In this video, we are going to continue our discussions on persuasive speaking. We're going to move into the issue of credibility for persuasive speakers. I'll start off by saying that the successful presentation takes into account the opinion leaders of an audience. A successful presentation takes into account the opinion leaders of an audience, and it references those opinion leaders. frequently.
So what are opinion leaders? Opinion leaders are those people who are capable of influencing the decisions and the attitudes and the behaviors of your audience simply because their judgment or their taste or their background are respected by that audience. If an audience has a lot of reverence toward an individual who is associated with them based on their background or something They often lead the mindset of that group of people.
They often lead them in forming their opinions. So a good persuasive presenter learns to discover who those opinion leaders are. Now, when we talk about opinion leaders in this regard, we're talking about people who are directly associated with the group that you're speaking to.
They might be an employee or something like this. I mean, an employer. or something like that.
They might be someone who that this audience works with on a daily basis and is probably present at the speech. And if you can identify those people prior to giving your speech, you know that you can reference them often, reference them frequently to help establish credibility for yourself. So identifying opinion leaders in an audience is an important resource to a successful persuasive presenter.
So let's talk about making the most out of using opinion leaders. To be effective in the use of opinion leaders, the speaker should first reference those opinion leaders clearly and frequently, meaning don't hide from the fact that they're using them to support your contentions, to get to build your image with them. Don't hide from that because people recognize that's what you're doing and they also understand that that's a feasible part of the speech the persuasive speech process also you want to demonstrate ways in which his or her ideas are very similar to yours if they are people like opinion leaders often are that an audience highly respects if you can show the similarities in their rationale as they apply to your rationale People are more apt to listen to your rationale. You want to give credit to your opinion leaders accomplishments.
You do so by using examples of things that they've succeeded in, incidents in their lives that might have stood out among you know beyond the incidents of others. Pointing out their accomplishments, pointing out their strategies and their successes for an organization will often make that organization feel good about you, the presenter. Now that's one type of opinion leader.
The opinion leader that is in the audience. The one that you frequent because they're sitting among the folks that you're speaking to. Another type of opinion leader is one who holds some higher prominence.
Maybe something at the national level or the state level or holds some public significance in the minds of the audience but may not be present at the speech. These are folks that might be political figures, a president maybe, or a state senator or a representative, or maybe even the mayor of a community. It may be someone who has a celebrity status or a sports figure. These are opinion leaders also.
Audiences often follow the thinking of prominent figures. If you can discover with your audience, through audience analysis and so forth, who these figures might be, referencing those folks frequently would be to your advantage as well. So the importance of opinion leaders suggests the larger issue, and that's what this video is all about.
Opinion leaders suggest the larger issue of credibility. When you use your opinion leaders properly, speakers can easily establish credibility for themselves. We've talked about credibility in here before. But I'm going to talk specifically about credibility and persuasion.
So I'm going to remind you. you of a principle that we always need to hold dear to our hearts and that is credibility is in the eye of the beholder. We've talked about that before. It's in the eye of the beholder. You might believe in the credibility of the source all day long, but if your audience doesn't see them as credible as you do, it's probably not going to be very advantageous for you to use that opinion leader or to use that source.
Okay, so So because credibility is in the eye of the beholder, it resides within the audience. And you need to learn to present yourself as being as credible as the sources or the opinion leaders that you have been referencing. Because now you're using them to give you credibility. If they believe in what you have to say, it's time for you to take that as a building block and start to establish yourself as credible to the eyes. Yeah.
So what do you do? You want to signal traits about yourself, such as trustworthiness and competence and dynamism. You want to come across as somebody that they can have faith in, that you're not going to lead them down a wrong path.
That builds credibility. You want to show yourself as being competent in your subject matter. You are someone who has a history, a background, an education, a research history in the subject matter, so that the stuff that's beginning to happen, beginning to make sense to them can be validated by your expertise.
And when I say dynamism, there needs to be an impact that comes from your persona, from your personality and your delivery and your energy. This leads itself to an important facet of credibility that speakers need to be aware of, and that is ethos credibility. E-T-H-O-S credibility. those credibility is when an audience can be persuaded simply because of who or what the source is an audience can be persuaded simply because they like the source or believe in that source you know know that source leads their political party or as the captain of their favorite football team people can sometimes be persuaded simply because they like the people that you're referencing You also want to establish ethos and credibility for yourself through those three terms.
Competence, trustworthiness, dynamism. You want them to like you. Being liked lends itself to credibility.
credibility is simply when an audience can be persuaded by who the source is or who you are as the presenter now there are two sources that provide credibility in a present presentational context I've kind of touched upon this already credibility can come from the speaker it can come from you the speaker and it can come from your sources But remember, credibility is not something that we can measure concretely. Credibility is solely based on the audience's perception. You should ethically believe in...
the people you are citing. You should ethically believe as a presenter in the message you are delivering. You should believe by our code of ethics that your message has credibility. However, your audience...
doesn't always measure it the way that you do, and it's not their burden to do so. Your audience just simply has to believe in the source, or just like the source, or just favor the source. They don't even have to be as logical as the presenter. So credibility doesn't exist in any real or absolute sense.
