Don’t bring a data set to a food fight!

The takeaway message of the 2013 Sackler Colloquia on The Science of Science Communication, which I attended Monday and Tuesday at the National Academy of Sciences, was the importance of trust to being heard.

Much of Susan Fiske’s presentation confirmed how I approach communication for smart leaders:

• “People are not idiots. It’s up to us to figure out what things mean to them.” Later, Dietram Scheufele pointed out, “The same information means different things to different people.” This is because all communication is contextual. And because “we process incoming information based on the ideologies we have.”
• Trust is the neglected side of communication! Communicators are ineffective if they are not trusted.
• People trust people who are like themselves. They are motivated to support these people.
• We figure out whom to trust based on both warmth and competence.

Melanie Green, who is conducting compelling research on persuasion, built upon this last point: You will be perceived as an expert if you use statistics. You will be perceived as being a warm person if you use story. 

Given my own motivated reasoning, these points confirm my Heart, Head & Hand™ approach to communication: first, establish trust, often by sharing a story; then, share information; and be sure to invite your listener to apply or act upon your information in some way.

There was also a fascinating presentation by Noshir Contractor on the importance of leveraging social networks for the effective dissemination of information. He identified four kinds:

1. Social networks – who you know
2. Cognitive social networks – who they think you know
3. Knowledge networks – what they think you know
4. Cognitive knowledge networks – what who you know knows

Contractor said it’s impossible to leverage your networks if you don’t see yourself embedded in all of them. And that most people who accomplish anything do it because of what they know and whom they know.

He also offered research showing that new media helps people connect, but mostly with people just like themselves. There’s an echo effect. He suggested that to address this, we use network analysis and look at the bridges and the brokers who operate at the crossroads.

The final panel was on narrative, and Michael Dahlstrom proposed that stories, as a communication tool, are becoming a focus of attention because “people want to make things closer to human scale”, and stories accomplish that goal.

This was the first conference I’ve attended in a year in which I did not present, but had the simple joy of solely participating. I’m thinking about ways in which to make my work even more practical, and I’m interested in focusing my writing on audience-identified challenges. So, I spent a lot of time listening to the Twitter feed. And then I got sucked into Twitter participation. You can read many Storify compilations for the sessions here.

All of The Science of Science Communication sessions will be available for viewing on line, and I will post a link when that becomes available.

Despite the smart presentations and some enthusiastic reception of the science of effective communication, I left with the sense that many scientists shun responsibility for audience engagement. Many believe in only imparting information: in telling, not sharing. Many came eager to hear about what the audience must do, but repelled any onus on the part of the scientist to communicate empathetically. 

Public Relations Executive Peter Zandan provocatively noted, “Businesses are spending $9.5 billion a year on research on the effectiveness of their messages. These methods come from the social sciences! Yet, when we work with the sciences, they do not have the appetite to use the very methods they developed!” As a marketer, however, I’m uncertain that Mr. Zandan had the trust of the audience to be heard, let alone for the scientists to act on his message. 

All communication is contextual. People hear only what they want to hear, from trusted sources who have demonstrated warmth. Perhaps this can be best remembered by Marty Kaplan’s admonition, “Don’t bring a data set to a food fight!”

Persuasive Communication

I was recently interviewed for a magazine article on persuasion. Unfortunately, I just found out that the not-to-be-named magazine folded before the interview could run. Here are some excerpts from my unpublished Q&A with the journalist:

Q: Can learning the right ways to approach people with requests help people become more assertive? How so? We all hate rocking the boat, but why is it important to stand up for yourself and ask for what you want?

A: We all want to be heard. We don’t even necessarily want to “win” or get our way; we crave being heard and understood. The Earl of Chesterfield is quoted as saying, "Many a man would rather you heard his story than granted his request." Being able to voice our authentic feelings and desires while at the same time showing respect and empathy for our listeners is incredibly powerful. Continually tamping down on one’s own passion is eventually exhausting and demoralizing.

Q: What are the keys to being a persuasive person - and how is this different from being manipulative?
A: We need to understand that we are primarily communicating because there’s something we want our audience to do. It may be that we want our listener to undertake a different approach to solving a problem, or we want our partner or roommate to take out the garbage, or we want to help a friend feel better – there is an end goal to our communication. Persuasion is not coercion, or manipulation; it’s about moving toward action.

Persuasion is about helping change people’s minds about changing their minds. It’s not about telling people what to do, but facilitating their own discovery of the action and the rewards of taking such action. It’s about engagement, and helping people find meaning, and requires two-way communication. Being effectively persuasive is about respecting how other people see the world.

Q: When trying to get someone to see your side, are there tactics that work across the board, or do you have to know your audience and adjust?

A: I recommend a 3-step process, based on history, experience, and an understanding of the science behind cognition, emotion, and memory. I've trademarked it Heart, Head & Hand™. Heart, Head & Hand™ recommends first establishing a relevant and emotional context for communication, then delivering facts and data, and then asking the audience to take action. The order is crucial.

Q: So how can you read your audience – what should you look for?

A: Start with a clear understanding of what you want your listener to do as a result of your communication. Consider how your listener may need to feel in order to take the desired action. Might you have a story you can share about a time when you felt similarly?

Think, too, about where your work and concerns overlap with your audience’s work and concerns. Draw a Venn diagram and map it out. Seeing it visually can provide insight, and thus confidence.

Q: How important is confidence in being persuasive? How can you exude confidence without seeming cocky or arrogant?
A: Too often, we fail to show up, to show emotion, to show passion and desire. Showing passion is crucial to successfully moving listeners to action, and to making change happen. In a professional setting, passion and emotion need not translate as emotional. Emotion, in a professional setting, means delivering your information, and your request for change, with passion and confidence, and within a context that the audience finds meaningful.

