LAERADESALLY

To understand both how to persuade and how to resist persuasion when we should, we must look at how persuasion works. Effective persuasion is a complicated process.
Five stages: awareness, understanding, agreement, enactment, and integration. Familiarity with these stages helps us see that persuasion is not an all-or- nothing affair. A persuasive message may be successful if it moves people through the process toward a goal.
The first stage in the persuasive process is awareness. Awareness includes knowing about a problem, paying attention to it, and understanding how it affects our lives. This phase is often called consciousness-raising. Informative speaking can build such awareness and help prepare us for persuasion. Creating awareness is especially important when people do not believe that there actually is a problem. For example, before feminists could change the way females were depicted in children’s books, they had to make people understand that always showing boys in active roles and girls in passive roles was a serious problem.
They had to demonstrate that this could thwart the development of self-esteem or ambition in young girls. Similarly, Anna Aley had to draw people’s attention to substandard student housing, and Bonnie Marshall had to start listeners thinking about who would make life-and-death decisions for them if they did not prepare living wills.

Beyond acquainting listeners with a problem, persuasive messages aimed at building awareness must demonstrate that the problem is important and show listeners how it affects them directly. Persuasive speakers must raise awareness before moving on to the next stage in the process.
The second phase of the persuasive process understands. Listeners must understand what you are telling them. They must be moved by your ideas and know how to carry out your proposals. To provide understanding, Anna Aley used an “inside-outside” approach. She took listeners inside the housing problem in Manhattan by vividly describing her basement apartment. Then she took listeners outside the problem by showing them the total picture of substandard student housing: the number of students involved and the causes of the problem. Helping listeners understand is important when listeners admit that there is a problem but don’t know what to do about it. Ethical persuasion expands our knowledge of arguments, demonstrates how some arguments are stronger than others, and provides evidence to support a position.

The fourth stage in the persuasive process is enactment. It is one thing to get listeners to accept what you say. It is quite another to ask them to act on it. If you invite listeners to sign a petition, raise their hands, or voice agreement, you give them a way to enact agreement. By enacting their agreement, listeners make a commitment.
The student speaker who mobilized his audience against a proposed tuition increase
• Brought a petition to be signed
• Distributed the addresses of local legislators to contact
• Urged listeners to write letters to campus and local newspapers
He channeled their agreement into constructive action. Changing agreement to action often requires the use of emotional appeals. Stirring stories and examples, vivid images, and colourful language can arouse sympathy. As she told the story of Harry Smith, who died an agonizing death because he had not signed a living will, Bonnie Marshall moved her listeners to act on behalf of themselves and their loved ones. Anna Aley’s concluding story of her neighbour’s accident helped motivate her audience to take action against substandard student housing.
The final stage in the persuasive process is the integration of new attitudes and commitments with the listeners’ beliefs and values. For a persuasive speech to have lasting effect, listeners must see the connection between the attitudes and actions you propose and their important values. Your ideas must fit comfortably within their belief system. As she presented her case for living wills, Bonnie Marshall anchored her appeals in the right to control one’s destiny. Anna Aley tied her attack on housing conditions to the values of fair treatment and safe living conditions.
All of us seek some consistency among our values and behaviours. For example, it would be inconsistent for us to march against substandard housing on Monday and contribute to a landlord’s defences fund on Tuesday. This is why people sometimes seem to agree with a persuasive message, then change their minds. It dawns on them that this new commitment means that they must rearrange other cherished beliefs and attitudes.
You are asking a great deal when you invite dramatic changes. You must offer listeners compelling reasons to change—even appealing to their humanity. To provide such reasons, point out how the new position is consistent with their cherished values. Show listeners how the change will benefit them and their1oved ones. Finally, plan responses to objections. Help listeners see a situation in a new way. On some issues this may require an almost biblical conversion—listeners must be “born again.” Obviously, this degree of integration is rarely achieved through a single message. Such dramatic changes may require a campaign of persuasion in which any single speech plays a small but vital role.

Effective persuasive messages strike sparks in the minds of listeners.
For instance, an example may remind listeners of a similar situation they encountered. An argument may generate additional supporting arguments or counterarguments. This interplay engages the audience in both critical and constructive listening. It invites listeners to participate in the communication process. Finally, the audience must understand how to put the speaker’s proposals into effect. Bonnie Marshall clearly spells out the steps she wants her listeners to take, enumerating these as she presents them.
The third stage in the persuasive process is agreement. Agreement means that listeners accept recommendations and remember their reasons for accepting them. Agreement can range from small concessions to total acceptance. Lesser degrees of agreement could represent success, especially when listeners have to change their attitudes or risk a great deal by accepting your ideas. During the Vietnam War, classroom speeches attacking or defending our involvement in that conflict were often heard. Feelings about the war ran so high that just to have a speech heard without interruption could be an accomplishment. If a reluctant listener were to nod agreement, or concede, “I guess you have a point,” then one could truly claim victory.
Often you achieve agreement by presenting indisputable facts and well- reasoned interpretations that make your conclusions seem beyond question. You can help listeners remember their agreement by providing vivid images or telling interesting stories that embody your message. While reasoning is important to secure agreement, stories and images will stay with your audience after they have forgotten the details of your argument.

When audiences hesitate because they question your credibility, you can “borrow ethos” by citing expert testimony i Call on sources that your listeners trust and respect. Uncommitted audience will scrutinize both you and your arguments carefully. Reason with such listeners leading them gradually and carefully to the conclusion you would like them to reach. Provide supporting material each step of the way. Adopt multi sided approach, in which you consider all options fairly, to confirm your ethos as a trustworthy and competent speaker.
When addressing uncommitted listeners, don’t overstate your case. Let your personal commitment be evident through your sincerity and conviction, but be careful about using overly strong appeals to guilt or fear. These might backfire, causing listeners to resent and reject both you and your mess, is also important not to push uncommitted listeners too hard. Help move in the desired direction, but let them take the final step themselves.

