On March ten, 1748, John Newton, a 22-year-onetime English language seaman who had worked in the slave trade, was traveling abode on a merchant ship after a series of misadventures, including being captured and enslaved in Sierra Leone. On that twenty-four hours, a trigger-happy storm struck only off the coast of Donegal, Ireland. Rocks ripped a hole in the side of the transport, and information technology seemed unlikely that the vessel would get in safely to shore. Newton prayed and committed to devote his life to Christianity if the ship was spared. At that moment—the story goes—the ship'due south cargo shifted, roofing the pigsty and assuasive the ship to limp to port.

Newton kept his promise, eventually condign an Anglican priest. Most famous perhaps for composing the hymn "Amazing Grace," the former slave trader defended himself to ending the slave trade. In 1787, he joined efforts with others to found the Gild for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Their members included Olaudah Equiano, a former slave whose storytelling abilities and autobiography made the horrors of slavery existent. Josiah Wedgwood, an industrialist, created a logo for the campaign that inspired empathy and connected with the horrifying inhumanity of slavery. The emblem pictured an enslaved man on his knees, in bondage, encircled by the words "Am I not a human and a brother?" It appeared on snuffboxes, cufflinks, and jewelry throughout Europe. Newton himself wrote a pamphlet titled Thoughts Upon the African Slave Trade, which detailed conditions on slave ships, and which he sent to every member of parliament.

Copies of this cutaway map of a slave transport, created in 1787, were posted in taverns across Europe. Regarded by some as the world'due south kickoff infographic, information technology fabricated a powerful case against slavery. (Image courtesy of the British Library)

Together they created what is often regarded as the world's offset infographic: a cutaway map of the Brookes slave send, showing how slaves were stacked and chained. They posted these images in taverns and pubs throughout Europe. (Encounter prototype below.)

As part of their entrada, they launched a cold-shoulder of saccharide, a product purchased by and large by women, who made most decisions nearly the foods and products their families consumed. The campaign reduced the demand for sugar by thirty percent, showing that the necktie between economic dependence on slave labor and products in demand beyond Europe could be severed.

Their work eventually succeeded. In 1807, Parliament passed the Abolitionism of the Slave Merchandise Act, which banned British ships from engaging in the slave trade. Their efforts are widely regarded as one of the start social justice campaigns.

What these men accomplished contains the hallmarks of whatsoever constructive campaign and conveys lessons we can apply today.

In what follows, we delve into the scientific discipline behind what makes people intendance. Nosotros've identified five principles that are supported by research from a range of bookish disciplines. Collectively, these rules offering a framework for edifice and assessing your communication strategy and designing efforts more likely to result in conventionalities and beliefs change. Merely, equally with any endeavor to employ research findings to strategy, we have to be cautious not to overstate or oversimplify what the enquiry tells us.

Perhaps most of import, applying these principles doesn't crave yous to make a massive investment in new communications efforts. Rather, they offer a style to make the work you're already doing more than constructive. Since they are likewise easily mastered, people throughout your organization can embrace their roles as communicators regardless of their championship or office.

From Feelings to Change

Social service organizations collectively spend millions of dollars each yr on communications that focus on informing people. Sadly, these kinds of efforts ignore the scientific principles of what motivates engagement, belief, and behavior change. Consequently, a lot of that money and effort invested in communications is wasted.

We are required to practise better, because challenges such as poverty, homelessness, and racial and gender inequity have endured in the confront of lasting and robustly funded efforts. In our Jump 2017 commodity for Stanford Social Innovation Review, "End Raising Awareness Already," nosotros implored organizations in the social sector to motion beyond sensation objectives in their piece of work, because awareness-raising efforts are expensive, labor intensive, and unlikely to outcome in ameliorate outcomes. Such campaigns typically accept 1 of iii kinds of results: They reach the wrong audience and therefore accept picayune to no effect; they crusade backlash; or, in the worst cases, they cause harm. The science of communications argues against it.

The corporate sector has long taken advantage of scientific discipline to market products from tobacco to booze to dish detergent. For the most part, the social sector has not fabricated the same shift. Social service organizations may conduct their ain research through focus groups and surveys, but most lack the resources to root their communications strategies in published academic research. Scholarship that can aid you understand attention, motivation, and emotion may be the most powerful and affordable tool you're non using.

