Jérôme Provensal

What do you do when physically aroused?

 Influence, Marketing, Psychology  7 Responses »
Apr 282013
 

Physical arousal linked to increased sharing

arousal eyeThe answer to the question “What do you do when physically aroused?” is that you probably share.

By sharing, I mean the stories, news and information that people share with others around them.

According to this fascinating article published in Psychological Science:

We forward online articles to our friends, share stories with our co-workers at the water cooler, and pass along rumors to our neighbors. Such social transmission has been going on for thousands of years, and the advent of social technologies like texting, Facebook, and other social media sites has only made it faster and easier to share content with others. But why is certain content shared more than others and what drives people to share?

Jonah Berger, the author of the study:

The sharing of stories or information may be driven in part by arousal. When people are physiologically aroused, whether due to emotional stimuli or otherwise, the autonomic nervous is activated, which then boosts social transmission. Simply put, evoking certain emotions can help increase the chance a message is shared.

Jonah Berger is also the author of the captivating book Contagious: Why Things Catch On and that’s how I heard of his theory. In both the book and the article he explains how his study was conducted. He and his team of researchers looked at a large number of New York Times articles and whether they made the “most emailed” list, which is a good measurement of the article virality.

What they found is that while article evoking positive emotion were typically more viral, some negative emotions like anxiety and anger actually increased transmission while other like sadness decreased it. Berger posits that fear, anger or amusement leads people to share new and information more. These emotions are linked to higher level of arousal and action vs. emotions like sadness or contentment which lead to low arousal and inaction. If something makes you angry (vs. sad) you are more likely to share it with your friends and family because you are “fired up”.

With the emergence and the importance of social media these days, companies and organizations must understand why people talk about and share certain things.

Berger and his team conducted two experiments to confirm their theory. In one experiment they asked students to watch videos that made them either anxious or amused  (high arousal), or sad or content (low arousal). The results demonstrated that students who felt high arousal emotions were much more likely to share with others.

In the second experiment, students were asked to sit still or to jog for about a minute – a task proven to increase arousal. Then, they were shown a neutral online new article and told they could email it to anyone. The experiment showed that the students who jogged in place were more likely to share.

Why should companies/associations care about that research?

Berger states that the implications of his study are quite broad:

People’s behavior is heavily influenced by what others say and do. Whether you are a company trying to get people to talk more about your brand, or a public health organization trying to get people to spread your healthy eating message, these results provide insight into how to design more effective messages and communication strategies.

We knew about “don’t drink and drive”, and now we should probably be cognizant of “don’t jog and share”.

Practice safe sharing!

[Photo Credit: close-up photo of my wife‘s beautiful left eye]

Cultivate Mental Confusion

 Creativity, goals, Innovation, Psychology, Software Development  4 Responses »
Apr 212013
 

Muscle Confusion -> Mental Confusion

mental confusion brain

If you have been to the gym or involved in any fitness for the past few years, you certainly run into the concept of “muscle confusion“.

The idea behind the concept is that muscles accommodate to a specific type of stress/exercise when the same stress is continually applied to the muscles over time. We become very proficient at doing that same exercise but we eventually reach a plateau, where we get stuck.

The solution:  mix up your exercise routines. You are a jogger? Try some strength training. Yoga is your passion? Give swimming a chance, every so often. A mix of different exercises was the novel ingredient to the incredibly successful P90X

When it comes to our daily job, we also become very proficient at it over time. Our brains develop routines and we stick to them because they work. That said, by not challenging the way we do things we invariably plateau and reach a state of pleasant comfort, sometime without even realizing it. However, there is nothing more dangerous in life than comfort because it can quietly kill your creativity, desire to innovate and aspiration for a better tomorrow.

If you have reached that dangerous level of comfort or don’t want to get even near it, let me offer a solution: Mental Confusion.

I do realize that “train your brain as if it was  a muscle” metaphor has been overused but in this case it seems very apropos.

2 ways to stimulate Mental Confusion

How do you go about creating “mental confusion”?  My suggestions are simple:

  • do something unrelated to your day job
  • do whatever makes you (somewhat) uncomfortable

Say, you are a software engineer, programming all day. Why not pick up a book about doing simple sketching. Check out Mark Kistler‘s books. That new skill will help you express your software design to non-engineers.

