Running head: Captivate Audience

Leadership & Communication: How to Effectively Captivate An Audience

Jeremy M. Caverley
Coms 4800
Lucas
Ohio University
23 June 2013

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Leadership & Communication: How to Effectively Captivate An Audience
Introduction:
There are several things in life that tend to gather in all the masses and keep them captivated,
enchanted by the charms of the eloquent words spoken for the long-term, whereas other times,
no matter how hard someone may try their actions are never good enough to keep the
attentiveness going. In this examination of leadership, we are focusing on how to be an effective
leader that can persuade an audience of any size. The styles of leadership that will be mentioned
are servant and team, and then this paper will cover the details of self-esteem and determination,
followed by a critique of how persuasion works as related to the leadership theories and a
comparison to a few of the styles in relation to other necessities of leadership skills.
Leadership Defined:
Leadership is the ability to impress the will of the leader on those led and induce obedience,
respect, loyalty, and cooperation (Northhouse, 2013). Now I have to interject here for a moment
to explain that since this 1927 definition, just about every decade a newly defined answer has
been given from various scholars around the world. I personally chose this answer as it was the
first one that tried to define leadership. So now, let us go onto the explanations of servant and
team leadership traits.
Servant Leadership: place the good of followers over their own self-interests and
emphasize follower development (Northhouse, 2013).

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Team Leadership: starts with a mental model of the situationeffective leadership
process [that] support employee involvement [and has] internal/external actions [lead to]
team effectiveness (Northhouse, 2013).
Now that I have defined the basics of several leadership styles that use various traits and
a combination of skills to make them work properly, I will now discuss the connection of
leadership to the term persuasion and how this combined effort makes for a perfect dialogue to
keep an audience tuned into your speech, presentation, or any other form of communication
where leadership is required.
Persuasion-Do I Have Your Attention Now:
Throughout history there have been a few people that defined what persuasion is to its
fullest means. From Jesus Christ to Benjamin Franklin, and in our current generation K-Mart
with their ship your pants marketing campaign, everywhere around us someone is vying for
our attention. For now let us focus on what persuasion does and how it works.
Persuasion: human communication that is designed to influence others by modifying
their beliefs, values, or attitudes (Dainton, 2004)
Here is another way to describe persuasion from Lee McGaan at Monmouth College, in a step
system that goes from a cognitive thought a belief then a value followed into a motive
then, attitude which becomes an action and a repeated action behavior that goes on to
become a part of everyday life, what others may call a habit (McGaan, 2010).

The first term you should know is "BELIEF." In persuasion theory "belief" refers to
what people think is true or false, that is, the facts (McGaan, 2010).

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The second term is "VALUE." "Value" refers to what we think is good or bad, right or
wrong (McGaan, 2010).

The third term is "Motive." "Motive refers to the audience member's self-interest
(McGaan, 2010).

The fourth important persuasion term is "ATTITUDE." "Attitude" refers to what people
like or dislike, favor or oppose (McGaan, 2010).

The last persuasive term we need to define is "BEHAVIOR." "Behavior" means

intentional action (McGaan, 2010).

Next we need to discuss about the characteristics of self-esteem and determination as related to
how persuasion works. These traits are used to convince viewers/listeners to truly believe the
words coming out of their mouths is a whole truth and even if it is a blatant lie the listener could
be swayed to believe this message over time or instantly without question, this is what takes to
captivate an audience.
Self-Esteem:
What every leader needs is the intuitive ability to have faith in their styles, traits, and skills; this
is otherwise known as self-esteem or as some call self-confidence. Now this positive trait is
either self-taught, or build up through a combined effort of educational and personal experience
through trial and error. But what is self-confidence, how does this connect to your organization,
yourself and others? The University of Marylands Dr. Florence Rosenberg defined self-esteem
on a scale system as a, positive or negative orientation toward oneself; an overall evaluation of
one's worth or value (Rosenberg, 1989).
As a leader grows their unique path, their self-esteem is correlated to the direct cognitive
thoughts as to how good or bad they are doing overall. Without a proper positive level selfesteem, a leader could implode and end up having burn out. Far too many leaders tend to become

