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    You are here Home » communication

    Playing by the Brain’s Rules to Make Communications Stick

    Last updated on Jul 6, 2017 by Dan McCarthy · This post may contain affiliate links

    Guest post from Tim Pollard:

    Despite the
    fact that the stakes of business communications are often high, it’s sad
    reality that most are really not very good. 
    Survey after survey reveals that only about one quarter of internal
    business presentations are rated as good or better by their audiences, while 75
    percent languish as mediocre, poor, or terrible.

    And for those
    critical sales presentations that companies make to customers, the score is no
    better. Data we’ve gathered shows that while companies self-assess the quality
    of their solutions on average at 8.1 out of 10 (where 10 is excellent), those
    same companies self-assess the quality of their solutions messaging at only
    3.9/10. It’s little short of tragic to battle to finally get that elusive
    customer meeting, only to deliver a 3.9/10 presentation.

    Which raises a
    fascinating question. Given that communication is such a high-stakes affair,
    why are we so poor?

    We have all
    been subjected to some mind-numbing PowerPoint deck where the speaker toiled
    through an endless series of slides, and in our gut we know that this can’t be
    the right way to do it. But while it’s tempting to simply blame PowerPoint,
    that is missing the point completely. The real problem is far more interesting
    than the poor use of a software tool. It’s all about the poor use of an audience’s
    brain.

    Here’s the
    real problem: the human brain is wired in very particular ways in how it wants
    and needs to take in information. When communication aligns with how the brain
    wants to consume information, incredible, breakthrough effectiveness is
    possible. But when you misalign with the brain, you are guaranteed to fail. It
    is certainly true that dense, excessive, poorly sequenced PowerPoint slides are
    doomed to fail, but the reason is how badly that approach misaligns with the
    way the brain works. The key isn’t prettier slides. The key is understanding
    what the brain really wants.

    For example,
    at a cocktail party you are introduced to a random stranger. Three minutes
    later you’ve completely forgotten his name. 
    The reason this happens tells us something critical about how the brain
    stores information.

    The brain
    stores information contextually. When presented with new information the brain
    looks for context – for something to attach that information to. If it can find
    it, the information can be stored. But if no context is found, it can’t be
    stored. We call information like this an “intellectual orphan.”

    Why does this
    matter to communicators? When you create any argument that simply moves from
    point to point – “That was point 3, let’s look at point 4” – but where there’s
    no logical flow BETWEEN those points, you are presenting intellectual orphans
    and your argument is destined to be forgotten within minutes.  And it’s what most presenters do most of the
    time.

    So what’s the
    solution to this particular problem? You need to take the substance of the
    argument and create a logical sequential narrative, because sequence creates
    the context that the brain needs.  When
    you read a book, chapter 6 makes perfect sense because of chapter 5. But if you
    read the chapters out of sequence it won’t make any sense at all, even though
    it’s exactly the same content. It’s the context that creates comprehension.

    This is just
    one example of the relationship between brain wiring and communication, and
    it’s the reason why most people communicate badly - because they have no idea
    what the brain’s rules are.

    Based on 15
    years work and research, I’ve identified six critical brain violations that
    show up in almost all communication, and a six-step process for message design
    that solves for these. And when communication is built using this model,
    whether it’s a sales pitch, a TED talk or a CEO message to the troops, impact
    and effectiveness skyrocket. (One client saw a sales conversion rate for one
    solution jump from 15% to about 90%, simply because they finally learned how to
    tell this complex story in a much simpler way.)

    So, in the
    spirit of giving you a really valuable and practical takeaway, let me share the
    biggest lesson, and the most valuable thing you will ever learn about the way
    your audience’s brain works.

    Your brain and
    mine operate at the level of ideas. If you were to sit through a long
    presentation, even a great one, and afterwards, I asked you “what was that all
    about?”… automatically, without even knowing you were doing it, you would
    reduce that hour to one or two big ideas. It’s how our brains work. They are
    reductionist. They traffic in ideas. They do NOT traffic at the level of facts
    and data (especially lots of fact and data).

    Do you
    immediately see the problem? The overwhelming majority of communicators take an
    approach that is thoroughly at odds with this reality. We bombard our audiences
    with as much fact and data as we can, usually thinking that we are making the
    best case we can, when in fact we are likely making the worst.

    In the famous
    OJ Simpson trial of 1993, the prosecution presented a mind-numbing seven months’
    worth of fact and data. And yet, history clearly suggests that this was all
    undone by ONE simple idea of eight words…. “If the glove doesn’t fit, you must
    acquit”… and the fact that most of you reading immediately recognized the
    phrase (even after a quarter of a century) is huge testimony to the incredible
    brain-stickiness of an idea.

    In almost any
    presentation I see, the big ideas are murky at best, or completely hidden at
    worst. Indeed, in most “decks” you can’t find the ideas at all. Next time you
    are building any communication, go and apply this principle by asking this
    question: “What are my 2-3 big ideas?” Then build around them. Make them clear,
    prove them with your best data, not the most data you can, and strip away
    everything else that’s secondary.

    And watch what
    happens.

    Tim Pollard, author of The Compelling Communicator: Mastering the Art and Science ofExceptional Presentation Design (Conder House Press, 2016), is the
    founder and CEO of Oratium, a communications firm helping organizations from
    Fortune 500 companies to law offices hone their presentation and messaging
    skills.
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