When people working on behalf of social causes accept rooted their strategy in science, intentionally or not, they have tended to be highly successful. In the last several decades, nosotros've seen significant social change: the fight for racial and gender equity, the reduction of smoking and boozer driving deaths, and the passage of spousal relationship equality laws. Yous might look at these changes and encounter them as a reflection of a naturally changing society. But in fact, these changes were designed by thoughtful communicators who used practices that we now see are supported past behavioral, cerebral, and social scientific discipline, and that y'all tin apply to enlist people in your cause.

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people volition forget what y'all did, but people will never forget how you made them experience," poet and author Maya Angelou in one case said. Research backs her upwardly. To gain influence on your result, you lot'll need to empathise what compels people to invest their attention, emotion, and action. If you're going to make a difference, you have to employ the science of what makes people care as the foundation of your strategy.

Earlier nosotros leap in, one more signal: The research we share reflects years of written report and the themes that emerged from our exploration of the science of strategic communication. Even though these recommendations are supported by studies from a range of academic disciplines, it is important to annotation that what we share here is our interpretation of the research theory and findings. Enquiry tin can never merits to exist conclusive. The recommendations hither reflect suggestions of the scientists based on their piece of work, and our perspective on how you may utilise or experiment with some of those insights.

Principle #1: Bring together the Community

When you walk into a crowded cocktail party, you practise not loudly innovate yourself and spout facts and opinions from the middle of the room. Instead, y'all grab a beverage, scan the room, and look for a chat or group that interests you. Y'all sidle up, mind for a while, and—when you lot have something to add—join the conversation. Organizations often aim their communication efforts toward building their own profile with messages and tactics that are more well-nigh them than about the issue they've set up out to accost and the audience they are addressing. They are essentially walking into a party, announcing their presence, and asking people to pay attending.

Research from multiple disciplines tells us that people engage and eat information that affirms their identities and aligns with their deeply held values and worldview, and avoid or reject information that challenges or threatens them.i This requires advocates to move beyond a focus on building and disseminating a message to stepping into the globe of their target community. Think of advice less equally a megaphone and more than as a souvenir to your audience. Does it help them solve a problem? Does information technology brand them feel good nigh themselves or see themselves as they want to be seen? Does it connect to how they see the world and provide solutions that are actionable? If we want people to engage and take action, we have to connect to what they care about and how they meet themselves.

When data is perceived as threatening or contradicting how people see themselves and their deeply held values (which are often shaped by their customs), they volition find a reason to ignore that information or rationalize why information technology is wrong. Researchers have found that people who are more conservative tend to take an individualistic worldview. They value respect for authority, preserving the sacred, and protecting their own group. By contrast, people who are more than liberal tend to have an egalitarian worldview and value justice, fairness, and equality.

On the other hand, when letters are framed in a way that connects to their deeply held behavior, people are more than open to changing their stance or taking action. This has been found to be true on a range of issues, including marriage equality, solutions to climate change, and health care.2

At the aforementioned fourth dimension, people also consume and engage with data that affirms identities that are important to them. Being a nature lover, activist, scientist, or bodybuilder may be a ameliorate indicator of what people engage with than the information itself. Our social networks, or social groups, instill the norms and taboos of the grouping. On a psychological level, people seek to affirm and prove that they are who they say they are past engaging in the norms of their groups. Information that asks them to question or go against these norms and values will likely be ignored.3

People seek information that makes them feel good near themselves and allows them to be a amend version of themselves. If y'all start with this understanding of the human mind and behavior, you lot can pattern campaigns that assistance people see where your values intersect and how the issues you are working on matter to them.

For instance, climate experts believe that ane of the best ways individuals can make a departure is to reduce meat and dairy in their nutrition. Diet experts also believe a plant-based diet rich with natural whole foods is best for your wellness. Yet diets rich in meat and dairy are deeply ingrained in American habits, and then asking people to give up their favorite foods for the survival of the planet is unlikely to be effective. Science tells u.s.a. that people will ignore your information, justify why information technology is incorrect or irrelevant to them, or give in to the immediacy of their own cravings rather than work toward the preservation of a future that is abstract and far away.

If y'all wanted to get people to eat less meat and dairy, y'all could develop a advice strategy that taps into the deeply held values and identities of a customs with the power to affect the beliefs and norms of others in their social grouping. The Game Changers, a new documentary film that follows aristocracy athletes, ultimate fighters, weightlifters, and bodybuilders, is seeking to do but that. The flick undermines the myth that meat consumption is critical for edifice a strong athletic torso. It shows that many of the strongest men and women in the globe are vegans and that the viewers likewise tin can accomplish their fitness goals by eating a plant-based diet.

