Tag: communication

5 reasons why ‘5 reason to…’ lists don’t work

Posted on by philipdodson

1. It’s been done, we’ve all been there.

2. It’s been done to death.

3. It is not imaginative.

4. It is unlikely we’ll say anything that will stand out, that is really insightful, just more list filler.

5. It’s difficult to think of 5 things or 9, or 12 or whatever number we chose for our list. So we fill up lists to make them look bigger and more useful.

Lists are often accompanied by a ‘buy my stuff’ style ‘hook’. We’ve all spat them out now and do not get hooked.

What we could choose to do instead is share our story, our passion, and build trust by generously sharing our knowledge in a deeper more informative way, that will connect us with the people who like what we have to say and what we stand for.

Our story is uniquely different and needs to be told to our tribe/audience who will care about what we do if it adds real value in exchange for their time to consume our content.

Skip the lists and hooks for more genuine content that is about connecting, sharing, building value and trust.

Avoid the quick wins and opt for the longer term.

The communication struggle

Posted on by philipdodson

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The key to opening up the world of limitless opportunities is being able to communicate effectively with others. The ability to make the right connections and the ability to converse and articulate with ease is vital to being able to learn from others, share our story, our vision, and to get others to become part of that journey or to understand their’s.

Yet so little time is dedicated to helping us achieve that.

School is so dominated by science, maths, compliance and regurgitation of facts to get meaningless pieces of paper to allow us entry to work. Work, a place of doing as you are told, so little real communication.

Work is a place of being managed and controlled, a place like school, where communication and creativity are actually stifled and not focused on.

It is no wonder that when faced with public speaking, writing, communicating in groups and effectively articulating our vision, our opinions and our feelings that we struggle.

We need to focus the world on becoming comfortable with communicating and opening up to others.

After all cooperation, collaboration, empathy and kindness to our fellow human can not be expressed by formulas, or sitting compliantly shackled by management and fear.

Denmark have boldly started to have empathy lessons at school, perhaps we could start that as a template to change education to become more about communication less about compliance.

We need better connection not more training to do as we are told.