I used to tell people, you know, my grandmother probably wouldn't believe too many things. things that she heard coming from a scientist or a professor. But if she read it on the front page of the National Enquirer, she would probably believe it. She put faith in that publication.
All right. It had credibility with her. I would never use the National Enquirer. Most of you would not use the National Enquirer most of the time as a source for validating one of your supporting points.
But if you did it with my grandmother, she would buy into your message. She saw credibility in that. So yeah, credibility does not exist in an absolute or a real sense. Credibility comes into play at all stages of the presentation.
All right? Audiences are more likely to attend presentations. by and pay attention to and carry out commitments by a presenter that they consider to be credible. Alright, there is a type of credibility that we refer to as extrinsic credibility. Extrinsic credibility.
Extrinsic credibility is credibility that occurs outside the present. It's usually established by an introductory speaker or by your reputation, maybe a news story, what people know of you out in town. If they don't know you at all, quite often they'll assign an introductory speaker to stand up and introduce you and talk about your background and your history, your expertise, your research, your family, your affiliations. This kind of gives the audience somewhat of an understanding of who you are.
They haven't met you yet. So that credibility is coming from outside the presentation from an introductory speaker. And again, if they saw a news story or read an article about you, that would be extrinsic credibility.
It comes from outside your presentation. Then you come up to the podium and you start speaking. And from that point on, you're starting to establish a degree of intrinsic credibility. Intrinsic. I-N-T-R-I-N-S-I-C.
And intrinsic credibility occurs as the audience... learns about a speaker and observes the speaker and starts to infer from the speaker's analogies and humor and concrete delivery. So you have extrinsic credibility that comes from outside the presentation, that's what you walk up to the podium with. You have intrinsic credibility which is what you build while the speech is taking place. I'll refer to these again toward the end.
the end of this video. What are some aesthetic components to credibility? In other words, what are some of the things that will create an audience to see you as credible besides the words that you are delivering?
Well, if you come across as prepared, preparedness is a valuable tool for establishing credibility. Sincerity, poise, firmness. If you see well poised, well prepared, you're firm in your delivery, like you're very confident in your message, this will award a high degree of intrinsic credibility to you as a persuasive speaker. So I guess in a nutshell, speakers can build their credibility and the credibility of their sources by providing qualifications, accomplishments, company or university affiliations.
If you you or your sources have degrees in the field that you're discussing, all of that lends itself to credibility. It's very important for a persuasive speaker to understand the five phases. of the persuasion process.
The five phases or the five stages of the process of persuasion. Because just like so many things that we talk about in an academic setting, persuasion is also a process. You don't just change your mind.
There are steps that we go through in our logic and reasoning that lead us to take on a new opinion or to move to the other side. So let's talk about these processes because an effective speaker knows how to use each stage in the process to his or her advantage. So you have to understand the stages in order to know how to employ a strategy that will help you take an audience from stage one to stage two or phase one to phase two without losing them. What are those five phases?
The first one is this. Listeners will become aware. a message exists that has to happen believe it or not you could get up there and speak all day if you're telling a lot of jokes give a lot of warm stories and emotional appeal they might be caught up in that but they might miss the entire intended message so listeners have to become aware that a message exists also list the second stage or the second phase is that listeners become interested in hearing more they're not going to be persuaded they're not going to change anything anything about their logic or their beliefs if they're not interested in hearing more of you during your presentation.
In the third phase, listeners evaluate what they've heard and more importantly, They evaluate how they feel about what they've heard. All right, I'm going to cover that in a couple minutes. In the fourth stage, listeners set aside a trial period to judge the feasibility of a message. Think about voting for a candidate.
You know, we hear this person, we hear this person. We start to figure out how we feel about it. We conclude how we feel about it. But before we cast the vote, We kind of give that time to simmer. We give that time to gel, to see if my newfound belief holds water.
And then at the fifth stage of the persuasion process, the listener will make a decision. At any point in those five stages, a listener can bail out. Persuasion will not occur. We call that withdrawal, we call those folks who withdraw from the persuasive process or bail out persuasive process, persuasion dropouts. So you have to guide, lead your audience through all five stages.
You have to make it clear to them early on that there's a message here. You are going to learn something. You're going to think differently about something before this presentation is over. If they don't, they will withdraw.
They'll drop out. Let's say that you've let them know that there is a message in the... In the process of you elaborating on the message, you have to be intriguing with it.