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isolated and never receive proper feedback of when they actually do something good, as with the
mainstream media there is more reporting when the facts line up with the immoral versus a
morally feel good story. So to solve the problem of needing a good self-esteem, a leader needs to
develop over time a select group of people that can be a sounding board for them so they can
continually enhance their abilities. Another way for this to happen would be to not set limits too
high beyond their actual capabilities as well.
Determination Connected to Situational Leadership:
To define determination fully this would require the terms motivation, catalyst, and
endurance. The reason I personally chose these three terms is that they surround and connect to
how determination works. As the term determination is part psychological and physiological in
nature. The psychological side is where the mind creates the cognitive thought process, a
controlled system in whereas explained in more detail later about goal-setting, but for now this
will be related to how a person decides to create new content, follow-up, and make decisions to
go beyond an obstacle placed in from of them. Then the physiological side is the follow up of the
thought process in action, in other words what other people see us do in our daily lives as they
cannot read our minds. Then the best leadership theory to explain this would be situational
leadership, as this form is an ever revolving, always learning characteristic trait that changes
around the employees they are training, to the environment they are placed in. Now, a good
example of that could be, the United States Coast Guard, as their motto is Semper Paratus
which means always ready. This military branch is a part of Homeland Security and they
reflect and define what situational or another term for this servant-leadership means. Every day
is a new challenge for the US Coast Guard, a new case with different situations, people,

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locations, a task going alongside that is mundane and habitual. All this and more defines Coast
Guard leadership and its subordinates. But what about how effective is leadership that uses
persuasion as its core foundation?
Critique of Effective Attention Getting Leadership:
The resounding evidence of persuasion connected to leadership traits and skills has its own
positive and negative actions and said reactions. So this next section will explain and answer
how an audience decides to give a listening ear towards to speaker and how they stay engaged
and this will be compared to the required skills a leader needs to have and what goal-setting
plans can be achieved in the process.
We Are Listening Now Or Are We:
The act of engaging in a conversation or being part of an audience requires an acute attention to a
detail known as listening. So many leaders fail to acquire this trait as many are too focused on
over-thinking and engaging in what they want to say next. Now part of listening is also use of
sight-reading your listener. This sight-reading is a must learned trait and to do this will keep your
audience holding onto every word you speak. What can be found out by looking at your listener
is that many want to see your face the emotional response you give with your words and on the
other hand what is the listener expressing with their tone of voice and non-verbal bodily
behavior. This interjection of a tale-tail response can show if those listening to a speech actually
are mentally and physically involved with the message being delivered. As a speaker when these
cues start to show an error of deviation to the desired response then its time to change the tactics
used to continue the message with a positive end result.

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How Important is Persuasion to Other Leadership Skills:
In this section the issue of how persuasions importance is to other leadership skills such as,
intelligence and problem solving, and what does persuasion do to a persons integrity and
personality. For the record, there are several more different combinations that could have been
used for this research, but I personally feel that the below skills chosen can better explain where
persuasion is in a long line of several skills lined up, tested, and compared to each other.
Intelligence & Problem-Solving:
The intelligence quotient of a skills-based leadership is always connected to how problemsolving is completed. The amount of attention to details is correlated to the level of intelligence a
person reflects. Usually the lower the intelligence the more the use of persuasion is needed.
Many times the lower the intellect, the more focused on just one problem-solving skill is used, to
persuade an audience that the speaker actually knows more than they truly do. But where does
this measure in comparison to persuasion alone? Again, this is a complex solving issue as both
intelligence and problem-solving are connected to the scale of how persuasion is used. So to
answer this I would personally have to say that persuasion always connected to every form of
leadership qualities, it could seem hidden in plain sight, but the purpose of a leader is to convince
their audience to believe in their speech, there actions, and to formulate decisions that would
either carry over to their team or go completely against. So persuasion is a main issue for
problem-solving and intelligence; it is just a matter of how the median used is directed and
related to the level of a leaders own intelligence level. The higher the level of intelligence the
leader has, then the broader scope and reach the persuasion can be used. But on the other hand, if
the intelligence level of the leader is quite small, then the scope and focus reaching level of the

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problem-solving and decision-making becomes narrow; and the use of persuasion becomes a
most important piece of the leaders skill sets; in other words, a leader could lie his way
through and with enough charisma and focus, they could convince anyone to believe in them,
but if they start to lack in details their whole plans could fall apart (Northhouse, 2013).
Integrity & Sociability:
So what is integrity and how does this relate to sociability? First we must define both terms and
how they integrate together.
Integrity: the quality of honesty and trustworthiness (Northhouse, 2013)
Sociability: leaders inclination to seek out pleasant social relationships (Northhouse, 2013)

Now with both integrity and sociability has been defined, now we can look at how the
personality styles connect these two traits together. For instance, if a person tends to be more
high strung this could cause them to behave irrationally or with a higher level of scrutiny for
details. The best terms to define this behavior would be neuroticism and extraversion; which
many leaders tend to either be extraverted or introverted. But when it comes to the social-liking,
most people prefer a person that leans towards extraversion and away from neuroticism and
introversion. This now can be correlated to integrity because as a leader, a person must make
several critical decisions that can have a long-lasting effect on a company or the leader
themselves, that if the course of action taken is criminal, or unethical in nature then that can
spiral down throughout the employees and into the media and then into the eye of the public.
The Eye On The Prize of Goal Setting:

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Every leader needs to create goals for themselves, the team, company, and others. This can be
done through technical means connected to a project manager to delegate and adjust plans as
needed, as well as various meetings throughout each quarterly term to make sure they stay on
track. Each step of the direction for goal-setting will have to be flexible for a good leader
succeed, to many concrete set in their way plans can fall out and cause the whole idea to crash
and that means having to start all over from the beginning. Now this does not mean have core
beliefs, ideas, and set plans inside a goal that can never be moved; these plans would be called
milestones (Northhouse, 2013).
Short-Term Goals:
A short-term goal is one that is connected to the overall project, or a personal career path plan,
but it is overall shorter in duration to accomplish, and it is only part of the larger plan/project.
These plans have smaller milestones or milestones that can be reached quickly to reach
completion, and they should have more flexibility in case of changes that need to be made
(Northhouse, 2013).
Long-Term Goals:
The way long-term goals work is that they are the essential milestones needed to reach to the
next level of the overall project. These plans can make or break a company if too much money is
invested and then nothing can be shown for it. Long-term goals are more expensive than the
latter and usually can be several short-term goals connected that reach the final collaborated
project (Northhouse, 2013).
How Short-term And Long-term Goals Effect Leaders Persuasion Skills:

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The University of North Carolina Greensboro Dr. William Seiler mentions that action [is the]
ultimate goal of all persuasion and that there are four sub-goals: adoption, discontinuance,
deterrence, or continuance [that defines the directional goal a leaders persuasion takes the
audience] (Seiler, 1995). Below will have the four sub-goals listed, and how they are connected
to goal setting.
Adoption: an action that asks listeners to demonstrate their acceptance of an attitude,
belief, or value by performing the action suggested by the speaker (Seiler, 1995).
Discontinuance: the opposite of adoption. (Seiler, 1995).
Deterrence: an action goal that asks the listeners to demonstrate their acceptance of an
attitude, belief, or value by avoiding a certain behavior (Seiler, 1995).
Continuance: an action goal that asks the listeners to demonstrate their acceptance of an
attitude, belief, or value by continuing to perform a certain behavior (Seiler, 1995).
Personally I feel that Dr. Seilers goal-setting ideas only cover a small amount into what a larger
format is needed for the creation of short and long-term planning, but it does give an insight to
where to begin. Next up in discussion will be the rest of what a leader needs to do in the goalsetting production stages.

Goal-setting for Leaders:

Early on in the goal-setting process a leader needs to create a thesis question about the
continuance; the action they want the audience to perform. Now this action could have the
listeners take on a practice of adoption, meaning joining sides with the speaker or to take action
via an advocate role or the opposite could occur with discontinuance. Then after these variables
have been pre-scripted out as possible in the risk management stage, a leader needs to ask the
question(s) about deterrence; will the listeners perform a mental process change in beliefs or to
take a stance against the topic mentioned. All this and more needs to be pre-thought out as

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possible so that as a leader you can become more prepared in follow up actions through a
situational awareness role (Northhouse, 2013).
Conclusion:
As time goes on, and historians look back upon the various genres of business, ministry, politics,
etc., there will be only a few that stand out among the rest as great leaders who changed the
world. The reason why they were a catalyst of creating a legacy that will last throughout the ages
was how they captivated audiences around the world with their persuasion through the use of
their talents and traits in; charisma, prestige, honor, respect, and an extreme devotion to their
trade. A passion that will never fade, but burn bright as long as people find it in their hearts to
want to continue to learn, inspire, overcome and enhance the quality of life around them. As Zig
Ziglar once said, the most important persuasion tool you have in your entire arsenal is
integrity, because your integrity is what creates your legacy, so what will our leaders be
remembered for? How they persuaded their audiences around the world.

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Bibliography
Dainton. (2004, September 16). Explaining Theories of Persuasion. Retrieved from
SagePub: http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/4985_Dainton_Chapter_5.pdf
McGaan. (2010, Feburary 11). Introduction to Persuasion. Retrieved from Monmouth
College:
http://department.monm.edu/cata/saved_files/Handouts/PERS.FSC.html
Northhouse, G. P. (2013). Leadership: Theory and Practice. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Rosenberg. (1989). The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. Retrieved from University of
Maryland-Sociology: http://www.bsos.umd.edu/socy/research/rosenberg.htm
Seiler, W. J. (1995, May 28). Goals of Persuasive Speaking. Retrieved from The
University of North Carolina Greensboro The University Speaking Center:
http://speakingcenter.uncg.edu/resources/tipsheets/argumentation/goalsofper
suasivespeaking.pdf