Playing with audience perceptions of size

by Peter Watts

Size is relative to the words you use. Those words will make your subject appear either dramatically bigger, or pathetically smaller.

Rhetoric works by using word patterns. Whether you intended to do it or not, if you trip one of those patterns during a sale or a presentation, then a sizing spell kicks in and you shrink your positives or enlarge your negatives.

Here’s an example of a recent conversation I had with the receptionist of a hotel that I was checking into:

“Good evening Mr Watts. Welcome to our hotel. We want you to be very comfortable, and it is our pleasure to offer you a complimentary upgrade. We will therefore be upgrading you to one of our Executive Rooms”

Delighted, I asked what made an Executive Room special, and received the deadpan answer:

“Fruit bowl”

My sense of privilege dropped lower than a dachshund’s belly. A fruit bowl? Really? This was their idea of an upgrade?

Now when you’ve come off an international flight, and it’s too late for dinner, then a complimentary fruit bowl sent to the room is a nice touch; something fresh and healthy to snack on. The receptionist however had unwittingly shrunk this gift by presenting it at the end of a series of upwards steps:

Be comfortable…. Complimentary upgrade…..  Executive Room…….

My imagination could then take over and continue climbing those steps:

Bigger room…. King size bed…. Club Floor…..

When he dropped the sucker-punch of “fruit bowl” it had the effect of bowling me right back down to the bottom again. By comparison to where my imagination had been a few moments before, that fruit-bowl now seemed almost humorously insignificant.

This is known as anti-climax. You build, build, build the power, and then drop it back down again. The effect makes your subject appear pathetically tiny. It invokes an almighty contrast between what could have been, and what actually is!

For a more subtle way to super-size either benefits or consequences, try this approach. It’s called a Step Augmentation. It follows the same path as anti-climax but without the deliberate crash at the end.

Examples of Step Augmentation:

“We have to recruit now because finding the right person could take us days, weeks, months!”

“With this infrastructure our network can extend into new districts, new cities, new states.”

“Consider how your needs will be change one year from now, five years from now, ten years from now.”

“The loss of opportunity would sad, it would be tragic, it would be heart-breaking.”

By arranging terms in a sequence of increasing strength, the audience finds themselves looking at the topic through a telescope; they put their eye to the small end and see the subject matter magnified out of the big end.

To shrink the apparent size of the subject, simply flip the telescope around. By starting with the most dramatic term and then running the sequence backwards you effectively place your audience’s eye to the big end of the telescope and have them perceive the subject radically reduced. Try looking through a toy telescope or binoculars backwards and you’ll see the effect for yourself.

When done this way, it’s called a Step Diminution. You lead your audience down the steps, instead of up them.

When building a case for something, we naturally string together little lists of adjectives and adverbs, causes and consequences, and then run them either in random pairs or groups of three. Listen to others presenting and you’ll hear how common it is.

The secret to size is to make this natural descriptive behavior into a conscious descriptive behavior. Arrange your terms from small to large if you want to enlarge your topic, and from large to small in order to shrink it.

Always be aware of which end of the telescope you’re asking your audience to look through.

For more ideas on shrinking and growing your audience’s sense of scale, check out this post: Because Size Matters

Presentation Ethos, Mr Burns, a Dental Nurse, and Me

by Peter Watts

Credibility in public speaking is associated with the level of ethos that you command with your audience, customer, or patient.

Ethos is founded on reputation, it’s founded on the title before your name or the qualifications that trail after it. It’s bolstered by visible accoutrements such as your premises, your equipment, or your uniform. It’s your past track record and your client list. Ethos is that diploma you keep framed on the wall. When ethos is visible, ethos is easy. Once you’ve got the titles and the trappings, then you can ride on them. Right?

Wrong.

Most of all, ethos is similarity. It’s can people like you? People buy from people. Are you a likable human, or a cold diploma?

Allow me to illustrate, because I just met this phenomena in the flesh in my Dentist’s office. Or rather, I met her eyes in the flesh because every other bit of anatomy was covered in surgical-wear, and a gloved hand was sticking some cold whining torture tool into my gum-line. How’s that for all the accoutrements of ethos with none of the likability?

About ten minutes into treatment, I must have angled my jaw into the perfect position for oral penetration, because unexpectedly, from under my tormenter’s mask came a creepy but perfectly phrased “Excellent”. Joann the Hygienist had just delivered a grade A impression of the Simpsons character Mr Burns.

Treatment had to stop immediately. I was experiencing an overwhelming urge to respond with a Burns quote of my own:

“Release the hounds.”

Complete strangers till 15 minutes earlier, Joann and I had just established a level of intimacy born of our shared enjoyment in a TV character. Once that connection was established, all Joann had to do was slowly steeple and then drum her fingers together for me to become instant dental putty in her hands (fellow Burns fans will know what I mean!)

In this coincidence of connection, I was experiencing ethos at first-hand. While Joann had all the visible elements of ethos, the Burns connection suddenly gave us a shared cultural reference point. It gave us an aspect of similarity, and we are most readily inclined to favor and believe those who we regard as being similar to ourselves.

Doctors are held up as a prime example of ethos, and yet, how many Doctors find themselves getting sued?

As Malcolm Gladwell explored in his book “Blink”, there is an inverse correlation between the amount of time Doctors spend on social orientation with patients, and the likelihood of their later being sued for malpractice. Malpractice suits are the ultimate expression of the collapse of ethos. Ethos is collapsing through a lack of social connection.

Joann and I connecting over Mr Burns was maybe an extreme example, but the fundamental point remains. For complete credibility, connection is as important as  qualification.