In today's uncertain environment, the ability to sell our ideas, points of view, products, services and even our reputation is crucial. Communication and interpersonal skills are now ranked as critical business skills by recruiters, and a flattening out of hierarchies in our interdependent society has led to increased dependence on interactive skills. However, persuasion is often overlooked in current management literature. In their paper, IESE's Brian Leggett and Josep M. Rosanas stress the continued importance of persuasion in running a successful organization and offer practical tips on how to be persuasive.

"A man of extraordinary strength and intelligence may never be more than a failure in society if he doesn't know how to speak in public," noted the writer William Channing in the 19th century. Two centuries later, knowing how to speak in public is a skill increasingly valued in the workplace. The ability to change public perception through a persuasive presentation is considered one of the keys to success in any job. Still, when faced with having to speak in public, many managers panic. You may not be a born public speaker, but as IESE's Brian O'Connor Leggett and Ricardo Velilla assure us in their new book, public speaking is, in fact, something one can learn, and they suggest some tips for successful presentations.

Television advertisements, public presentations, business negotiations, the opening arguments in a courtroom... persuasive communication is critical in many contexts. But how can speeches move people and mobilize masses? Where does the power of words come from? The answer is not so much in what it is said, but in how it is said, or rhetoric. The term rhetoric embraces all public speaking and interpersonal communication that seeks to persuade its audience. In his article "A Rhetorical Approach to Communication," Brian O'Connor Leggett takes a look at its history and presents Aristotle's rhetorical triad of ethos, pathos and logos, which formed the basis of communication training and written and oral discourse for over 2,000 years.