In my experience it’s important to make an emotional connection with people and you have to share what you are passionate about. The first question you have to ask yourself when you are creating your brand, product or service is, “What is it that I am truly passionate about?” I think that you have to appeal to the heart before the brain as our brains crave meaning before details. Back in the days when we were running around in the Savannah, if we saw a sabre tooth tiger, we never thought about how many teeth it had. Our first response would be, should I run, or will it eat me? Our brains are hardwired to process information this way and that’s why we need the big picture before the details.
V is for value
Do you understand how value is created within your organisation and how it is created for your customers? This requires understanding of the value of long-term brand building and the communication of its commercial benefits for your financial team regardless of whether you are a start-up or a multi-national organisation.
“A fool is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
Align your company focus
The North Star has been used for the purposes of navigation for centuries, acting as a guiding light, people have used its brightness and prominence in the sky to ensure they are travelling in the right direction. The principle of the North Star works as a fantastic analogy in the world of business. Are you and your colleagues clear about whether your business is travelling in the ‘right direction’?
I have been involved in the world of business improvement and customer experience for over twenty years. For the past six years, I have had the opportunity to see and experience organisations across a variety of industries all over the world. Whilst I observe a number of similar issues and opportunities to improve and become more customer centric, one of the most common observations I make is on the subject of ‘clarity of purpose’. Contact me via e-mail if you interested in me facilitating a ‘North Star’ workshop for your organisation.
Watching brief
Whilst there is a need to keep a watching brief on the changing customer environment, their needs, and technologies, the benefit of a good education is the ability to think on your own. In effecting other people with words, I found something very interesting about communication, you have to learn to be nice as your attitude will make a huge difference to how you are received. Communication is 80% what you feel and only 20% what you know, I think it’s not so much what you say as how you say it. Your attitude will make the difference in both your sales results and in the quality of your life as most people are interested in how you feel not just in what you know.
“Once you’ve accepted your flaws no one can use them against you. ”
Tell good stories
Storytelling is ingrained in our culture, in fact, ever since humans first walked the earth, we have shared stories. The basic purpose of a storytelling is to share a story, message or theme that is understood universally by your audience, even though it doesn’t have to be interpreted the same way by every person. Great storytelling connects our past, present, and future.
Here are three fundamental keys to creating a good story:
- I did this …
- Then I did this …
- Then this happened.
I think your storytelling will create a mental image or entice the listener into the story and this requires that the audience be actively engaged. And it doesn’t matter if you’ve moved the audience to tears unless they know how they can make a difference, so remember to add a call to action.
Show and tell
The best storytellers, authors and speakers paint pictures giving the audience something they can visualise in their heads. I help managers and leaders gain clarity in their message so that they can grow their influence and build trust in the workplace. Gaining more clarity about what their message is and then looking at the steps and things that they can do to get even more clarity. Getting managers and leaders pointed in the right direction to help them implement and put things in their lives that can take them and their team forward, for example, journaling, tracking the data, finding out why “X” felt that way, etc.
I have clarity about who I am, I have clarity about my story and how to share it in a way that brings value to the people in the room. Do you know what your gifts are and where your talents are best used? Do you know how to build your story so that it elevates others? My mission is to make people great communicators - transmitting their message clearly and concisely so that it is understood - regardless of their field or career path. Reach out to me via e-mail if you would like to learn how you can share better, message better, communicate better.
Follow the leader
I think that there’s a science to storytelling. Good storytellers transport their audiences, making them feel what the characters feel. For audiences to bond with characters in this way, there has to be some sort of arousal response in the brain. I mean that in order to engage the listener, storytelling requires the ability to tell a story with just the right emotion, description, and details… not too much and not too little.
What distinguishes business storytelling from classical storytelling?
Business storytelling has a clearly stated point. Classical stories are enriched by multi-layered interpretations, but in business storytelling, there should be no doubt in the listeners’ minds about what they should do in response to your story. When it comes to business stories, don’t just wing it and ramble. Know the structure that will be easiest for your audience to follow and then they will not only follow the story, but they’ll also follow you as a leader.
The keys to a good story
When it comes to storytelling one of the best ways to draw people to you is not by telling them - you should do this or that, you should listen to me, etc. A much more powerful and persuasive way to do it is to share the same lesson in a story. I think that sharing a good story is a win-win as both the storyteller and the audience are elevated to a higher level. The more you tell, the more you sell, set the stage, start dialogues, and present the point.
I think all good stories starts with you taking the audience to a time and place when this happens, and you need to be very specific. Perhaps, I’m mistaken but I remember that fairy tales always start with, “once upon a time.” When I tell stories I always try to set the stage, for example, “many years ago I did…” to create a mental image in your imagination. I like to use dialogues because dialogues are so powerful in storytelling as places the listeners and readers right in the middle of the scenario. For example, how many of you can visualise a 2m tall guy on stage from the back of the room? See, dialogue immediately puts your listeners right into the middle of the action, and this is a very powerful thing to do. What’s the moral of the story? What’s the transformation? What’s the one takeaway that you want the listener to have?