You are a finance guy, and although no one can rock a spreadsheet like you do, writing has never been your forte. Why not start a blog on a topic you cherish? It can be finance related or not.

You are a math teacher and you nailed your lesson plan… 10 years ago and you can now do it with your eyes closed. How about looking into the ways Khan Academy has successfully harnessed the elements of gamification into their own lessons plans? How? Take this excellent Coursera course on the topic.

You are a magazine editor with a successful personal blog on the side about fashion and have always wanted to customize the look-and-feel of your WordPress blog. Why not take a class on HTML5/PHP/CSS? They are so many good  resources (videos, classes, etc…) on those topics that it’s a shame not to take advantage of them.

I could go on but I’m sure you get the idea.

Benefits of Mental Confusion

Outside the obvious  advantages of broadening your mental horizon. The new skills will make you more creative overall, more able to be innovative and find better ways of excelling at your trade.

It is no surprise that successful entrepreneurs these days no longer look for talents in a narrow field. Instead they seek well-rounded, dual (T-shaped) or even multidisciplinarity individuals who can contribute at many levels and bring both left and right brains at the table. Companies like IDEO have long preached the gospels of having employees being skillful  in more than one field. Practicing “mental confusion” will lead you to become one of those creative innovators.

Universities have also noticed the trend with schools like the Stanford D-school  offering a degree in design, combining traditional design teaching with finance/entrepreneurship  acumen. Even, bastion of technical/scientific knowledge like Caltech now offers the very popular class PA 16… on Cooking Basics and other typically right-brain topics.

Innovation often emerges at the intersection of 2 disciplines or when 2 experts in their respective domains have a chance encounter. Imagine what you will be able to achieve once various areas of your brain have been sufficiently cultivated .

Ready to get “mentally confused”?  Don’t wait, get out of your comfort zone.

If you still need some extra motivation, check out Seth Godin‘s excellent blog post “the simple power of one a day”.

[Image credit: lightwise / 123RF Stock Photo]

Powerful formula for setting and achieving goals

 Book, Creativity, goals, Leadership, Psychology  5 Responses »
Apr 172013
 

Procrastination be gone! Use written goals.

goals settings

Source: http://www.briantracy.com/

You’ve decided to be more creative, and you want to do something about it; maybe read more books on a variety of topic unknown to you in order to broaden your horizons. Or maybe it’s to travel more, learn how to sketch, pick up a new language (human or programming), etc… Whatever your goals are, you are very motivated to achieve them… the first day or maybe the first week and then procrastination sets in.

According to Brian Tracy in his best-selling book Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time, you need written goals.

Brian Tracy claims that only about 3 percent of adults have clear, written goals. These people accomplish five or ten times as much as people of equal or better education and ability but who, for whatever reason, have never taken the time to write out exactly what they want.

There is a powerful formula for setting and achieving goals that you can use for the rest of your life. It consists of seven simple steps. Any one of these steps can double and triple your productivity if you are not currently using it.

 

7 steps of the formula

 

  1. Decide exactly what you want. Either decide for yourself or sit down with your boss and discuss your goals and objectives until you are crystal clear about what is expected of you and in what order of priority.
  2. Write it down. Think on paper. When you write down a goal, you crystallize it and give it tangible form. You create something that you can touch and see. On the other hand, a goal or objective that is not in writing is merely a wish or a fantasy. It has no energy behind it.
  3. Set a deadline on your goal; set sub deadlines if necessary. A goal or decision without a deadline has no urgency. It has no real beginning or end. Without a definite deadline, you will naturally procrastinate and get very little done.
  4. Make a list of everything that you can think of that you are going to have to do to achieve your goal. As you think of new activities, add them to your list. Keep building your list until it is complete. A list gives you a visual picture of the larger task or objective. It gives you a track to run on.
  5. Organize the list into a plan. Organize your list by priority and sequence. Take a few minutes to decide what you need to do first and what you can do later. With a written goal and an organized plan of action, you will be far more productive and efficient than people who are carrying their goals around in their minds.
  6. Take action on your plan immediately. Do something. Do anything. An average plan vigorously executed is far better than a brilliant plan on which nothing is done.
  7. Resolve to do something every single day that moves you toward your major goal. Build this activity into your daily schedule. You may decide to read a specific number of pages on a key subject. You may call on a specific number of prospects or customers. You may engage in a specific period of physical exercise. Whatever it is, you must never miss a day.

