Toastmasters Speech 9 Tips: Persuade with Power

This article details down how to outline and deliver a 5–7-minute speech to “Persuade with Power.” We’ll break-down how to persuade your audience to adopt your point of view using logic and emotion. An example topic is detailed, step by step, to further illustrate how to outline your own speech in a short amount of time.

The purpose of Toastmasters Speech 9 is to “Persuade with Power.” More specifically, you want to:

• Build a speech that persuades the audience to accept your point of view on a particular topic.  You want to establish yourself as a competent leader on this particular topic.
• To effectively persuade, you’ll need to use logic and appeal to your audience’s self-interest.  Help them understand “What’s in it for me?”
• Five- to seven-minute time limit.  This is typically not enough time to persuade an audience which is part of the challenge to get to your points very quickly. It will be important to incorporate expressive body language, strong eye contact, potential visual aids and vocal variety.  Speech 9 may push some club members outside of their comfort zone but lean into this for continued growth.

The Details…

Changing people’s minds is difficult (hello politics of the last 10 years). Your fellow toastmasters may already have a point of view on your subject or, they may have no opinion at all. It is important to capture the audience’s attention right away so that they may assimilate new information with their preexisting beliefs and ultimately form a new belief. Applying logic and emotion are critical during your 5-7 minutes.

Let’s break these two concepts down more

Logic. To convince your audience you must provide evidence – outside sources that provide proof to your position. Appropriate research from credible sources is invaluable as often a person’s point of view on a topic is not rooted in proper facts or evidence. This is a critical part of reshaping an existing opinion.  Draw on your experience from Speech 7 – How to Research Your Topic. While important, logic alone will often not persuade a person to your side which is why you need to layer in…

Emotion and specifically creating an emotional response in your audience member, is a major contributing factor in people’s willingness to change their minds. Arousing emotions such as happiness, sadness, fear, anger etc., and relating them to your subject is an effective tool. Remember, listeners always want to know, “What’s in it for me?” so you need to make your appeal extremely personal to each individual in your audience.  

Picking your Topic

As with all speech projects, my recommendation is to pick a topic that you are fairly knowledgeable about and/or feel passionate about.  It can speed up the research and development process as most of us are participating in club meetings while also juggling school and / or work!  Given the timeframe, be realistic on the topic you choose, and my recommendation is to stay away from any “third rail” topics such as politics and religion.  Is it reasonable to convince the audience that they should all become vegan in 5-7 minutes? Probably not but you can potentially persuade them to reduce/eliminate high fructose corn syrup from their diets or stop eating certain kinds of processed foods.  

Speech Structure

There are several different ways in which you could structure your speech but I am recommending the following:

Problem/solution. State the problem, then present your solution, explaining why it is the best one. Then discuss how to put the solution into effect and the benefits that the audience will experience.  Demonstrate, with authority, your leadership skills as it relates to this topic.

Example: 

All details from the above example were obtained from the following link Maison Pur.

Practice your delivery

This is a speech that you will need to rehearse several times in advance of the actual speech so that your delivery is on point.  I recommend recording your practice rounds to evaluate if your emotional appeal, reinforced by strong eye contact, movement, hand gestures and vocal variety, is compelling enough to support your logic. Perhaps you can even practice in front of a friend or family members to assess whether or not they have been effectively persuaded.  Make adjustments as needed.