Persuasive Communication - How Audiences Decide. 2nd Edition

Types of Audience Decisions 73

also serve as an outline for the documents and presentations principals produce in order to elicit

rallying decisions from their agents.

• Does the leader endorse the values our group holds dear?


• Does the leader understand the significance of the occasion to our group?


• Does the leader appreciate the sacrifices our group has already made?


• Is the leader ready to do his or her part?


• Does the leader acknowledge the difficulty of the task that lies ahead?


• What is the leader’s vision for our future?

In addition to the leader’s answers to these questions, followers may also require benchmark in-

formation about the group’s responses to comparable challenges in the past as well as information

about competing visions for their future.

Getting followers to make favorable rallying decisions requires more than rational arguments,

doing so requires artistry, emotion, conviction, and a sense of history. The leader’s spoken deliv-

ery of her vision can have as great an impact as the content of her vision on how effective her

followers perceive her to be.^69 Not surprisingly, speeches that elicit rallying decisions—Abra-

ham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech, John F.

Kennedy’s inaugural address, George Washington’s farewell to the troops—are among the most

memorable speeches ever made. Notice how Lincoln’s speech evokes deep emotion as it addresses

each of the six key criteria listed previously for rallying decisions. As we will see in Chapter 7 ,

the audiences’ emotions tend to infl uence their decisions any time a leader speaks to the values

they hold dear.

LINCOLN’S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS

With the Six Criteria for Rallying Decisions

Lincoln Addressed in Brackets

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty,

and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. [Criterion 1. Our values: Liberty and

equality.]

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedi-

cated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that

field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting

and proper that we should do this. [Criterion 2. The significance of the occasion: To commemorate

our brave soldiers.]

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground.

The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to

add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget

what they did here. [Criterion 3. The sacrifices already made: Our soldiers paid the ultimate

price.] It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought

here have thus far so nobly advanced. [Criterion 4. The president is ready to do his part to win

the war.] It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us–that from these

honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of