Because somehow, you have to motivate the audience to want to listen more. Meaning, they have to become interested in hearing more about that subject matter. If they are not interested, after they find out what the message is, they will drop out.
Persuasion will not occur. But let's say that they become aware of a message, they are now interested in hearing more, and they are listening to you. Guess what? They're going to evaluate what they've heard. That's fine.
That's the way critical thinkers and critical listeners all ought to be. And let's say you did a real good job of it and you've actually changed their minds. They've evaluated what they've heard and now they go, you know what?
I kind of think that person is correct. I'm starting to see it differently. That's not good enough.
Because that's only half of the third stage. The second half of the third stage is where the challenge comes in. Because a listener not only will evaluate what they've heard, now they evaluate how they feel about what they heard. and sometimes people can see the truth.
Sometimes people can see the light. They can be persuaded to think the way you do, but to get them to go out and admit it, to get them to go out and act upon that new foundation, belief is a completely different story. You know, you hear people say, Mom, my daddy was a Democrat, and his daddy was a Democrat, and his daddy was a Democrat, and I'm going to be a Democrat all my life, and they might change their stripes, or vice versa.
Same thing with Republicans, and they might start seeing things a certain way, but the peer pressure comes from going out and admitting it. People don't like to do it. Let me simplify that.
Think about the days when we were children, and we still believed in Santa Claus. Santa Claus was real. Mom and Dad told us about Santa Claus, and they have credibility. And guess what?
They were right because Christmas morning, those presents were there and so forth. We believed in Santa Claus. Then somewhere in our early development, we meet little Johnny.
He's the kid out on the playground in grade school who starts talking about the concept of Santa Claus. And little Johnny doesn't believe in Santa Claus. And he starts to tell you why.
And little Johnny's pretty logical. He's actually credible. So, you know, come on.
Toys in the world fitting in one sack in a sleigh that's pulled by deer and they fly. And that fat guy with that sack can fit down a chimney. You don't even have a chimney and you get those toys every morning.
You ever stop to think about that? Come on, Santa Claus. And all of a sudden, Johnny's making sense.
And we're smart enough at that age to realize there's no way that Santa Claus can be a possibility. We now have evaluated what we've heard from little Johnny. Johnny and we now believe little Johnny but guess what most of us do some of you will probably get you can probably relate to that or maybe even seen this with your own kids we've evaluated what we've heard but we don't like how we feel about what we've heard we have evaluated what Johnny said about Santa Claus and we now are smart enough to realize there's no such thing as Santa Claus but we feel so uncomfortable with that we feel so uncomfortable with the fact that Mom and dad has been pulling the wool over our eyes and so uncomfortable about confronting them with it.
And we also don't want to lose the risk of getting a bunch of Christmas. Presidents come December that we kind of turn our back to Johnny's logic for another year maybe maybe two but usually for another year and kind of play the game a little more kind of knowing in our subconscious that it's wrong So when you take an adult audience through the persuasive process and you successfully get them to stage three, remember, no matter how good of a job you've done with your logic at convincing them that what you're saying is right, you now have... to make it comfortable for them to adopt publicly that new belief or that new stance and go out and act and not be ashamed to tell people that.
That's where opinion leaders can be very handy to you. If you could reference people who once believed the way you did, but now they're over here and you take them through that logic and maybe use their words in the form of testimony, that's a good way of getting them through the second half of phase three. So let's say you've done that. They've evaluated what they've heard. They've evaluated how they feel about what they hear.
They kind of, whether they like it or not, they kind of see you as telling truth. They're not going to stop there and say, I'm done, I'm on board with this guy. They're going to set aside a trial period.
They're going to backtrack a little bit, double check what you said, read up on it some more, maybe go to a few people that they trust and backtrack a little bit. bounce some of their new ideas off of them, and they're going to give it time, give your message time, to prove that it holds water. Meaning they're judging the feasibility of your message.
And that's a critical time in the persuasive process. Sometimes that might happen in one presentation. Usually it happens a little bit, with a little bit of time following the presentation. And after phase four, after they've given some time, a trial period, to judge the feasibility of that persuasive speech, they will then make a decision.
And guess what? Sometimes that decision might be no. They might say, nope, I don't buy what you're saying. I'm sticking with my guns.
I feel this way. And that's fine too. But again, after any stage of this five-phase process, the listener may withdraw from it and persuasion will not occur. We call those folks persuasion.
dropouts. Now, let's talk about an understanding. Some people might say strategies, but more of an understanding about strategies in preventing persuasion dropouts. Something you should remember. is that as a persuasive speaker, you can choose from three options in which you present your main points.
In persuasion, there are three options in which you can stack your arguments. to give you the best possible chance at winning this audience over. The first one is called the climax order.
