Communicating Persuasively and Building Trust
ACTION PLAN WORKBOOK
Communicating Persuasively and Building Trust: Action Plan
INSTRUCTIONS
In the Preparatory Activity, you first listed several upcoming situations where persuasive communication would be critical, and then chose to focus on
one you considered to be the most pressing. In the lecture material, Professor Tormala introduced a wide variety of communication techniques you can
use to heighten your persuasive power and gain the support of your target audience. In this Action Plan, you will put these persuasion techniques to
work as you do the following:
1. Analyze Your Audience: Consider the audience that you’ll engage with your persuasive communication. What is important to them? Where do they
turn for trustworthy information? What characteristics or qualities might make a speaker credible to them?
2. Identify Your Approach: Choose at least two techniques introduced by Professor Tormala that you think will be most effective in persuading this
target audience to support you. Explain your reasoning for your choices.
3. Plan Your Persuasive Communication: Determine how you will integrate each technique you selected in Step 2 into the flow of the communication,
and document what you will convey to the target audience using each technique.
4. Deliver and Reflect: Develop and deliver your planned communication to your target audience. If this is not possible in the week allotted for this
experience, choose a “practice” audience (e.g., your team members, a trusted colleague, a friend or family member, etc.) and conduct a dry run.
Then, use the final worksheet provided to reflect on your experience.
1. Analyze Your Audience
Use this worksheet to speculate on the perspective and preferences of your target audience.
Audience Member(s)
1. My manager
2.
3.
1. Engagement:
What is most important to this audience?
What interests them? What does your idea,
position or proposal offer them?
The most important things for this audience is
the progress of our product and the wellfunctioning of the team. My idea could offer
them a way to make their team seem more
technically mature, and to show that the team
members are progressing.
2. Trust:
What sources would they find trustworthy?
Where do they look for reliable information or
opinions?
They would find KPIs and other progress stats to
be trustworthy. They would look for charts or
some sort of metrics before making a decision.
3. Credibility:
What characteristics or qualities confer authority
in your workplace?
Technical and product knowledge.
2. Identify Your Approach
Use this worksheet to choose the most effective persuasion techniques for your target audience and explain your choices.
Persuasion Techniques
For details on all persuasion technique options, please review the Job
Aids (on engagement, trust, and credibility persuasion techniques)
included in the module content. Select at least two that you think will be
most useful, given your context. Include the high-level category and the
specific technique (e.g., “Make it important”  Highlight relevance).
Rationales for Chosen Techniques
Explain why you feel each selected technique will effectively persuade this
target audience.
I would like to appear confident but not pushy, valuing their opinion on
whether I should get the promotion.
Technique 1: Make it important > Value audience perspective
I believe the audience will feel represented with the story I present.
Technique 2: Engagement triggers > Say ”you”
Part of the reasons of why I believe I deserve the promotion, is my autonomy
in the job, and part of it is feeling confident that I can do the tasks ahead.
Technique 3: Heuristics > Convey confidence
3. Plan Your Persuasive Communication
Use this worksheet to outline and plan for the delivery of your persuasive communication.
Communication Logistics: When, where and how (e.g. email, in-person) will you deliver your communication?
a. Format: Virtual meeting (cameras on)
b. Location (if applicable):
c. Date/Time: TBD
Your Techniques: List the persuasion
techniques you chose on the previous slide.
Detail: Describe how you plan to enlist those techniques to convey your message (e.g., what data or
sources you will use; how you will frame your arguments; what exactly you will do or say).
Make it important > Value audience perspective
I will ask about his feedback, and also pinpoint situation where we working together and I showcased
autonomy and technical knowledge.
Engagement triggers > Say ”you”
I want to highlight the benefits the promotion will have for my manager, such as showcasing that his team
is progressing and evolving.
Heuristics > Convey confidence
I want to appear as confident that I deserve the promotion, and that I have become more autonomous in
my job.
4. Deliver and Reflect
Use this worksheet to reflect on your communication delivery (to the target audience or a practice audience).
Successes
What elements of your communication
had the most positive responses? How
could you tell?
By the way my audience was responding, I could tell the “Say you” technique had a good impact. I believe it is due to
the fact that they could see themselves representing with the information and the story I was presenting.
Opportunities for Improvement
What elements of your communication
did not seem to appeal to your
audience?
Maybe my confidence could have been mistaken with being pushy. I will try to seem more objective when presenting
facts in the future.
Alternative Approaches
What might you have done differently?
Given what you know now, are there
other techniques that might have been
more effective?
I could have also presented more data, going for a more objective approach.
Looking Ahead
How will you use what you learned from
this experience to plan for future
persuasion opportunities?
I have learned that it is crucial to learn about your audience, and how they understand and approach information.
Finished!
Congratulations! You have completed your Communicating Persuasively and Building Trust Action Plan. You now have a valuable set of
techniques for persuasive communication that can be adapted to suit your purpose and your audience’s preferences.
You should keep this Action Plan, and your Focus Your Learning preparatory activity, past the end of the Experience. In the Focus Your
Learning activity, you listed additional opportunities for persuasive communication, and you will want to address those in the near future.
You can make a copy of this Action Plan and fill in the information relating to each additional persuasion challenge, following all the steps
again. You can use this process to help you communicate a variety of messages or ideas, while customizing your persuasive strategy each
time.