Keep pushing forward. Once you start moving, keep moving. Don’t stop. This decision, this discipline alone, can dramatically increase your speed of goal accomplishment and boost your personal productivity.

 

Improv techniques to boost your group’s creativity

 Creativity, Innovation, Leadership, Psychology  4 Responses »
Apr 142013
 

Your brainstorming sessions are going nowhere?
Try these improv techniques

Improv techniques

Source: http://bit.ly/10VOBQc

First of all, I should say that those improv techniques don’t involve having you stand up in front of an audience with a mic in hand and a stool at your side. It’s much less involving than that. In fact, they are extremely simple and yet incredibly effective. Read on to find out more.

We’ve all been in those meetings either at work, in the classroom, in a family gathering deciding on a vacation together, or in a community group where we need to generate new ideas and come up with an agreement on those ideas. Very often, we witness some brave souls offering their ideas, to have them rebuked with a harsh “NO!” or its sneaky cousin “yes, BUT…”.

At that point, whatever creativity flow was in the room screeches to a dead stop or is replaced by a confrontational back-and-forth where all parties hunker down and are dead set on defending their ideas and ignoring any other ideas. In the end, the strong personalities end up imposing their ideas. The end result: very few ideas are generated, egos get hurt and everyone comes out frustrated.

What if there is a better way that would remove the risk of  strong personalities or personal glory getting in the way of the creative process? A way where everyone has to actually listen to the members of the group’s ideas and be willing to embrace them for at least a little bit? A way where everyone involved ends up looking good?

3 simple improv techniques

Those techniques come from the world of improvisation where creativity and flow of ideas is paramount. They have been taught for decades to aspiring comedians (think Steve Colbert) and recently to a much more diverse audience ranging from adventurous business leaders, to nerds, to husband/wife in couple therapy.

The techniques (actually more they are more like guidelines) are incredibly simple:

  1. Use “yes, AND…” (vs. “no!” and “yes, BUT…”) because it forces you to listen to the other person’s ideas and to accept their idea (even if it’s just for a bit) in order to allow you to build on it. It’s about acceptance. Knowing that everyone will have to accept your idea as part of the exercise will embolden you to offer more creative ideas instead of sticking to safe suggestions.
  2. Accept every offer. That’s one of the cardinal rule of improvisation. Go with the flow and never antagonize the person who suggested the idea.
  3. Make the others look good. This gets your ego out of the way. Establish the rule to make your counterpart look good and shed some positive light on their best ideas.

Don’t be fooled by the simplicity of those improv techniques. They do work and not solely on the stage of comedy clubs.

So, the next time you are in a group setting, seeking to generate ideas, offer those 3 guidelines at the beginning of meeting and witness how the dynamics of the group will radically improve. You will be surprised by how well the techniques work.

Have you have ever tried those techniques?  Will you try them in the future and share the outcome? I’d love to hear your feedback ! Use the comment section below.

Your memory sucks? Blame it on Gutenberg and Google!

 Creativity, Innovation, Psychology  4 Responses »
Apr 072013
 

The modern man doesn’t know how to use his memory

memorization technique, memory palace

Credit: http://bit.ly/10uAGCa

I recently finished listening Moonwalking with Einstein, Joshua Foer’s fascinating book about his yearlong quest to become a top “mental athlete”. His journey is really about how our mind’s memory developed and works from an evolutionary and historical perspective.

My reference to Gutenberg is of course about his introduction of movable type printing to Europe and how it revolutionized the inexpensive printing of books. Believe it or not, for hundreds of years prior, going back to Ancient Greece, learned people actually memorized tons of things because there was no book and written materials were very rare and confined to far-away libraries. Anecdotes of ancient and medieval people who were able to commit to memory huge amount of written material abound. It was told that an Ancient Greek named Charmadas could recite the contents of any volumes in libraries as if he were reading them.

