How to explain your THOUGHTS and IDEAS and persuade others - MADE TO STICK

I recently read a fantastic book about effective communication titled made to stick this book will help you to organize your thoughts with Clarity talk with such Precision that the other person clearly understands your message not only that but also motivate them to do what you want them to do because you were so persuasive and impactful the book consists of six principles in this video I'll summarize five of them that I personally found helpful first principle a unexpected the first requirement of effective communication is getting attention the second is keeping it in order to get attention

you need to introduce your message in an unexpected way humans think in patterns our brain is a guessing machine always trying to predict what is going to happen next the key is to break that pattern and then fix it for example according to statistics every year deer kill more people than sharks in the United States right now you might say what how's this possible how can such a nice animal kill more people than sharks this information is unexpected if because it is against the image in your mind most probably you'll want to hear the rest

of the story well the rest of the story is that deer really do kill more people because they cause a lot of traffic accidents so to apply this principle to your message you need two things first identify the core of your message second figure out what is counterintuitive about this core message and communicate it in a way that breaks your audience's pattern the most difficult part is finding the core of your message in the second lesson I will explain how to do that the second principle Simplicity the formula for Simplicity is this simple equals core

Plus compact simple doesn't mean dumbing down your message it means determining the essence of your message and compactly delivering it let me first explain how you can find the core of your message then I will explain how to make it compact finding the core journalists have a method for this called the inverted pyramid where they deliver the most essential part of their message first and only then add supporting details journalists know that the first 5 to 10 seconds are all they have to catch their audience's attention so they deliver the core of their message first

and then the rest of the details are added another way to find the core is using a method called Commander intent imagine you're in the middle of a war and you can teleg only one single message before the line gets cut what would it be inverted pyramid and Commander intent are great methods because they force you to eliminate everything and focus on the single most important thing and nothing else once you found the core the next step is to make it compact here are two tactics to make your message compact first use memory flags and

tap into the existing memory of your audience for example let's say you do a survey on your team and find out that only 37% know the goal you're trying to achieve you get very upset with this and decide to meet with your team and explain the seriousness of the situation when you're presenting instead of saying that only 37% of our team knows our Target you can say we are a soccer team with 11 players however seven players including the goalkeeper don't know which side they are attacking only four players know it the remaining seven players

have no idea idea using the soccer game as a flag makes a more significant impact because employees can easily understand how terrible a team can look with seven players not knowing which side to attack and which to defend second tactic analogies Dean Sherman was an algebra teacher who would often get the question when are we really going to use this in real life Dean says first I was really annoyed and would bring different justifications why they should take algebra seriously but now I say never you'll you'll never use this in your life but here's the

thing you don't go to the gym and lift weights because one day someone might lie you down in the middle of the street and put a barbell on your chest and ask you to bench press you lift weights because you want to be strong and healthy you do it so that one day you can lift your grandchildren without being sore you do it so that you can carry your groceries math is the same you do math exercises to improve your ability to think logically so that you can become a lawyer a doctor or an architect

this analogy is quite effective because it makes you understand why you are studying math besides that if you noticed the opening sentence was unexpected and breaks the pattern never you will never use this in your life so to summarize simple equals core Plus compact use the inverted pyramid or Commander intent methods to find the core and to make the core message compact use analogies or memory Flags third principle concrete concrete means the more people can see it feel it smell it and hear it the more something feels real experts tend to get more abstract because

they have so much knowledge abstract ideas are hard to understand and remember and because of that they are open to different interpretations which one do you think is easier to remember bicycle or Injustice if I tell you that movie popcorn contains 20 G of fat this doesn't mean a lot to you but instead if I say that movie popcorn has more fat than bacon and eggs for breakfast a Big Mac and fries for lunch and a steak for dinner all combined you're more likely to avoid popcorn in the future which is the essence of effective

communication making people act you don't just want them to understand your message you also want them to take action you don't want your kids to just understand the importance of math you also want them to study math if you are working in a corporate environment you you've probably heard the phrases such as mission statement Vision synergies strategic initiatives Etc many experts in the companies use these types of fancy words in their presentations which puts the audience to Sleep Experts suffer from a phenomenon called The Curse of knowledge according to this phenomenon once we know something

we forget how hard it was not to know it we forget how hard it was to be a beginner our knowledge has cursed us and we can't put ourselves into our listener shoes there's a famous experiment called Tapper and listener in this experiment they took a group of people and divided them into two tappers and listeners tappers received a list of well-known songs such as happy birthday to you each Tapper was asked to tap the rhythm of the song to a listener by knocking on a table the listener's job was to guess the song based

on the Rhythm being tapped before the listeners guessed the song's name the experimenter asked the tappers to predict the odds that the listeners would guess correctly tappers predicted the odds were 1 out of two 50% however in reality listeners guessed the song correctly only one out of 40 2.5% this is the curse of knowledge this is one of the reasons your teachers think that she's done an excellent job at explaining the subject but in reality she hasn't this experiment repeats itself daily between managers and employees teachers and students marketers and customers writers and readers so