The climax order is simply when you have the weakest argument presented first and the strongest argument presented last. You're building to that high point. Now, what situations would require that you give the climax order as a presentation? Usually it's motivational speeches.
If you're... talking to a group of people who already believe the way you do but you're wanting to motivate them to go out and act on behalf of the cause to go recruit voters or team members or something like this then you start with the weaker argument and you end with a bang you end with a rallying cry and send them out on their way the opposite of that would be the second version of offering your main points and that would be the anti-climax climax order. The anti-climax order is the one where the strongest argument is presented first and then you're moving down to the weakest argument which is presented last. Why would you do that?
Well you give that kind of a speech when there is a high potential of rejection within that audience. If the chances are that that audience is not going to buy into what you say you should start with the anti-climax order. Start with a bang, because if there's a high potential of rejection, they're not really that interested in listening to you. So you want to hook them as early as you possibly can. And if you can at the very beginning, you're more apt to have their attention at the end.
If you start the other way, and these people are already convinced that they're not going to agree with you, you're going to lose them early on if you go with the climactic order. The third order would be that of the pyramid order. You can probably figure out what that is.
That's when you have the strongest argument between the two weaker arguments. You start with the weaker, you go to the pyramid order, and then you come back. to one of the others which is weaker.
And usually you give that presentation to a neutral audience, an audience that seems to be the most objective. They're willing to listen to whatever you have. So you take them through that piece. and then of course your conclusion kind of brings it back up again as we talked about in your notes on the conclusion also it's important that you know as a persuader that you should choose between a one-sided versus a two-sided presentation one-sided versus two-sided presentation you know what this is all about a one-sided presentation is when you are Giving your take on an issue.
You're not telling what the other side believes. You're not giving their arguments. You're just giving your one side.
And a one-sided presentation works best when your audience already agrees with you. It's a motivational speech. You're going to remind them of how we feel.
Raw, raw, raw, and out they go. Two-sided presentation works best with an audience who might not already be on board with you. Because it goes back to the first one.
to this credibility issue. You want to kind of inform the audience on what the other side feels rather than letting them do that. And if you give the facts on this side versus the facts on your side, the audience is going to see you as honest and they're going to see you as credible.
So what you do is you give the two sides and you show why yours is the better option. That's the two-sided presentation and you give that to audiences. who are probably predisposed to disagreeing with what you have to say. So, listeners will accept the speaker's ideas for one or more of the following four reasons.
Listeners will accept your ideas if they see you as having high credibility. They'll accept the speaker's ideas if the speaker is perceived as having high credibility. They will accept the speaker's ideas if the speaker does a good job of winning the listers over with his or her evidence or his or her sources.
That's the second one. The third one is listers can be persuaded if the lister is convinced by the speaker's evidence. And the fourth one would be that a lister or an audience can be persuaded if their emotions are affected. by the presenter.
We talked about ethos credibility, being the ability of an audience being persuaded simply based on who the source is. Pathos credibility, P-A-T-H-O-S, is when an audience can be affected because you've appealed to their emotions. And in our next video, we will talk about just that, appealing to audience emotions.
When establishing credibility, speaker must establish that he or she is competent. We said that before. And if an audience believes that that speaker is competent, it will believe that the speaker has intelligence on the subject matter. Character as well is a very important factor in persuasion. They just don't want to see a speaker as competent, but they want to see that speaker as having character.
An audience must believe that the speaker has character. So how do you do this? Character pertains to a few traits.
I mentioned one of them before, but the speaker wants to present himself or herself as having sincerity, trustworthiness, and concern for the audience's well-being. They don't want to see a presenter, a persuasive presenter, who stands up simply to sell them on something that's going to help them. them alone. If the presenter really seems to be concerned that you adopt this belief or adopt this policy because it's going to benefit you and they show concern for you, it's going to build your credibility and make it much easier for you to be persuasive. I said there were three, or I guess I listed two sources of credibility earlier.
Right now I'm going to talk to you about the three types of credibility and they kind of intertwine. We talked about entrance. and extrinsic credibility a while ago, they're going to come into play here once again. The three different types of credibility are initial credibility, derived credibility, and terminal credibility. Initial credibility is the credibility of a speaker before he or she starts to speak.
Our other word for that was extrinsic credibility. Derived credibility is is the credibility of a speaker produced by everything he or she says or does up here at the podium while the audience is making their observations. That's derived credibility. A little while ago, we referred to that as intrinsic.
And the third one is terminal credibility, and it's the one you're shooting for the most as a persuasive speaker. And that is the credibility of a speaker at the end of the speech. You want to make sure you leave that podium.
with that group of people seeing you as a trusted, credible source for them to get that information. You must understand the importance of credibility beyond the logic and the reasoning and the facts that you present. Credibility carries an equal amount of weight in terms of your pursuit of persuading a group of people who might see things differently than you do.