, consider which evidence will be most believable to your audience. Also decide which arguments your audience will find most reasonable.

EMOTION

One of the most motivating ways to get through to an audience is to capture their emotions. We can try to engage positive emotions like joy, pleasant surprise or inspiration. For example, getting an audience to laugh at a funny story is a magical moment.

Believe it or not, we can also get results from negative emotions like fear, pity and sympathy. If your story makes the audience cry, then you know they are feeling something. They are likely to be more susceptible to persuasion.

Fear appeals are commonly studied in persuasion because of their success. Next time you see a TV commercial or public service announcement, notice if they use fear appeals. For example, anti-marijuana ads try to scare audiences by showing a youth shooting his friend.

Be careful, however, because emotional appeals can backfire with unfavorable audiences. For example, you probably have learned not to get into an emotionally charged religious debate with someone. If you’re like me, you’ve learned all that arguing usually gets you nowhere.

4If you expect serious resistance, keep the emotional appeals to a minimum and focus on logic instead.

4Emphasize emotional appeals when trying to motivate a positive audience to act.

Even though you are only planning now, understanding how to use credibility, logic and emotion will help you build a more successful speech.

To summarize, speakers should always think strategically. However, strategic planning during the early stages of speech development is especially important. This lesson reviewed several strategies that will help you get results from your audience. We also discussed why and how to define a clear purpose and topic. We looked at choosing effective main points and using persuasive tools.

Now complete Activity 2, which directs you to plan your speech’s strategy and post your ideas to our bulletin board. Next week, we’ll research for evidence that will satisfy our plan.

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