Cheat Sheet for Confessional Preimmunization

3-step audience analysis:

1. Relevant attributes of the audience. 
(Age, occupation, gender, technical knowledge, culture, etc)

How do those attributes impact the way I should communicate?

Tip: Use analogies like: “4-core computer -> 4-brain (human?)”, “it’s like tinder for cats” etc, 2. Know/Think/Feel/Do

Fill this matrix:

What does my AUDIENCE                                                                                                                    about:
	the Subject I’m communicating about	The communicator (Me)
Know
Think
Feel
Do

How to fill it:

What does my AUDIENCE                                                                                                                    about:
	the Subject I’m communicating about	The communicator (Me)
Know	How familiar they are with the subject?	What do they know about me?
Think	Opinion/view on the subject: (un)interesting, too complicated etc, positively/negatively predisposed	WhaddatheTHINK ‘bout me?
Feel	Emotions, emotions.. (anger, doubt, confusion, arousal, flambergassment etc)	<- that over there, only about me.
Do	What are their actions today, how they communicate, behave. E.g cooperate, badmouth, reject etc	<- That’s the behavior you want to act upon.

In general: Try to put the audience in your shoes, one person at a time, if you are large man it’ll be better both for the audience and your shoes.

3. What’s In It For Them?

That’s what will:

Grab their attention, get them involved, interested, persuaded.

Focus on Benefits, NOT features.

Explain how their life get better, not the technicals.

I can mention some features afterwards to support the promised benefits.

Present benefits as solutions to problems.

Direct approach is usually preferable in western cultures.

Indirect approach may be better for announcing bad news.

Decide or account for how the is message delivered:

Written: Document (e,g report, essay, announcement)

Oral only: Phone/conference call

Blended: Real life presentation (words and non-verbal communication)

Each method has its merits and disadvantages.

Combination of methods?

HOW2 WORK ON THE CASE TOMORRAW

#1.  Drink coffee 20’ before the exam

#2.  Mind your breathing

#3.  Don’t think of your ex or anything that will distract you.

#4. Read the case briefly but word by word once.

#5. Read the case patiently, underlining and taking notes.

#6. Read each question at least twice.

#7. Adapt the arbitrarily previous-century models chosen for this course to the case.

#8. ‘Sound’ confident in your writing, they’ll mistake it for smart (judging by their presentations).

- - - 

How I can boost my credibility:

- Briefly mention my title (Executive Corporate Associate Manager a’le creme)
- Mention my track record/ expertise, career, relevant previous accomplishments.

- Use citations, relate myself with great minds.

- Wear appropriate clothes (only a bit more formal than my average audience member)

- Emphasize their benefits WiiFit (that makes me the ‘good news’ person they instinctively want to trust)

- Emphasize common ground (goals, worries, concerns, effort)

Describe my objective (my goal) -> What do I want the audience to DO after my presentation.

E.g: Put more effort, give us an extension, fund my project, be tolerant etc.

What I will DO after my presentation: Work on this and that, keep in touch and frequent

Critical Thinking

Three ideas to keep in mind:

Consequentialism: Evaluates our actions considering the result they seek/accomplish.

Deontology (Virtue Ethics): Examines how moral are our actions themselves, regardless of the result they seek.

Relativism:  knowledge, truth, and morality exist in relation to culture, society, or historical context, and are not absolute.

Fallacies can generate bad arguments or bad reasoning.

Check the relevance between statements.

Crucial Fallacies of relevance.

1. "Ad Hominem" or "against the person."

“He is a bad/incompetent person so his argument MUST be wrong.”

E.g: “My dietologist is fat so he can’t give dietary advice” is a flawed argument because he may have amazing advice he just can not or does not follow.

2. Attacking the motive:

“He is greedy/desperate/shark so his argument MUST be wrong”

E.g “He’s the CEO so he’s greedy and money-driven so his new environmental policy will ruin the local ecosystem”

3. “Tu quoque” or “You do it too”

This is a specific of Ad Hominem fallacy. When someone acts opposite to his/her own argument that’s not always enough to prove the argument wrong (or/ and the credibility of the dude)

4. Bandwagon arguments

“Everybody does/believes it, so that’s what we should do”

Very usual and effective. E.g: Giving percentages of people who engage in something, suggesting you ‘follow’ them.

It’s also used to argue against something new or uncommon.

5. Straw Man

Distorting someone’s words or acts to create a ‘strawman’ of him/her and often claim they are or believe things they never mentioned.

