How to Communicate Better

Telling or Selling?

The key differences between informative and persuasive speaking

by Orator and Writer, Frank Sardella

A Little Persuasion to Let Me Inform You, Not for Your Information, but for Your USE!

I have to tell you something.

It may be something you have studied about before. It may be something you believe you know well. It may be something that you had disregarded as “I will never, ever use this” and forgotten all about it.

No matter the case, there is something missing from this elusive subject that university education tends to miss, an omitted that makes the information useless. It is this that this brief writing is to inform you of. And it is for the purpose of making something previously-deemed “useless” of great use to you and to give you and edge and a little advantage in life.

It is for your information, something fundamental I know and wish to pass along. A fundamental that may be the difference between, not just a pass or fail in a college Communications course, but in a capacity of the business of living your life in any of the various contexts, social and professional, in which you find yourself.

So, I’m telling you about it here.

Admittedly, my real motivation in telling you all of this is that I wanted to highlight some “education” you “learned and forgot” (in other words “memorized” and “discarded as useless”) in your school years and empower you to use and apply it in life to your advantage, the subject of Communication being the foundation upon which all your endeavors rely for any sense of stability and success.

To get you to read this however, I may have to sell you on it. To get you to read the informative, I have to resort to the persuasive. I’d have to persuade you that you have something to learn from it. And, informing you of a few salient points, I hope to persuade you to read, absorb and consider this information.

So, I’m selling you on that here, to be completely transparent as to my intentions, but only as regards that fact of convincing you to read it for your consideration and not force it upon you, passing it off to you as education or knowledge you must “learn”.

In so persuading, and having informed you of a few fundamental observations about the subject you may not have considered, the all-too-important self-evaluation of the information will be required of you. (Essentially adding an omitted prerequisite to understanding information, preceding analysis of its informative and persuasive qualities.)

There is a give and take to information. There is the type of information received but, in its reception, there is a responsibility to assess its nature. And, while it may have some menial value to establish whether information is informative or persuasive in nature, these categories are not themselves the sole criteria on which evaluation should be established, but one of several.

Evaluation of information is where the vital factors of the speaker’s intent, motivation and intended result become critical. It is vital to know the purpose of the communication, the underlying message it intends and the conclusions you will potentially draw. And your conclusion will fail to be your own should you just receive a dissertation, as intended, without self-evaluation.

Self-evaluation, at first glance, seems a bi-polar, black-or-white, two-valued decision for the reader or listener to conclude, deciding “yes or no” whether the information holds water based on one’s own belief, experiences and education.

But this crucial process entails much deeper investigation and consideration.

Factors such as pure observation of the contentions and intentions of the author, that author’s “sources” backing up the data, and further evaluation of the quantity and quality of said “resources” to say nothing of their overall validity.

Surprisingly, yes, quantity is a factor.

“Sources say there is no end in sight to this issue…” (yada, yada, yada) implies a plethora of positive data (quantity) backing up a statement when, in fact, “sources” (plural) can simply mean “more than one” and turn out to be two. Beyond that there is credibility (quality). Who are these two “sources” and why is what they said relevant to what we’re supposed to conclude?

“Science tells us that there is a connection between…” implies a wealth (quantity) of credible (quality) information backing up a statement, with an implied trust (mere faith) on the part of the reader or listener of “the facts” of the case. But the true story is there is no person named “Science” and the broad subject of Science is too all-encompassing to be used as a reference or source for anything.

“Studies show that…” again implies an abundance (quantity) and validity (quality) taking advantage of the fact that a reader will have faith (trust) without further question.

Welcome to modern journalism. But life doesn’t just revolve around “the news” when it comes to received information on any given subject. This is not just to educate you on the news or even Wikipedia, Google or the internet at large.

Even people you encounter, socially, professionally and “familially”, can have these fundamentals sufficiently confused, for lack of knowing what is covered here. And sometimes, yes, it may be with intended malice. Whatever the motivation however, knowing these fundamentals can lead to better understanding and, of course more effective application of the information to life, my professed intent from page one.

So, there is much more to know than you have been taught and signifantly more homework and work-work to be done besides “listening” or “reading” or even “researching” information, especially in an age where “information” is coming at you (uncontrollably) on all channels imaginable even while you sleep.

I come from a generation of those who had to do the hard work of what Wikipedia does in milliseconds. By use of a library, its card-catalog system and consulting various books on the subject, we looked to various sources to learn something. Sitting at a table in the library with a stack of books, reading from the actual authors IN CONTEXT what their conclusions were, we saw all the data.

As just a statement of fact (informative) and not a criticism (persuasive), Wikipedia culls what they consider “relevant” data to what words you search. It crawls the entire internet for anything published there that “relates” to your search terms. It them compiles it into a singular report of the data. And while it does quote sources, it does not present a full picture.

Compare it to the library scenario and this would be the equivalent of you asking me for the information you’re looking for, me going to the card catalog, checking out all the books and authors I could find on the subject, reading each book in its entirety looking for what I find to be “relevant” facts, clipping them out and giving you the clippings.