And it wasn’t only about memorizing or recalling books; Seneca the Elder could repeat two thousand names in the order they’d been given to him. Think about that the next time you struggle to remember someone’s name at a cocktail/birthday party.

Incredibly effective memorization technique: Memory Palace

How did they do it? They used memorization techniques such the poetically named “memory palace”. They were so commonly known back then that very few written records of those techniques were found.

The memory palace mnemonic device relies on the fact that millions of years of evolution didn’t do such a good job at helping us memorizing people’s name, words, phone numbers, etc…, i.e. the important things in modern life.  Instead, our hunter’s brain was shaped to memorize physical locations in order to go hunting (and gathering), remembering the good and dangerous spots and taking us safely back to camp: I left my cave, crossed the river by the big fallen tree, went left at the large boulder, etc…

The mnemonic technique is about associating the things you want to remember (your grocery list) with known locations (the rooms in your house for example). Check out this wikihow article for more details on how to use the technique. Try it! It works amazingly well.

The strong link between memorization and creativity

Now you might ask: what’s the connection between memorization techniques and creativity/innovation which is the driving  topic of this blog?  The answer comes fromTony Buzan (a proponent of mental literacy and inventor of Mind Mapping. Also see my recent blog post on Mind Mapping) who’s quoted in the book as follows:

In our gross misunderstanding of the function of memory, we thought that memory was  operated primarily by rote. In other words, you rammed it in until your head was stuffed with facts. What was not realized is that memory is primarily an imaginative process. In fact, learning, memory, and creativity are the same fundamental process directed with a different focus.

The art and science of memory is about developing the capacity to quickly create images that link disparate ideas. Creativity is the ability to form similar connections between disparate images and to create something new and hurl it into the future so it becomes a poem, or a building, or a dance, or a novel. Creativity is, in a sense, future memory.

If the essence of creativity is linking disparate facts and ideas, then the more facility you have making associations, and the more facts and ideas you have at your disposal, the better you’ll be at coming up with new ideas.

Also, as Buzan likes to point out, Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory, was the mother of the Muses.

 

Need to convince? 6 novel ways to pitch your ideas

 Influence, Innovation, Leadership, Psychology  2 Responses »
Mar 302013
 

Forget the elevator pitch! It’s so 20th century.

Say no to the elevator pitch!

Credit: http://bit.ly/ZKgaNB

Everybody has heard of the elevator pitch. Dale Carnegie advised us to be ever ready with our “elevator speech” in case we encountered the big boss. Thankfully, companies have become much more democratic and you often have more opportunities to present your ideas to the “suits”.

In his new book To Sell Is Human Daniel Pink introduces us to what he calls: the six successors to the elevator pitch. The overall claim of the book is that “selling” is no longer a dirty word or is no longer associated to the repulsive image of a sleazy, shady, slimy used-car salesman. According to Pink, everyone is now in the business of selling or rather living in a world where the skills of convincing or persuading are becoming essential, to everyone.

The book’s chapter called “pitch” is particularly compelling and I would like to share with you what resonated with me.

6 compelling ways to pitch your ideas

1) the one-word pitch. Inspired by the advertizing agency Saatchi & Saatchi’s “one-word equity“, its claim is that in the 21st century, the attention span is so short that we need the “brutal simplicity of thought”. Think “search” for Google, or Obama’s “forward”. If you can find that one (positive!) word and the world starts associating that word with you or your company, you have it made.

2) the question pitch. Asking your audience a question often packs more punch than your typical declarative statement. Example: Reagan didn’t say “your economic situation has deteriorated over the last 48 months”. Instead he asked the famous question: “Are you better off now than you were 4 years ago?”. Asking a question compels to respond and that in turn provokes a deeper, more intensive processing of the message content.

3) the rhyming pitch. This pitch relies on rhymes which boost what linguists and cognitive scientists call processing fluency. Rhymes “taste good” to our minds and make the content of the message more palatable and more memorable. If you were around during the O.J. Simpson’s trail, I’m sure you’ll remember Johnnie Cochran’s (in?)famous pitch about a certain glove: “if it doesn’t fit… you must acquit!”. So if you want your message to stick, use rhymes.

