Persuasion Atrophy (Part 2): Choreographing Your Content and Delivery
Lonnie Pacelli is an Accenture/Microsoft veteran with four decades of learnings under his belt. He frequently writes and speaks on leadership, project management, work/life balance, and disability inclusion. Reach him at [email protected] and see more at ProjectManagementAdvisor.com.
In Part 1 of Persuasion Atrophy, I introduced how I see social media and artificial intelligence not only impacting how we work and play, but also how they can fundamentally impact the skill of persuasion. Professionals now and in the future need to be intentional about how they build and exercise what I call their “persuasion muscle” to ensure the skill of persuasion doesn’t go the way of long division by hand.
To apply a layer of practicality to my argument, I’d like to use The Four C’s of Compelling Presentations as the roadmap for exercising the persuasion muscle. This installment in the series focuses on choreographing your content and delivery.
The most challenging and consequential talk I’ve ever given wasn’t to a large group of people or a room full of executives, and it wasn’t even a business presentation. It was when I eulogized my sister Lori, who died of lung cancer in 2012 at age 54.
The most important objective of the eulogy was honoring Lori and celebrating her life. Lori loved laughing and having a good time, so a great way to honor her was to inject some funny stories into the eulogy. Twenty-four years before she died, she suffered a type of brain aneurysm that only five percent of people survive. I used an opening story about George Bailey from It’s a Wonderful Life, and how George got to see what …
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