E.g

“-Do you like my food? - I think it's really unique - I'm glad you like it.”

“He doesn’t wash so he’s a hippie so he’s a communist so he’s smoking pot.”

Evidence vs Relevance:

There must be enough evidence to avoid a relevance argument or to argue for itself.

Evidence arguements:

6. Inappropriate appeal to authority:

Using ‘authority’ names where they are really not:

• Genuine authorities in the subject (e.g Madonna shaves her legs with our razors, what does she know?)
• Not accurate (e.g XXX)
• The source is generally unreliable. e.g “The Onion mentioned that...”
• The source was removed from context or cited incorrectly

7. Appeal to ignorance

If you can not prove something the opposite must hold:

• Russell’s teapot. “You can’t prove that there’s not  a teapot orbiting around earth, so it has to be there.”
• “There is no evidence yet so it didn’t happen”

8. Hasty Generalization

When draw a general conclusion from a small or/and biased sample or with irrelevant facts.

It’s like “Yeah, I had three workers and one was jew and you know Jews stink and I heard most Belgians are catholics and cold and people say avocado is an aphrodisiac so I have to eat three every day”

How to avoid fallacies

1. In my own Know/Feel/Think/Do
   E.g in case of a techie addressing non-techies.
2. In Their Know/Feel/Think/Do
   Which fallacies I anticipate my audience will be prone to
3. In my message
   Good arguments + “Let me make clear”

- - -

Three sorts of ethical arguments:

• From professionalism
  “We have do serious business here”
• From consequences (consequentialism)
  “It’s gonna affect us this and that way”
• From Duty (deontology)
  “I’d be immoral/moral to act like dat”

Our code of ethics: (just sprinkle the text with some of the following):

• Integrity
• Competency
• Leadership
• I’m objective
• Honesty
• Trustworthiness
• Sustainability
• Encourage diversity
• I’m Batman (confidentiality)
• Responsibility
  etc…

Now, let’s see what’s the assignment is about:

We’ll be given a case study and will be asked to:

• Consider credibility
• Profile our audience
• Describe the objective
• Identify fallacies
• Come up with ethical arguments
• Decide upon channel and content

This is an easy-dirty, maybe wrong method to tackle each of them, according to the lecturers’ notes and mindsets.

1. Consider credibility: My initial credibility will be mediocre, I will briefly present some personal successes, I’ll dress appropriately (in that case formally but not too much) I’ll can use the audience analysis to enrich my inventory of credibility enhancers.

2. Profile our audience:

• Their relevant attributes is their age, jobs, technical-knowledge level
• I’ll use examples and metaphors to demonstrate benefits or explain problems

What does my AUDIENCE                                                                                                                    about:
	the Subject I’m communicating about	The communicator (Me)
Know	As much as stated	I’m that (position) guy/girl
Think	uninteresting, complicated, troublesome	tech-nerd, I don’t understand them
Feel	confusion, doubt, frustration	doubt, defensiveness, dismay
Do	badmouth, inactive, passive-automatic	cooperate, engage, communicate

3.Describe the objective:

What’s my goal: To gain their trust, cooperation, collaboration, patience, money.

What should they know:

• New information: We are working very hard and are really close to do it.
• Wrong impressions: In fact the deficit is because of good reasons (see also fallacies).
• What are their benefits: Finally we will all get richer, happier and wiser after this story.

4. Identify fallacies:

- Check for generalization, then check which people are mentioned so there may be inappropriate appeal to authority, strawman, personal attacks or ’tu quoque’.

- Remember to mention my own possible fallacies and explain (e.g if I’m angry/frustrated I can do personal attacks or tu quoque, I always can generalize etc).

- ‘bandwagon argument’ is there when smthn like ‘everyone does (not do) that

Counter the fallacies: Address each fallacy explaining that ‘some may/we may tend to believe that… but in fact…’, say what it NOT true.

5. Come up with ethical arguments: Showing as ethical will save your ass.

These can apply to almost any case study:

Professionalism: Be a robust and profitable company, maintain a good status, come up to our values.

Consequences: We could have worse risks/ accidents otherwise.

Duty: Environment, human safety

6. Decide upon channel and content

Depending on the number of the people we need to address.
- A presentation or a meeting/talk.

- If they are in different countries, a recorded conference call.

- If there’s much money hire someone to edit a short video to explain clearly my points with visuals and shit.

- If the trouble is really big and there may be legal issues we also need to write a report