Part V
Changing Minds
Chapter 11
The Visual Channel
Throughout this book, we’ve emphasized the power of “word pictures” and the value of concrete examples that turn on the visual processing power of the right side of the brain. In this chapter, we’ll explore less well-known aspects of how to use the visual channel to persuade and motivate others.
The visual channel in our brain is directly connected to our emotional decision-making centers, specifically to the amygdala. The amygdala is an almond-sized cluster of neurons. It’s part of the primitive brain that helps us react fast in the face of threats and rewards. If you’ve ever been scared by a rubber snake or a plastic spider then you have experienced the life-saving power of the amygdala at work. The amygdala triggers our threat response and we jump back; even before we have consciously registered what we are seeing, we are in the air and screaming.
Not all images trigger our amygdala, but when they do, we feel a powerful and immediate urge to act. Think for example of what would happen if you were standing on the side of a busy city street, and suddenly you saw a toddler wandering in traffic. You would probably run forward, grab the child and dodge your way back to safety, literally without thinking. This is pretty complicated pre-conscious behavior. You put your own life in jeopardy for a child you don’t even know. However, if you had stopped to reflect on your options, the child would be dead. This kind of quick decision-making helped our species survive as we evolved in the forests and savannahs of Africa. The short pathway between visual stimulation and the amygdala means the right-brain ability to understand pictures can be powerfully motivating.
One beautiful example of how actual images can motivate people to act comes from a TED Talk delivered by a friend of ours, Wade Davis. Besides being a best-selling author, Wade is a professor of anthropology at the University of British Columbia and a National Geographic Explorer in Residence. For years he has been actively campaigning alongside First Nations tribes to save the province’s last great pristine wilderness (known as the Sacred Headwaters) from destructive mining and gas operations. In Wade’s TED Talk, he explains factually the threats that would blast mountains and poison rivers, while on screen he shows a cascade of stunning photos of this vast and pristine region of shining mountains and deep green river valleys. The Geographic-quality images fill one with awe and move one powerfully to want to preserve this land. As it turned out, the chairman of Shell Canada was in the audience the day of Wade’s talk. He met with Wade afterwards, and within a year the company announced they were ending their plans to frack for gas in the Sacred Headwaters.
There are many ways in which visual images – actual or “word pictures” – deeply affect and move us. Especially when it comes to influence and leadership, a master communicator should be aware of them all.
Dominant Images
An image can lodge in our minds as a dominant organizing principle that fundamentally changes the way we think, care and act. For example, recall the long struggle to ban ozone-depleting chemicals in the 1980s. Images from NASA of a “hole” in the ozone layer over Antarctica changed the debate. As a result, every nation signed on to the Montreal Protocol, the world’s first globally binding environmental treaty.
Images can be just as powerfully motivating when evoked by words alone. Just one kind of example might be the images used to inspire people to follow their leaders into new and unfamiliar territory: “The Land of Milk and Honey,” “Eldorado,” and “Greenland” (imagine how Viking settlers must have felt when they landed on that glacier-covered island).
As negative examples, think of the powerful fear evoked by the following images: “The Angel of Death,” “The Red Menace,” “Nuclear Winter.” You can see the powerful grip of such images on the amygdala, urging us to avoid the threat at all costs. In the face of inconclusive evidence that Iraq was building weapons of mass destruction, the Bush administration persuasively made its case with just such a powerful mental image: “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”
So think carefully about the dominant images you want to evoke to motivate your audiences.
Symbols, Logos and Icons
The Statue of Liberty; the Chinese dragon; the skull and crossbones; a peace sign; the star and crescent of Islam: visual representations of ideas, institutions or nations carry potent meaning. Wearing the flag pin of your country, a religious symbol around your neck, or in some cases even wearing a particular color can become a bold political statement. Ukraine’s Orange Revolution is just one of many examples. Half a million protesters marched in Kiev, wearing orange or waving orange flags as a symbol of opposition to a “stolen” election. In response to this show of unity, the opposition candidate ultimately unseated the fraudulently elected president.
In one organization we worked for, the president refused to step down in the face of nepotism charges. Many people in the organization started wearing a blue ribbon on their lapels, which they said symbolized their commitment to “anti-corruption and good governance.” But everyone knew the ribbon was a subversive demand that the president resign. As more and more of the blue ribbons appeared, the pressure mounted until the president quit.
The point is, symbolic objects carry powerful meaning. They stir something tribal in us, something totemic that shapes our sense of purpose and group identity. As a master communicator, think about how you can associate yourself with the right symbols and icons in your communications. Politicians often do this by having icons or symbols in the background. Remember also the negative coverage President Obama received when he was photographed at an official event without an American flag pin on his lapel.
Symbolic Acts
“Actions speak louder than words.” Indeed, when people say one thing and do another, we always look to their deeds to reveal their true nature. Mahatma Gandhi understood this well when he defied British rule by walking to the ocean and picking up a handful of salt. The British had decreed salt-making illegal in India. Thousands joined Gandhi in this simple act of defiance, and united the nation in rebellion.
Sometimes a symbolic act may not be deliberate, yet may become a dramatic inflection point. The Arab Spring began in Tunisia with an act of despair and protest. A young fruit vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, set himself on fire and died in front of a government building after police shut down his fruit and vegetable stand. His self-immolation catalyzed the frustration of millions in the Arab world living under repressive governments. Ultimately it swept away entrenched autocracies in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt.
Especially if you are a leader subject to media scrutiny, with cameras following you around, beware that your every move will be analyzed for potential symbolic acts. Use that fact to send the messages you want through conscious and creative actions. We heard a terrible story from an IMF official who recalled landing in Brazil for meetings and being rushed upon by two ragged children, whom she shunned. Her shooing away of the children was captured on camera and ended up on the front page of a daily newspaper. In fact, it turned out the newspaper photographers had planted the children in order to catch the official in exactly this moment of callous indifference! How different this moment would have been if she had knelt down to talk to the children when they approached her.
So pay attention to how you are being visually portrayed, especially in visits abroad, and find opportunities to create symbolic acts that portray you and your organization in the right light.
The Halo Effect
A person can become a powerful symbol. Aung San Suu Kyi, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama: they each encapsulate a quality, a value or an aspiration. As a result, anything associated with them tends to take on a similar quality. Any organization’s leaders easily fuse in the mind of the staff and the public with the identity of the organization as a whole. This is one reason why leaders must hold themselves to a higher ethical standard.
Beyond leaders, the act
ion of the staff of an organization can also have a positive or negative impact on how an organization is perceived. Recent research has indicated that when organizations take on a collective good work – a charity drive, environmental efficiency programs, community clean-up – it not only boosts how the company is perceived and the morale of those who participated; it even boosts the work performance of those who did not take part in the activity.
When you become a visual message
Whenever you appear in public as a representative or spokesperson for your organization, how you look becomes part of your message. Our personal philosophy is that each one of us should wear our clothes and hair in ways that make us feel comfortable and confident. Yet there is no doubt others make judgments about how we look, and those judgments will color how people listen to us. So here are a few strategic rules of thumb that can help your visual appearance enhance your communications. The key is to understand the status dynamic of whatever situation you are entering.
Same tribe. If you want to convey equal status in order to encourage acceptance and open discussion, dress for similarity with your audience. It’s easier for people to listen to someone who looks like part of their “tribe” than to an outsider. If you are a public official meeting members of a trade union, wearing an expensive designer suit will hurt, not help, your ability to connect with them. Perhaps rolling up your shirtsleeves would make it easier for them to connect.
Authority. Sometimes you are expected to appear as a leader, respected guest or expert. In these cases, wear clothing your audience will recognize as authoritative or that appropriately supports your high status in this specific context. A friend of ours who runs an underfunded NGO was invited to brief the US State Department about her international work. Her usual attire consisted of casual jeans and worn sandals. We persuaded her to wear business-like attire for the occasion. We told her, “It will help State Department staff hear you better as the authority you truly are.” They have since invited her back for regular updates, and she is pleased to be having an influence on an issue she is passionate about.
Respect. Sometimes your appearance should be dictated by the need to show respect to your audience, the venue or the occasion. Typically, this requires more formal wear than normal. If you don’t follow protocol – for example not wearing a tie or a polished outfit, you may be perceived as disrespectful. One murky area is wearing the traditional dress of other cultures. Should a Western woman wear a sari to a formal event in India? A kimono to a state dinner in Japan? In such occasions be sure to check with your host to see what will be perceived as respectful.
To sum up, always consider the visual channel as part of your communication. Consciously consider the power of the images, symbols and actions you associate with yourself and your organization.
Chapter 12
Framing
Have you ever had an argument with someone and you have factually proven them wrong, then been astounded that they have not only refused to change their mind, but they seem to be more convinced than ever that their erroneous position is true? If so, then you have encountered the powerful force of framing.
Framing is perhaps the least-well understood concept in communications. Yet when you learn the power of framing, it will fundamentally alter your approach to communications. Framing helps us understand how our ideas are organized in our minds. It helps us grasp how difficult it really is to change someone else’s mind. And reframing – the subject of the next chapter – opens up possible ways in which you can actually help someone shift their thinking.
