Allgemein Archive - Page 56 of 158 - The Art of Communicating

Would you like tea or coffee?

A simple decision, isn’t it? Well, you have no idea.

Let’s have some fun with it and pretend we would have to decide in a meeting. Obviously, we’ll need a PowerPoint to discuss the matter, right? Quickly, we arrive at 10 slides highlighting all of the important aspects, like so:

Slide 1: Title slide with presentation title (“Advantages and disadvantages of proceeding with tea vs. coffee”), name of presenter, their department, date, location, at least five logos
Slide 2: Agenda
Slide 3: Sales distribution of tea and coffee during the last 6 quarters, broken down by region. Underneath: comparison with other drinks such as hot chocolate and various juices
Slide 4: Mission statement for the coffee choice, market analysis including target group breakdown
Slide 5: Composition of ingredients (unfortunately, though, the font is so tiny that you can’t read anything) plus certificates from food testing institutes
Slide 6 & 7: The same for tea
Slide 8: Customer satisfaction rating and award for the most creative brand campaign 2021
Slide 9: Classification in the brand range with different flavor additives, variants, sizes and special promotions
Slide 10: Summary
Bonus slide 11: “Thank you for your attention”

All of this followed by an intense discussion to repeat the arguments a couple of times.

All of this without ever asking the question plainly: “Would you prefer tea or coffee?”

I’m positive that quite a number of meeting room presentations fit that description rather well.

Gifts

Here are some ideas for last minute gifts that will still arrive on time to bring someone joy over X-Mas.

Smile.
Lend them a helping hand.
Say something nice to them.
Listen.
Be patient.
Let the day unfold their way.
Be present. In the moment.

Wishing you a very merry X-mas.

(PS: Drawing by my daughter.)

The furious entrepreneur

Recently, I met an entrepreneur who was furious at his audience. They just didn’t get him. Although he explained his idea in thorough detail and told them everything there was to say, they just didn’t approve the budget he needed to implement his idea.

He was really mad at them. Some weren’t even paying proper attention, one was typing on their phone.

But of course, the audience is always right. If you didn’t grab their attention, it’s not their fault. If they didn’t get it, they didn’t get it.

It just doesn’t matter how good we think our pitch is. It’s always the audience’s call. No one in your audience is obliged to understand, let alone like your idea. It’s your job to explain your idea in a way that gets their attention and resonates.

I asked the furious entrepreneur what he learnt from the experience and whether there’s anything he would do differently the next time.

To which he replied: “No, no! The pitch was brilliant.” He wanted to quickly move on and try it unchanged somewhere else – any change would just lose him time.

So you did nothing wrong

You did nothing wrong. And yet you take responsibility.

That’s a hard to find attitude in a world that’s used to equate imperfection with failure.

In that world, we’re much more used to seeing the opposite, i.e. someone refusing to take responsibility even if they did something wrong.

Which is no wonder as we learn early on that the one who does something wrong takes the blame. And the punishment. So we better avoid being that one. Thankfully, confirmation bias and other biases are here to the rescue.

Astonishing things happen when you break that pattern.

When you’re the one who takes responsibility for the outcome regardless, not only does it takes all the anger away from your customer. It earns you a smile as this attitude is so unusual to find.

Likewise when you’re on the other side. When someone other than you did something wrong and you refrain from putting blame and punishment on them, it opens the door for them to own the outcome regardless.

Either way, it allows all of us to focus on what actually matters: To find a solution to the trouble we’re looking at.

In the middle of the night

I was 16 when my dad died out of nowhere in the middle of the night, 30 years ago on this day.

It was about 1am in the morning when the door to my bedroom burst open. My mom was in panic because my dad had made strange noises and she couldn’t get him to react.

I was instantly wide awake and ran downstairs to call the emergency.

When I came back, my dad had already stopped breathing. I tried to reanimate him but it didn’t work.

