Melissa Camacho

ENG 2700-Professor Corbett

NYC College of Technology

2/8/2017

TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION Study Guide

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Technical Communication Study Guide Chapter 3: Persuading Your Audience

Contents What is Persuasion? ................................................................................................................................ 2

Steps towards Persuasive Goals: .......................................................................................................... 2

Support Claims by Arguments .............................................................................................................. 2

Identify Your Specific Persuasive Goal ..................................................................................................... 2

Types of Persuasive Goals: ................................................................................................................... 2

Predicting an Audience’s Reaction ........................................................................................................... 3

Persuasion Causes Audience Resistance .................................................................................................. 3

Identify Audience’s Point of View ........................................................................................................ 3

Be Flexible with Persuasion ................................................................................................................. 4

Acknowledge Constraints ........................................................................................................................ 4

Constraints within a Company ............................................................................................................. 4

Make Connections with the Audience .................................................................................................. 4

Legal Constraints ................................................................................................................................. 5

Ethical Constraints ............................................................................................................................... 5

Time Constraints.................................................................................................................................. 5

Social & Psychological Constraints ....................................................................................................... 5

Support a Claim Effectively .................................................................................................................. 5

Use Convincing Evidence ..................................................................................................................... 5

Identifying Types of Evidence ............................................................................................................... 6

Appeal to Common Goals and Values .................................................................................................. 6

Considering Cultural Differences.............................................................................................................. 6

Shape Your Argument.............................................................................................................................. 6

My Reflection: The Persuasion Development Stage ............................................................................... 13

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Persuading Your Audience By: John M. Lannon & Laura J. Gurak

What is Persuasion?

Persuasion is the influence on people’s opinions, actions, and decisions. There is a difference between persuading and informing. When you are informing, you are trying to give the audience what they need. When you are persuading, you are trying to get the response you want. However, both require audience awareness and accuracy. There are other goals to be pursued when it comes to persuading people in the workplace, relationships, and readers of written information you prepare for them.

Steps towards Persuasive Goals:

Identify Your Claims: A claim is a statement of proof. It includes an acknowledgement of facts to support reasons or doubts.

Define what the facts are: Explain what the meaning behind your facts are such as data, statistics, etc.

Provide solutions to the facts stated: Explain what can be done to change negative outcomes from the facts provided or how to solve the problem.

Support Your Claim: People may disagree about the point you are trying to make, but you need to provide the best reasons to your point of view.

Support Claims by Arguments

An argument in the case of supporting a claim is not a dispute, but it defends the reasons that support the claim. Arguments vary in the level of involvement from the audience.

Identify Your Specific Persuasive Goal

What is the purpose of your persuasive goal? How do you expect people to react?

Types of Persuasive Goals:

Arguing to Influence the Audience’s Opinions: The goal is to make people agree to your agreement.

Arguing to engage in the Audience’s Support: This goal is to get people involved, or get them to help out.

Submit a Proposal: Proposals provide solutions to problems and are intended for people to approve of a proposal plan. For example, a software that will improve the performance of employees in a company.

Arguing for Changes in Behavior: The goal is to get people to change their bad habits. Though they may disagree, you want them to see that the actions they commit are wrong and they want to do something about it.

Technical Communication: Chapter 3

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Note: In addition to accomplishing these goals, don’t start an argument without letting the audience know what you want to get out of it.

Predicting an Audience’s Reaction

Documents can result in different reactions depending on the interests, fears, ambitions, and biases of the audience. When they feel that the views are challenged, they ask these following questions:

Say Who? So What? Why Should I?

Persuasion Causes Audience Resistance

Identify Audience’s Point of View

People who can’t make up their minds, most likely accept the influence of persuasion. When people make up their minds, they will most likely assume they are right of their own point of views.

The more you get people to admit they are wrong, the more they will resist. The result of people’s reactions vary. They may respond willingly, they may possess enthusiasm, or be resentful. Below is a chart of The Level of Response to Persuasion:

In order to handle these responses, you need to establish connections. Below are different connection strategies you can use to maintain and develop an agreement with the audience.

