If You Want More Passionate Fans, Consider This Subtle Switch
The way most business communicators and leaders try to teach others and earn fans is actually the opposite of what works. Yet we're so convinced of our style, and it's become so common in our community, we don't even see the error of our ways.
In short, we keep firing the director.
To understand what I mean, we first need to play a quick game involving a list of prompts.
Please understand that this is NOT a trick, though in a sense, it is.
It's NOT a trick because the list contains no riddles. They're not trick questions. But in a sense, this IS a trick, because when you recognize what words wielded well can do to the minds of others, you see it for what it is: a magic trick.
Here's the list of prompts, then we'll talk about the trick.
I'm picturing a long, yellow fruit with an outer peel and a soft interior.
There's this flightless bird that lives on the snow and ice and waddles around everywhere but swims gracefully.
If I sing, "Weee are the champ-iooons," you sing...
If you responded with banana, penguin, and "my frieeend!" then congrats, you've won the game. You've also experienced the magic trick.
I never said the words banana or penguin to you, yet I still planted those exact images in your head. The meaning was conveyed. I also never sang the final bit of the song lyric ("my frieeend!") and yet you heard it as clearly as if I had.
This is a better way for me to teach, not because I show up trying to prove to you that I know more about fruits or animals or Queen than the other guy, but because I ensured that the final revelation belonged to YOU. I ensured you felt enrolled into the learning process and felt a sense of accomplishment by the end. Because YOU got the answer. I didn't hand it to you.
This is NOT how we teach others in the business world. Instead, we mostly spell out everything and stuff all experiences and content full of the exact takeaways. In doing so, we lessen our own influence and our ability to earn trust and earn passionate fans.
The best part of the list of prompts is what happened inside your mind. You constructed something and also felt ownership of it. The banana you pictured was the exact hue of yellow that YOU always picture when you imagine a banana. Or maybe you pictured it sitting on your table or your kitchen counter. Maybe it was like clip art in your brain, floating in a white void. Similarly, the penguin you imagined was the kind you always imagine when you picture a penguin. Maybe you even felt some kind of emotion associated with penguins: a stuffed toy you had, a connection with a friend or loved one at the zoo or watching a nature film, or another memory or experience I couldn't possibly have described or given you. What penguin did you picture? I can't say. You tell me.
And that's the point: you tell me. Tell me the answer. Tell me what you took away from this experience or story.
* * *
Maybe you've heard the phrase "theater of the mind" before? I think all our stories, used effectively, are theater of the mind. Much of what makes the story effective unfolds in your head, prompted by me but not actually created by me.
The thing is, in the theater of your mind, you are the director. You run the show. You are not a bit character on the stage with me. You're also not the star, the proverbial "the customer is the hero of the story!" (Blah.) No, when I'm doing my job, you're the director. I handled a little bit, but you handle the bulk of it. I prompt you, but you arrive at the answers yourself.
This is a better way to teach, and yet it's not the way we normally communicate with others. We overstuff our writing, our speaking, our podcasts and video with "key takeaways" and exact prescriptions. The way we try to teach is like we've gift-wrapped a lesson in a box for someone, march straight to their doors and knock (DON don-na don-don ... DON DON!) They open the door, we hand them the package, but then 0.2 seconds later, we grab the box out of their hands, shove them away, and rip out what's inside.
"See it's THIS. And it does that and that and that. I first heard about it from THIS time back then, when I was doing that thing, and then I used it here and here and here, and now you can use it like this and like that and like this. So go use it. Now. Now use it. You go now. You go now to use this thing now that I give you here and now. You go."
And when we stare at them, we go, "WHY THEY NO GO?! Must be the wrapper, must be the box, must be this place where we tried to deliver it to them."
But no, WE are the problem. WE aren't teaching others in a way that allows them to feel enrolled or feel achievement. We've done this twitchy, impatient, stressed-out thing to them because we aren't certain it will work or that we're worthy or that they'll care, so we try to TELL them to care instead of show them by leading them.
In doing so, we've committed a cardinal sin of teaching others. We've stolen the revelation.
"One of the rules I think of teaching is, 'don't steal the revelation.'"
This week, Seth Godin joined me on the podcast.
He shared a lot of stuff he doesn't normally share, including analyzing his storytelling style, discussing the overlap of strategy and story, and dissecting one signature story for us. We even swap stories of similar styles in the back-half of the episode, in a pure and amazing moment of geekery.
You can watch some clips + find the podcast episode here.
"Don't steal the revelation," Seth said. To illustrate, he used an example of that common knocking cadence we often use at a friend's door, which is inspired by the old timey call-and-response, "Shave and a haircut!" followed by, "Two bits!"
The knock sounds something like this:
DON don-na don-don ... DON DON!
"But I don't say, DON DON!" Seth explains on the show. "Because if YOU finish the line, it's yours. If I finish the line, you just write it down in your notebook."
Seth wants to change others just as you want to change something about the way your audience thinks or acts. So you tell stories, teach, and inspire. But if others don't arrive at the moment of revelation themselves, then it doesn't stick and doesn't get put into action. Nothing changes. Your audience needs to feel a sense of achievement thanks to your words.
Banana! Penguin! WEEEE are the CHAMP-IOOONS, my frieeend!
If YOU finish the line, it's yours. If I finish the line, you just write it down in your notebook.
If I hand you each and every insight you need and then spell out each and every detail for how to think and how to act, welp ... I haven't really done my job.
All learning is autodidactic. Most of us forget. Most of us are great at filling notebooks but not so great filling minds. Because most of us steal the revelation.
An effective storyteller doesn't. Bourdain did not spell out exactly what I should take away from the episode I watched last night. Instead, he placed me there in Montreal, he toured me around, he switched on some lightbulbs, and then through sparse but powerful voiceover, through music and tension and other wonderful witchcraft available to storytellers and creatives, he gave me just enough for me to synthesize meaning.
He didn't leave it to chance. It was intentional. And you can say, well, I sell to executives, I sell to entrepreneurs, I speak to marketers or HR professionals or Etsy store owners, and I'm saying back to you, "Great, they also think they need to get your exact spelled out takeaways, and they also will feel the magic of the trick when you don't do that but instead give them something that makes them go, OH MY GOSH OF COURSE! THIS! YES! How can I have thought or acted any other way? THANK YOU!"
Because you said, "DON don-na don-don..."
And they finished it.
What it means to be our type of storyteller—this combination of expert and entertainer and practitioner and marketer and leader and performer—is ultimately to use our stories to teach. We know stuff, and we want to convey what we know to others in a way they'll care about. But we just keep opening up the package and over-explaining the gift inside. We rob them of that moment of achievement. We steal the revelation.
Effective storytellers operate in the theater of the mind, but it's not what YOU picture that matters. It's what THEY picture. Because ultimately it is THEIR play. They aren't sitting in the balcony. They aren't a background actor. Heck, they aren't even the star or the hero. They're the director.
Stop firing your director.
Stop stealing the revelation.