4) the subject-line pitch. When you think about it, every email message is some kind of pitch, with every subject-lines in your mailbox vying for your attention… “click me!”. According to a study conducted at CMU, email readers based their decision whether to open an email on 2 main factors: utility (it affects your work) or  curiosity (curious about what the email is about), where utility taps into extrinsic motivation and curiosity taps into intrinsic motivation. Pink provided 2 examples: the useful “Found the best & cheapest photocopier” and the intriguing “A photocopy breakthrough”.

5) the twitter pitch. Pink uses the example of the investor Stowe Boyd who, while heading to a conference to meet start-up companies, asked the eager entrepreneurs seeking a meeting with him to pitch their idea via Twitter, i.e. in 140 characters or less. Scientists studying the Twitter medium found that the tweets that were the most attention-grabbing asked questions to the followers, proving again the potent nature of the interrogative form (see 2) above) to engage and persuade.

6) the Pixar pitch. No need to introduce the animation studio behind so many animated movies, Pixar. One of the reasons for Pixar’s success is attributed to the way movie ideas are pitched, using the following 6 sequential sentences:

Once upon a time, ____________________________________________________________.

Every day, _________________________________. One day _________________________

____________________________. Because of that, ________________________________.

Because of that, _____________________________________________________________.

Until finally, ________________________________________________________________.

The book then goes on about advice on how to pitch but you will have to buy the book, or ask me to summarize that part in an upcoming post.

I will just leave you with the most important of his advice:  after someone hears your pitch…

  1. what do you want them to know?
  2. what do you want them to feel?
  3. what do you want them to do?

You now have 6 new ways of pitching. How will you pitch your next idea?

Mind pumping: Thinkertoys’ style!

 Creativity, Psychology  No Responses »
Mar 272013
 

Mind Pumping: “Pumping” it’s not for muscle only…

Mind Pumping

Credit: http://bit.ly/ZqC9Wg

I started rereading Michael Michalko’s book: Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking techniques, as a source of inspiration for a post for this blog. This book is so amazingly rich on ideas and techniques on creative thinking, it’s absolutely dizzying. It seems that any 1/2 page would be enough material for a good LighBulbBite.

But since I had to choose, I’d like to try to summarize chapter two, titled Mind Pumping.

The author’s premise for mind pumping, is that if you want to be creative, it’s not enough to have the intention of being creative, you must act like a creative person by going through the motion of an “idea person“.

9 great Mind Pumping exercises

  1. Idea quota: Set yourself an idea quota for a challenge that you are working on; say 5 ideas, every day for one week. Having a quota forces you to actively generate ideas rather than waiting for ideas to occur to you
  2. Getting tone: Really paying attention to the world around you will help you develop the extraordinary capacity to look at mundane things and see the miraculous
  3. Dukes of habit: Instead of always doing the things the same way, deliberately program changes into your daily life: take a different route to work, listen to a different radio station each day (different newspaper), change your reading habit (fiction vs. nonfiction), switch hobby, etc…
  4. Feeding your head: To quote Gore Vidal, “The Brain that doesn’t feed itself, eats itself”. So, read to feed your mind but:
    • Select carefully: how good an exercise for my creative mind will this provide?
    • Take notes
    • Read biographies: there are a treasure-house of ideas
    • Read how-to books on any subject
    • Read magazines on varied subjects
    • Read nonfiction: when reading nonfiction books, practice thinking up solutions to any problems presented in the book. JFK’s favorite exercise.
    • Think: think as you read and find connections/parallels between what you read and your problems
  5. Content analysis: observe the world around you (popular culture, your job, places where you travel, local/international news, conferences, etc…) and analyze what you see/absorb, look for connections, trends and patterns, and seek new opportunities/ideas out of your analysis.
  6. Brainbanks: collect and store ideas/thoughts like a pack rat: quotes, designs, ideas, questions, pictures, and words that might trigger ideas by associations. (I personally use Evernote for that very purpose).
  7. Travel Junkie: whenever you are feeling stale/bored, go to new store, trade/craft show, exhibition, library, museum, etc… Wander with an open mind and wait for something to catch your attention and connect it to your problems/challenges
  8. Think right: make your thinking more fluent (number of ideas) and more flexible (more creative).
    • Making lists is a powerful way to increase fluency. Example: list all the possible uses of WD40
    • Flexibility in thought means the ability to see beyond the ordinary/conventional. Be more improvisational and intuitive by focusing on processes rather than outcomes.
  9. Idea log: One of CIA’s favorite techniques for recording information in a written form. This enables the agent to instantly focus on all the ideas, comparisons, interrelationships and data relating to a given problem.

