Change Archive - Page 2 of 3 - The Art of Communicating

You don’t need permission

You don’t need permission to change the world.

If you feel that you have a great idea that has the potential to change things for the better, that’s enough of a permission to make it happen.

You don’t need anyone else’s permission to go for it.

Just make sure that it’s true to who you are and that it actually changes things for the better.

Then, simply tell a true story about it.

If it really changes things, people will resonate with that story.

Looking forward to you lighting the path in 2022.

Change

Today marks the end of Angela Merkel’s period as Germany’s chancellor.

Three attitudes she brought to the office:

Keep calm.
Be respectful.
Listen.

Put together, these three lead to the confidence that there’s always a path. No matter who or what is challenging you. Keep calm, be respectful, listen … and you’ll figure it out.

It might not be the change you were hoping for. Maybe you could have done without change, entirely. But given that the world is changing regardless of whether you like it or not, being able to find a reasonable path forward, even when it’s a severe disruption, is a great virtue.

Thanks for your service, Mrs. Merkel.

The magic of a great story

That brilliant keynote speech that told a story about climbing the Mount Everest and inspired you to finally start your company.

That fascinating book that told the life of a pianoman and inspired you to never give up.

Or that YouTube video that showed you how to capture beautiful pictures and inspired you to capture some yourself.

It’s the magic of a great story.

We look at the hero but we see ourselves.

It’s also the source of confusion in storytelling and why many marketers get it wrong. It’s not about you.

You might be telling a story about yourself. But you’re telling it on behalf of your audience. So that they can project themselves onto the canvas of your story. Learn from it. Change their path based on what they see.

That’s why they listen to our stories.

I’ve got a question for you

It is this: Which question have you been afraid of asking yourself?

When we decide where to go next, we’re looking for the right answers. But sometimes the more helpful approach is to look for the right questions.

Because, we will only get the answers that we were asking for. Avoiding the difficult questions, especially those for which we are afraid to hear the answer might be the reason why the breakthrough that we are working towards, hasn’t come, yet.

What’s a difficult question for you? What question have you avoided because you feel that you might not like the answer?

Almost dying changes nothing

“Almost dying changes nothing. Dying changes everything.”

This is a quote by Dr. House from the TV series. He says it to one of his assistants, who has been diagnosed with a fatal genetic defect, the Huntington’s disease.

House makes her see what she can’t understand: why one of her patients is slipping back into her (dull) role as an assistant instead of striving for a leadership position herself, which previously she had decided to pursue in the face of her (subsequently prevented) death.

A less harsh version is true for many changes that we pursue in our life. Almost facing a consequence is not the same thing as actually facing a consequence. We’re much more committed when “almost” turns into “actually”.

Making a dent in the Universe

“Others have tried this before and it hasn’t worked”, she said. And that’s why she was quite hesitant to start her journey.

I’m glad that she has found the courage to go for it. Because there’s actually one thing that was missing from any previous attempt: her.

It may sound cheesy but it’s true. For almost everyone who made a dent in the Universe: Others have tried it before. And yet, it was them who actually made the dent.

The Wright Brothers weren’t the first to try to fly. Rafael Nadal wasn’t the first to try to win the French Open 13 times. Gandhi wasn’t the first to step up for the Indian independence movement.

For all of them, it would have been perfectly reasonable to assume that their mission was doomed. Others had tried it before and it hadn’t worked. They still went for it.

So, here’s a word of encouragement if you feel like you’re trying to achieve something that others have tried before and failed. You know what was missing before? You have been missing!

Changing the world, one life at a time

It’s tempting to want to change the world and do it all at once. But almost all revolutions start small. Martin Luther King didn’t give his first speech at the Lincoln Memorial. Facebook didn’t start as a 3 billion people network. The first iPhone was laughed at by most. But because all of them crafted a message that was beloved by some people and made these people feel special, their message could spread.

When we try to please everyone, we’re forced to make compromises. We’re forced to include more details. We’re forced to leave out the controversial parts of our message. All of this makes it harder for the special someones to truly love our message.

It takes courage, yes. We might miss out on a lot of people at first. But what gets easily overlooked is how we miss out on changing anyone’s life when no-one really gets us because it’s just a generic, everything-for-everyone message that no-one in particular loves and feels the urge to spread.

So, who do you start with?

How to find out whether you’re doing it?

Conductor Benjamin Zander has a simple rule to find out:

“When their eyes are shining you know you’re doing it.” – Benjamin Zander

I have adopted that rule from the moment I first saw his great TED talk and it has served me really well ever since.

The moment that people see order from chaos, that they see the path that was there all along, yet hidden in darkness, that moment is often exactly when their eyes start shining.

When you’ve experienced that moment with your clients, your audience, your children or anyone else even once, there can only be one conclusion for any further conversation that you’re going to have:

“Who am I that their eyes are not shining?” – Benjamin Zander

Applause is seductive

Getting applause for your talk and having an impact are two very different goals for a presentation.

A good round of applause feels great. That’s for sure. But the enthusiasm of the moment is no guarantee that your message will stick. Or that it changes a mind.

Even worse: applause is seductive. When you get some, you want more. When you get a lot, you want even more. And it’s quite possible that you do because once you get the hang of it, you’ll have a good sense of what makes your audience cheer for you. The temptation to strive for that applause is not a small one.

And yet, the talks that resonate the most are often the ones that cause the audience to become quiet. Pause. Reflect upon what they just heard.

Applause and impact are by no means mutually exclusive, but they also don’t necessarily come together. Faced with the choice, I’d always prefer the talk that makes a difference rather than the one that makes for a good round of applause.

But let’s look at it from a different perspective: If the audience is still resonating with our talk a month – or a year – after … because that talk made a profound difference in their life … now, that’s a reason to be really proud of.

The people changing business

When we write a report about something, our task is not to write a text but to inform the reader.

We must not stop at correctly and completely describing all aspects of the topic at hand but lead our readers to understanding. It’s vitally important that the reader of our report understands that the product will fail if we don’t manage to bring the tolerance down to .03%. It’s not sufficient to simply describe what we see. We must make sure that our reader sees it, too.

It’s always about the reader, never about the paper. The goal of a report is not to be written but to be understood.

The same is true for communication in general. Our job is not to write a speech, design a website, or create slides but to change people’s minds.

We are in the people-changing business, not the text-writing, website-designing or speech-giving business.

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