It took the emergency only 5 minutes to arrive at our house and they immediately started to reanimate, too. Seeing how frightened we were, they ordered us to leave the room and I remember my mother, my brother and myself lying in my bed, anxiously waiting and hearing the sounds from my parent’s bedroom.

It was too late. They tried everything, even after hope was lost. But they couldn’t get him back into life.

My mom froze. He was the love of her life. Being married myself to the love of my life I cannot even imagine how she felt in that moment.

The only thing she could manage after the doctor had gone was to call her best friend. It was the best thing she could have done in that moment.

Before morning broke, the message had spread through our village like wildfire. People came to our house from all directions. Friends. Neighbours. My mom’s brother and sister who live three hours away grabbed a bag and were with us by noon. My dad’s brother flew in by the evening.

We were not alone for a single second since that morning.

My father was a man who had a smile and a helping hand for everyone. I never saw him smile again. But we had so many hands who were there to help us and so many shoulders we could lean on.

I’m grateful to this day for the support we got through these times.

And to my father for being the man he was.

I’m on your side
Oh when times get rough
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down

My dad’s favourite song was “Bridge over troubled water”.

Today, I know why.

Hey, here’s more of what you like

A huge building block to the appeal of social media – and ultimately to their success – is their brilliance in surfacing more of the things we enjoy.

You enjoyed this cooking video? Here are five other awesome recipes to check out. You love Led Zeppelin? Check out these 7 incredible drum riffs from John Bonham.

But also:

You believe X? Here are ten more reasons to believe it.
You hate this guy? Here are 13 other reasons to hate him even more.

The dark side is strong in social media and there’s no easy fix for it.

More of the same leads to more of the same. Whether it’s good or bad. Whether it’s useful or destructive. It gets amplified.

The thing to be aware of is that the control of the stream is with the media. They conclude that you are someone who loves Led Zeppelin and hates this guy. So they show you more of that stuff.

Not because it’s in your best interest. But because it’s in their best interest. It keeps you on their platform so they can show you more ads. And keep you from visiting someone else’s platform.

Most importantly, they don’t feed you based on who you want to be, but based on who you are. Or, more precisely, based on who you are according to their data (which, to be fair, could be a rather accurate representation).

Actually, TikTok has just announced some counteraction “to protect against viewing too much of a content category that may be fine as a single video but problematic if viewed in clusters”.

But ultimately, you should probably not let the media determine your priorities in the first place. Ultimately, you should take control of the pieces you’re going to consume. (And no, this is not a problem that’s only affecting the youth.)

A good place to start is to become aware of the mechanisms by asking “Why are they surfacing this?”

And then to practise saying “no” – either by leaving or by consciously searching for something of your choosing.

But in the end, I feel like an even better approach would be to question whether aimlessly surfing the media is a good use of your time at all.

Oh, and by the way, if you enjoyed this post you might also enjoy … well, I’m going to let you determine that.

A better use of your time

If you feel the need to check Instagram while watching a movie, it might be that you’re watching the wrong movie.

If you feel the need to check your phone while in a meeting, it might be that you’re in the wrong meeting. Or meet wrongly.

If you feel the need to do other things while you’re doing one thing, it might be that that one thing wasn’t the best use of your time to start with.

Instead of looking for ways to re-use your time, it might be a better idea to use your time better in the first place.

The power of staring at a blinking cursor

Never underestimate the power of staring at a blinking cursor.

Resist the urge to grab your phone if there’s no immediate thought and nothing to type.

Just the blank screen. And a blinking cursor.

Resist the urge to check Insta, LinkedIn, Mail etc.

Still only that blinking cursor.

Resist a little longer.

A little longer.

You will start typing, eventually.

And what you’ve typed is something to work with.

(Works with a blank piece of paper, too.)

The slow buyer

Most businesses are obsessed with getting customers to buy faster.

While dismissing that the customer who buys slowly, after careful consideration, is more likely to turn into a raving fan later.

The magic ingredient that can’t easily be accelerated is trust. Trust can’t be built over night. Trust grows. Usually rather slowly.

But it’s the stuff long-lasting relationships are made of.

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