Credit to TSO Photography.
This was filmed over the course of 7 days at El Teide, Spain’s highest mountain.
How does that make you feel is something I say and think about both personally and professionally. It is what I say to my children when I want them to think about what they have done or are about to do and what I ask myself and the team.
That video above makes me feel alive, inspired, excited and interested. It makes me want to travel and get out into the world and revisit some of the places that moved me in the past and see stuff I haven’t ever seen.
It makes me want to have experiences.
That is precisely what you want from art, writing, commercials, movies or any sort of piece that communicates a thought or an idea. You want to make people feel but if your goal is to inspire action you need to think about what it is you make them feel.
Don’t Touch That–It’s Radioactive!
There is a post floating around the blogosphere that has created a significant divide among people. It is based upon a topic that men and women might see very differently and is so heated many people won’t dare write about it.
They won’t touch it because we are living during a time when tolerance for differing positions can sometimes be very limited. A time when failure to agree or support some things can cost you dearly.
Write, speak or share the wrong the idea and you can lose your job.
It is not in my nature to write or speak around the hot buttons. Most of the time I would have already identified the topic and shared a link but this time I am not going to.
In part because it is radioactive but primarily because I haven’t seen the conversations around it remain constructive so I don’t see a benefit to bringing it here.
But it serves a purpose as providing good fodder.
How Do You Motivate People?
Communication should motivate people to respond to a call to action.
That motivation doesn’t have to come from a positive place but it should lead to positive action. What that means is that if you are raising money to help people who lost their homes in a natural disaster or war you can use language/pictures that shows their situation.
If you show green fields, towering trees and homes with well trimmed lawns it is hard to get people to reach in their pockets to help. But if you rubble and dirty children you get a different response altogether.
When you want to change how people think and speak you probably won’t find many takers by opening up with a sentence that offends the people you want to motivate to change.
Nor are you likely to move people by telling them they are stupid.
If you want to inspire change you have to engage in a way that opens minds and doors, not the opposite.
How Does That Make You Feel?
In concept it sounds like a childish thing to say but in practice it makes plenty of sense. People prefer to spend time or do business with people they like or at least aren’t irritated/offended by.
If you have a client that has to apologize or explain their actions you probably don’t want them to start by telling people that the reason they are angry is wrong and based upon their own stupidity.
What do you think?
