Picture: A simple and sticking message delivered on the 1st of May in Zurich.
According to an US study about medical doctors, doctors who listen to their patients get sued less; regardless of the success of the treatment. According to an article in the German weekly Die Zeit about the “placebo-effect”, certain doctors “heal” patients just by lending them an ear. The “placebo-effect” works particularly well for mental disorders like back-pain and sleeping-disorder (it does not work on broken legs). Crucial for the success of the placebo-treatment is how strong the suggestion by the doctor is: the more competent and convincing the doctor, the higher the chance of “healing” for the patient. Medical treatments are a good example of services that are based on trust as the results are hard to compare. And trust is apparently generated by how strong the suggestion aka the message is. If patients believe that they are receiving a beneficial treatment, they would likely respond to the said treatment (and less often to sue their doctor).
If delivering the all important message is so important, I wonder why I regularly have to attend poor presentations by managers, politicians, professors and other professionals. Not only are the presentations, aided by PowerPoint, poorly researched; often presenters invest 95% of their time building a case and gathering facts with only 5% of their time devoted to thinking about how to get the message across. More often than not the message they desperately try to convey does not get across or stay in people’s head.
Our brain constantly looks for familiar clues and draws conclusions from the setting, e.g. a stethoscope indicates a doctor. If a doctor does not look or behave like a doctor, we would not trust him (just watch Dr. House on TV). But obviously we cannot wear stethoscopes as managers. So how do you present in a “memorable” way? According to Chip Heath, a communication trainer, a message has to be simple, it has to contain surprising elements, it has to be concrete and credible and it has to be emotional and tell a story. In my eyes especially the last element, the story-telling, is crucial for crafting a message that sticks. Think about any message that successfully stuck around for a long time, the Bible or the Koran, fairy tales, movies etc., and you realize that the message is always encapsulated in a story. So before actually start preparing for a presentation, ask yourself what story you would want to tell and how to make it simple and emotional. And use PowerPoint only sparingly for the most important messages, pictures or charts. Think about how to create a “placebo-effect” in your audience. And be emotional (it also prevents the audience from falling asleep). Just watch any television evangelist and learn how to make a very old story stick.
Learn on how to make a message stick here: http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/article_abstract.aspx?ar=2062&l2=18&l3=27&srid=17
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