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Anyone in the communications business, advertising or marketing, knows that the human touch is profoundly instrumental in getting the results you deserve.

Part of that personal interaction includes face to face conversations, whether one on one, one in a group, and the like.  [Many of us call it F2F.]

And embedded within those dialogues is a skill that, of late, the media has examined inside and out:  Listening.

Yeah, your mother told you:  ‘Listen when I talk.’  ‘God gave you two ears and one mouth.’

Still. 

Recent academic research has probed the nature of mindful hearing.   Eighty-five percent of what we know we learn through listening.  Yet we only listen at a 25 percent comprehension rate.  Compare those numbers with the demands of a typical business day:   45% listening, 30% talking, 16% reading, and 9% writing.

Despite all those stats, we’re not great at attending.  We interrupt.  We’d rather talk about ourselves.  We’re uncomfortable with emotions, so we avoid them.   We try to fix.  We’re distracted by you-know-whats.

As with all intangibles, listening well takes time to, well, learn.  It’s a matter of using the right tone, interpreting body language, and learning to actively hone in on another being.  Which is why corporate processes and programs like performance management , learning and development, even business strategy could stand a long and lengthy dose of ‘how to listen.’ 

No wonder Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust agrees:   “When you’re listening, you’re getting information.  You’re being given the gift of understanding where someone is … “

MINDING OUR STORIES

With stories now becoming the center of what we do, everyone has an opinion about best ways, best techniques, best values.

Visual storytellers insist on incorporating principles like authenticity, relevancy, sensory and archetype.

Community organizers, long-time astute power users of tales, propose three interlocking circles:  the story of self, the story of now, and the story of us.

And (not to be forgotten) corporate types espouse messaging and expression as part of a strategy that considers goal and audience front and center.

To be honest, everyone’s right.  And wrong.

A brain researcher (Princeton neuroscientist Uri Hasson, to be precise) is showing us new ways to think about creating compelling narratives. 

Which is:  It’s all about how our brains react and respond to stories. 

In a series of incredibly complicated analyses and tests, he and his team reveal that different people respond in remarkably similar ways to great stories, no matter what the media.  Using MRIs and other medical technologies, the scientists prove that the best of storytellers have gotten into our minds and altered them in some predictable ways.  Even better:  That the storyteller somehow makes the listener’s/viewer’s brain match his/her own.

You heard it here first:  We predict soon we’ll be taking our ads, messaging, and digital promos to the docs for brain imagery … not just copy-testing.

MEET-OCRACY

Wherever you sit in your career, pros and cons of that position abound.

As consultants and entrepreneurs, we talk about such intangibles as flexibility and availability, in general, and relish our freedom from corporate doings like meetings and mandated forms et al.  [Though, trust us, meetings are de rigueur for many of our long-time clients, especially on short-term initiatives.]

So we were intrigued by a to-be-published book that, in part, took a new bead on meetings and corporate governance, in general.  Based on the notion that organizations are best governed by a constitution and roles (not titles), Holacracy is, for sure, an idea that some will find eminently practical.  And some, not.

Ahem:  About the meeting section, to ‘triage’ issues (author Brian Robertson calls them ‘tensions’).  There are three practices we particularly admire:

• The check-in and closing rounds.  One person at a time shares her/his present mindset, distractions included.  Upfront.  With no interruptions.  Similarly, the meeting’s end allows each individual to reflect on the time just spent.
• Agenda building – together.  Why not ask participants to tee up one issue apiece – during the meeting?  It forces everyone to mull over those problems that are most immediate, most important.
• The ask – what do you need?  Haven’t we all been taught about the WIIFMs … in terms of communicating, promoting, advertising, and so on?  This gets right to the heart of the issue, and helps all feel accomplished and motivated by the meeting’s outcomes. 

There’s more, obviously.  After all, re-arranging your meeting might be easier to implement than asking leaders to be guided by a new organizational constitution. 

AN E-SALUTE ... AND WE MEAN IT!

In our never-ending search to make things simple, we forgot to tap one important audience:  The military.

What jogged our memory was American Sniper, quickly followed by the “Joining Forces” program FLOTUS and Dr. Jill Biden rolled out a few years back, asking employers not to diminish the skills of returning veterans.  To celebrate their accomplishments and recognize talents by providing job opportunities.  And to understand that, believe it or not, entrepreneurialism is baked into officer training.

Then one acronym caught our attention as civilians (and, yes, as communicators and marketers and the like):  SMESC, or situation-mission-execution-support-command. 

These five words serve as the foundation for a five-paragraph (no more!) plan that aids decision making.  It begins with the problem described and the ultimate strategy, articulated.  The next three paragraphs, in order, talk to tactics, the kinds of logistics and e-stuff needed, and the involvement of other audiences and organizations.

Done correctly, it’s a one-pager that dramatically states “we’re taking care of this.”  It could morph into a five-part infographic that visualizes the action intended, with just a few words.  And it’s a great sales piece for leaders and managers to use in socializing tangible plans for a sometimes intangible function in the corporation, helping everyone understand exactly how results will be realized.

Now all we have to do is think of a slightly different way to remember the veterans’ mnemonic  - Sargeant Major Eats Sugar Cookies.