Getting Your Message Out

Copyright ©2004 by Don Blohowiak
Don@LeadWell.com http://www.LeadWell.com/

(January 28, 2004)--Question: What do major presidential candidates meeting with potential voters in their rural homes have in common with the latest computer virus clogging email in-boxes everywhere?

Answer: Both speak volumes about the very real challenge you face as a leader hoping to penetrate the din in the minds of your constituents: Mass messaging defeats your message today.

Defending Against the Incoming

Virus scare or not, most of us now routinely delete emails without opening them. We sort physical mail, much of it unopened, over a trash can.

Our minds, if not our software, automatically block the ceaseless stream of countless, mass pleas for our attention:

• Poorly targeted emails from lazy marketers -- some sent in languages you cannot decipher;

• Advertisements in every imaginable form screaming out from every conceivable venue;

• Corporate execs desperately trying to whip their associates into a frenzy to, once again, "do more with less."

In today's communication-clogged environment, one-way disseminations -- regardless of their merit -- reach blinder eyes and deafer ears. Most of us now manage to skim, dismiss, and quickly forget --all in one effortless step -- even those few messages that do manage to squeeze into the periphery of our awareness.

It's not that everyone in our modern society has become pathologically selfish or hopelessly apathetic. No, it's just that we are protecting ourselves against the rampant Cognitive Pollution constantly bombarding us.

From Mass to Missed Communication

Jay Rosen, press critic and journalism professor at New York University suggests that the people happily ignoring your messages "are the people formerly known as the audience. And they do not want your message."

That presents challenges for you as a manager trying to get the attention and "share of mind" of the people around you. You can finely craft a great speech, memo, article, whatever, only to see it make little or no impact on the people to whom you aimed the broadcast.That's true even when you send out a message that your target audience should find personally relevant -- or even appealing.

Why? Two reasons. 1) Many people instinctively assume that a mass message is propelled by a motive to manipulate their minds. And 2) Addressing individuals as mere components of some ill-defined blobby mass (such as the workforce, the troops, the rank and file...), demeans and alienates them.

"If you don't address me as me," they reason, "I can just tune you out." And they do.

Can You Hear Me Now?

So how do you "get your message out"?

First, you must answer this question: Why should the receiver care? "Because I said so," doesn't mean much -- even when it comes from the Boss. And, contrary to the overly worn popular wisdom, the key is not to cleverly appeal to the self-interest of "the audience." (The WIIFM -- what's in it for me -- factor some call it, is an incomplete, inadequate response to the challenge.)

Mano a Mano

Here's the secret...

The meaning of the message must go beyond its cognitive content. The words are not the message. The feelings felt by the recipient of the communication gives the message its meaning.

That's why little girls knock on your door to sell you Girl Scout cookies instead of sending you an order form by email.

Human connection -- at a deep emotional level -- is the only place where communication really registers in an over-communicated environment.

Hard Push Yields to Soft Pull

Here's an old truism worth repeating: People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.

Broadcast messages typically do little to express "how much you care." They fail to make a human to human connection (unless they build on a previous connection that the intended receiver can effortlessly recall).

Emotionally connected messages influence how people think and how they choose to act.

Connecting emotionally requires honesty, humility, and both a means and a commitment to listen as well as disseminate.

If you don't care enough to solicit and then listen to responses, to earnestly consider concerns, to entertain differing viewpoints with an eager learner's mindset, then you don't care enough for your message to be heard. And you can --rightfully -- expect it to be ignored or rejected. Just like a computer virus automatically zapped by vigilant software toiling silently in the background.

I welcome your comments. Send them here.

Lead Well® helps organizations to improve measurable results by developing their current and future leaders. For more information, please contact us. By phone, toll-free in the USA: 1-888-LeadWell (532-3935), or 1-609-716-9490. By email, Info@LeadWell.com.

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Don Blohowiak, a management consultant and popular conference speaker, is the author of several business books. The executive director of the Lead Well® Institute in Princeton, NJ, he may be reached at http://www.LeadWell.com/.

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Copyright © 2005, Don Blohowiak, Lead Well Institute

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