Allgemein Archive - Page 49 of 158 - The Art of Communicating

Overdeliver on your clickbait

We’re living in the attention economy (think “5 super weird reasons why your headline doesn’t perform”).

Whoever gets the audience’s attention, gets the first shot at selling them something. So, it’s no wonder that people love to use attention grabbing techniques – such as scroll-stoppers or click-baity headlines.

LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook are flooded with these things that have the sole purpose of making you click “Read more”.

And it might get you the click. Initially, that is. Until these techniques wear off and the readers just give up on clicking “Read more” because every single time the actual post doesn’t deliver on the promise.

And suddenly, something unexpected becomes the attention grabber for these readers. Suddenly, they are drawn to the people who just post valuable stuff. Smart thoughts. Funny takes. Or useful hacks.

Don’t get me wrong, though. There’s nothing wrong with grabbing people’s attention. If you can grab their attention, go for it. (We’re really in the attention economy.) Just make sure that what you deliver after the click delivers – or even better: overdelivers – on what you promised before the click.

In other words: Make a bold promise – one that gets people’s attention – but keep it, even better: overdeliver on it.

Leading your future boss

Lighting the path is an activity, not a role. You can light us the path from any position, no official title required, no permission needed.

In fact, we see examples of people lighting the path in the most unexpected places. Here’s a remarkable example from a marketing manager who landed their dream job by lighting the path for their future boss.

That person crafted a website which made the company (called Basecamp) see the future of working with him. The website pays incredible attention to detail to pick up Basecamp’s style. Ultimately, the job application site led the founders of Basecamp to the point of no return, the point at which it had become an unbearable thought not to hire this person who was so passionate about getting the job and who understood Basecamp so well.

Lighting the path means bringing the future into the present. You don’t need any title for that. What you need to do, though, is to show up, step up, and do work that matters.

Read the manifesto at https://LeadersLightThePath.com.

The right idea in the wrong meeting room

Some pitch situations quickly turn into a status game.

The pitching party feels high status because they feel like they’ve really nailed it and have an extraordinarily brilliant product. It’s going to change the world (which might be true).

The decision maker feels high status because they get to decide about the proposal and they want you to know that they have the final say. They are extraordinarily brilliant in identifying trends (which might be true).

Inevitably, both desires for higher status clash when one of the parties makes a claim that the other just must dispute – because, well, they know it better (which might be true).

The world, however, couldn’t care less about who’s right and who’s not. Or about who’s in charge and who’s not. They care about which ideas see the light of day. And so, the right idea in the wrong meeting room likely isn’t worth much when the parties have status as their top priority.

Change happens easier if we ban status from the meeting room.

If the other party doesn’t see it that way, you might be better off looking for a different partner.

Moving faster

“I’m not getting the results I’m looking for … so I need to work harder and move faster.”

But do you?

Because the thing is when you’re moving full speed in the wrong direction, you’re not going to arrive anywhere meaningful. It pays to reflect on whether you’re actually headed in the right direction before working harder or moving faster.

Which means that the opposite might be way more useful. Pause for a moment. Reflect, refocus, and refine to gain clarity about where you’re headed. Or more precisely: where you should be heading.

That process takes time. You might feel that it slows you down. But it’s required work that will pay off manifold when you do it properly.

That’s one of the reasons why you can’t accelerate the “Crack the Clarity Code” course. Lessons are released daily and there’s no way for you to skip ahead.

When you’re considering the course, you’re looking for clarity, not speed, don’t you? The quick answer is usually not the most clearest answer. That’s why I want you to really think the prompts through before you move on to the next lesson. When you do, the next lesson will be so much more valuable. And the results will feel so much clearer.

Remember me!

“I’ll send you the slides.”

The fairy tale about the double use of presentation slides as handouts goes something like this: Without any extra effort from your side, the audience can review what you said plus they are reminded of you when they look at the slides.

Which is exactly the problem: when they look at it. Which, of course, is mostly never.

Handouts are rarely fun. They are cumbersome to read and often plain impractical as a reference: Who wants to sift through 30 pages of loosely structured, badly designed info that would have easily fit on one page if written down concisely?

There might be more useful handouts than your slides, don’t you think?

Apart from that one page summary, here are some random ideas that have a better chance of being looked at:

Do you manufacture tools? Why don’t you leave a couple of them so your customers can try them at home – and be reminded of you when they do (which they’ll do if they are actually useful tools).

Do you provide customized services? Why don’t you close the laptop, analyze your customer’s struggles using paper and pen, sketch possible solutions and leave the sketch with the customer (but don’t forget to take a picture so you can write an appropriate proposal).

Are you a designer or artist? Why don’t you leave your customers something that’s a pure joy to look at, let’s say a poster. You can greatly increase the chance of them actually putting it on the wall when it contains useful knowledge, e.g. “Three ways to make your message more relatable” or “The history of app design” – you get the idea.

Are you a consultant? Everything you know can be found on the internet in one way or the other. However, actually finding it is difficult. Why don’t you just assemble a reference handbook for your clients that is so well written that they find what they are looking for faster than on the internet and can understand it more easily. They are not hiring you for the knowledge but for your skills in helping them make the knowledge work for them.

