Episode #119: Unpacking Donald Trump’s Persuasion Power

Donald Trump breaks many of the rules of presenting but he gets the key stuff right. Love him or loath him as a contender for the Republican Party Presidential race nomination, he continues to perform strongly in the polls, against the expectations of the vast majority of American political experts. So, he must be doing something right, as he is proving to be very persuasive with the audiences who flock to hear him speak. Are there any lessons here for us, when we come to give our own presentations?

He is authentic when he speaks. There is no speech writer grinding away in the background polishing his prose to within an inch of its life. None of those semi-invisible prompters on the left and right to drip feed the polished input. He does have some notes to keep him on track, but he barely refers to them. He digresses, goes off on tangents, gets sidetracked, but the audience understands this is the price for the speaker being non-scripted. He keeps their attention because he concentrates on his audience. So let’s take the good bits of what is working for a guy who only recently started as a public speaker and drop the rest.

Here are a couple of fundamentals we can all safely adopt - be yourself, don’t ape anyone else. Yes, be you, but try to be the professional you. Focus on your audience, not on the technology, the laptop, the big screen behind you or your notes. Having one thing to focus on makes the public speaking task easier, so divest distractions.

One observation is that he has been getting a lot of practice lately. Prior to this run for the nomination, he rarely had to make such long public speeches. Like the rest of us, he had to learn by doing. Repetition is key to learning new skills and so seizing every chance to present is needed to improve our professional craft. Sounds terribly logical doesn’t it. However, many people shy away from presenting because they are lacking in confidence or are too nervous. Fortunately, there are various techniques for overcoming nervousness. These can be learnt and by increasing the frequency of presenting, we gradually become more comfortable with the process.

Trump’s messages can be quickly understood. Build a big wall; everyone is more cunning than we are; make America great again; read my Art of the Deal; it’s my own money so I don’t owe anybody; politicians are useless; I am rich and successful; I know how to get things done; I am not politically correct; etc. He is derided as a demagogue, but as a speaker he presents his ideas such that we can remember them. Isn’t this what we also want with our audience? Think back though, how many key messages can you recall from the many business presentations you have heard over the course of your business career? I would guess not many or none. Here is the key question - will people remember yours?

When we speak, we need to have clarity around the key points we want to get across, in the time we have available. Taking on too much content (“death by Powerpoint”), nullifies the key messages we want to have resonate with the audience. A major information dump is also a killer, especially when quoting lots of data. Overload just destroys the communication and the audience are lost.

Trump totally oozes self confidence. Confidence certainly sells and if he has any self-doubt (?) about this new public speaking role for himself, he is certainly not sharing it with his audiences. Now, we may not have his same degree of self-belief or his serious billions, but we must exude confidence when speaking with our audience. Some people say, “fake it, till you make it”. Remember, in the room there is only one person who knows you are not confident and that person is you. Unless you run around advertising it, nobody else will have a clue.

In Dale Carnegie we bolster confidence through embracing the 3 E’s: We have Earned the right to speak, because we know our subject; we are Excited because of our positive feelings for the content; and we are Eager to share with our audience, because we feel this will help them. There is a cross-over point as a speaker, where you stop concentrating on yourself and what is wrong with you and then you start concentrating on your audience. Employ the 3 E’s and you will become confident. Even if we are not super confident at first, never ever show that to the audience – they buy speaker self-belief and our job is to provide it.

Trump loves to tell stories. NBC begged me to do a new season of The Apprentice; Carl Icahn told me he is ready to be my negotiator with China; I saw all of these Japanese cars in LA coming out of the biggest ship I have ever seen, etc. He weaves these vignettes into his speech to highlight his key points. Storytelling works and as he demonstrates, they don’t have to be lengthy stories to be effective. Sprinkle some real life stories into your presentations to make you and the content come alive for your audience.

Talk about people, places and emotions that the audience can identify with. Don’t say, “we were having a meeting”. Talk about, ”It was winter in New York and we were in the wood paneled boardroom of the client, on the 36th floor of the Rockefeller Center, having a tough meeting with the CEO Jane Smith and I was becoming more nervous.” Now we have taken our audience to the place, added in the people, the season, the atmosphere etc., such that they can clearly visualise it in their mind’s eye. This is how we need to use stories in our talks.

Whether you agree with him or not, it is a simple fact that if a novice like Trump can learn to become persuasive as a public speaker, we can too. Take the advice offered today and study successful speakers, adapt what works, hone your skills and rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. The latter, by the way, is the most common error of unsuccessful presenters – they forget to make time to rehearse the speech before they give it to their audience. Some good advice in business is don’t practice on the client and that includes public speaking!

Action Steps

Be authentic but be the professional you

Focus on your audience the entire time you are presenting – never take your eyes off them

Take every chance to speak for the practice

Keep the key messages simple and easily accessible for the audience

Appear supremely confident, even if your knees are quivering

Embrace the 3 E’s - Earned, Excited and Eager

Use stories to bring your content to life