By John E. Anderson, MS DTM
Master of Science, Management
Understanding our brains better allow us to find agreement and build successful teams. By using the frontal coretex – amigdala circuits, I can support others identifying their interest and commitment to demonstrate excellence in completion of a project.
We have the ability to stimulate the reasoning, risk calculation and commitment to another person making a wise decision in ourselves and in others by asking questions about the benefits of successful project completion and the costs of failure.
The need to feed and defend ourselves has contributed to human brains being wired to quickly evaluate risk and take action. By noticing how the frontal cerebral cortex is connected to the amygdala and thalamus, we better understand how planning and causality (frontal cortex) interacts with the fear of pain, death and loss (amygdala – limbic system) resulting in immediate orders to dodge, run and take immediate action such as talking, arguing, anger and action (thalamus – motor control and regulating cortex excitement).
Knowing how and why these systems inter-relate allow us to stimulate them in others to develop rapport, build trust, generate interest and get fast buy-in and commitment.
Rhetorical analysis strategy is an example of an attempt to discern and explain the rational of an author to make a point and convince their audience to take particular action.
When we seek to inspire and motivate others to believe as we do and then take action, we are using our cortex-amygdala-thalamus circuitry to stimulate the circuits of our listeners.
In the case of leaders inspiring teams to achieve objectives, we seek to align the values and goals of staff with the values, vision and mission of an organization. When we reach through our staff to our customers so the customers see staff helping them to solve significant problems in new and powerful ways we raise customer satisfaction to customer delight. The result has been called the conversion of consumers to pro-sumers, customers find ways to become involved in the product in ways that allow them to more fully realize their interest than normal. As a result they champion the brand.
This was written about in 1980 by Alvin Toffler in The Third Wave. People have used customers commitment to Apple products as an example of pro-sumerism in which they become zealots for the firm and its mission.
When seeking to create action, consider the interests and desires of your audience.
What triggers can you bury into your message that will capture their imagination and curiosity?
Once stimulated, how can you make promises to win their agreement that your values and ends are aligned and what they want is very similar to what they want?
Offer them options that have low risk for them to try and experiment to confirm your objectives further their own progress towards their personal goals.
Create a feed-back loop that allows ongoing engagement so they see ways they can use this mechanism to get results like this in the future and can share it with their friends and family. An author does this in their promise of their next book and Apple does it with their next iPhone model.