‘When did you hear that?’ – the relatinship between sound and our basic needs

I need to start with another apology – for another unscheduled gap. This will be the last post for 2015. Normal service will be resumed in the new year!

 

I chose the title for this part of the programme to emphasize the relationship between sound and time. That’s highlighted on the show by Michael Proulx and Julian Treasure. Here, though, I want to pick up on another relationship – between hearing and our basic needs, as set out in Abraham Maslow’s five-level hierarchy.

• Level: 1 Biological/physiological
• 2 Safety/security
• 3 Belongingness/love
• 4 Esteem (including self-esteem) and
• 5 Self-actualisation (fulfilment of potential).

 

In terms of biology/physiology, I mention on the show that evidence is growing of a strong link between hearing and health. When it comes to safety/security, our ears are the first line of defence against invisible threats. I ran across a powerful illustration of that a couple of weeks ago.

 

I was listening to the radio when I suddenly noticed an odd noise in the background – odd because it was out of place. Within a couple of seconds, I realised it must be a fire alarm. One of the presenters didn’t spot it, because she has significant hearing loss. Under normal circumstances, thanks to hearing aids and impressive lip-reading skills, you’d never know; but in this situation, it was just as well she was working with a fully hearing person.

 

Ok, so as far as I know, it was nothing serious – and if it had been, and she’d been working by herself, someone would have told her; but it’s not hard to imagine a situation where a deaf or hearing impaired person could be left behind in an emergency.

 

On Friday (4th December), in another studio, I was reminded of the part hearing plays in our higher level needs – from inclusion to fulfilment. This time, I was the presenter – interviewing Brendan Magill for The Wireless from Age UK.

 

This year, Brendan turned seventy – and celebrated fifty years of unbroken employment. His career has taken him from trainee computer programmer (in the early days of the technological revolution), to a ‘Business, Employment and Disability Consultant’ (since the mid-nineties); but the reason for talking about him here pre-dates all that. It goes back to something he said about his primary school education.

 

As a partially sighted five-year-old, he started at the ‘school for the deaf, dumb and blind’ in Belfast. (The word ‘dumb’ was dropped in 1956 – not a moment too soon!). He said the education ‘wasn’t bad’ and that overall it was: ‘A good experience, because I learnt to communicate with people who are deaf’.

 

Despite the fact that we live in a culture obsessed with the visual, hearing loss often creates more physical, psychological and social barriers than sight-loss. Why? Well, very simply because it makes it difficult or impossible to access the spoken word – which is a far more powerful communication tool than we tend to realise. It’s the fastest way to express complex ideas and emotions – and to tell the stories which bring us together and bind us together.

 

Yes, it’s descendant (written language) is generally quicker to consume, but it takes much longer to create. The average native English-speaker produces around a hundred and eighty words per minute, while even the most competent typist struggles to reach a hundred.

 

No, I’m not overlooking the vibrant culture developed by deaf people who sign; but that’s a response – a fantastically positive one – to being excluded from hearing society.

 

Since I started studying human communication, I’ve found it interesting that while ‘deaf culture’ is a definable entity, there’s no blind equivalent – for the simple reason that we don’t need one. Everything from music to conversation relies primarily on sound. Even things like cinema and video are accessible, on the whole, through the common language of sound in general – and speech in particular.

 

It’s fairly straightforward to translate vision into sound, but standard gestures etc aren’t up to reversing the process. Signing is a rich language in its own right – which too few of us master. While everyone who is able learns to speak, very few of us learn to sign. In the field of relationships, be they social or professional, it’s worth remembering that just because a person is hearing doesn’t mean they’re listening!

 

That’s one of the issues I’ll be looking at in the next programme, in January.

 

In the meantime, have a great Xmas and New Year. If you have any:

• Questions
• Comments or
• Communication issues you’d like to chat through…

 

…come and talk to me! All the contact details are on the website. I’m around til next Friday (18th December), then back on 4th January.

What happens next? – Stories

Last week, when I was talking about the importance of expressing things like gratitude and apology, I used the example of two versions of a customer’s story, one all about a problem and the other ending with a solution.

When I first started in business, eleven years ago, I remember coming across an article which said that a satisfied customer might tell one or two people; but a dissatisfied one would probably share their experience with ten!

In the social media age, those accounts can spread faster and further than ever before; but they’re still a continuation of an ancient oral tradition.

Storytelling has been part of every human culture for many millennia; but why?

Our brains might represent only around 2% of our body weight, but they consume 20% of our energy. Just following a tale involves more effort than we realise – and telling it takes an even bigger investment. The listener/reader needs ‘fifth order intentionality’ – the ability to keep track of up to five people’s states of mind at any one time – four characters’ and their own. That’s at the top end of the normal adult limit; and the teller/author needs to be able to go one step further, to ‘sixth order intentionality’ – four characters, the listener/reader and themselves. That’s why far more people love a good story than can tell one.

As I’ve said before, Mother Nature is generally portrayed as either a soft, Mumsey figure, or a slightly unstable parent with a taste for cruel and unusual punishment; but I see her as the FD of Earth PLC – a very shrewd accountant. She won’t buy new if it’s cheaper to adapt existing equipment – and she doesn’t make big investments unless she’s absolutely convinced of even bigger returns.

Stories are sizable investments in terms of the ‘cognitive load’ they put on everyone involved. They force us to operate in a virtual world, dealing with people and events outside our own immediate physical experience; and that, so the science says, is much more costly than straightforward face-to-face interaction.

So what’s in it for us?

We probably all know from personal experience that a good story is a powerful thing. It can encourage, inspire, scare or control; but more important than any of that is the reason I’m talking about it in a series on professional relationships:

Storytelling binds people together.

It all starts with something very simple and basic – good, old-fashioned curiosity. Once we get involved in a narative, we really want to know:

‘What happens next?‘

It’s disappointing and frustrating to be left hanging in mid-air, without a resolution, isn’t it?

That has a lot of potential for smart marketers.

Traditional radio and TV advertising just hits the consumer with repetitions of snapshots and soundbites showing the benefits of a product – cleaner dishes, whiter teeth, higher status – whatever it happens to be.

Repetition works well, up to a point. The more our attention is drawn to something, the more importance we attach to it – so the more attention we give it. At least, that’s the theory. The trouble is, if we decide a message isn’t relevant to us, the constant repetition just becomes a pattern which our brains filter out as background noise.

If, on the other hand, the message is woven into a story which captures our imagination, we’ll stick with it just to see how things turn out. In the process, we build up an emotional attachment to the characters which, over time, is likely to translate into an emotional attachment to the brand.

Just look at a brand like ‘Coronation Street’. Not convinced that’s a product? Well, indirectly, it is – because it’s what the Americans might call ‘prime real estate’ in the television advertising landscape.

Every now and then, adverts themselves have told a story in serial form.
The example that immediately springs to mind featured the ‘Gold Blend couple’.

We saw them meet as neighbours in 1987, because one of them was out of coffee. Then we watched them get together, through twelve episodes, across the next six years.

As a marketing investment, it was a roaring success. Sales went up 20% in the first eighteen months and 70% over the campaign as a whole.

With figures like that, why don’t we see more soapvertising?

Well, mainly because in tougher economic times, everything becomes more reductive. We don’t look so far ahead – and we’re certainly less willing to commit big budgets to longterm strategies; but – pardon the pun – that isn’t the whole story.

A good tale needs a good teller and the necessary script-writing skills just aren’t as big a part of advertising as they used to be. Then there’s the question of the viewers’ attention span – which is a whole other subject, for another post!

The nearest thing we have in 2015 is something like the meerkats campaign, for Comparethemarket.com; but even there, each ad is a separate, self-contained vignette, part of a loosely linked series using the same characters, rather than an ongoing narative.

Yes, they work. Changing the ad regularly solves the problem of patterning – people mentally switching off because they’ve seen the same thing too many times; and the cute, human-like characters attract the attention of whole families, so making use of motivations not normally associated with these products – such as pester power. Kids don’t care about insurance or energy suppliers – but they do want a Baby Oleg toy – even my elderly Mum wants a Baby Oleg toy!

The campaign is obviously working well, because they’ve been able to afford a good chunk of that prime real estate I mentioned earlier (they currently sponsor ‘Coronation Street’!)

Still, this approach, built around those snapshots and soundbites I’ve mentioned, is all about prompting interaction; a short-term investment with the promise of an immediate physical return.

Stories, on the other hand, are all about relationships – and vice versa. The investment is longer-term; and so are the potential returns.

Every organisation has a story behind it. Hearing it can draw us in – and becoming part of it goes a long way to keeping us engaged. That’s why good PR campaigns are built around storytelling.

Looking back to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:

Factual and fictional tales have certain rules and structures, feeding our need for safety and security
Having one shared with us helps to meet our need to belong; and
Contributing to it strengthens our sense of being part of something and feeds our need for esteem.

The link between stories and marketing/PR, might be obvious; but even if you want to build better relationships with your:

Existing customers/clients
Staff
Suppliers and
strategic partners

your story is a great place to start. Theirs might be an even better jumping-off point.

I’ll come back to that in a couple of weeks, when I talk about memory; but the immediate answer to the question:

‘What happens next?’

Is another slight change to the original schedule. Next time, I want to look at one of the things stories can help to build – trust.

In the meantime, if you have any:

Questions
Comments
Communication issues to discuss or
Tales to tell (yes, I do mean that)

come and talk to me! All the details are on the website – as is the story of how this company came to be …

‘How can I help you?’ – Value

Two weeks ago, I talked about inclusion. Last week, the theme was negotiation. This week, I’m looking at one of the results of adding those two together – value. This topic also ties back to the last because that was about the importance of asking questions and this is about one of the most important questions we’ll ever ask if we want a professional contact to grow into something more enduring and productive. In fact, this week’s title question is an ideal follow-up to last week’s!

Actually, this week’s title was nearly:

‘How can you help me?’

because that’s often the real starting point; but either way, the fact is that help is at the heart of every professional interaction we ever have.

Reception staff ask callers or visitors:

‘How can I help you?’

At interviews, we ask candidates:

‘What do you think you can bring to the company?’ (in other words: ’How can you help us?’).

Marketing is about identifying and solving the customer’s problem.

Pr involves us asking journalists etc for their help in spreading our messages.

Wherever we look, across every area of operations, someone needs help from somebody else. When there’s a one-off, one-way match, we make a connection. When the roles of ‘helper’ and ‘helpee’ are switched back and forth over time, the result is a relationship founded on equality – which is central to the common ground on which the healthiest, most productive relationships are built. (No, I’m not sure ‘helpee’ is a word – but it serves our current purpose, doesn’t it?!).

I’ll be honest with you: I’ve never been completely convinced that ‘a picture paints a thousand words’
– but after putting this post together, I’m a believer!

My ideas quite often start as mental images, which I then translate into words. This one proved a trickier translation than I was expecting. If I could have just drawn you the picture in my head, with a few explanatory notes, I could have saved us both some time – and myself a lot of effort! Unfortunately, my drawing isn’t up to the job – so here goes with my best effort at a description!

Imagine, if you will, the classic ‘circles of intimacy’ diagram – five concentric rings:

• The smallest represents our five to ten most intimate relationships
• Around that, a slightly larger circle contains another twelve to fifteen people we’re close to but less intimate with
• In the next largest circle are approximately another twenty-five individuals we’re in regular contact with
• Beyond that are an additional hundred people, or thereabouts, who we feel personally connected to, although we keep in touch less regularly and
• At the outer edge of the largest circle are those we identify with because we share a group membership, although we won’t know them all personally –such as people who speak our language.

This graphic representation of our social relationships (which includes professional connections) often ties each level of the hierarchy to frequency of contact – which roughly translates into how much:

• Time
• Attention and
• Energy

we spend on the people within them.

That makes sense as far as it goes. Those three interdependent resources are vital to every relationship worth the name – and they’re all finite. We have to budget carefully, so (in theory at least) we allocate the biggest share to the most important people in our lives; but I’d argue that where we invest our resources is only a secondary cause of someone’s position in our circles; an effect of the primary cause.

The fundamental reason why one person sits in the centre and another is lucky to make it within the outer rim comes down to need – specifically, the type of need we have, which they’re able to fill.

In the first of this series, I mentioned Maslow’s Hierarchy. That isn’t usually shown as a set of circles, but while the numbers involved might be different and the boundaries may not match perfectly every time, it can be mapped on to the ‘circles of intimacy’.

Now imagine that:

• The ‘intimate’ centre circle represents the few people who can help meet our biological needs – including food and procreation. Our immediate family (partner and kids, if we have them) would be in the same position in both versions of the diagram;
• Next, there are those who help with our survival needs – shelter etc. Whether we have employers or employees, they should be in here, along with clients/customers – because they all help us earn the money that pays for our day to day survival. In theory, they also fit into this circle in terms of their share of our resources – although in practice, some of us see more of the boss, or the staff, than the people we live with, don’t we?!;
• Next come the people who give us a sense of belonging. In each case, the larger circle includes the smaller – so this is all of the above, plus friends outside work;
• The next largest circle includes anyone else (not in any of the smaller circles) who we’re able to help because that feeds our self-esteem.
• Finally, in the outermost circle, we can place the individuals, personally known to us or not, who help us reach our full potential – including those who help to spread positive messages about us.

If I haven’t made your head spin, there are three key points to pull out of all those imaginary circles:

1 As I’ve said, time, attention and energy are vital to every relationship

2 Provided nothing disrupts the natural process, the more of those resources we share with another person, the closer we become and

3 To find The best route to a bigger share of someone else’s resources – the path to their inner circles – we just need to look behind the question:

‘How can I help you?‘

An investment of time etc in identifying the answer generally yields healthy and consistent returns. For example:

Astute PR people find out what a journalist needs and how they can supply it –
• feeding the journalist’s ability to realise their own potential and
• increasing the chances of the favour being returned in the form of coverage;

Switched-on marketers involve customers in helping to plan campaigns –
 fostering a sense of belonging
• making the customer feel good about themselves and so
• maximising the chances of fulfilling the potential of the individual relationship and the campaign as a whole; and

Smart managers engage their teams in planning their own way forward and even the way forward for the organisation – helping them
• secure their practical survival
• feel safe in their position within the group
• build their self-esteem
• fulfill their own potential and so
• benefit the organisation by increasing their commitment.

Those are just three of the many illustrations I could have given you.

There are some implicit assumptions about power and status attached to the role of ‘helper’ and ‘helpee’.

Asking for help – even admitting we need it – can be seen as a weakness; a concession of power to whoever can meet our need. If nothing else, the helper can usually decide whether or not to help and they normally get to set the terms (if someone’s doing me a favour, I’m in no position to dictate how, where or when it’s done, am I?!). So if one person is always giving and the other is always receiving, the balance of power will be unequal, which strains dynamics and stunts growth.

If you’ find yourself caught in that cycle, in a particular interaction, or more generally, the trick to breaking it is to flip your usual opening question, whether that’s:

‘How can you help me?’ or
‘How can I help you?’

The second is usually the safest starting point – but if you always start from there and it doesn’t always work for you, it’s worth remembering that sometimes, you can support someone else by letting them support you. By showing you value somebody’s assistance, you might actually be giving them the validation they need to boost their self-esteem and reach their full potential! It’s a thought to ponder next time you’re struggling with something and don’t want to shout:

‘HELP!’

It’s all about exchange – which is next week’s theme. On that subject, if you have any:

• Questions
• Comments or
• Feedback

come and talk to me! All the contact details are on the website.

Who are ‘we’? – Inclusion

This post links back to the first and ninth programmes in the last series – and forward to the first programme in the next series, due for release this May.

In the first programme and post touching on this subject last year, the question was:

‘Are you “one of us” or “one of them”?’

In the upcoming show, it’ll be:

‘Who do you think I am?’

Each comes at the issue from a different angle, but they have one essential element in common – they both focus on our fundamental human need to belong. This is no. 3 in Maslow’s original five-stage Hierarchy of Needs, and it keeps that position in later expanded versions. The only motivators ahead of this one are:

• Biological requirements and
• Safety.

According to Maslow’s theory, without a sense of belonging, we can’t begin to value ourselves or realise our full potential. We have to survive before we can thrive.

At the root of this need are two plain and simple facts:

• There’s safety in numbers and
• Staying safe means being able to distinguish threats from opportunities.

Both those things hold whether we’re talking about social, professional, or basic physical survival.

When you talk about ‘we’, who do you mean? Your:

• family?
• Friends?
• Work colleagues?
• Other people of your
• generation?
• Gender?
• Race?
• Culture?

The answer is probably:

‘Any/all’ or ‘none of the above’, depending on the circumstances, right?

The truth is, ‘we’ is a little word with two big meanings. As we all know from experience, it can be inclusive or exclusive; it can mean ‘you and me together’ or
‘us in here, separate from you out there’ – and the line between the two is a fine and elastic one.

It’s very easy to end up on the wrong side of that line unintentionally. So many things influence what we mean by ‘we’ and, importantly, what someone else thinks we mean, such as:

• What we say
• Why, where and when we’re communicating
• Who’s involved and
• How we’re interacting.

When we’re relaxed and free from immediate stress, we’re more likely to feel collaborative, so the definition of ‘we’ tends to be more expansive; but the moment we feel threatened in any way – when resources of any kind are stretched – attempts to conserve them makes us more competitive or adversarial, so the scope of ‘we’ immediately becomes more reductive.

Whether ‘we’ are a family issuing ‘close relatives only’ orders in hospital, a company trying to stop information about a financial crisis leaking out, or a nation where right-wing politics is gaining ground, the same thing is happening – ‘we’re’ closing ranks and sending ‘keep out’ messages to ‘them’.

So what does all this have to do with investment in professional relationships?

The point is that, in subtle but significant ways, how this little word is interpreted by all concerned either consolidates the connection, or challenges it.

Across the board in any organisation, including:

• Management
• Marketing
• Delivery
• PR or
• Anything else,

people who feel like insiders – part of an inclusive ‘we’ – – ‘one of us’ – are more likely to invest, in any sense of the word. They also invest more, for longer.

So how do we make sure we’re including when we’re able and only excluding when we have to?

This, like every other change, starts with awareness – especially awareness of common assumptions.

Unless I tell you otherwise, when I say ‘we’ here or on a programme, I mean you, me – and anyone else who happens to find the content relevant; but if you’re a marketing person, you’d probably throw up your hands in horror if I took that approach on my website etc, wouldn’t you?

Correct me if I’m wrong – no, I mean it – let me know if you take another view! – but the reasoning seems to be that from a distance, the presumption is exclusive. ‘We’ means ‘us – over here – separate from you – over there!’ The fact is, that’s exactly what a lot of organisations do mean when they’re engaged in long-distance communication – from marketing to media.

The corporate ‘we’ is exclusive, meaning people working for the organisation; but it can be reduced even more, to a single branch, department or team. There are times, of course, when that’s completely appropriate; but at other times, it sets up obstacles and stops us going for, or even spotting, opportunities.

Communities (be they social or professional) are living entities. They evolve or die. So at some point, links need to be fostered beyond the immediate circle, or the circle will, eventually, collapse in on itself.

Last year, I outlined my idea of ‘the three dimentions of distance’ – space, time and human connection. It’s increasingly difficult to get everyone who matters to an organisation, or a particular project, in the same place at the same time. It’s much easier – and cheaper – to work on closing human gaps.

A genuinely inclusive definition of ‘we’, which crosses all three dimentions of distance, is a good place to start. The next step is to back words with action. It’s all very well telling someone they’re part of something; but it’s meaningless unless we also treat them as such.

I’ll talk more about that next time, under the theme of ‘negotiation’.

In the meantime, as ever, if you have any:

• Questions
• Feedback or
• Communication issues you’d like to chat through,

come and talk to me! All the details are on the website.