Every Good Talk Is Secretly an Argument
By Rita Okonkwo · The Craft
There is a useful distinction between a presentation and a talk.
A presentation transfers information. Here is what happened last quarter, here is how the feature works, here is the roadmap. Success is measured in accuracy and completeness.
A talk changes what someone thinks. Success is measured in whether anything is different afterwards.
Most people are asked for the first and try to give the second, or are given the platform for the second and deliver the first. Both mismatches are uncomfortable to sit through.
The disagreement test
The test for whether you have a talk: could a reasonable, intelligent person disagree with your central claim?
If no, you have a presentation. That is a legitimate thing to give, but stop trying to make it soar. It will not, and the attempt is what makes corporate talks feel inflated.
If yes, you have an argument, and now you have obligations.
What an argument owes the audience
A claim stated plainly. Not buried, not implied. Somewhere in the first two minutes, in one sentence, say the thing.
The strongest objection, stated fairly, and answered. Skip the strawman and give the best reason a smart person would push back. If you have not said it, the audience is saying it internally and you are talking past them.
A reason to move. Evidence, a story, a demonstration: something that makes the claim more likely than its opposite.
The middle one is where almost every talk fails. Speakers avoid the counter-argument because it feels like handing the audience a weapon. Done properly, it works the other way round, and there is research on what "properly" means.
What the research says about the objection
Persuasion researchers call this the difference between one-sided and two-sided messages. A one-sided message presents only the case for. A two-sided message also mentions the case against. Two meta-analyses, which pooled many earlier studies, found the same pattern.
Mike Allen's 1991 review compared the two and split the two-sided messages into those that raised the opposing argument and then refuted it, and those that merely mentioned it.1 Two-sided messages with a refutation were more persuasive than one-sided ones. Two-sided messages without one were less persuasive than saying nothing about the other side at all.
Daniel O'Keefe's larger review in 1999 found the same split.2 Raising the other side and answering it gave a persuasive advantage. Raising it and leaving it hanging cost one.
So the rule is more specific than "acknowledge the objection". Naming it is only half the move. If you name the strongest objection and then walk past it, you have done the audience's arguing for them. If you name it and answer it, you have shown that you have thought about this properly, and you have taken the point away from the person who was about to raise it.
The answer does not have to win outright. "That is true in the first month, and here is why it stops being true by the third" is a refutation. So is conceding part of the objection and showing why the claim survives it.
A worked example
Say you are giving a ten-minute talk to your team arguing that the weekly status meeting should be replaced by written updates.
Claim. "We should stop holding the Monday status meeting and write our updates instead."
Objection, stated fairly. "The best argument against this is that the meeting is the only time the whole team is in one place, and written updates are easy to skim and ignore."
Answer. "That is a real cost, so I am not proposing we lose the hour. I am proposing we use it for the two or three items that need a conversation, which the written updates will tell us about in advance."
Reason to move. A short, true account of the last meeting: how much of it was people reading out updates that could have been a paragraph.
Notice that the answer changed the proposal slightly. That is common and it is a good sign. Objections taken seriously often make the claim better.
"But my talk is personal"
Personal talks are still arguments, and usually the most interesting ones.
"Here is what happened to me" is a presentation. "Here is what happened to me, and here is what I think it means, which is not the obvious lesson" is a talk. The argument is the interpretation.
A story with no interpretation makes the audience do the work of deciding why they were told it, and most of them will not bother. For why a well-told story can still carry an argument, see narrative transportation.
Common mistakes
A claim that is really a topic. "Remote work" is a topic. "Remote teams need fewer meetings, not more" is a claim.
The weakest objection. Picking an easy objection to knock down looks like the real thing and the audience can tell.
Naming without answering. The research above is clear that this is worse than silence.
Too many claims. One talk, one argument. Supporting points serve it; they are not separate arguments.
Finding your claim
If you cannot find the argument in your material, try finishing these out loud:
- "Most people think ____, but actually ____."
- "The obvious answer here is ____. It is wrong because ____."
- "Everyone agrees we should ____. Almost nobody does. Here is why."
If none of them can be completed truthfully from your material, that tells you something. You may have a presentation. Give a clear, short, well-organised presentation and sit down. That is a valuable thing, and it is over in six minutes instead of twenty.
A short drill
Take your claim and write the best objection to it in one sentence, as if you held that view. Then write your answer in two sentences. Say all three out loud to someone who disagrees with you, and ask whether you stated their side fairly. If they say no, rewrite it until they say yes.
References
- Allen, M. (1991). Meta‐analysis comparing the persuasiveness of one‐sided and two‐sided messages. Western Journal of Speech Communication, 55(4), 390–404. https://doi.org/10.1080/10570319109374395
- O’Keefe, D. J. (1999). How to Handle Opposing Arguments in Persuasive Messages: A Meta-Analytic Review of the Effects of One-Sided and Two-Sided Messages. Annals of the International Communication Association, 22(1), 209–249. https://doi.org/10.1080/23808985.1999.11678963