How To Be More Convincing

November 1, 2011

Interview with Dan Roam, author of the book Blah Blah Blah: What To Do When Words Don't Work [1]

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Mike Carruthers:
When we’re talking with people socially or professionally our ideas and the stories we tell are simply a string of words.

Dan Roam:
The problem is that unless those ideas are really, really crystal clearly formed they’re just kind of like big fluffy clouds. We talk about this one for a moment and then it passes away and the next one comes along and we completely forget about the previous one.
 

Dan Roam, author of the book Blah Blah Blah [1], says you will be more believable and more convincing if you tell your story with both words and pictures. For example in a meeting…

If you were the person who went up to the white board in a meeting and drew out the form of your idea with a couple of circles and arrows and then write 4 words down that said this is the essence of my idea. I guarantee you that will be the idea that everybody is going to talk about for the rest of the meeting. And that will be the idea that everyone will remember when they leave.

We tend to think that if we can just get the right words out people will believe us and remember what we say. But people usually listen to you with what Dan calls vivid thinking.

Vivid thinking in a nutshell says I will not believe that you know what you’re talking about really if you can only talk about it. Nor will I believe that you really know what you’re talking about if you could only draw me a picture of it. But when you can do both that’s when I’ll know that you have really thought it through and you really know what your idea is.
 

To hear the complete unedited interview, click here [2]