The thing with habits is that they are unconscious. Our brain is on autopilot and so we don’t even recognise when we follow a habit. It’s the whole point of habits … to take load off of our consciousness.
Disaster strikes when it’s a bad habit, more so when it’s not even our own habit. Like the bad presentation habit. It’s our audience’s habit and it works as follows: As soon as the first slide is on the screen, audiences go into PowerPoint consumption mode. Also known as sleep mode. Or Instagram checking mode. Or vacation planning mode.
The problem is that habits are not easy to change. When they are triggered, autopilot takes over. Worse: we don’t even have an easy access to our audience’s autopilots.
But: We can easily break it. Because it turns out that it’s much easier to break a habit than to change it. A habit needs a trigger. No trigger, no habit. Change the trigger – that’s easy!
How? Start differently! Start with the beamer off. Or tell a story. Or interact with your audience. Do anything that’s different from what you – and others – usually do.
Most social media platforms measure engagement in order to determine relevance. Basically, the more people interact with a piece of content and the more time these people spend on a piece of content, the more relevant the piece is considered to be (and also, the more profitable it turns out to be for the platform as they can show us more ads).
And it makes sense, right? Why would people interact with content if it wasn’t relevant? Well, maybe. But it misses the point.
Because why would I need you to interact with this piece of content for it to change how you act as a leader? Why would I need you to spend ten minutes on this piece when all I need to say can be said in two minutes?
Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate your thumbs up as much as anyone. And I’m grateful when you choose to spend your time with me. But it’s not why I’m doing this. I’m posting my thoughts because I hope that it will lead you to reflect upon the way you speak, act, and lead. If it actually does, you’ll hopefully come back to hear what else I have to say.
Change is a much more useful (albeit hard to measure) metric for the relevance of a piece of content than the time we spend together or the amount of interaction we exchanged. It’s the metric that I use in choosing the content that I consume.
Does it make me think? Does it open up a new perspective on something? Does it make me act differently? These are the things that matter much more than the time I spend on a piece.
(PS: So, from a social media platform algorithm point of view, my podcast is probably the worst thing you could do with each episode being only about two minutes long.)
Here’s a random piece about my teenage years. It’s about trespassing. In fact, it’s about the album “Trespass” by Genesis.
I bought the album back in the days when CDs were still the hype (late 80s I assume). I liked Genesis’ popular tracks such as “Land of Confusion” and I liked the cover of “Trespass”. What I didn’t know was that it didn‘t have anything to do with the Genesis I knew from the charts. It’s their second studio album, recorded even before Phil Collins joined the band. Back at home, when I first listened to the album, I was totally surprised but also a bit angry. Being an experimental progressive rock album, it sounded so strange to my ears that had been exclusively trained on chart music.
But, well, I actually spent money for the album (also I didn’t own that many albums) so, I listened again. And again. And it turned into a revelation. It was way richer and denser than what I was accustomed to from the charts. For me, it was the beginning of a journey to discover the richness of music as a storytelling tool and as a way of expressing yourself. First, I discovered other progressive rock bands such as Pink Floyd and Yes, then I continued to Jazz which led me to discover Miles Davis and guitarists like John Scofield, Mike Stern, and Pat Metheny who inspired me during the time when I still thought I would become a professional guitarist.
Well, obviously I didn’t but I’m glad that I took that journey. Not sure if I would have trespassed the boundaries of pop music without “Trespass”.
A speech that doesn’t change people’s minds is a waste of time.
A speech that doesn’t resonate with people doesn’t change their minds.
A speech that has nothing to do with people’s lives doesn’t resonate with them.
A speech that remains stuck in the abstract doesn’t have much to do with life. Life’s concrete, not abstract.
A speech that doesn’t explain how the facts relate to real life remains stuck in the abstract. Life is not made up of numbers, but of people who have feelings, goals, desires and fears.
A speech that doesn’t add anything to the facts is not worth giving. It is mere information. Just write the info down.
Only when you explain how the info relates to your audience’s lives, will the facts become more than info. Anyone can outline facts. But making me see what the facts mean, explaining how they relate to my life, that requires more than writing things down.
In fact, it requires you. Because if your speech matters, you’re probably the only one who can do that. Because you dug deep. You do care. You see what we don’t see, yet.
That’s why we need you to give that speech and change our minds.
Presentations are about changing thoughts and therefore, if done well, presentations are a great tool to move people to take action.
Obviously, the difficult part is to find – and then change – the thoughts that trigger the action. Understanding this relationship informs us about where to start:
What do your customers do currently? What action should they take? Why would they want to? Why don’t they already? What needs to change so that they will? How can we make them see it? Even better: feel it? …
These are much more powerful questions for a sales pitch than to start with a list of all your product features that your audience already knows from your sales brochure but didn’t act on.
Part of being human is that there is a disconnect between what we want and what we need.
We want things that we don’t really need. And we don’t want things that we would actually need. We tell ourselves stories that are influenced by the people and things that surround us and that make us feel the strong desire to want or not want something.