This was one chapter out of 39! Get the book for many more techniques/ideas.

Hopefully, this LBB will give you ideas on how to become more creative.  Don’t try all of them at once but do try some and let me how know how they work out for you.

I invite you to share your thoughts, feedback or your favorite Mind Pumping exercises below in the comment area. Looking forward to reading them!

 

Mind mapping: mapping ideas in and out of your brain

 Creativity, Design, Innovation, Psychology, Technology  5 Responses »
Mar 242013
 

A powerful technique to organize and generate ideas

Credits: http://bit.ly/X1LdWg

Credits: http://bit.ly/X1LdWg

According to Wikipedia:

A mind map is a diagram used to visually outline information. A mind map is often created around a single word or text, placed in the center, to which associated ideas, words and concepts are added. Major categories radiate from a central node, and lesser categories are sub-branches of larger branches. Categories can represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items related to a central key word or idea.

And you go, huh?

Mind mapping is one of those techniques which is easy to demonstrate or show but difficult to describe in words.

Check out the following video for a quick primer using a basic example:

Why is this technique superior to your typical lists of bullet points?

It has to do with the way the brain functions. It doesn’t organize its information like sentences in a book, instead it’s stored as a large collection of ideas connected with one another.

Tony Buzan, a influential promoter of mind mapping, likes contrast traditional note taking vs. mind mapping:

  • Traditional note taking: a linear recording of information without connecting the concepts together. Doing without thinking
  • Mind mapping: radial explosion of visually interconnected ideas

The technique has been widely used to promote creativity, problem solving, and synergetic ideation. The main reason why it’s such a powerful tool for those activities is because it forces to create association of ideas in a very visual way which tends to be the brain’s favorite way to recall and create new relationship between ideas.

To get started, all you need is a blank sheet of paper, a few colored pens and you are ready to go using the following guidelines suggested by Tony Buzan himself:

Guidelines on how to create a mind map

  1. Start in the center with an image of the topic, using at least 3 colors.
  2. Use images, symbols, codes, and dimensions throughout your mind map.
  3. Select key words and print using upper or lower case letters.
  4. Each word/image is best alone and sitting on its own line.
  5. The lines should be connected, starting from the central image. The central lines are thicker, organic and thinner as they radiate out from the centre.
  6. Make the lines the same length as the word/image they support.
  7. Use multiple colors throughout the mind map, for visual stimulation and also to encode or group.
  8. Develop your own personal style of mind mapping.
  9. Use emphasis and show associations in your mind map.
  10. Keep the mind map clear by using radial hierarchy, numerical order or outlines to embrace your branches.

Here’s a mind map on how to create a mind map… :-). The same website allows you to create online mind maps for free.

If you want to share your mind maps, or simply prefer to create them digitally, they are dozens of applications for desktop applications, web sites, and iPad/tablet/mobile applications to help you. Checkout Mind Mapping Software Blog for an impressive collection of reviews and recommendations.

Not convinced on where you would use mind mapping? Here are 100 reasons.

So, the next time you need to organize ideas in a new way or want to trigger new ideas, why don’t you give mind mapping a try?

PS: Have you ever used mind mapping? How did you like it? Share your comments below.