to sum up this third principle to make your message concrete use words or phrases that are easy to feel see or hear always keep the curse of knowledge and avoid using abstract words the fourth principle stories a boy named Jared had a serious weight Problem by his junior year in college Jared had ballooned to 425 PB PB 192 kg he wore 6 XL size shirts which is the largest size his life's decisions were controlled by his weight when he registered for a class he didn't base his choice on the professor or class time like most

students he based his classes to register on whether he could fit into the classroom seats when most folks worried whether they could find a parking spot close to campus Jared worried whether he could find a parking spot without a car already parked nearby because he needed the extra room in order to fully open the door so that he could get out his father a general practitioner warned him that his weight might not let him live past 35 but by spring break Jared had decided to change his life by following a strict diet that he invented

himself he once ate a Subway sandwich and liked it so much that he decided to create a diet based on Subway sandwiches only by following the Subway diet he lost almost 100 lb 45 kg in three months and he kept losing more and more weight after losing significant weight his body allowed him to start his Fitness routine he started walking as much as he could and avoided the use of public transportation and escalators when an article was published about Jared his transformation story became a national phenomenon in America the article described how being obese had

affected Jared's daily life and how Subway a fast food restaurant had helped him transform his life the article ended with a quote from Jared saying Subway helped save my life and start over I can't ever repay that this was the first time that a fast food chain was credited with positively transforming someone's life in such a profound way Jared's story got so viral that everyone wanted to talk about him on their platform in 1999 Subways sales were flat in 2000 sales jumped 18% and they jumped another 16% in 2001 just for comparison at the time

other fast growing smaller fast food chains were growing only at a rate of 7% per year Jared's story serves as an inspiration to people who are struggling to lose weight it's a story of perseverance and determination and shows how this huge guy lost 245 lbs 111 Kg on a diet that he invented himself the story provides good motivation for anyone who has been struggling to lose just a few pounds and is in need of a boost of inspiration if you are skeptical about using stories to deliver your message then here are four key reasons that

will change your mind number one the success of the Jared campaign serves as a reminder that people are often more interested in hearing about real life inspiring stories than statistics or marketing campaigns a story has the power to connect with people on a personal level making it more impactful number two when we hear a story we are not just hearing it we are also reliving it the story doesn't just transmit the information it also draws Us in and makes us feel what the main character is feeling so such as fear insecurity courage Etc we almost

feel like the things happening to the character are also happening to us number three the message you deliver through a story lives much longer people remember stories even after years have passed for example after this video has ended you will not remember most of the things you heard but Jared's story will probably stay with you number four you don't have to have your own stories or you don't have to invent stories you just need to be able to detect good stories that already exist around you for example Jared's story was detected by one of the

managers fifth principle emotional Mother Teresa once said if I look at the mass I will never act if I look at one I will researchers wanted to test this idea and see how people responded to charitable contributions to an abstract cause versus a single person they offered participants $5 to complete a survey and they received an envelope with the charity request letter giving them the opportunity to donate some of their money to save the children a charity focused on the well-being of children worldwide the researchers tested two versions of the request letter the first version

featured statistics about the problems faced by children in Africa such as food shortages in Malawi affecting more than 3 million children and the other version was about a single young girl roia from Molly roia is desperately poor and faces the threat of severe hunger and starvation the letter in detail explained how her life will be changed for the better if they donate on average people who read about Ria's story contributed $238 which was more than twice as much as the people who read the statistics who contributed $114 it seems that most people have something in

common with Mother Teresa one individual trumps the masses but the study doesn't end here the researchers gave both groups of people Ria's story but this time before reading her story they asked one group to do some calculations and another group was asked to describe some feelings such as describing the feeling when they hear the word baby when people were primed to feel before reading the story they gave $2.34 the same as before however the other group who read the same roia story but was primed to calculate gave only $126 cents these results are shocking the

simple Act of doing random calculations reduced people's Charity donations despite the fact that they read the same emotional roia story it seems like once we put on our analytical hat we react differently even if the story is emotional so the conclusion for you is this number one when delivering your message create empathy for specific individuals don't address the masses number two help people to take off their analytical hats and put on their emotional hats before you deliver your message what you do or say before you deliver your message can be more impactful than the message

itself psychologist Robert chelini has a great book on this topic titled persuasion in the book Robert concludes that if I can shift your attention to let's say helpfulness fairness or romance before I deliver my message then at that moment you become a helpful fair or romantic person in other words by using the persuasion tactics I can change your identity in that particular situation I can change who you are I can change how you perceive yourself and I can change how you perceive me and my message if you'd like to learn more about persuasion tactics then

check out the video you see on your screen it's the summary of the book I just mentioned thanks for watching