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Showing posts with label Communication. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Communication. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Socialnomics
Still not sure if all these social networks online are worth troubling about? You are already way behind the curve.
Who are you trying to reach? Because that is where they are.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Common sense is the enemy of sticky messages
Do you want to know why that message that you sweated over and poured your soul into fell onto an audience that didn't seem to care nearly as much as you, and really not even as much as you expected?
You thought through it, your ideas and statistics and and bullet points were arranged just so that in the end you could come up with your big idea - but nobody understood why this was the big idea! Or maybe they said, Yeah, we agree, but so what?
Chances are your big idea that you worked over, found studies that agree with you, and you even know, you know, that people aren't really doing is something like "companies need great customer service." You just know that without this idea companies are going to struggle, and you have the proof that they are. But people in the audience, or your boss, or co-workers, or congregants, or your kids' sports team are yawning like it is no big deal!
The Heath brothers want to tell you why no one is listening to your incredibly important message: They are thinking Duh. In Made To Stick (72):
Common sense is the enemy of sticky messages. When messages sound like common sense, they float gently in one ear and out the other. And why shouldn't they? If I already "get" what you're trying to tell me, why should I obsess about remembering it? The danger, of course, is that what sounds like common sense often isn't... It's your job, as a communicator, to expose the parts of your message that are uncommon sense.
As an example, Nordstrom wanted to explain to its employees that they need "great customer service." They could have said that, and employees would have yawned. Instead the chose to provide stories that are shocking if you have ever worked in retail (examples come from Built To Last):
- The Nordie who ironed a new shirt for a customer who needed it for a meeting that afternoon;
- The Nordie who cheerfully gift wrapped products a customer bought at Macy's;
- The Nordie who warmed customers' cars in winter while they finished shopping;
- The Nordie who made a last-minute delivery of party clothes to a frantic hostess;
- And even the Nordie who refunded money for a set of tire chains - although Norsdstrom doesn't sell tire chains
Nordstrom understands that customer service is important, but just saying that doesn't get you anywhere. Now all of a sudden you are comparing what you are supposed to do with the examples. Am I providing that level of customer service?
What if instead your message was something more like "Customer Service Is The Only Thing" or "Customers Are More Important Than The CEO." What is the uncommon message, in story form or in a way that surprises or shocks the audience? What if you could tell your idea in a way that actually goes against the grain, yet solves a problem?
Now you have something worth sitting up and listening to.
Thursday, November 05, 2009
Anger and certainty
Often when we try to influence someone, we try to do so in a "rational" manner by using stats and logic, because surely if they could only see the "facts" then there is no other conclusion.
What we fail to see is that "facts" rarely convince or persuade anyone, they really just help reassure ourselves that we are right. The best way to convince someone of something? You have to tap into their emotions.
Don't read that as manipulate. What it basically means is that you have to help them care. Which is why it is so hard to understand why we sometimes use argumentative language that only gets people defensive. If the person on the other side of your cause is guarded because of you, your cause is already lost. Check out this observation from Made To Stick (67):
Emotions are elegantly tuned to help us deal with critical situations. They prepare us for different ways of acting and thinking. We've all heard that anger prepares us to fight and fear prepares us to flee. The linkages between emotion and behavior can be more subtle, though. For instance, a secondary effect of being angry, which was recently discovered by researchers, is that we become more certain of our judgments. When we're angry, we know we're right, as anyone who has been in a relationship can attest.
Humor opens us up to possibilities. Two-way conversation provides an avenue for people to find bridges into other possibilities. Persuasion is not a battle to be won, but a joining of arms in a cause. Be strong in your beliefs and wise with your words.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
The Curse of Knowledge
One of the best and by far the most useful books I've read in a long time is Made To Stick by the brothers Heath. I can't think of a profession or organization that could not benefit greatly by reading this book.
One of the foundations of the book is wrapped around the idea of the Curse of Knowledge. Try this game with some people:
Pick a song in your head, and then tap the beat on a table and see if anyone can guess what it is (p. 20 in the book).
