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Why all talks are persuasive talks

Some presentations are clearly intended to persuade an audience to share the speaker's point of view. "Vote for me!" (or "Vote for my friend John Smith!) tries to persuade the voter to cast a ballot for a certain candidate. A sales representative, whether an anonymous Fuller Brush man peddling cleaning supplies or a Fortune 50 CEO trying to close the deal on an acquisition, is certainly trying to persuade. A courtroom litigator has to persuade a judge or jury of his case, and a negotiator's job is to persuade the other side (or an arbitrator) to accept his or her position.

But some talks are just facts. The purpose is not to persuade but only to inform. Presenting information could not be persuasive.

But it is.

In any presentation, the way facts are selected, presented, given weight, or are ignored shapes the way they are delivered. Consider a single story reported by both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

By altering the lens through which the audience views the facts, the meaning can be completely altered. In the classic Japanese movie Rashomon, four individuals describe the facts of a violent act. In each telling, the dialogue and actions remain identical, yet each recounting casts a completely different interpretation upon the agreed facts.

The law provides an instructive example of the inexact nature of factual presentations. When cases go to the Supreme Court, the Justices all share a common Constitution of the United States and the same laws. They hear the same facts from the same attorneys. They then vote 5-4, and even Justices who voted the same often write their own opinions because they disagree about why they voted the same way.

A manager who is chairing a meeting for a status report on the progress of a new product could shape the data ("Here is where we are.") to describe the success of how much has been accomplished and how near the goal is, or to describe failure because it is not complete.

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