First of all, your blog and the videos are beautifully done. Congrats on that.

I also like the sponsor, target, agent, and advocate model. It reminds me of the work we do in changing indivduals to be more capable of changing their target audiences.

As you know, I do executive education in the area of speech communication. The modern business world calls it Presentation Skills, a descriptor that smells like “packaging.”

The ancient Greeks called it rhetoric, which I consider a synonym for leadership, since it comprises the ethical appeal of the speaker, along with the ability to stir emotion and make a strong rational case for action.

There are two phases of change in the work. First, the speaker has to change, or develop himself. Then the speaker has to change, or move, the audience.

Both these changes are steep and thorny journeys, as are the corporate-wide changes that you implement.

The change within the speaker requires an expansion in two dimenions–what I think of as outward and inward.

Outward is an expansion in assertiveness. Inward is an expansion in empathy. Both of these can be life-changing for the speaker.

And when they are, the speaker can be a life-changer for his organization, or for his cause.

In a sense, a persuasive speaker needs the authority of the sponsor, the creativity of the advocate, and the interpersonal savvy of the change agent–all in service to moving the target in the desired direction.