The Full Story
Most of us were never taught how persuasion actually works. Please Prove Move™ is a positive persuasion framework built to fix that. It distills the persuasion skills — the same skills that win courtrooms, close deals, secure raises, raise money, and lead change — into three legs of a single stool. Please your audience by being credible and authentic. Prove your point through the right story and the right logic. Move your listener by choosing the right words and the right emotion. Take away any one leg and the persuasion stool falls.
The framework was developed over twenty-five years of practicing persuasion professionally, teaching persuasion and advocacy to lawyers, students, and even Oxford barristers, and is now distilled and taught to everyone in the book Profiles in Persuasion through five true stories of people who used it — sometimes consciously, sometimes by instinct — to change minds against extraordinary odds.
PLEASE
Be a speaker whose audience can hear you.
Pleasing is a function of two things: credibility — a real basis for saying what you're saying — and authenticity — being yourself instead of a performance of yourself. Know your audience. Respect the reasonableness of those who disagree. Own your mistakes. Without pleasing, your logic is wasted and your story is unheard.
PROVE
Give your audience the right story, carrying the right logic.
Proving is a function of the story you choose and the logic carried inside it. Facts, data, and arguments cannot move anyone on their own — they need a vessel. The right story is one you can credibly tell, one your audience can hear, and one whose logic does not overreach. The wrong story boomerangs.
MOVE
Choose the words and the emotion that bring your listener with you.
Moving is the emotional payload — delivered with word rhythms, brevity, and the absence of negativity. Anger and character attacks may feel powerful but almost always backfire; the brain of the person you're trying to move retrenches. The most lasting persuasion is delivered without venom.
FROM ARISTOTLE AND CICERO TO TODAY
Old idea. New language.
The three-legged structure of persuasion is not new. Aristotle named the legs ethos, logos, and pathos. Cicero, centuries later, reformulated them and became the greatest ancient advocate: the ideal orator, he wrote, is the one who delights, instructs, and moves the minds of the audience. The bones of the idea have survived two thousand years because they describe something true about how human beings actually persuade.
Please Prove Move™ is the modern English reformulation — three single-syllable verbs, sticky enough to remember, simple enough to teach, durable enough to apply to a board meeting or a school board, to a sales pitch or a pay raise request, to a Sunday-dinner debate or a local political event.
One-on-One
You and one other person, eye to eye, with something at stake. A performance review. A raise ask. A negotiation. A sales pitch. A meeting with a customer.
Story example: A liberal rock star walks into a conservative Senator's Washington office and persuades him to back a bill that has since saved twenty-six million lives. How did he do it?
One-on-Many
You and a room. A keynote. An all-hands. A board update. A pitch to investors. A change announcement to a skeptical team. A sales pitch to a room of skeptics.
Story example: A young president stands on a hot day in Houston and persuades a divided nation to spend a generation of treasure trying to land a human being on the moon. How did he do it?
One-versus-One
You against another person, with a decision-maker in the room. A competing proposal. A board contest. A debate. Two finalists for a single contract.
Story example: A bishop and a senator each argue before a Roman emperor about whether an ancient pagan altar should be restored to the Senate floor. One framing of history wins; the other loses. How did he do it?
A calm, civic-minded guide that aims to remind readers that persuasion remains possible — even in an age that profits from outrage.
KIRKUS REVIEWS on Profiles in Persuasion
Profiles in Persuasion captures a truth most dealmakers learn the hard way: persuasion isn't force — it's alignment. The Please, Prove, Move framework reflects how consequential decisions are actually made: credibility opens the door, logic earns respect, and story carries the outcome. Drawing on history, the book sharpens instinct into discipline without stripping its humanity. This is persuasion as it's practiced at the highest levels.
TANNER HALTON, CEO, PLANET FITNESS FRANCHISE PACIFIC NORTHWEST
Bring the framework to your team.
Please Prove Move™ is taught as a keynote (45 to 60 minutes), as an interactive workshop (90 minutes to a half day), and as an executive coaching engagement. Peter speaks to leadership groups, HR and L&D programs, sales and revenue teams, nonprofits, faith-based and civic audiences, and higher education. Inspiration stories can teach everyone the skills.