Feb 13

A speaker with integrity seems ethical, honest, and dependable. Listeners are more receptive when speakers are straightforward and concerned about the consequences of their words. You can enhance your integrity by presenting all sides of an issue and then explaining why you have chosen your position. You should also demonstrate that you are willing to follow your own advice. In a speech that calls for commitment or action, it should be clear to listeners that you are not asking more of them than you would ask of yourself. The more you ask of the audience, the more important your integrity becomes. Let us look at how integrity can be conveyed in a speech. Mona Goldberg was preparing a speech on welfare reform. The more she learned about the subject, the more convinced she became that budget cuts for welfare programs were unwise. In her speech, Mona showed that she took her assignment seriously by citing many authorities and statistics. She reviewed arguments both for and against cutting the budget and then showed her audience why she was against reducing aid to such programs. Finally, Mona revealed that her own family had had to live on unemployment benefits at one time. “I know the hurt, the loss of pride, the sense of growing frustration. I didn’t have to see them on the evening news.” Her openness showed that she was willing to trust her listeners to react fairly to this sensitive information. The audience responded in kind by trusting her and what she had to say. She had built an impression of herself as a person of integrity.
This example also shows how a “halo effect” can cause competence and integrity to be linked in judgments of credibility.’ Speakers who rank high in one quality may get positive evaluations in the other.