The six principles of influence

Yesterday, I completed my second speech project at Toastmasters. The “CTM 2 project” as it is called in Toastmasters parlance requires you to “organize your speech“. Yours truly spoke on the six weapons of influence. The reason I chose this topic was because I wanted the talk to be useful to the audience. I felt there was no point in talking about something as mundane as how much I love cricket. So, I customized some of the examples for each influence principle to bring the message closer to home. As an example, for the consistency principle, I quoted how one of our members, in a prior meeting, asked those of us present to state out loud our committment levels towards attending meetings. And when I said that very action of the member would most certainly have increased the overall attendance percentages of the club, I could see him smile.

For the authority principle, I called out a doctor in the audience and asked him if he had framed and hung his medical degree for display on the wall of his clinic. I had no clue if he would reply in the affirmative or in the negative. And when he said yes, I complimented him on using his medical degree as a symbol of authority. Overall, the speech went off pretty decently and I was able to carry forward my beginners luck from the first speech. However, I need to slow down a tad bit more and introduce a little more pauses as I speak. Guess that will naturally happen when I become a more confident speaker.

I’m already thinking of topics for future speech projects. Any suggestions would be deeply appreciated