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- Gioia's Six NEW Rules For Engagement
Ted Gioia shared a list I might need to print and frame (via his The Honest Broker post “The 6 New Rules of Communicating: The era of teleprompters and talking points has come to an end”):
Here are the six new rules of engagement — for politicians, broadcasters, and all aspiring experts, decision-makers, and leaders.
1. You gain more trust when seated, not standing.
2. Don’t speak at people — speak with them.
3. An informal tone is more persuasive now. Even leaders must adjust to this.
4. Conversations have more influence than speeches.
5. Spontaneous communications delivered from a personal standpoint are considered more “real” than a script created by a team or speechwriter.
6. Soundbites and talking points are less impactful than storytelling, humor, and off-the-cuff comments.
For my professional friends in particular—all of you who communicate for work, here are some tweaks, translations, and related Personal Archive posts to get you thinking too:
Our faces side by side in the video chat = the new sitting on the same side of the table. We want to consider this framing constantly. Stay aware of how “Professionals don’t change hats, they change positions,” remembering it requires we know the position we are choosing to take and why.
Most things in the world talk at you, we all prefer those who talk with us. It also applies to performances (we prefer “perform with” to “perform to” and especially to “perform at”).
Talk like you speak, and anytime you’re around people talking like an academic they admire talks, talk in even more basic terms than normal to magnify the difference. You have to practice this, so hit the shed before you perform in public.
Spend less time on stages and more time in crowds of likeminded fans. The one-to-one connections around one-to-many engagements are complimentary and essential. In other words, always leave breadcrumbs!
Even though spontaneous communications can suck, they work, and today they’re being given higher regard because they haven’t been scrubbed of emotional weight. There’s a balance here to remember (and some emotional weight is key). Don’t forget being spontaneous doesn’t absolve you of making it interesting—that requires curating tension.
If you’re rehearsed sounding and the person next to you is totally unrehearsed, it’s obvious. Anything you can do to neutralize the “look how hard I prepped for this” while still showing an ability to be hip, smart, and flexible in the moment is everything. Ps. Less soundbites, more bits is the way I think of this, meaning always have little product tested stories. Josh Spector is the best at explaining this. Also, Chris Stefano’s exploration of how you get your outcomes by focusing your output on your audience applies too.