Heart, Head, Hand & Complexity

I’ve just started collaborating with Peace Over Violence and saw this fundraising video they did at the end of last year.



It was highly successful: 50% increase from the previous year's annual appeal; doubled the number of donors; and brought in 30% new donors, which they attribute to the viral nature of the video.

It’s a great example of applying my Heart, Head & Hand(TM) framework to video. Emotional connection followed by data (presented graphically, not to diminish or compete with the emotional resonance of the speakers), closing with a strong and compelling ask.

One aspect that I imagine contributed to the success of the video is the acknowledgment of complexity. Note Leona, from 1:03 to 1:26:

A lot of times, and particularly with this case, yes, it had a very great outcome: the person who harmed is now going to go to jail. But the family has to deal with this concept of, 'Okay, but now we have this family member that has to go to jail.' And there's the complexity that's around - particularly in families where the abuse is within the families - separating out what that person did, and that person also being a family member.

Increasingly, I am finding that audiences are deeply appreciating organizations that acknowledge the complexity of their work; they can relate to life not being black and white, and they are happy that someone is stepping up to work in complex spaces.

I've seen this frequently with National Advocates for Pregnant Women, when audience members thank Executive Director Lynn Paltrow after a speech, for "finally, perfectly, capturing the complexity of what I am feeling." And, certainly, some (if not most) great literature presents complex characters in complicated situations.

Chances are, if you are a nonprofit organization, the solutions you are offering to seemingly intractable problems are fairly complex. That's good, and as it should be. Talk about that complexity, because people will, indeed, understand.

I worked with Enterprise Community Partners in engaging wealthy, altruistic, potential donors with the following

Think of when you bought your home. Or think of when you may have built a home, or done a renovation. Think of all the institutions and vendors that were involved. Think of the brokers you may have hired, or the general contractors, to get things done that you didn’t know how to do. Now, imagine if you were attempting to purchase land or property, renovate it or build on it, and wanted to make that property available to scores of families, while making sure those families would be safe, have access to schools and parks, and could afford their homes forever.

...Enterprise is the leader in navigating the financial, political, and social complexities of creating and preserving safe, healthy, and affordable homes. Please join Enterprise in finding big-picture, long-term solutions to some of our nation’s most difficult problems.

The truth is in the grey zone. Acknowledge complexity. Don't ask your donors to work as hard as you, however; make their ability to contribute to your solution easy.

Q & A on Functional NeuroImaging [a follow-up to NeuroCooking Live!]

Q: How do you use MRI to study brain function?

A: We make MRI movies of the "blushing brain", from which we calculate "activation maps".

Q: It blushes?

A: Changes in neuronal activity are accompanied by changes in blood flow and blood oxygenation (as has been known since the 19th century).

Q: You make movies?

A: We image the whole brain every two seconds (30 frames per minute).

Q: How do you calculate that "activation map"?

A: Generally speaking, we use the MRI movie to make a picture of where the "brain blushes" in time with stimuli or responses. Those colored blobs (that we overlay, photoshop-style, over a greyscale image of brain anatomy) show where the timing of the MRI signals agrees with the timing of the stimuli or behavior.

Q: What do those maps look like? What do they show?

A: They generally show a collection of brain regions, that do different things (principle of segregation), which work together (principle of integration).

Here's an example: A right-handed adult (who gave written informed consent to participate in IRB-approved research) was scanned for several minutes, during which they alternated, for thirty second periods, between holding still, and sequentially tapping the fingers of their right (dominant) hand – the thumb to each of the opposing fingers, in turn. Looking at just one "slice" – not even the whole brain – you can see four different regions that serve four different roles. Our understanding of these different roles comes from neurology, and from neuroelectrophysiology. MRI shows us the regions, but MRI doesn't see the roles.

Q: So, what do those regions have to do with the stimuli or behavior?

A: Well, it varies. And MRI can't tell. Correlation ain't necessarily causation; correlational neuroimaging cannot address causality. MRI shows us the regions that are correlated with the behavior, but not the different roles those regions serve.

Heart, Head & Hand: An Advanced Approach to Persuasive Communication

For the past three years, I've been coaching smart leaders and training whole organizations in persuasive communication, using an approach I call Heart, Head & HandTM. I've just published a short essay outlining the approach. I invite and welcome your thoughts.

Improv and the Heart of Communication

Another Improv class, another round of posts on Improv and Communications! And this 10-week course is focused on emotion, perfectly aligning with my focus on the Heart of Heart, Head & Hand(TM) - how to engage your listener.

Pat Shay, my new and fabulous teacher, said, "If you show you care, your audience will be fully invested in what you are saying."

Placing your information in a context of meaning is crucial to being heard, understood, and having your listener engage with and take action based on your comments. Too often, we fail to show - to show up, to show emotion, to show passion and desire. For my clients who are vested in making change happen, showing passion is crucial to successfully moving listeners to action. In a professional setting, emotion does not need to translate as emotional. Emotion, in a professional setting, means delivering your information, and your request for change, within a meaningful context.

In regard to two-person scenes, Pat instructed, "If we focus on how we feel, the space between will fill up."

Again, focusing on the Heart helps to build a bridge between what you are saying and what your listener is hearing. Without that bridge, your information risks falling into a chasm. Without an emotional context, your information risks going unheard or being misunderstood by your listener, or your audience. Emotion is the connective glue between your idea and your listener's understanding and acceptance of the idea.

And, "The way you support your partner is by giving them something concrete."

Stories are concrete and tangible. Stories showcase emotion, and emotion is universal. Communication can be a gift, handing your listener [and your audience] something they understand, to which they can relate, and in which they can find meaning. Show respect - for both your audience and your idea - by delivering something solid.

Pat also said, "When we are being really honest, people see us as highly creative."