Approaching a group of bodybuilders and request them to stop eating meat considering information technology is good for the planet is unlikely to result in success. Eating meat, for this community, after all, has historically been recommended practice and a sign of masculinity.4 But if influencers in their world tell stories nearly the ability that veganism has played in their own lives and how it has helped them build strength, those who aspire to be similar them are likely to pursue veganism, too. The filmmakers acknowledge the group's values and goals, and show how eating a found-based diet can help. This arroyo doesn't obligate viewers to sacrifice something; it gives them the control to become a improve version of themselves. It's possible that these influencers and their followers will share this new norm within their community and spread the perspective that veganism is the path to strength.

How to apply this insight: Notice your vegan bodybuilders. Identify a group whose alter in beliefs could brand a profound departure for your consequence or inspire others to accept activity, and figure out how to bring that grouping value.

Principle #2: Communicate in Images

People in the social sector work on complex bug that are fairly abstract: justice, equality, wellness, fairness, and innovation. One of the challenges with these abstract concepts is that they leave space for people to brand assumptions about what these terms hateful to them. For example, someone hearing the term "innovation" might worry about how innovations in tech could brand their job unnecessary, while another might interpret it every bit a way to employ fresh thinking to stubborn challenges.

Just concrete, visual language engages the visual and emotional areas of our brains. "We are primates, with a third of our brains dedicated to vision, and large swaths devoted to touch, hearing, motion, and space," Harvard cerebral scientist Steven Pinker writes in The Sense of Mode: The Thinking Person'due south Guide to Writing in the 21st Century. "For us to go from 'I retrieve I understand' to 'I understand,' we demand to come across the sights and feel the motions. Many experiments have shown that readers understand and remember material far better when it is expressed in concrete language that allows them to class visual images."

A study by Princeton Academy linguist Adele Goldberg suggests that "metaphorical sentences may spark increased brain activity in emotion-related regions because they insinuate to physical experiences." Her study showed activity in the emotion area of participants' brains when they heard metaphors that connected to experience. "Sweet" drew a stronger response than "kind." "Bitter" drew a stronger response than "mean." Goldberg's coauthor, Francesca Citron, a psychologist at Lancaster University, suggests that figurative linguistic communication creates a rhetorical advantage.five

One could hardly find a better case of this principle at work than Martin Luther King Jr.'southward "I Have a Dream" spoken communication, delivered August 28, 1963, in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Almost every sentence includes vivid imagery, from "Let united states non seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred" to this stirring visual: "I have a dream that one twenty-four hour period in Alabama, with its fell racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one twenty-four hours right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers."

We utilise this spoken language in course and workshops to help people run into merely how powerful figurative language tin exist. In a workshop with senior military machine officials from countries surrounding the Lake Republic of chad region in key Africa, one of the men said subsequently watching an excerpt of Male monarch's speech, "All I can see is freedom, but if you lot had asked me what that looked like before I listened, I could not accept told you lot. King gave me image subsequently image after image of freedom, and now I tin see nil else."

How to apply this insight: Are y'all using abstruse concepts to describe your organization, effect, or solutions? Try creating a pic in the listen of your audience of what that concept looks like. Use visual language to help people connect with your work. The adjacent time you write a presentation for yourself or someone else, try press it out with wide margins. Can you create drawings of the images y'all're creating in your listeners' minds? If not, go dorsum and add together visual language that volition keep their attending and stick in their memories.

Principle #3: Invoke Emotion With Intention

People who work for social change want others to feel as strongly as they do about their cause. And about of united states of america recognize the importance of telling stories that invoke profound emotion. We see many organizations striving to brand people empathise with those they're trying to help through sad stories. In some of the work we do with a humanitarian relief organization, staff members often tell the states, "I merely desire people to imagine what it would experience similar to exit everything backside and run for your life." The staff care securely about the organization'south mission, and they want the globe to care merely as much.

Just getting people to care requires a more nuanced approach to emotion. Relying on sadness as a way to "pull on heartstrings" may really result in your community tuning yous out entirely. People tend to avoid or remain unmoved by stories and situations that effort to make them feel bad. If y'all've inverse the channel or gone to make a sandwich when that commercial comes on featuring singer Sarah McLachlan with the heartbreaking images of animals in shelters to the strains of "In the Arms of an Angel," you know what nosotros mean.

Enquiry tells us that people are really proficient at avoiding information for three reasons: Information technology makes them feel bad; information technology obligates them to practise something they do not want to do; or it threatens their identity, values, and worldview.6 From lifesaving wellness data to climate modify to mass violence, people avert data that makes them experience lamentable, fearful, or guilty when there isn't a way to resolve those feelings. That'due south why information technology tin be and then hard, for example, to communicate on issues of climate change. If humans are responsible for the warming of the climate, talking about the causes and solutions may go out them feeling guilty. Equally Ezra Markowitz, professor of ecology decision making at the Academy of Massachusetts Amherst, told us concluding year in an interview:

A lot of the [climate change] messaging nosotros have heard for decades now is each of u.s. needs to take responsibility for the emissions that each of us are responsible for; our apply of electricity to driving our cars around makes united states of america all responsible. The implication there is that we should experience guilty well-nigh this problem. The problem is we are actually good at getting out of feeling desperately since nobody wants to feel badly nigh themselves. We have a guilty bias. People are actually good at trying to avert feeling guilty. And and then we downplay the upshot, we downplay the loss of victims, nosotros kind of play up the fact that there is lots of doubtfulness to get united states out of feeling badly about information technology.

Studies have shown other, similar tendencies. People are more than likely to avoid learning well-nigh their take a chance for obesity if it obligates them to have a pill regimen forever. Women are more likely to choose non to find out their risk for endometriosis if it requires a cervical exam. In ane study, patients said they would fifty-fifty pay $ten to avoid finding out if they had canker because of the anxiety they did not want to feel.7

Although people avert information that makes them feel bad, they are attracted to things associated with pleasant emotions. For example, awe—the feeling of wonder that comes with seeing a bright landscape or sunset—opens u.s. to connecting with others considering we feel smaller and more continued to other humans. The motion picture Man, by director Yann Arthus-Bertrand, juxtaposes breathtaking landscapes and images from throughout the world with conversations with various individuals from unlike cultures and viewpoints who share their stories. It greatly demonstrates the power of awe to open u.s. to new perspectives. Research past Melanie Rudd, consumer beliefs scholar at the University of Houston, and her colleagues seems to prove that feeling awe can increment openness to learning and willingness to volunteer.8

Some other pleasant emotion, pride, tin be uncommonly powerful. Researchers have found that people anticipating feeling pride in helping the environment were more likely to take positive activeness than those anticipating guilt for having failed to do and so.ix

Several organizations and movements have shifted to invoking pleasant emotions, with neat consequence. Greenpeace, for case, has focused on hope rather than fear, acrimony, or guilt. In the early years of their piece of work, Greenpeace was known for angry acts past a small group of champions chaining themselves to copse to demonstrate their anger toward ecology offenders. More recently, however, they have moved toward a strategy that includes optimism and inspiring others. Their message strategy at present includes this passage:

Now, to save the world, we're going to go a billion other people to smash their own impossibles.

Calls to action that leave people feeling that they volition not make a difference on the issue volition likely consequence in inaction.

We will tell stories using language that is optimistic, bold and includes a humorous wink. Nosotros volition rebel against convention and make beauty in the face up of dreary and dried.10

Communications strategists know they accept to be deliberate in identifying their goals and target community. Nosotros accept to use the aforementioned intention with the emotions nosotros choose to invoke. Each emotion can lead people to different deportment, and pleasant emotions tin be especially effective. Equally you lot recall about what it is yous want people to believe and do, employ emotion with intention.

How to employ this insight: Think about what you're trying to get people to exercise and how they would experience if they were doing it. Then retrieve about stories that would brand them feel that way.

Principle #4: Create Meaningful Calls to Activeness

"Sign our petition." "Follow us on Facebook." "Click here for more information." Do these calls to action audio familiar? As mutual as they are, they don't tell anyone how to make a difference. They may get out people feeling like their efforts volition exist mere drops in a bucket. They don't inspire.

It is also easy to conflate goals with calls to activity. But they are not the same affair. The 1955-56 Montgomery Bus Cold-shoulder aimed at Jim Crow laws in public transportation sought to terminate segregation of the bus system as a pace toward ending racism. But the call to activity was non "stop segregation" or "end racism." How would the community even brainstorm to know how to exercise that in an organized and strategic way? Instead the call to action was "Don't ride the bus." People knew how to do that: They rode bikes, fix carpools, or walked.