The selfish marketer doesn’t care about any of these. He’s happy when he closes the deal. When you want something, he will think “great!” and happily sell it to you. In fact, he will try hard to make you want even more of the things that you don’t need.
Marketers who care for their customers act differently. They dig deeper and listen carefully. Because what counts for them is not just the deal but the people. What is it that my customers really want? What is it that they need? They strive for a long-lasting relationship built on trust. They strive for actually changing things for the better.
That’s what good communication helps us to achieve. By listening carefully to not only what they say that they want but sensing the underlying feelings and desires, great communicators are able to guide their customers to what they need without dismissing what they want.
Empathy is the key skill here. Great communicators use empathy not only in listening but to guide conversations to where their customers need to go while making them feel that that’s where they want to go.
Is it worth it to go through the hassle of preparing a presentation? To research material, craft a story, design the media, rehearse, gather people in a room, …
Well, answer this first: What will be different?
What will your audience understand after your presentation that they couldn’t more easily understand otherwise? What will they see differently than before? Where will they take action that they wouldn’t take on their own?
This is the key question to help you decide whether it’s worth it or whether you can just as well send a memo.
If nothing will be significantly changed by your presentation, then why bother? However, if the change you’re going to make happen with your presentation is worthwhile, then do go through the hassle … and go all of the way.
“Fast Sterben hat noch nie etwas verändert … Nur der Tod ändert alles.” Dieses Zitat von Dr. House aus der gleichnamigen TV-Serie bringt das Dilemma all derjenigen auf den Punkt, die Leben verändern möchten, ihr eigenes oder das anderer Menschen. House sagt es zu seiner Assistentin, die seit Kurzem weiß, dass sie genetisch bedingt an der tödlichen Huntington-Krankheit sterben wird. Er sagt es, um ihr zu erklären, was sie nicht verstehen kann: wieso eine ihrer Patientinnen zurück in ihre (bedeutungslose) Rolle als Assistentin schlüpft, anstatt selbst nach einer Führungsposition zu streben, wofür sie sich eigentlich im Angesicht ihres (anschließend verhinderten) Todes bereits entschieden hatte.
Es ist das gleiche Dilemma, in dem Verkehrssicherheits-, Antiraucher- und ganz allgemein Gesundheitskampagnen stecken. Wie überzeugt man jemanden, der eigentlich schon alle guten Gründen gegen sein Verhalten kennt, davon, sein Leben endlich doch zu ändern? Oft setzen entsprechende Kampagnen auf drastische Motive, nicht selten verpackt in einen emotionalen oder satirischen Kontext.
Einen anderen Ansatz wählt die britische Grafschaft Sussex. Wachrütteln ohne zu Schocken lautet das Motto der grandiosen Embrace-Life-Kampagne:
Wirkungsvoll wird die Kampagne gerade durch das, was man nicht sieht. Sie betont – im Gegensatz zu vielen, vielen anderen Kampagnen – ausrücklich das Positive (“Embrace Life”) und eben nicht das Negative. Sie sagt nicht: “Wenn du das nicht lässt, dann wirst du krank/tot/einsam sein.” sondern rät: “Tu’ es für (d)ein schönes Leben.”
Der konkrete Erfolg solcher Kampagnen ist schwer messbar und sicher funktioniert nicht jede Kampagne für jede Zielgruppe gleich gut. Die Brüder Dan und Chip Heath fassen in ihrem Buch Was bleibt ein paar Empfehlungen zusammen, wie emotionale Botschaften bei der Überzeugungsarbeit helfen, von denen sich viele Tipps in der Embrace-Life-Kampagne wiederfinden: “Wie bringen wir andere dazu, dass sie sich von unseren Ideen angesprochen fühlen? Wir zwingen sie, ihre analytische Haltung abzulegen [“Helft Rasern. Spendet Hirn”-Plakat]. Wir schaffen Empathie für bestimmte Personen [“Runter vom Gas”-Plakat]. Wir zeigen, dass unsere Ideen mit etwas verknüpft sind, das den Menschen bereits am Herzen liegt. Wir sprechen ihr Eigeninteresse, aber auch ihre Identität an – und zwar nicht nur die Menschen, die sie gerade sind, sondern auch die, die sie gerne wären [“Raser sind so cool”-Plakat].”
Vielleicht der beeindruckendste Vortrag, den ich bisher zum Thema Motivation gesehen habe, stammt von Alan Sim, Sicherheitsbeauftragter bei Woodside, Australiens größter Ölgesellschaft. Sie können ihn entweder hier oder hier herunterladen (leider nicht auf YouTube verfügbar). Wenn Sie die 12 Minuten nicht investieren, verpassen Sie einen der eindringlichsten und emotionalsten Apelle an das Gewissen, den ich kenne. Sie werden anschließend (hoffentlich) nie mehr versuchen, jemanden mit Hilfe einer PowerPoint-BulletPoint-Regelliste zu überzeugen, Vorschriften einzuhalten.