If you want to be memorable with your handouts, give your customers something they will enjoy looking at or using often. Sure, that’s extra effort. And no, it’s not guaranteed that this effort will pay off.

But: nothing creates more trust than providing real value.

PS: Whatever you choose to leave as a handout, don’t forget to place your contact info on it.

Leaders who light the path

Leaders who light the path care for their cause – not the applause.

They care for better – as opposed to more.

They strive to get it right rather than to be right.

They speak with clarity – not ambiguity.

They figure it out so we don’t have to.

They start with empathy.

And make change happen.

Will you light us the path?

How great communicators make change happen

When you want us to see something, you need us to look. You need our attention.

Poor communicators fail to get our attention. So, we can’t see what they want us to see. Change can’t happen – even if we care. We don’t see it.

Good communicators make us see the things they care about. They serve us their cause as something we should care about. And probably we do, but probably we don’t. Change might happen or not depending on whether we do.

Great communicators are different.

Rather than to speak so that we get them, leaders who light the path get us and speak about it.

They make us see a path forward that we care for. A path we want to take.

One we choose to take.

And that’s why change happens.

PS: This is an excerpt from the “Leaders Light the Path Manifesto”. Read the full text here: https://LeadersLightThePath.com and share it with everyone who needs to read it.

The Leaders Light the Path Manifesto

Every change start with someone who sees a better future.
Change happens when you make others see what you see.

Introducing the “Leaders Light the Path Manifesto”.

Whether in tiny ways or affecting the world at large, great communicators make change happen by helping us see what they see, a future that matters and that we strive for. Through their communication, they light us a path that brings us there.

In the past 14 years, I’ve had the honor to work with many of those leaders. On top of that I’ve spent an enormous time analyzing even more of them, some well known, others not so much.

What’s common to all of them is that they don’t persuade harder, but resonate stronger. They start with empathy, honesty, and trust. They do work that matters and tell true stories about it.

The Leaders Light the Path Manifesto captures the essence of that approach: https://LeadersLightThePath.com

I hope that you take it as an inspiration to follow their example. Please spread it far and wide if you find it useful.

Keep lighting the path!

Meet Rambo

We don’t meet Rambo when he was born. We don’t meet him in school. Not even in Vietnam.

We meet him after all of that has already happened. We see him walking down a path, arriving in Hope, Washington.

We meet him at the latest possible time in the story.

Most business stories are different. They start at the earliest possible time. Usually when the business was founded. And then they continue by telling us about the company milestones – all kinds of events that matter a great deal to the founder but not at all to the audience.

When they get to the interesting parts, they have long lost our attention. Rather than to make us curious about the story, the founders expect us to be already curious. Which we’re not.

It’s much better to do it like the great novels and movies. Start at the latest possible point. Speak about things that grab our interest. Give us a reason to care

When you do, it’s almost inevitable that we want to know the details.

Rewarding meetings

Meetings are madness. We all know better. But still, most of us don’t do better. Because we’ve accustomed ourselves to the way that meetings are run. We’ve let inefficient meetings turn into a habit basically from the very first meeting we joined (we were the juniors, after all).

It’s just the way it is. They’ve always been like that. Get over it.

Or not.

Let’s revisit this statement: We have allowed inefficient meetings to become a habit.

The thing with habits is that they are automatic behavior. Once you experience the trigger for the habit, the habit takes over. The trigger in meetings is the meeting room. The habit is to drift away in your mind doing things like planning your next vacation, thinking about new career opportunities, or just catching up with mail.

The bad news is that habits, even if you’ve uncovered them, never go away, as Charles Duhigg argues in his fabulous book “The Power of Habit”. Bad habits can only be replaced by new habits.

One possibility to replace a habit is via what Duhigg calls the “reward”. For example, for some of you a reward of the inefficient meetings habit might be that you feel like you’ve managed to catch up with mail (finally!). Much better than to waste your time listening to a boring PowerPoint presentation.

So, the question becomes: How can you make the reward of paying attention more desirable than the reward of catching up with mail?

Let’s look at what causes meetings to feel so inefficient. Some of the more important ones are:

Too many participants who don’t have anything meaningful to contribute.
Too many topics that don’t impact us.
Nobody’s prepared.
Statements (especially when they’re conveyed via PowerPoint) are vague, abstract and inconcise.
Nothing comes out of it. People make great promises that they never keep.

Making meetings worthwhile means eliminating these causes. If you’ve got something to contribute, if you can articulate your thoughts with clarity because you’ve prepared well (and don’t rely on your teammates to figure out what you mean), if what gets agreed upon gets actually done because people take responsibility, people will pay attention because they will feel like they can affect change.

I believe that that’s the actual meeting problem: People feel that their contribution doesn’t matter (that much). So, if you manage to make every meeting member’s contribution matter a lot, your meeting problem will vanish. If their contributions matter and have an actual impact, then that’s potentially a much bigger reward for people than catching up with mail.

Here are a couple of steps you can take towards this:

Enforce a being prepared policy!
Insist on clarity (Say what you mean)!
Have people take on responsibility (Mean what you say)!
Include only the people who can contribute in a significant way or are directly impacted!
Exclude people who don’t contribute or aren’t paying attention!

In other words: switch to a doing!

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