So how do we create calls to action that motivate people to have activeness and will brand substantial progress toward our goal? Constructive calls to action follow three rules: They are specific; the target community sees how the solution will aid solve the problem; and they are something the community knows how to do.

Leaving some specific details out of your story creates an empty infinite for your readers to insert their own feel.

Offset, make your telephone call to action physical and super-specific. In one study, marketing professor Melanie Rudd and her colleagues provided two different calls to activity to two singled-out groups. Ane group was asked to "back up environmental sustainability." The other group was asked to "increase the amount of materials or resources that are recycled or reused." The lxx participants had 24 hours to complete their tasks. In a follow-up survey, the researchers assessed how happy the participants were with their activeness. Participants who had the concrete goal of increasing resource for recycling reported greater happiness. They conducted like experiments for "make someone happy" versus "make someone smile," and "give those who demand os marrow transplants greater hope" versus "give those who need os marrow transplants a better hazard of finding a donor." Rudd and her colleagues argue that physical calls to activeness brand people happier because the gap between their expectations and reality becomes smaller. They are left feeling expert nigh what they were able to reach. The researchers theorize that when people are more satisfied and happy with their activeness, they are more than likely to assistance again.11

Second, people need to run into how their action will aid solve the problem. Calls to action that leave people feeling every bit though they will not make a substantial difference on the upshot will likely upshot in disengagement or inaction. Paul Slovic, social psychologist at the University of Oregon and president of the Decision Science Research Institute, and his colleagues fence that when people feel as though their actions will not brand a departure, they are less likely to take activity. The negative feelings outweigh any positive feelings they might have had from the activity. The researchers refer to this as "pseudo-inefficacy." In one written report, Slovic and his colleagues institute that people were more than probable to give to one child in need than to a group of children because as the number of children increases, people's sense of efficacy and impact decreases. In another written report, when people were asked to donate to a single child facing starvation, the number of donations decreased as they were made more enlightened of millions of children who would still be in demand of help.12 "Behavior of personal efficacy plant the key factor of human agency," writes Stanford University social psychologist Albert Bandura. "If people believe they have no power to produce results, they will not attempt to brand things happen."13

Third, people need to know how to do the affair you are request them to do, and exist able to hands contain it into their daily routines and habits. If your call to activeness is not easily incorporated into your target customs's everyday life or is not easily achieved, they may not take action. When you're designing calls to action, it volition be important to understand the habits and routines of your target customs. The Water ice Saucepan Challenge—a viral social media entrada that persuaded people to post videos of themselves pouring ice water over their heads to raise money for boosted research about ALS—did this well. People habitually scroll through their social media feeds. Asking people to postal service videos of themselves dumping ice water on their heads or donating money to ALS and nominating others in their social network taps into these habits. Sander van der Linden, a social psychologist at the University of Cambridge, argues that this entrada went viral because it taps into the psychological habits of the mind, including engaging in behavior to fit in and follow the norms of your social group, and the desire to feel good nigh ane'south actions—both internally for participating and externally through likes and comments.14

How to use this insight: Review your calls to activeness. Are you lot asking communities to exercise something specific that they value, that will connect them to the cause, and that they know how to do?

Principle #five: Tell Better Stories

Storytelling is the best tool we accept for helping people care most issues. People are more likely to remember information they become in narrative form.15 Stories have the unique power to convey new perspectives and thereby lower counter-arguing, increase perspectivetaking and empathy, and capture and maintain people'south attention.16

Gregory Berns, a neuroscientist at Emory Academy, and his colleagues suggest that reading a novel creates new connections in the brain, which leave united states thinking nearly the story long after it ends. When we experience a captivating story, we sally from it changed and frequently remember the events and experiences in the story as if they were our own.17

While the social sector has embraced the importance of storytelling, many people are not actually sharing stories. Instead, they apply vignettes or messages. Stories have characters; a starting time, centre, and end; plot, conflict, and resolution. If you practise not include these elements, you lot are not telling a story.

Scholars and data scientists accept studied thousands of stories to understand universal themes. When we tell stories to help people care about our outcome, nosotros should figure out which plot structures we wish to use. In his 2004 book The 7 Bones Plots: Why We Tell Stories, journalist Christopher Booker outlines some basic plot structures, such as "Overcoming the Monster," "Rags to Riches or Riches to Rags," "The Quest," and "Voyage and Return."

