Featured
This week’s featured posts.
Strategy. Innovation. Brand.
Code Words & Tribal Grooming
You may not have noticed it but, throughout this video series, we’ve been talking mainly about deliberative presentations. In such a presentation, you present a logical argument and your audience deliberates on it. You’re recommending a course of action and trying to convince the audience of the wisdom of your logic. There’s an entirely different animal called the demonstrative presentation — where logic is simply not needed. In a demonstrative presentation, you’re building group solidarity, a sense of belonging, and esprit de corps. It’s sometimes called identity politics. Jay Heinrichs calls it “tribal grooming” and logic has nothing to do with it. Before you develop your presentation, you should decide whether you want to be deliberative or demonstrative. Learn more in this week’s Persuasive Communication Tip of the Week.
Disagreeing Effectively
Let’s say you’re having an argument and your opponent has stated his position clearly. You’d like to persuade him to change his position. But you’re working against the consistency principle — once your opponent has stated a position, inertia keeps him from changing it. Your argument needs to be clear and compelling but it also needs to provide a way for your opponent to change positions gracefully. While it may be tempting, making your opponent feel small or cornered is usually unsuccessful. Remember, you’re interested in persuading, not humiliating. Similarly, making your argument overly abstract doesn’t do much good. You need to get personal and stay positive. Learn more in the video.
This tip has a lot to do with the consistency principle — and how to overcome it. You can find more on the consistency principle here.
Will the Internet Cause Dementia?
Liberals go here. Conservatives go there.
When I walk the dog in my neighborhood, I meet a lot of people. They don’t all look like me but — according to Bill Bishop in The Big Sort — they probably think like me. Bishop argues that we’ve sorted ourselves out less along ethnic lines and more along religious, political, and philosophical lines. We tend to live with and talk to people who agree with us. Bishop argues that’s bad for our country. It tends to exacerbate our differences. We think everybody thinks like us because we only speak to people who think like us. Anybody who doesn’t think like us must be a small group of weirdos who can safely be ignored.
Sorting ourselves out may also be bad for us as individuals. According to recent research, one of the best ways to keep the brain stimulated — and to avoid dementia — is to read or listen to contrary points of view. If we only listen to sources we agree with, we’re simply reinforcing existing pathways in the brain, not creating new ones. What does that have to do with the Internet? The Internet makes it much easier to find and consume only sources that we agree with. In the old days, we would read the family newspaper and be exposed to multiple points of view on the editorial page. With the Internet, it’s much easier to isolate ourselves in an echo chamber.
So, will the Internet cause dementia? It may already have. Watch the video.
Why is Warren Buffet’s Hair Messed Up?
Every time I see Warren Buffet on TV, his hair looks like it hasn’t seen a comb in years. Surely he can afford a comb. So, why is his hair so messy? I’m guessing that it’s a subtle — but persuasive — effort to brand himself as a smart guy. Who do we think of when we think of smart guys? Albert Einstein. What did his hair look like? It was a mess. I think we’re supposed to conclude that Albert and Warren are so busy thinking deep thoughts that they don’t have time to think about their appearance. It’s a good branding strategy. So what’s your personal branding strategy? Find out more in the video.
Creativity & Questions
Do you want to be more creative? It’s often a question of asking the right question. Pursuing a different line of questioning can change your frame of reference and lead to surprising results. Use your listening skills to hear the questions that others are asking. If everybody else is asking “what”, then maybe you should ask “when”. It can lead you to a radical new invention — like the air bag. Learn more in this week’s video.
My Social Media
