Communicating your authority Are you making these 3 mistakes?

When you have an appliance that is not working, you contact an electrician, or better yet, the service department for that appliance brand.

If you are ill, you contact a health professional.

When your electrician or appliance service person has finished their job, and you are chatting, and they (he/she) offer advice on your health problem, you will probably discount it

UNLESS

you don’t trust your health professional

OR

your technician tells you a story so powerful that you believe their advice.

There are three issues here – 

TRUST

STORY

and PERSUASION,

and that is what authority is all about, persuading your audience that you are credible and worthy of their time and attention.

They need to trust that you have the knowledge and ability, the character and the skills to be believable.  You need to establish your authority to gain their trust.

There are many ways, with varying degrees of success that we can all use to build authority, but there are three that really are mistaken ways to do it and I see them used quite regularly.

The first is to assume that listing achievements is enough.  For a small minority of audiences within a narrow field, it may be, and in certain cultures, but for most audiences, while a list of academic qualifications, or successes or achievements may be impressive as it is presented, it will quickly lose its power as the speaker moves through the levels of persuasion or explanation. 

Those qualifications, those character traits, those successes need to be woven into the presentation as support for the speaker’s points, arguments, message as it unfolds.

And yet, if it’s not done well, people become tired of a braggart.  Have you watched that incredibly ambitious person at work –  the one who is constantly self-aggrandising?  Establishing authority in the workplace is vital to growing your career and your leadership, but it needs to be done subtly.  Authority does not grow from that sort of neediness! 

I have been to business presentations where someone announces their massive success and then asks if I want to hear how they got there.  No, I don’t.  I want to know that you care about me and my problems and pain points and dreams, THEN you can sell to me.  WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) is a very strong motivator of attention in any audience, and if they sense this is no more than a one-way street to results for the speaker then they will tune out, lose trust.

Oftentimes, this is not that the speaker was a braggart.  Oftentimes it means either that they are relatively new to this, they know they need to build authority and are doing their best with lists of achievements – or are following a 

mentor’s misguided advice.  

 

 

Other relatively inexperienced speakers can head in an entirely opposite direction and feel too timid, lack faith in their credentials or don’t want to be seen as boasting, and consequently say nothing. 

 

 

The third mistake is not using story or not using it effectively.  Storytelling really is a powerful way to build trust and connection with an audience.  It works very subtly.  It gives meaning to a message, to a point you are making.  Your audience can see and feel what it is you have to offer working in their lives, see and feel your value.

Facts inform, but stories change hearts and minds, about you, as well as your subject material.

That’s why I have finally put together a series of trainings on authority storytelling for you, so that you can not just avoid the mistakes, but maximise a very subtle, persuasive use of story to establish and communicate your authority and build the trust and engagement of your audience.


How to build a deeper understanding of, and faith in, your undoubted authority,
How to choose the most appropriate and effective stories to tell, even if you think you have no stories at all,
How to weave them into a presentation without coming across as boasting,  
and How to present the stories in ways that support the authority you seek to convey. 

You can sign up here >>>

(and yes it will be recorded, so you can register for the recorded version) 

I look forward to seeing you there so that you can speak to build your career, your business, your reputation, and most assuredly from a place of authority.

Introduction to Authority Storytelling