Telling stories that connect with people: Is it a left brain or a right brain thing?
The idea that there are right-brained and left-brained people, it turns out, is a myth. Scientists have now discovered that there is no dominant side of the brain, so it’s no longer accurate to say that you are a “left-brain person” or a “right-brain person.” However, we live in a world that seems to reward “left-brain” behaviors and strengths the most. The corporate world seems explicitly to value people who are great thinkers over all other strengths. How does this impact how companies approach their storytelling? Think of storytelling as everything from your company to your audience(s) - end customers, partners, investors, etc. Spoiler alert: there are some contradictions to consider, starting with: It turns out that we aren’t thinking creatures who feel; we are feeling creatures who think.
The culture of a company is a function of its leaders. Look at what is required to make it through middle management and into the upper echelons of senior management. You will see a landscape littered with desired behaviors such as analytical, methodical, organized, structured, and detail-oriented. These are all so-called left-brain traits — the manager side of your brain. Nowadays, we may also see a nod to something called “EQ” or emotional intelligence, but is that the foundation on which hiring decisions are made, or is it more of a nice-to-have? Being a feeling person in the corporate world is undesirable. Being analytical and structured in your thinking is rewarded. Left brain behaviors constitute a winning formula for those willing to leave their right brain behaviors at the door.
This begs a question: how do we bridge this gap to better communicate with our audiences?
I’m here to warn you that we are on a collision course — no one is safe! The corporate world that values methodical, calculating, and analytical types conflicts with how we connect as humans. It’s a common pitfall. The way to communicate with audiences — the best way to reach people, the way that expands and builds brands — is to access the brain’s emotional, feeling, and intuitive areas.
The pitfall of valuing completeness
The approach I have seen many people take in their communications is to be exhaustive and complete. This seems like a great thing to do. The mindset is that you can’t leave A, B, or C out of the story because that’s part of what this “thing” is. Being exhaustive can be exhausting. Sometimes it results in a word salad of corporate-friendly jargon that means little and resonates even less with your audience. In almost every case, when I am asked to help a business with their communication, pitch, messaging, or keynote, it ends up being a reductive exercise. To borrow a gardening analogy, I am pruning and weeding such that what’s left is healthier. I always have more content than I need; my job is to determine the best way to distill my client’s content into something clear, consistent, and resonant with their target audiences. I like to say, “If I ask you what time it is, I don’t need to know how to build a clock.”
I live and work in Silicon Valley, home to the world’s brightest minds and most profound thinkers. I grew up in the era when software development and programming meant writing a piece of code line by line. It looked like the Matrix before there was the Matrix. You had to be incredibly meticulous and precise, and you could not afford to leave anything out, or your code wouldn’t work. In other words, there was a price to pay for not being complete, thorough, and precise. The cultural impact of all this deep thinking (and programming background underpinning the culture of the valley) is to value completeness as the highest performance measure.
In the programming world, however, this concept of elegant simplicity exists. It is hard to obtain. People who can program, do, but within that group is a small elite tier who know how to write things simply and who understand how to make the user experience very clean and intuitive. Apple has built a brand on this. Other companies have built their brands on the exact opposite.
The pitfall of trying to outsmart your audience
I’ve seen business leaders try to “think ahead” of their customers, ignoring what makes them tick. The mindset is best described as: “They may not know this, but I will convince them this is the right product/service/tool for them!”
You are not competing with your customer. You aren’t in a battle against them that you win or lose. You are trying to connect with them more deeply to understand what makes them tick. All of this leads to you delivering greater value to them. You are seeking a mutually-beneficial outcome. You must develop a genuine interest in understanding your customer and their needs -both stated and unstated. This approach requires extreme empathy and acute listening skills to be successful - classic right-brain territory, in other words.
To connect with your audience, you must first be able to connect to the emotions that drive them to act. Removing feelings and emotions from the equation is a pitfall. It pays to be curious about your customer. You know, walk a mile in my shoes and such.
This is where we see clients falling into a common trap. When we aren’t sure what to say, or — worse — we aren’t convinced that what we are saying is something of value to our audience — we tend to use more words and explanation than necessary to communicate the point. We weaken our communication in this way. Our overexplaining tends to dilute the actual kernels of value.
Marketing is a field that invites participation. People feel “it’s just common sense” and “hey, I could do that” — especially those who are adept at and rewarded for deep thinking. The challenge is that marketing — the art of marketing — is about feeling. Embracing deep empathy for your audience and having the discipline to deliver what’s relevant to them is a formula for success. Think about it in terms of a minimization exercise; what is the minimum I need to do or say to get to the next step or action? That is where you can simultaneously be concise and create value for your audience. It’s not about pleasing your superiors, detractors, or anyone else. Try taking a more empathetic, creative, artistic, intuitive, and feeling-based approach. After all, this isn’t brain surgery 😊
