Influencing Action by Showing the Way
By: Michael DeVenney
Words alone are not always enough to motivate people to take action. In fact, almost half of your audience relates better to pictures than to words.
Combining a visual (or video) of what success looks like will inspire and motivate people more to take action than just words or speeches. A great idea or an excellent strategic plan will engage your audience better if they can see what you mean.
 “It’s a stretch to overcome the competition,
but working together and staying connected
we can reach our goal and get on top of the
market.”
A picture galvanizes the mind – and the body.
The ability to gain commitment to support ideas and plans is a competitive advantage. With the average leader and organization achieving only a 67% rating to follow-through on strategies, connecting ideas with actions is not working well.
The problem lies in our communication – how we make our point and try to get people to take initiative to support us.
Leading change and gaining buy-in to our ideas is more about feelings than facts. We need to people to see where we are going and connect their heart – and heads – to our vision of success. In most situations, the vision is not visual and we leave it to our audience to try to figure it out what success looks like. In the end, the result in people on different pages and not working efficiently or effectively – we miss the mark and do not achieve our potential.
In our research on change leadership, we found that employees rank their leaders’ ability to communicate initiatives effectively at only 60%. Employees feel disengaged and don’t feel the vision. The connection is not made and commitment doesn’t happen.
Most leaders feel pressured in presenting their ideas and strategic plans – there are so many pressures and demands on time that you find it hard to find space to connect with people, it is difficult to understand what makes each person tick, and the need to balance the need for short term results with taking time to build engagement for long term sustainability are often at odds.
The result being that most leaders fall back to a directive approach to get things done – although without any ability to build sustainable investment. We just work harder and harder to get less than effective performance and results.
Communicating our ideas is vital for success. We need to be able to connect people with our ideas, gain their buy-in to support our plans, and build their investment to take consistent initiative and action to achieve results.
One key shift can greatly enhance our results in building engagement in our audience to our idea. Pictures affect the heart more than words alone.
A number of studies have shown that the personality and instinctive strengths profile of the world is quite different than the approach leaders take to present their ideas and plans.
Research from the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL), one of the world’s leading leadership research facilities, outlines that 80% of leaders base their communications on facts and figures – the rational basis for the idea. At the same time, the research also shows that the general population connects more to the heart than the head – 60% of employees (as represented by the population averages) are feelers rather than thinkers like the leaders. One of the best ways to connect to the heart is a visual – a picture of what you mean. We read many things into one picture and it is can greatly enhance the audience’s ability to see what you mean and connect to the meaning.
Further testing through the Kolbe© Index, (which measures people’s instinctive strengths for taking initiative and action), reveals that 60% of the general population need to see a visual or picture to connect. When we use words only, we have the potential of missing more than half of our audience.
Increase the impact of your message by incorporating a visual with your presentation – whether on paper or in person. In presenting your plan, highlight the key point and find a picture that represents your vision of achieving the results you want to see. Think about what success looks like and find a picture that shows your vision.
It takes only a minute to find a visual of your vision. The web provides access to thousands of pictures that could speak for you – simply go to www.google.com and click on images and then type in words to describe your vision, and you have incredible options.
In the presentation of your idea or plan, start first with your key point and a visual to represent your vision. Use a story to connect your thinking to the visual. People will get it and connect to it. Follow through with your reasoning and how we will get there. Talk about the future benefit of succeeding in translating your vision to reality for your audience and your clients (employees support plans to improve client value more than any other reasoning). Close by repeating your key point, what you need people to do, and the visual.
You can increase the impact of the visual connection by asking your audience what they see in the picture. The perspectives you gain from including people in your vision of success are incredible and the nuances of the responses and discussion increase the impact and engagement.
Even when you are trying to resolve a problem or challenge, pictures can be used to represent the situation now and also what success would look like if the situation was changed.
Keep the visual in front of people and you will build their connection to taking action and investing in your plan.
If you are presenting a financial plan to prospects or clients, include visuals of what success would look like working with you. When you are presenting your business plan and strategic plan to your team or organization, start and end with pictures that show what success looks like in achieving the plan. As you make your pitch to management of your great idea, focus them on a visual that shows the benefit of investing in you.
When you are approaching people to influence them to support you, take the time to find a picture that represents your vision of success. Tell the story of why the picture means success to you. Using visuals will connect better with your audience.
Winning sports teams envision success before the game. We need to as well.
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