Effective Communications Make your Ideas Stick Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die PCBN Pacific Coast Business Networking September 10, 2014

Effective Communication Principles S imple – 1 idea vs. 10 U nexpected – Grab attention C oncrete – Be specific & visual C redible – Present credentials and authority E motional – Have them feel something S tories – Relate an experience A Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credentialed, Emotional Story

#1 – Keep it Simple Simplicity means Finding the Core of the Idea People will not remember 90% of what you tell them, so be clear what are the one or two key things you want them to remember and just focus on those (i.e. cut away most of the other stuff). We need to become ‘masters of exclusion’ in order to strip an idea down to its bare essentials.

Simple What Gets in the Way of Being Simple? The Curse of Knowledge You Know so much about your business That you can’t explain it simply

The Curse of Knowledge You understand your business with a lot of technical terms If you tend to explain things that way others may not understand what you say

#2 – Do the Unexpected Get attention: Surprise the listener The key to get a message received is first to capture attention. The most powerful way to get a person’s attention is to break a pattern (as our brains filter out consistency and only focuses on what’s different). Unique ideas disrupt people’s expectations.

#2 – Do the Unexpected Get attention: Surprise the listener We need to maintain attention – we need both ‘surprise’ to create attention and ‘interest’ to maintain it. The nature of surprise is critical in learning. It starts to jolt our models of reality and destabilizes our locked-in beliefs. It opens us up for re-evaluation as we try to make sense of them. To get change, you need to destabilize the status quo.

#1 Simple + #2 Unexpected 1.Identify the central message you need to communicate — find the core 2.Communicate your message in an unexpected way that grabs your receiver’s attention.

#3 - Concrete Help people understand and remember - Be Specific Concreteness makes it easier for someone to more easily visualize it - Present a picture The easier it is for us to relate to something, the easier it is for us to understand it and remember it. The more people can ‘see’ it, ‘smell it’, ‘hear’ it the more something feels real. Conceptual thought is not real

#4 - Credible Personal experience is the most powerful way to shift a belief Rational arguments are often rejected – unless supported by an expert or authority. Help people believe – cite an authority If we ‘believe and trust’ a person – (family, friend, expert or even celebrity) as long as we can be convinced of their authenticity with no hidden agenda, then we are more likely to be influenced by them.

#5 - Emotional Emotions are a powerful influencer of thought and behavior - Make people care Feelings inspire action. For one’s message to be received, you have to help make them care. To create care you need to create a bond between something they do care about and your message. Self interest is also a way of creating an emotional connection. WIIFM (What’s in it for me)

#6 – Stories Telling a story is the oldest form of getting a point across. We naturally pass information on through a story – and we use it all the time. Stories help us translate information into an emotional experience. We effectively relive the event inside. Research has shown the when someone re-lives a story in their head it re-triggers the same areas of the brain as the original experience.