1. Power Connection: Ideal for audience’s in the Compliance Persuasion Response Level.

Example: Ordering employees to show up for a workshop. 2. Relationship Connection: Ideal for audiences in the Internalization Response

Level. Example: Inviting employees to participate in a workshop. 3. Rational Connection: Ideal for audiences in the Internalization Level.

Example: Why not take advantage of the benefits our workshop has to offer?

• The Ideal Response

Internalization

• A willing and Productive Response

Identification

• A Resentful and Unproductive Response

Compliance

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Be Flexible with Persuasion

You can promote your view by considering opposite views as well. Take these steps:

Explain the reason and evidence behind.

Offer tips on how people can improve on weaknesses towards your point of

view.

With alternative reasons, allow people to challenge your ideas.

If people provide an opposite view, take the issue (s) described.

Explore other ideas people may agree on.

Acknowledge Constraints

Who should you say it to? How Should You Say It? Are you creating Ethical or Legal Problems? Is it the best time? What types of personalities are involved? How will you overcome any peer pressure? Is this a big issue?

Constraints within a Company

Be aware of company rules. Rules vary for deadlines, budgets, formatting documents, and distributing material. There are also unofficial constraints. Some rules are not stated, but you can use careful judgment and decide who to address the issue to and when to do it.

Make Connections with the Audience

There are three persuasive strategies people can look into in order to create a relationship and reach out to an audience. If people provide an opposite view, take these steps:

Consider the issues they face in opposite views. Understand the issue accurately and phrase it in your own words. Make agreements on the next plan to resolve differences pertaining to the issue(s) described. Explore other ideas people may agree on.

Example of Wrong Approach:

Tell the director to get staff to do their job because there is an overload of cases to process. Example of Correct Approach:

I think we can meet with the staff and discuss strategies we can use to expedite the overload of cases to process.

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Legal Constraints

Be aware of rules you and the company are responsible for. There are laws and regulations when it comes to making agreements such as contracts, writing sales literature, or manuals. You and the company must use caution in the accuracy of writing procedures and instructions in order to prevent facing charges that involve damages or injuries.

Ethical Constraints

While you are being persuasive, you must be honest and fair at the same time. Be careful not to deceive others just to get your point across.

Time Constraints

Manage your time wisely in order to present the most vital information to the public. This entails finding the right time to use your persuasion before carrying out a plan.

Social & Psychological Constraints

You will come across some barriers in people’s personalities that can affect your relationship to the audience and may have a bad influence on reaching your persuasive goals.

Here are the following audience constraints and how you can deal with them in a positive manner:

Relationship with the Audience: Know who your readers are. Are they subordinates, management, or peers?

Audience’s Personality: What characteristics do they have in their personalities? Are they open or close minded, understanding, and reliable?

Unity and Identity of the Audience: Know what category the audience falls under. Are they employees, members of an insurance company, and do they demonstrate any kind of loyalty?

Relevance of the issue to the Audience: What is the urgency of the issue? Have they heard or not heard of the issue announced before? How is it affecting them? How large of an impact will the issue have on the audience?

Support a Claim Effectively

Provide reasons that are meaningful to the audience. In a given situation, your reasons must be evident and appeal to the audience’s needs and values.

Use Convincing Evidence

Evidence or supporting facts are a way of persuading However, it must be reliable. Below are tips to ensure the evidence is useful to the audience’s persuasion:

Quality of Evidence: Make sure the evidence provided is strongly detailed, specific, stands out, and can be easily verified.

Credible Sources: Let the audience know where, who, and how you gathered information from.

Reasonable Evidence: Make sure the evidence presented is permissible and pertains to the issue.

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Identifying Types of Evidence

1. Factual Statements: Something that can stated and demonstrated by

observation, experiments, and research.

2. Statistics: Numbers and rates presented in graphs or charts which must be

verifiable.

3. Examples: Examples can be illustrations presented to prove a point.

4. Expert Testimony: Opinions and experiences that are expertly shared and

acceptable by the audience as long as it is not biased.