In ordinary usage, “to frame” means to fit something together in order to create a physical structure, such as the frame of a house or a painting. In this chapter we are talking about a “frame of reference” as a mental structure. This mental structure clusters together a set of ideas or assumptions, and shapes how we see some specific aspect of the world.
There are lots of different kinds of these mental frames. Politically, you could speak of a liberal or conservative frame. You could speak of an environmental frame, an economics frame or a social justice frame. We also have frames for all the situations in life that we regularly encounter. We have a “home life” frame and a “work life” frame. An avid whiskey drinker may have a well-developed frame around single malt Scotches, while a music lover might have well-developed frames around various singers and styles she likes. So think of frames very flexibly as like mental boxes in our heads in which similar ideas are all clustered together and connected to each other.
Dr George Lakoff, a psychological researcher at UCLA and author of one of the best books about framing, Don’t Think of an Elephant, puts it like this:
One of the fundamental findings of cognitive science is that people think in terms of frames and metaphors…The frames are in the synapses of our brains, physically present in the form of neural circuitry. When the facts don’t fit the frames, the frames are kept and the facts ignored.
Why Do We Frame?
Framing is how we make sense of our world. Clustering ideas into frames brings huge evolutionary advantages. Imagine your life if you were always encountering everything for the first time – like how to drive a car. When you rent a car, you don’t need to have everything explained to you; you already have a frame in your mind for “car.” That frame includes: how to drive, rules of the road, speed limits. Framing makes it easier to do things over and over again.
We also frame our preferences, which helps us make quick, intuitive decisions. For example, when you look at a menu, you have a frame for the sorts of things you like to eat and those you don’t. These are going to be different from person to person. Do you sort through the menu with a frame of a healthy diet, a “foodie” gourmet experience, ethical treatment of animals, or to honor religious taboos?
Different Frames Shape Different Realities
When you look at a house you don’t see the inner framing; you just see the house. Similarly, we don’t see our own mental frames; we just see “reality” as we know it. We don’t realize our “reality” has been shaped by our frames. The best proof of framing is the fact that people interpret the world very differently from each other – even though it’s the same world. While it may be tempting to believe people who don’t think like you are all idiots, it makes more sense to see this variety as a natural result of people with different sets of experience constructing different frames of reference. One simple example is a friend of Tim’s who is an expert birder. When they go on hikes together, the friend calls out different bird names as he hears the distinct calls each species makes – he’s developed many categories for them. Tim hears only generic “birdsong.”
On a grander scale, countries are often ready to go to war over a disputed territory because each side looks at the issue only through their national frames of reference. A good case in point is the currently hot dispute between China and Japan over who owns a few tiny, rocky islands in the sea between them. Each side considers these islands, historically, their territory; because each side has written their own history books, there is no way to find common ground. People who stick to their frames tend to stick to their guns. Our frames can make us rigid if we refuse to see perspectives different from our own.
The Amygdala’s Role in Framing
Framing is not just about perception and preferences. It is also about values. Our emotions are wired into our frames. Our frames tell us what we value in our lives, and when that gets threatened, we often react as forcefully as if we were being physically attacked. Have you ever been in an argument and become so angry you started screaming at the other person? Questions about religion, politics and what we consider right and wrong are so deeply embedded in our frames that when we meet someone with a different set of frames, an argument with them can feel as if we are fighting for our lives.
In such moments our brain literally short-circuits, as the signals of incoming sense data get rerouted to the amygdala. We discussed the role of this primitive part of
our brain in the chapter on visual communications. To recap: when faced with a threat, the amygdala quickly activates our primitive emotions: our fight, flight and freeze responses. In today’s complex world, our amygdala can lead us to rash acts and poor choices. In zeroing in on a perceived threat, our amygdala-driven brains inadvertently filter out important information. So, for example, we may send a blistering email in reply to someone who offended us – only later realizing that offensive word might have been a typo, not an attack! On a grand scale, a nation might rashly declare war by misinterpreting an innocuous act as an intentional snub or insult – in other words, framing it as a symbolic act.
A recent example of this (fortunately not leading to war) happened when Bill Gates visited South Korea. He kept one hand in his pocket while shaking the hand of President Park. Within the South Korean frame of respect, this informality was perceived as deliberately rude. South Koreans were aghast when they saw the video, and many commentators refused to accept that the “slap” to their leader could possibly have been unintentional. That’s the power of the amygdala at work to automatically “frame” our reality for us.
The Master Communicator's Handbook Page 9