Episode #278: Motivating Others To Action

Today we are going to look at motivating others to action. Actually, this is a devilishly difficult task. Getting anyone to change what they have been doing and take a new action is extremely complex. We all talk up a storm about this or that should change, but we are not keen about changing ourselves. In fact, we expect everyone else make the necessary changes and we want to stay exactly the same.

In our training on the topic of mindset, to underline the power of our habits, we ask people to make small changes. For example, put your wristwatch on the other wrist or fold your arms across your chest, such that the arm that is usually on the bottom is now on top. Try it for yourself and like most people you will feel a bit uncomfortable with the change. Appealing to others on the level of logic works well, but people need their emotions to be engaged for them to take action. We act on emotion and justify it with logic. Let’s look at how we can design a talk which will motivate others to take an action we recommend.

Here is the design order, which is different to the delivery order.

1. We start with the end in mind and decide what is the concrete action we want people to take. This action has to be clarified and made not only easy to understand but also made to seem easy to complete. If the action required sounds complicated and onerous, our audience won’t be motivated to make it a reality.

2. We might think it is a good idea, but will our audience be convinced? This requires some clear benefit to taking action. Everyone thinks in terms of what is in it for them, so we have to supply that component. It also has to be powerful or the work to achieve the benefit may not seem worth the time and effort. The outcome of the action has to seem much more advantageous than sticking with whatever it is they are doing now.

3. Telling people what to do will induce resistance. That is why starting with the action is almost guaranteed to fail. Instead, the incident, the context, the background providing the evidence that this is a good idea comes next in the planning.

Storytelling is so powerful and this is where we have to make good use of it. There must be some reason we think taking this action is a good idea. What have we experienced, heard or seen that makes us think that is true. We need to reach back into our memory and capture the very basis for our belief. Our job now is to tell that as a story involving the people, the place, the season and the time. Ideally, we should include these elements in such a way that the listeners can see it all in their mind’s eye. People they know, a season they can relate to, a location they have seen or can imagine etc.

This structure is called the Magic Formula. When we deliver the talk, we reverse the usual order and we start with the Incident, then we finish off with the action and the benefit. The key here is the majority of the time is spent on the incident, the context and the action and benefit are honed down to the most key elements.

If we have more than one action, we are splitting the focus of the audience and we don’t want that. If we pile on the benefits, then each additional benefit we add dilutes the effect of the first one and so on. We must focus on the most convincing benefit and highlight that one alone.

One huge advantage of the Magic Formula is it is very hard to oppose what we are saying. Normally if we put up an idea, we are faced with a room full of critics. They are firmly fixed on why our idea won’t work and why their idea is better. By starting with the incident, we are taking our audience straight into the background, the context.

Often hearing the context, they conclude the same thing we have concluded. By the time we get to the action part, they are already there ahead of us and have concluded the same thing themselves. This is genius, magic, because we have now secured their agreement to undertake the action before we have even made the recommendation. If you want others to take an action you want to sponsor then this is the winning formula, the Magic Formula to make that happen.