Appeal to Common Goals and Values

In addition to evidence, share a common goal or interest between you and the audience. In doing that, keep in mind that people’s goals are shaped by their values and qualities they believe in such as equality, friendship, loyalty, fairness, honesty., etc.

(These are original examples and are not copied from the book)

Considering Cultural Differences

Cultural customs can influence reactions to expressing ideas and showing emotion. They also differ in the importance of values. For example, some cultures may feel obligated to return a favor.

When it comes to attitudes and behavior, values are also different in various industries such as business and technology. Get to know the audience’s preferences in order to safely direct them to the cause of your proposed idea.

Shape Your Argument

To ensure you have included all the necessary components to your argument, create a checklist for Audience Persuasion.

Example of Appeal to Share Common Goal:

Let’s say you want to address the company on team work training, you can share a common goal by stating, “At some point, we need to develop Team Player skills because we tend to forget how to communicate with one another.”

Example of Appeal to Share Common Value:

Let’s say you want to share a common value that affects you and the audience on a personal level by stating, “One of the reasons why we experience a hard time communicating at the work place is having difficulty accepting another’s differences. Therefore, we should all focus on the importance of equality.”

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Example of Audience Persuasion Checklist

Checklist for Planning Document

Did I identify my goal?

Did I identify my goal?

Did I choose the right approach to connect to the audience?

Did I construct a balanced and reasonable argument?

Have the audience thought about the ideas I wanted them to think of?

Have I searched for the right outcomes(s)?

Did I provide enough convincing evidence to support my claim?

Have I used my arguments professionally?

Have I received the reaction I wanted from the audience?

Checklist for Cultural Acknowledgements

Does this document consider the values and customs of the cultures involved?

Did I prevent any stereotype towards different groups of culture?

Does the document meet with legal standards and regulations to prevent any misconduct?

Is this document organized appropriately to accommodate readers’ understanding?

Does this document need additional formats to consider other cultural or ethical standards?

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Notes Taken for Technical Communication: Chapter3

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(Scanned Copies)

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My Reflection: The Persuasion Development Stage

How I Persuade Others

My first thoughts when I feel like I want to persuade someone or a group of people was just to get my point across. I never knew what the concepts were because I never knew they even existed. I always felt that if I wanted to persuade someone to do something that would benefit the person, I only had to them that person face to face with very few reasons. Sometimes they don’t do it. It is not because they don’t want to in my case, but it is because they forget. That is what I learned in this chapter-how to make them remember the benefit it will bring to their lives.

My Experience with Persuasion

In the past few years that I have dealt with my personal and work life, I see people do things that are not convenient for them. For example, they tend to be unorganized with their belongings, important documents, or they just don’t take care of themselves. I would first think of approaching them and tell them, “I think you should do this because this is what is going to happen, or it is happening already.” If I put myself in their shoes, I would just think that it’s a good idea, but I don’t have the time, or why do I need to hear it from someone else. Besides, I can manage my own problems because they don’t ask me what is holding me back.

Somewhere in the beginning of reading the chapter, I looked at the concepts involved in identifying an audience and the one that called my attention the most was being flexible with persuasion. I admit that is something difficult for everyone to do. I notice when we cross the persuasion line, we never stop to think that maybe there is a reason the people we persuade have hardships we do not know about. Maybe they are also in need of support in some areas before they can agree to different ideas and objectives that can help them find solutions in their daily lives. I know I have been one of them.

How to use Persuasion in the Future

Two strategies I can take from this chapter is sharing common goals and values. I have never done this when I am at work speaking with my colleagues or when I am training a group of people. I just figure, they do what they want to do anyway, but from reading that section, maybe they feel it’s just easy for me to follow my own advice or ideas. I believe if I try to relate to their issue or find out what barriers they are experiencing, at least they can see a bigger picture. They can stop for a minute and find out more information on how my idea is going to work for them. I decide to practice these ideas at my job because I feel my management and colleagues will be able to have better access to the documents and information they need. It may also help to establish a better relationship with them. Not only that, but more trust can be developed within the workplace. It will reduce stress factors that stand in the way of reaching goals.