What is your story?
I think for brand storytelling to work, we have to understand where we’re starting, where it is we aspire to be, how much time we’re willing to invest and how committed we are to executing this consistently. And that’s when we’ll see the relative force behind a brand story jump dramatically. The force is your brand story and what you are able to accomplish by committing to it over a specific period of time.
How consistently will you tell your brand story? This usually follows closely on the heels of an organisation’s willingness to change how they approach marketing and how they connect with audiences. Are you trying to accomplish great things but refuse to step away from your brand-centred tactics? Alternatively, are you willing to become customer-centric and shift your efforts in their direction? Where you are right now with your level of sophistication in brand storytelling? Contact me via e-mail fro arrange a storytelling workshop for your brand.
Storytelling on Sunday
Business storytelling elements help you engage your audience and leave a lasting impression. A story with business impact can be as short as one sentence, a three-minute speech, or a thirty-minute product demonstration. No matter what, it should have the following:
- An intriguing beginning
- A riveting middle
- And a satisfying end
For brand storytelling to work, we have to understand where we’re starting, where it is we aspire to be, how much time we’re willing to invest and how committed we are to executing this consistently. That’s when we’ll see the relative force behind a brand story jump dramatically. I have helped leaders build relationships, credibility, and impact via stories. Contact me via e-mail for a meeting about how to create a short story that other people can relate to.
What did you say?
Verbal communication is a skill, one must be careful about how you say things to avoid misunderstandings because everyone has different meaning for same words. In this world what you say doesn’t matter as much as how you say it. When putting forward an opinion, you need to think about your choice of words, your gestures, body language and about your tone intensity pitch.
My father always used to say, “It’s not what you say, it’s the way that you say it!” I think that this is correct and incorrect at the same time, as it's both what you say AND how you say it. The non-verbal components of an assertive message are really the key to its effectiveness. When a customer sees you - your look and your body language - you are already communicating to them, non-verbally, and they are deciding whether or not they want to listen.
The outsider’s perspective
I think that before you begin to communicate with anyone you have to know who you are communicating with and what’s important to them - always start with the other person in mind. As it’s the season of goodwill, here’s a few questions to consider in terms of communication:
- Who is this for?
- What’s in it for them?
- How much do you know about them?
- Can you meet them where they are?
Being an effective communicator is an invaluable leadership skill that goes far beyond having an even temper or providing concise directives. It relies on a thoughtful combination of empathy, accessibility, approachability and a genuine level of care and compassion for your team. Take your team on a short journey and land them in a better place than where they started. In essence, a strong communicator is a conscious communicator, and a conscious communicator is well on their way to becoming an incredible leader.
Facts on Friday
The real difference between us and chimpanzees is the mysterious glue that enables millions of humans to cooperate effectively. This mysterious glue is made of stories, not genes. We cooperate effectively with strangers because we believe in things like gods, nations, money, and human rights. Yet none of these things exists outside the stories that people invent and tell one another. There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no money, and no human rights – except in the common imagination of human beings. You can never convince a chimpanzee to give you a banana by promising him that after he dies, he will get limitless bananas in chimpanzee heaven. Only Sapiens can believe such stories. This is why we rule the world, and chimpanzees are locked up in zoos and research laboratories.
From “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” by Yuval Noah Harari
Understanding your biases
A cognitive bias is a subconscious error in thinking that leads you to misinterpret information from the world around you, and affects the rationality and accuracy of decisions and judgments. Biases are unconscious, they are automatic processes designed to make decision-making quicker and more efficient. Cognitive biases can be caused by a number of different things, for example, heuristics (mental shortcuts), individual motivations and social pressures. Everyone exhibits cognitive bias, and it might be easier to spot in others, but it is important to know that it is something that also affects your thinking.
Here are some typical signs that you are influenced by some type of cognitive biases:
- Only paying attention to news stories that confirm your opinions.
- Blaming outside factors when things don't go your way.
- Attributing other people's success to luck but taking personal credit for your own accomplishments.
- Assuming that everyone else shares your opinions or beliefs.
- Learning a little about a topic and then assuming you know all there is to know about it.
When you are making judgments and decisions about the world around you, you like to think that you are objective, logical, and capable of taking in and evaluating all the information that is available to you. Unfortunately, these biases sometimes trip us up, leading to poor decisions and bad judgments.
Don't crave attention
There is a load of measurable, quantifiable coaching programs out there but I’m all about the human-to-human communication. I would like to draw your attention towards attention. There is a spectrum that goes from noticing the other person to tuning into the other person, I mean emphasising and understanding what’s going on with them. Are they in need? Is there something we can do to help them with compassion? These questions only arise in the first place when we go down that road as information consumes attention.
“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”
In 2016, Daniel Goleman posted an interesting blog on Linkedin, in the blog Goleman quotes a landmark article by Robert Rosenthal and Linda Tickle-Degnan that described the three essential ingredients for rapport:
Mutual attention,
Shared positive feeling, and
Synchrony or coordination.