Metaphorical thinking

 Creativity, Design, Innovation, Psychology  6 Responses »
Mar 212013
 

Tap into the power of metaphors to boost your creativity

Metaphor: jaws in space

Credits: http://bit.ly/111cR4a

I once heard that Ridley Scott pitched his idea for his movie “Alien” as “Jaws in space” (confirmed here). How brilliant is that?! With that simple 3-word metaphor, the director was able to convey his novel idea for a movie so precisely that it baffles the mind!

A metaphor is a soft thinking technique connecting two different universes of meaning. Examples: Food chain, flow of time, fiscal watchdog. The key to metaphorical thinking is similarity. The human mind tends to look for similarities.

Excessive logical thinking can stifle the creative process, so use metaphors as a way of thinking differently about something. Invent and look for metaphors in your thinking. They are also potent tools as they make you and your audience look at things a different way.

Imaging within another sensory or conceptual frame can help. For example, in the visual images of spring which inspired Vivaldi’s “La Primavera”, one can clearly re-imagine then while listening to that piece of music.

When thinking of a problem and its solution, it helps to expose the mind with many related concepts. The hope is that the juxtaposition of 2 or more of those concepts will create a eureka moment that will lead to a solution. It’s not always a perfect fit but by stretching and examining the parts of the connection, you can start discovering new facets of the imperfect metaphor to lead you to the perfect solution.

Flex your metaphorical thinking muscles

Coming up with metaphors might come naturally for some of us as our brains tend to think metaphorically in the first place.  However, it’s sometime difficult to force their creation. It’s more like “they come to you” and not “you go to them”. That’s where English majors have an edge. That said, you can become good at it with some practice.

Here are some interesting resources on how to create and make use of metaphors.

Do you like metaphors? Share your favorite one(s) in the comments section below this post.

Selling a new idea? You might be 2/3 short on your persuasion mojo…

 Leadership, Psychology  3 Responses »
Mar 192013
 

A great ideas is only one component of the persuasion cocktail

Persuasion: ethos, pathos, logos

Credits: http://bit.ly/11gANVh

So, you have a great idea and you are convinced that everyone will readily recognize it as such. Think again!

As this TED-Ed (What Aristotle and Joshua Bell can teach us about persuasion) brilliantly demonstrates it, persuasion takes more than just idea/argument greatness.
The quick video recounts the story of the famed virtuoso violinist Joshua Bell who, 3 days after a much acclaimed performance at a packed Boston Symphony Hall, decided to play for an audience of… nobody. That performance was taking place in the subway station where barely a handful of people slowed down to listen to his music. People were actually ignoring him.

What happened?

Same music played by the same musician, with the same passion, on the same violin?
Conor Neill (the author of the TED-Ed video) tells us that Aristotle would have been able to explain… more than 2300 years ago!

Aristotle’s time-tested 3-part persuasion recipe

What does it take to convince people? That’s the topic of Aristotle’s Rhetoric and it boils down to the 3 means of persuasion: logos, ethos and pathos.

  1. Logos: does the idea/argument makes sense to the audience,  from the audience’s point of view? Does it follow a certain logic, the same way that good music follows certain good composition rules? Is the idea relevant to the audience?
  2. Ethos: Ethos is all about reputation, credibility, acting professionally, and being trustworthy. Do you care about the audience as much as yourself? Do you convey a sense of authority: a mix of confidence with a concise/clear message
  3. Pathos: Pathos is the emotional connection. Stories are a potent human tool to create an emotional connection. Sometime, the audience is not ready to hear your message/idea. A good speaker creates the right emotional environment for his/her message to connect with the audience.

What happened to Joshua Bell and what often happens to us when we try to sell our ideas is that we may have a great logos, but ethos and pathos are missing.
In the case of Joshua, the subway station didn’t convey the same sense of trustworthiness that a concert hall does (ethos). The emotional bond between the well-light, lone violinist on stage  and his concert hall audience didn’t exist in the hustle and bustle of the busy/noisy subway station (pathos).

So, the next time you try to sell your next great idea, how will  you build credibility and emotional connection?

PS: Have you been in the same predicament as Joshua Bell? Any tips on how to work up an awesome ethos/pathos like nobody’s business? Share it by leaving a comment below.

You like the post? “Like it” on your favorite social network(s) below.

 

 Older Entries  Newer Entries
%d bloggers like this: