Communication – Page 8 – The Brain Alchemist

Storytelling 2.0: a mystery singer, a shoe and a conflict.

Happy New Year!

What is your most daring business-related vision for 2014 and beyond? I will share one of mine with you. I just submitted a book chapter on transmedia storytelling for speakers. Transmedia storytelling is a novel concept for many. Here is a short video that explains it:

Having worked in the peacemaking and conflict management field, I would love to generate projects that can teach conflict management skills through transmedia. I plan to develop transmedia content myself as a speaker and trainer. Through Bookphoria, we work with authors to bring their expert content into multimedia.

What if we could create a transmedia narrative that is not about a mystery singer and a shoe, but rather about a conflict? Every good story has a conflict. We all have seen enough of venting about conflicts on social media. In contrast, our “caught-in-conflict” transmedia story can engage the audience members to solve a conflict by using their existing skills and extra help they may get along their journey from skillful professionals. The transmedia story may include videos and narratives of effecting peacemaking, as well as different scenarios to explore. The audience members become active participants and digital storytellers themselves. People can play and learn!

OK, this is an example of my vision of the future of conflict management training. How can digital storytelling become part of your vision?

Share your daring vision in the comments below!

P.S. Bookphoria offers a free PDF of my ebook “FANology Playbook: 27 Brain-Friendly Activities to Turn Virtual Friends and Foes into Fans.” Get it HERE.

By Anastasia Pryanikova| 2013-12-30T21:34:51+00:00 December 30th, 2013|Communication, Conflict Management, Learning, Public Speaking|2 Comments

Make them tweet as you speak: 5 tips to make your presentation more shareable

Whenever I attend a conference or other events with speakers, I always look for the nuggets of wisdom I can share with my social networks right then and there. I get original content and an opportunity to connect with other participants who may use the same hashtag for the event, as well as bring awareness to the event itself. It makes my job much easier when speakers have those catchy phrases, quotes, and headlines nicely peppered throughout their presentations.

If you are a presenter, you can benefit from having a range of shareable and tweetable phrases at your disposal. You get more exposure on social networks because others are more likely to share your words. You can use them in your marketing and promotional materials to stand out from the crowd. They can help people remember the gist of your message years after they heard you speak. Those expressions also build your brand if they speak to your values, core messages and perceptions. How do you develop such brain candy? Here are 5 tips to create shareable content:

1. Keep it concise and precise. Ambiguity tickles the mind, precision sharpens it. Aim to express the main ideas of your presentation in a memorable way in 140 characters or less.

2. Sample, but don’t steal. Be always on the lookout for headlines in newspapers and magazines that you like. Notice what catches your attention and stirs your emotions. Pay attention to the wording and structure of the headline. The more you notice, the better you become at writing your own headlines. The goal is not to copy them but learn from them. For example, I saw “Five things we can’t stop smiling about…” in The Oprah Magazine. That’s a construction that can be re-used in many contexts: “Ten things I can’t stop thinking about…” or “Three movies I can’t stop raving about…” You get the idea. Here is another example: “Good news for bad habits.” This headline plays with the contrast of “good” and “bad” in common expressions. You can create your own contrastive pairs: “light humor for dark days” or “a sweet treat for a sour disposition.”

3. Write to remember. Jot down your creative ideas whenever and wherever they pop up in your mind. It is difficult to come up with a catchy phrase on the spot. It usually takes time and several versions to perfect it. That’s why it is important to keep notes. Look for things that rhyme and word combinations that have a nice ring and flow to them. I have a Google document – Say Something – where I record my work in progress, and whenever I have a few spare minutes, I go there to tinker with words.

4. Sort and recycle. As you accumulate more catchy sayings, you can organize them according to their topics and combine them into an article or a blog post. My blog post “Six Tips for Peaceful Holidays” began with a series of tweets with the hashtag #peacefulholidays. Later, I expanded on each tweet to write the blog post. Craig Valentine, World Champion of Public Speaking for Toastmasters International, who trained me to become a certified World Class Speaking Coach, compiled his “27 Phrases To Master the Stage” to inspire other speakers. I remember much of his speaking advice through these phrases. There are WordPress Twitter plugins, such as Click To Tweet, that will allow your readers to share your phrases on Twitter with one click. If you find compelling photos or images to accompany your phrases, you can turn them into slides or inspirational content to post on Facebook, Instagram or Pinterest.

5. Make them laugh, make them cry. Appeal to emotions. Emotional content grabs attention and is more likely to be shared and better remembered. As one study revealed, “videos eliciting positive emotion, including joy and humour, are most likely to be forwarded; videos eliciting feelings of alertness and attentiveness are the next most likely to be forwarded. Videos that evoke negative emotions, such as anger or disgust, are still more likely to be forwarded than dull, non-emotional videos. Another study, done by the Journal of Marketing Research and the American Marketing Association, identified the top 9 emotional triggers that drive social sharing: emotionality, positivity, awe, anger, anxiety, sadness, practical utility, interest and surprise.

By Anastasia Pryanikova| 2013-10-18T20:14:36+00:00 October 18th, 2013|Communication, Public Speaking|0 Comments

Look it up: the value of unsearchable questions

Whenever my 7-year-old daughter has a question that I cannot answer immediately, her typical response is “Look it up.” Even with her purposefully limited exposure to the Internet, she knows that there is an answer somewhere there hiding behind the keyboards and screens. What she does not realize is that I cannot easily look up the meaning of made-up words, the habitat of imaginary animals or what the weather is going to be on her birthday, which is in December and still months away.

In the world where many answers are available at our fingertips, there is wisdom and learning for all of us in pondering things that are not easy to look up. As speakers, teachers, trainers, and facilitators, it is perhaps our mission to challenge the audience with inquiries that cannot be solved by a piece of technology. As neuroscientist Stuart Firestein suggests in his TED talk “The Pursuit of Ignorance,” “high-quality ignorance” – the appreciation of what we don’t know – is a fuel of discovery. While we can and should incorporate searchable facts, statistics, theories, and conclusions into our presentations, the growth potential often lies in unique, emerging connections initiated by the leaps into the unknown that the audience is willing to take. Here are three strategies to help your audience “to make better ignorance” – to tinker with ideas for deeper insights.

Offer questions for reflection. A question is a mirror for the mind. A search for an answer can reveal new associations and pathways that may not surface otherwise. Questions help to make your message relevant to your audience. They challenge the audience to think about how your main points relate to their lives and personal experiences. As Immanuel Kant observed, “Every answer given on principle of experience begets a fresh question.” What can you ask your audience to highlight the relevance of your message? In which contexts are they most likely to apply your ideas? Make your questions open-ended to invite a broader inquiry: who, what, where, how, when, why. Give enough space and silence for the insights to percolate to the surface. Invite your audience members to share their responses and listen actively for new connections to explore. Make reflection an essential part of the learning experience you create for your audience.

Explore life’s what ifs through scenarios. Scenarios are mini-stories co-created with your audience. They provide hooks for your audience members to hang their own assumptions, beliefs, fears, and hopes. Scenarios offer a unique way to determine how a set of factors or a specific context can influence outcomes. You can change things up, explore alternatives, brainstorm solutions without being threatened by negative consequences. Scenarios help to overcome the “groupthink” and invite contrarian opinions. In real life, we don’t always have the luxury of testing things out. Scenarios offer an opportunity to take risks while still playing it safe.

Gamify your message. Our brains like playfulness. The desire to play may be wired in our mammalian brain as many animals exhibit playful behavior and learn the intricacies of social interactions through play. Play can relax the brain and make us more open to experiment, prepare for the unexpected and produce a more diverse repertory of behavior. In a role-play, we can assume various roles, put ourselves through different kinds of experiences, learn to better understand other perspectives and explore our own identities. Invite your audience to play, be silly, poke fun at themselves and laugh. Reward your audience members for their contributions. Random rewards boost motivation and learning as they trigger the release of the feel-good neurotransmitter dopamine. Playfulness is a way to create the state of “flow” and full engagement with people and ideas. As Plato once said, “You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.”

By Anastasia Pryanikova| 2013-10-01T14:31:32+00:00 October 1st, 2013|Communication, Creativity, Public Speaking|0 Comments

Online communication: 12 questions to ask before you hit that ”Send” button

Communication feels like air, water and food to us. We communicate naturally and with abundance. The Internet turned communication into a buffet of ideas that we can all gorge on at any given moment, for better or for worse. How do we avoid empty information calories and excessive vicarious emotions that stimulate the brain but provide no meaningful outlet for the cultivated opinions and responses? How do we encourage communication that makes a difference and gets results?

Perhaps, taking responsibility for what we consume and share online and reflect on its usefulness and meaning can be a step in the right direction. A healthy diet for your mind is as important as a healthy diet for your body. In the words of Lama Surya Das, “If we want to simplify and deepen our lives, we must simplify and deepen our minds. When we become more centered, clear, spacious, caring, and open, there is suddenly much more room in our frenetic lives for both others and ourselves.”

Here are 12 coaching questions to explore if you want to become more aware of your online communication style and make it more effective and productive:

What is the intent behind your communication: to inform, entertain, support, motivate, inspire, reflect, understand, connect, persuade, distract, misrepresent, annoy, aggravate, vent, deflect, etc.? The intent is rarely stated but often assumed when we communicate online. You may never know what motivates other people to say certain things, but you should be clear about your own intent.
How do you want to be perceived when you communicate online?
What issues are appropriate for an email, a private message or a post and what topics are better handled via a face-to-face conversation or a phone call? If an important issue is likely to become explosive online, at what point do you pick up the phone?
How can your words be interpreted differently from what you intended?
How can you interpret what you read or hear differently?
How can you ascribe a neutral or positive intent even when you receive a seemingly negative message?
What needs to be clarified?
If you are having an online argument with someone and that person walks into the room, what would you say face to face?
What would you write if you were angry? What would be the benefits, costs and consequences of sending an angry message?
What would you write if you were calm and composed? What would be the benefits, costs and consequences of sending a balanced message?
How can you make your communication factual, positive, direct, precise and concise?
What do you want to communicate about HOW the issues are communicated? What suggestions do you have to improve communication and avoid misunderstandings?

By Anastasia Pryanikova| 2013-09-13T15:26:06+00:00 September 13th, 2013|Communication, Conflict Management|0 Comments

Navigate, tease and loop: Three ways to create anticipation when you speak

Whenever I have a few minutes in the middle of the day to enjoy a cup of coffee, I pull out my stove-top espresso maker. There is something about the slow process of filling the pot with water and freshly-ground coffee beans, setting it on a low burner and listening to the steam bubbles gurgle away. As the steam pressure pushes the water through the ground coffee into the collecting chamber, the enticing coffee aroma fills up the kitchen. The result is a strong brew, and its power is only enhanced by a few minutes of anticipation.

The brain is all about anticipation and prediction. Rituals make food and drinks taste better by increasing people’s interest and involvement. People get a boost of happiness when they plan their vacations. According to a study, anticipation increased happiness for eight weeks. Shawn Achor writes in “The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work”: “One study found that people who just thought about watching their favorite movie actually raised their endorphin levels by 27 percent.”

Not all anticipation is pleasant, however. Negative anticipation appears to play a big role in memory formation and emotional regulation. For example, the mere anticipation of a fearful situation can increase activity in two memory-forming regions of the brain, the amygdala and hippocampus, – even before the event has occurred. The increased brain activity during anticipation of negative events can make the event more memorable unless people are able to detach from their negative anticipatory emotions. Studies show that resilient brains appear to anticipate negative events by activating their emotional-control centers to control stress and calm down before the event begins.

You can use the power of anticipation as a reward to captivate brains. Be also mindful of the use of negative images as they can trigger negative anticipatory emotions. Here are three ways to add anticipation to your speech or presentation and increase your audience’s engagement.

1. Set the GPS to navigate through your talk. You want to let your audience know where you are leading them and what route you want them to take. What process, recipe, or model do you use to get your audience the results they need? What acronym or theme could you come up with to give your system a captivating and memorable name? Each step in your process will be a hallmark on you journey. Your audience should have a clear sense of where they are and what to anticipate as they navigate to the next point.

2. Tease your audience. Make an exciting promise so that your audience members are compelled to pay attention and can’t wait to hear more. Make them guess by asking an intriguing question and withholding the answer till later. Highlight the benefit of sticking around to hear your solution to their problems. Signal that they will be surprised with what they are about to hear: “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you right now…” or “Just imagine what would happen if…I will tell you what really happened…” Teasers are like juicy bites that make your audience crave more of what you have to offer.

3. Nest a story within a story. The brain always wants to complete a pattern. Once the story is over, it is filed away, and the attention is shifted to the next thing. To sustain your audience’s attention for a longer time and create anticipation, begin a story and then take a detour through another story. Close the second story first and then complete the initial story. You will create nested loops to keep your audience craving for a resolution. Think about mystery novels that gradually unfold the unknown. The only caveat is that you don’t want to make it too confusing and impossible to follow. Don’t overwhelm the working memory with facts, engage emotions instead. Loop but don’t ramble!

By Anastasia Pryanikova| 2013-08-19T15:40:52+00:00 August 19th, 2013|Brain, Communication, Public Speaking|1 Comment