In such a world, persuasion is the art of getting others to give fair and favourable consideration to our point of view. When we persuade, we want to influence how others believe and behave. We may not always prevail— other points of view may be more persuasive, depending on the listener, the situation, and the merits of the case. But when we practice the art of persuasion, we try to ensure that our position receives the attention it deserves. Some people, however, object to the very idea of persuasion. They may regard it as an unwelcome intrusion into their lives or as manipulation or domination.1 In contrast, we believe that persuasion is inevitable—to live is to persuade. Persuasion can be ethical or unethical, selfless or selfish, inspiring or degrading. Persuaders may enlighten our minds or prey on our vulnerability. Ethical persuasion, however, calls on sound reasoning and is sensitive to the feelings and needs of listeners. Such persuasion can help us apply the wisdom of the past to the decisions we now must make. Therefore, an essential part of education is learning to resist the one kind of persuasion and to encourage and practice the other.

Leadership styles are the various patterns of the manager’s leadership behavior. They describe the way leaders actually exert their influence.
All managers develop a style of leading or motivating subordinates. A leadership style can be defined as a pattern of behaviour designed to integrate organizational and personal interests in pursuit of some objective. For one thing, great success comes from hard work and practical experience. This a common assumption, but it is not always warranted. In such situation, for work group to succeed in attaining its goals, the manager’s leadership styles make the big difference.

Human behaviour in an organization is complex. A manager has to have the managerial capability for stimulating achievement and to exercise innovative leadership within his organization.
A manager possessed with innovative behaviour while maintaining his grip on organizational power, gives greater emphasis on the development of group values and attitudes. With his innovative behaviour and awareness, he solves managerial and organizational problems.
Innovative behaviour is oftentimes not what his subordinates expect. Because innovation creates uncertainty, it is sometimes unacceptable to the majority of the people in the organization. However, a manager should protect and encourage his people to develop to the maximum their potentiality in attaining not only organizational goals, but also personal gains.

When wrongdoing is ongoing in any organization, people usually find out about it sooner or later. From sexual harassment to racial stereotyping to revenue manipulation, wrongdoings may encompass misfeasance at the highest level or lower down in the totem pole. Should people - can people - legitimately reveal such wrongdoing? People who place loyalty in an unchallenged position at the top of the scale of ethical values would say “No.”
Yet the idea that the loyalty to one’s employer trumps all other ethical obligations is startling and dangerous. It’s also distasteful. We have duties to our employers not to disclose trade secrets, not to compete with them on the side, and to avoid doing things that will lead to legal or reputation problems.
Although we can expect a developing spin from the White House on McClellan’s revelations, it’s interesting that the initial response has not been to say that McClellan was wrong - either about the selling of the Iraq war or the CIA leak case. The “disloyalty” allegation shifts the focus from the truth to the propriety of McClellan having said anything at all. Indeed, many view the fact that the White House has not taken on McClellan on the merits as a tacit admission that his allegations are true.
Important though it is, we as a society don’t accept that loyalty is pre-eminent. In 2002, Time Magazine named Cynthia Cooper of WorldCom, Coleen Rowley of the FBI and Sherron Watkins of Enron as Persons of the year for their whistle-blowing activities, Cooper and Rowley for their role in disclosing two of the major corporate scandals of the first years of this decade, and Rowley for charging that the FBI had failed to follow leads on one of the chief plotters of the 9/11 conspiracy against the United States. For these women, and for those of us who did and do applaud them, integrity is a value more deserving the pre-eminence than loyalty.
Where an employee speaks out against wrongdoing, employers don’t play the loyalty card because what the employee has said is incorrect or untruthful. They invoke loyalty because the allegations are truthful. Loyalty is important and we rightly pay great deference to it. But when it becomes the smokescreen to hide wrongdoing, we shouldn’t pay any deference to it at all. People with robust commitments to integrity won’t be content to work for companies that send the message “loyalty to the company,” must trump that commitment to honesty.
Organizations that want ethics to flourish will resist the temptation of playing the loyalty card to prevent disclosures of wrongdoing. Rather than worrying about what song the whistle-blower sings, they should make sure that there’s no tune to play.

Ours is a sceptical and cynical age, perhaps because of large-scale abuses of communication ethics. A4s promise that products will make us sexier or richer. Persuasive messages disguised as information appear in “infomercials” seen on television. Public officials may present suspicious statistics, make dubious denials, or dance around questions they don’t want to answer directly. Television networks have staged visuals to dramatize their stories. Talk show hosts may play fast and loose with facts and use inflammatory language. Our government has more than once subjected us to “disinformation” campaigns that deceive the public. Little wonder that people have lost trust in their major institutions.
As a consumer of persuasive messages, you can at least partially protect yourself by applying the critical thinking skills. As a producer of persuasive messages, you can help counter this trend toward
unethical communication. While ethical questions in communication are often complex, depending upon the interaction of topic, situation, audience, and technique, you can start by keeping three simple questions in mind as you prepare your persuasive speech:
What is my ethical responsibility to my audience?
• Could I publicly defend the ethics of my message?
• What does this message say about my character?
Your responses to these questions should light your way through the complexities of ethical persuasion.
An ethical speech is based fundamentally on respect for the audience, responsible knowledge of the topic, and concern for the consequences of your words. The guidelines in the Speaker’s Notes above should help you apply these precepts to persuasive messages.