Go ahead, try it, quit reading ahead. OK, you're reading ahead anyway, so here is the result - they didn't guess it. In fact, they weren't even close. This despite the fact that you could clearly hear the song playing along as you were pounding away on the table thinking about what dopes they are for not easily figuring it out. What sounded like a simple song to you was meaningless taps on a table for them - because they couldn't hear the tune in your head.
The Heath brothers say the same thing is going on when we try to communicate thoughts and ideas. We have thought through the possibilities, the struggle to get to the conclusion, read the books, spoken with experts and it all came to this great conclusion. Yet it doesn't seem to be getting through precisely because the audience didn't go through the same process you did. They hear it and it doesn't stick. Why? And how do we make it stick?
We will take a look at it over the coming weeks I'll keep adding posts from this book and others, as well as random thoughts.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
This is what you should tell your kid
First, let's start with what you shouldn't tell your kid after he or she does something well: "I'm proud of you."
So, was that surprising? It was the first time I heard it. The problem with it, according to Hal, is that it is really about you. Should they do things just to please you? While it may be nice to think that way, the answer is No. They should do things to please themselves, because it is the right thing to do.
Let's turn the question a different direction - should they do things to please people? No. I don't want my kids trying to do things to please their friends, or just to please a boss. I want them to do it because it is the right thing to do, which may go against the grain and the crowd.
Let's turn it again - what happens when they don't do something that great? What happens when they strike out at the plate (and when they got a hit you said you were proud of them)? Are you now not proud of them? I hope not. I don't think too highly of those kind of parents. But if you only tell them you are proud of them when they do the great stuff, the implicit message is that you are not when they fail. I want my kids to fail, because at least it means they are trying, they are risking.
The last turn - what if, instead, you ask if they are proud of themselves? Help them to think through their accomplishments, especially their role in being responsible and taking steps.
If you want to praise your kids, the book The Narcissism Epidemic (83) says to praise your kids for working hard, because then they will want to work hard. Don't praise your kids for being smart - if it comes to a situation that calls for hard work or one that confuses them, they will shy away from it to protect the "smart" label. In these studies working with kids and how words affect them, those that were told they were "smart" struggled when they got to a problem which was difficult for them; the label "smart" scared them more than helped them. Those that were told they were hard workers buckled down because they believed they could figure it out.
Words matter. Be a hard working parent when it comes to your kids.
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
Listening to unlikely sources
Who do you go to for advice when you really need it?
Interesting quote from Serena Williams about the 2009 U.S. Open in this article from USA Today:
With the way things are going, some of the top women might be open to advice. Even the younger Williams listened to some unsolicited tips at Arthur Ashe Stadium. "I heard a guy in the crowd saying, 'Stop hitting lobs!' So I didn't hit any more lobs after that," she said with a chuckle. "My lob was not working today."I love that she was actually listening to the crowd! I really thought professionals try to tune out anything but cheers.
I suppose tuning things out is difficult to do.
I wonder how many of us really have anyone to go to when something is pressing and you need to know: do I continue going this way, or take another path? I have asked different people in my life over the last 15 years to do this for me - to listen to my issues and help me think through them, to help me set life goals, etc., with mixed results. But it generally helped having someone to talk to that comes from a different vantage point.
I also think we need to be careful about handing out advice. Is your advice really what is best for them, or is it self-serving in some kind of way? Is it really the type of advice they need, or when they need to hear it?
I usually give the soccer parents for teams that I am coaching an opening lecture on not giving sideline advice during a game. Their direction may be contrary to what the coaches have asked the boys to do, and at best it is distracting them from what is going on. And frankly, the parents don't have the same vantage point that the boys or girls do (an eight-year-old in the middle of a game with a ball flying around and trying to remember everything from practice). But the best reason is that the boys or girls need to learn to make soccer decisions themselves come gametime rather than learning to follow constant directions. There is time for advice and time to just cheer.
Listen to unlikely sources - you may need to hear something that puts it in a different perspective. And provide advice carefully, when it is asked for - you may be more influential than you realize.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Let there be stoning!
Do you hate boring lectures? Not as much as Lehr! In this article he says that we must punish boring speakers so that they stop punishing us. I've done my best to learn to speak well, but hopefully if I get a little boring the audience will only have access to old fruit...
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Dissent
What do you do when someone disagrees with you?