How can you improve your listening skills? While there are many strategies for developing better listening habits, a key step is to become aware that you aren’t listening well. Poor listening is often an unconscious habit and as such is governed by the part of brains that handles automatic tasks. Before we can change a habit, we need to become aware of it. That type of awareness can be developed through mindfulness, the secret ingredient in habit change. Once we’re aware in the moment, we can choose to step away from distractions and focus attention on another person. You can read Daniel Goleman’s blog here.
Small things matter
You don't have to be in a position of authority to be a good leader and we can show that through our communication. To paraphrase Simon Sinek, “Leadership is irrespective of what level we are at.“ When you start a business there is a method and there are things you need to do in order to build it up. In business you have to set certain goals that you want to achieve and then act towards achieving those goals. Once you have defined your goals and begin to pursue them with your team you will find that obstacles continuously arise as you go towards it.
Whenever you create something new, it’s rarely a smooth progression, you will have to overcome obstacles along the way in the form of people or situations that go wrong. I think that when an obstacle arises, immediately face the obstacle which can come in the form of a situation, for example, something is not working or something is going wrong or perhaps somebody is trying to sabotage you. What is your relationship to difficulties and obstacles that arise as you travel towards your goal? Contact me via e-mail as it's very helpful to share our stories with others as doing so will help you process your emotions.
In the making
Human beings are unique in their ability to experience pleasure from remembering past happiness. You cannot always predict the major events that will shape your life, nor can you change the genetic factors that influence your basic happiness set point. You can't control what other people do or say, all you can control is how you react to it. Remember some skills improve communication, like emotional intelligence (EQ), as it enables people to better understand their own emotions as well as the emotions of those around them. Book recommendation: “Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ” by Daniel Goleman
The hedonic treadmill is a metaphor for the human tendency to pursue one pleasure after another. People talk about the hedonic treadmill that we have, where it’s like you are constantly striving for new and exciting things. That's because the surge of happiness that's felt after a positive event is likely to return to a steady personal baseline over time, you actually become less happy because it makes you more aware of all the things that you are missing out on. I think freedom is where you are not on the hedonic treadmill and pleasure which comes from selfless acts will tend to outlast physical pleasures.
Mutual benefit
The world is an incredibly complicated place and none of us can ever have the full lock on truth, we only ever see the world from a particular vantage point. This means that our knowledge is going to have a special insight because of our vantage point, but it’s also going to be limited because of our vantage point. And so, this limited knowledge that we have about the world means that we must enter into any conversation with a deep sense of humility. This is because you need to help me to fill in my knowledge gaps, and I need you.
We have the opportunity to gain in our knowledge and to learn from anyone. I think that when we are thinking with humility anyone can be our teacher. The cool thing about conversations is when both of us look at the world from different vantage points, and that means that we each have something to offer the other. And this is true whether one person is the expert or not. A really great conversation is one where we genuinely learn something, or we come to a deeper understanding about why someone holds a particular point of view. It might have been a conversation that challenged you in all the right ways and left you feeling smarter. What are the design principles of a great conversation?
Words are words
Communication is a craft, it will serve you so well at home and in the marketplace, it will server you so well in your career and making your fortune. Here’s the combination; well-chosen words mixed with measured emotion. Not only do the words have to be well chosen, but the emotions also have to be well measured. I mean do not place too much power on a minor point, for example, nobody would get it, if you have a powerful point and a little bit of emotion. It wouldn’t make sense, therefore. adjust your style to fit the occasion and the emotional content.
Effective communicators spend a lot of time getting to know the product's target customer. Whether it’s working on a job or advancing your career, whatever it is, craft your communications and become a little more aware. Effective communicators ask themselves:
•. What is the customer's pain?
• What does the customer find frustrating with current products?
• What will surprise and delight this customer?
The better you know your customer, the more effective you'll be at crafting messages that resonate with them. This is a craft, and the payoff is so great when your communication makes sense. Just ask yourself the question: Could we possibly get better at affecting people with our words and language? What about with style and emotion content? And if the answers are yes, contact me via e-mail for creating a framework that ensures it consistently works.
Understanding how people listen
I think the basics of human interaction and communication is to speak to others the way you want them to speak to you. I have heard some really bad speakers, but I have never heard a bad speech. When I create material, I try to envisage that I am going to be the receiver, in other words I pretend that I’m in the audience listening to myself. Do you know what I mean? The reason I do this is because I think as a receiver, even if I don’t agree with your point of view, I will appreciate the fact that I am giving an honest effort to delivering what I truly see as the better point of view.
Taking a person from a place where they are right now and giving them the tools to invest in a better future. I think ultimately, people buy emotions and then justify their purchase with logic. Here are a 5 tips on how to create a human context speech:
1. Greet your audience
2. Explain early what your speech is about
3. Speak slowly, use short word sentences
4. Share what you think or how you feel
5. End your speech with a conclusion
Would you like to learn how to write an authentic story that truly connects with your ideal customer? Sales happen when we inspire our customers to invest in a better future, please do not manipulate or trick them as sales professionals our mission is to inspire. Contact me via e-mail for sales training and workshops.