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.