“I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” - Abraham Maslow
image by ChatGPT
Over the past six months, we've written about a variety of professional situations from over-preparing for a presentation to not knowing when to stop talking once you've made the sale. Each issue discussed one problem or situation around communication and influence, and presented a solution to address it.
This week, we've brought six of them together. You may find yourself in one or more of these situations over the next few months. Start with the one that sounds familiar.
Presenting to people who don't share your context
The Curse of Knowing Too Much. The better you know your material, the harder it can be to see what your audience doesn't know yet. A famous 1990 experiment about tapping out songs helps explain why a presentation that feels completely clear to you can still leave your audience behind. Read the full issue →
Knowing when to stop making your case
Stop Drilling When You Hit Oil. A founder kept making his case well after a buyer had already decided, until six words from her stopped him cold. The trick is noticing when the conversation has already turned from "why you" to "how soon," and having the discipline to stop there. Read the full issue →
Outreach or a pitch that isn't landing
The Detail Does the Work. Rebecca's cold emails were personalized in all the usual ways and still went mostly unanswered until, she swapped a generic compliment for a single, specific detail. Chekhov's advice about descriptive detail helps explain why: a well-chosen detail gives people something from which to reach the conclusion themselves. Read the full issue →
Walking into a room with unaligned stakeholders
The Meeting Before the Meeting. A colleague spent three weeks perfecting his pitch for a supplier change and left that meeting with people further apart than when he started. The next time, a few individual conversations before the meeting did more than the deck had. It was a real-world example of the Japanese practice of nemawashi (which we covered here): building alignment before the formal meeting. A real-world example of how the Japanese practice of nemawashi (which we covered here) works by building alignment before the formal meeting. Read the full issue →
A sales conversation stuck in the buyer's view
Change What They See. A deal had stalled for three months despite a strong business case. One question about what the buyer currently believed about the problem helped surface an urgency that three months of pitching hadn't.
Read the full issue →
Choosing the right story for a specific audience
When Someone Sees Their Story in Yours. A story becomes more useful when the person listening can connect it to something they've lived through themselves, even if the circumstances don't match. We saw exactly that happen in one of our own workshops. Read the full issue →
We've published 89 of these now. If there's a communication situation you'd like us to tackle next, reply and tell us.