And then provide you a bibliography page (list of sources) which gives the exact books from which I extracted the quotations so you can “check them out yourself”, as if you had the time, interest or desire to do so. Sarcasm admitted, but nonetheless a factor for consideration.

Would you trust me on my conclusions alone?

How do you know what I found to be the full story?

Do you know if there are any important, qualifying factors that may change the shape of my report, that perhaps I overlooked or even intentionally withheld?

Am I truly being informative, or am I using only certain facts to slant the story toward an intended outcome and persuade you to subscribe to an opinion and hold it as fact?

Don’t get me wrong. This is not being presented purely as a caution. Yes, that is one motivation. To lay wide open my intentions in having written this work, I am presenting some caution but, admonishing your “blind acceptance” doesn’t teach you how to speak or interpret. You need to learn to interpret correctly.

Taking a class in communication (or having done so in the education you decided you “would never use”), perhaps even having had to write and orate your own dissertations, you may have concluded that the principles governing informative and persuasive speaking apply only to giving a speech, something you will likely never need to do.

And, though you may conclude some possible, if remote application of it somewhere in your life, it may seem like a one-way flow of information from you to others. Speaking is undoubtedly important. But what about listening and understanding?

The listening end is tremendously underemphasized in its predominant importance (an informative statement with the persuasive word “predominant” thrown in for emphasis). Good informative speaking, even persuasive in nature, must convince the listener but, the listener must not be persuaded without evaluating more than just the words.

Who is this person, why do they want me to make these conclusions, what do they intend, what is their expertise, who are their “sources” and why should I give this any consideration?

This makes speeches and talks conversations and discussions as opposed to dissertations and, implies there are two active sides to any given work of writing or speaking: sending and receiving. It is within BOTH of these contexts where the data on “Informative” and “Persuasive” resides and where its usefulness comes alive.

What are my pure intentions in this work?

I woke up out of a comfortable slumber at 4 am or so and, while trying to drift back to sleep I realized I knew something of which I needed to inform others. I knew I wouldn’t be able to make it happen if I didn’t get up right now and get this out. It’s a responsibility to parlay.

Factually, in having successfully overhauled and revamped an entire college “Fundamentals of Communication” class lecture series, I have been working on this for nearly ten years. And, by success, I mean a night-and-day change in student participation, interest, grades and even application of the basics learned, semester after semester, session after session for the ensuing decade.

Ironically – and speaking of application over education – I made my own way of it. As an entertainer, stage-performing musician and public orator, I have decades of experience in studying audiences, not through books, but by COMMUNICATING with them. Using powers of observation (with which we are ALL fundamentally endowed – no special talent required) and shaping my own habits around the reception of an audience, I became a success.

How do I define success? Well, how would YOU define it?

If you were able to turn knowledge into a skill and use it to exchange a performance using that skill for income, that would be a good working definition of success. Wouldn’t it?

That is how I define it, anyway. I am sought after in a number of fields in which I’m expert to inform others, and I’m monetarily recompensed for it. In its greater simplicity, I get paid, handsomely, to speak and write for others.

So much so, a college professor paid me, out of personal funds to help restructure and revamp a course in communication to give students improved outcomes (grades, understanding, class participation, etc.). But I knew we would have to give them something most collegiate courses of study fail to deliver: direct and immediate application.

Period.

And I delivered, and students numbering in the thousands are directly benefitting these last ten years and counting. I can only imagine the ripples that have been flowing out from their success, and the secondary impacts this has made. I take pride in knowing this.

But you don’t have to be a student to benefit from this work. You do, however, have to be somewhat of a good student to understand it. Beyond that, you need to become a good student of life, not just in learning how to communicate outwardly better, but in how to receive information that is flooding your receipt channels, even as you read this, including this very work.

Informative vs Persuasive Speaking, being emphasized as an important distinction, but underexplained and incomplete in its substance, is a subject that should be mastered if you are to grab any sense of control over incoming and outgoing communication in your life, your job and any context in which you find yourself endeavoring.

“Informative” versus “Persuasive” speaking is interesting. I discovered, in being hired to revamp a college class lecture series, that informative and persuasive speaking are being presented (fundamentally speaking) as polar opposites: You’re either “informing” or “persuading” when you write or speak and being “informed” or “persuaded” when you read or listen.

That is a little misleading and is not fundamental in nature, nor does it give you anything useful to living life in so learning it. And so it becomes discarded.

So suffers communication in your life, in your vicinity, in your endeavors and in the world you find yourself living, striving for better survival, struggling at times to achieve it. But, multiply your confusions and difficulties times eight billion, and you can see where crisis may develop out of a single shortcoming of one inhabitant of the group, the county, the world and beyond!

Imagine straightening out the communication ability and perception of just one person and how it can ripple endlessly to the group and then from the group to the millions, one proverbial oar stroke rocking others’ boats stranded in planetary Stillwater, shallowed on shoals or aground on rocky coastlines to reverberate back in intense waves of better understanding.

What do you think the world would look like then?

And just what if it started with you?