I know what I want to do - get upset because they don't see it my way. Get indignant because surely they are being hard-headed when it is obvious that I am right.
The problem is, there are an amazing number of times when people disagree with me - like every day with my kids.
Interestingly, one person argues that there really is no such thing as wrong or right in a disagreement:About seventy years ago, an American political scientist, Mary Parker Follet, said that when you have dissent in an organization, you should never ask who is right. You should not even ask what is right. You must assume that each faction gives the right answer, but to a different question. Each sees a different reality. (Peter Drucker Managing The Nonprofit Organization, 124)
It is as simple as trying to understand that the answer or position of the other person makes sense to them, possibly through a number of reasons: their past, their environment, their education, their views of themselves, and so on.
Rather than winning, our task should be mutual understanding. Why does that person think that way?
It certainly doesn't mean that they will end up agreeing with you. From a 10-year old's perspective, cleaning the room doesn't make a lot of sense and I'm probably not going to convince her that it should. But we can come to a mutual understanding, and decide on action from there. It's not easy (she'll tell you the same!) but maybe we'll learn a more important lesson - the value of listening, because the other person is worth it. And the dissipation of negative energy and time is far more productive than venting anyway.
Friday, October 03, 2008
Are You What You Buy?
I finished the book Buying In by Rob Walker and thoroughly enjoyed it. The last chapter ends with the question: does what you buy define who you are?
I have the belief that every person is intrinsically valuable. If this is true, then what you buy or what you have does not make you more valuable as a person. But the objects that you surround yourself with does answer another question:
Who do you wish you were?
That is why advertisers tell stories now rather than promoting the practical usefulness of their item. They are working on your insecurity. You know this. I know it. It works anyway.As one contemporary ad agency executive has put it: "Few stronger emotions exist than the need to belong and make meaning. And brands are poised to exploit that need." (257)
We need food, basic clothing, and basic shelter. Everything after that is novelty that wears off fast because of our adaptive behavior. We adapt to the object, and it isn't as exciting for as long as we thought it would be.But, I asked, what exactly does it mean to say "the wrong reasons"? If someone creates a symbol that has meaning, if it's Polo or Ecko, and I buy into it and it makes me feel more classy or urban, isn't that okay?
"Yeah," they answered in unison, and Andrew clarified: "You're spending the money to pay for the advertising that they paid for to make you believe that. That's the snake-eating-its-own-tail of it all." (260)
It's okay to buy things, to own things. But before we do, we need to really think about who we intentionally want to be.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
What Is That You Are Tapping?
Do you think that your point is getting across? Communication is much more difficult that we think it is or should be - like trying to throw a baseball to someone in a thick fog, all the while you think it is only a cloudy day.
In a nice article from Janet Rae-Dupree titled "Innovative Minds Don't Think Alike," she has this paragraph:Elizabeth Newton, a psychologist, conducted an experiment on the curse of knowledge while working on her doctorate at Stanford in 1990. She gave one set of people, called “tappers,” a list of commonly known songs from which to choose. Their task was to rap their knuckles on a tabletop to the rhythm of the chosen tune as they thought about it in their heads. A second set of people, called “listeners,” were asked to name the songs.
Before the experiment began, the tappers were asked how often they believed that the listeners would name the songs correctly. On average, tappers expected listeners to get it right about half the time. In the end, however, listeners guessed only 3 of 120 songs tapped out, or 2.5 percent.
The tappers were astounded. The song was so clear in their minds; how could the listeners not “hear” it in their taps?
I am a professional speaker, so this catches my attention like a wild cat high on catnip being thrown in my face. But it should be relevant to anyone that has to communicate at all - teachers, business people, stay at home moms, people in any kind of relationship, etc.
I know what I am trying to communicate, but what I see in my mind has connections, both conscious and unconscious, to my life experiences and thoughts in a complex web. When I am brave enough to ask for feedback from people in the audience, what they heard connected in some way to an experience or thought that they had. It may go in the same general direction that I was thinking, but it may not. Which is ok. For my own purpose, getting people to think and ask questions is better than getting people to agree with me.
In future posts we will explore ways to make communication clearer, but in the meantime a healthy dose of realism about communication can keep your feelings from getting hurt and assumptions realigned.
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