Every bit people hear a story, they seek cues about how the story volition unfold and who the protagonist is. Familiar plot structures—such as "rags to riches" ("Cinderella")—help orient the audience's expectations about the events to unfold and whose squad they should exist on. This is particularly important for communicating with audiences that may not be familiar with the effect you are working on. Just for audiences that are very familiar with the issue, playing with plot structures that break expectations and surprise them may be more of import for capturing their attention and avoiding fatigue from hearing the aforementioned story ane likewise many times.

Simply simply using these dissimilar plots doesn't guarantee that people will appoint with the tale you desire to tell. Organizations that have adopted a strategy of incorporating stories in their piece of work frequently reuse the same plot structures, emotions, and types of characters. Every bit a event, many organizations tell stories that just aren't that interesting. Gain your customs's attending and engagement with unexpected twists, less-used plot structures, and unusual characters.

Keith Bound, media scholar at the University of Nottingham, studies horror films and consults with the movie industry to make horror films scarier. "People want stories that operate but at the border of expectation," he says. In other words, nosotros enjoy the comfort of knowing where a story is headed, but surprise keeps our attention. Similarly, computer scientists at MIT recently found that false news stories can travel faster than true stories because they defy expectations. They constitute that stories were more than likely to be shared when they included a surprise or caused cloy.

Despite what you learned in your high schoolhouse writing classes, the well-nigh powerful stories aren't necessarily the well-nigh richly detailed. Slap-up stories get out space for the audience in ii means.

Ane is allowing people to put the pieces together for themselves. "The audience actually wants to work for their meal," says Andrew Stanton, a Pixar managing director and screenwriter, in his 2012 TED talk "The Clues to a Great Story." "They just don't want to know that they're doing that. That'southward your task as a storyteller, to hide the fact that you lot're making them work for their repast. We're born problem solvers. We're compelled to deduce and to deduct, because that'southward what nosotros do in real life. It's this well-organized absence of data that draws us in." Stanton'southward observation finds support in bookish literature. For case, a written report that offered readers the opportunity to feel three different stories found that the one that forced them to put the story together for themselves was seen as most interesting of the three.

Because we fill in missing details with what is familiar to us, leaving some specific details out of your story creates an empty space for your readers to insert their own experience—what is known and familiar to them. When Aylan Kurdi'south tiny body washed aground on the Greek island of Kos on September 2, 2015, after his family fled the Syrian conflict, his image was captured by a photojournalist. The prototype and story went viral, and donations to support the Syrian refugees spiked. Why did his image capture the world's imagination? It may accept been his universality. In his simple red T-shirt and blue shorts, with his face obscured and the absence of identifying details—we couldn't see his face, and his wearing apparel were and then elementary that we might encounter them on any kid—it was possible for us to imagine a child nosotros loved in his place.

Detail is important, however, when you're working to utilise the power of storytelling to help people look at something in a fresh lite. Calculation specific, visual details almost a character or situation where your readers may take bias, prejudice, or a set of assumptions helps get them to see things in a new way. When you're telling stories about social issues, the social forces shaping that problem should be the context of your story—a trouble to overcome or a setting that shapes the decisions of the protagonist. The recently deceased chef, writer, and television journalist Anthony Bourdain was a master of this device. In his CNN show Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, which was ostensibly about food and travel, he went on quests to discover succulent dishes and unique cultures that well-nigh people could only imagine, and uncovered injustice, poverty, disharmonize, and triumph along the mode.

How to employ this insight: Are you lot telling stories with a beginning, middle, and stop, or merely sharing letters? What new insights will your audiences proceeds from hearing these stories? Are your stories interesting enough in their own right to merit a listen—fifty-fifty if the listener isn't passionate about your effect? And are yous using the empty and full spaces of your stories to help people proceeds new insights on topics and issues they assume they know well?

A New Perspective

If you're finding that your communications strategies aren't working, consider this: People fail to act not because they do non accept enough information, merely considering they don't care or they don't know what to exercise. If you outset with this perspective every bit the foundation for your work, you can craft a strategy that helps people care and tells them exactly what you lot desire them to practise.

In your piece of work to brand the globe a better place, you don't take a moment or penny to spare. Investing your communications resources simply in spreading information will not inspire anyone to go behind your cause. If you want people to get on board, you lot have to make them care, and you have to show them how they can make a difference.

Read more stories past Ann Christiano & Annie Neimand.