Check out the reviews of books on Amazon. You will find it
worthwhile and you will find some surprises.
For example, a book like “To Kill a Mockingbird”, with 3,664 reviews and an average of 4.7 stars out of a maximum 5. Yet 2% of its reviews are 1 star.
Of the 3,664 reviews 73 people gave it 1 measly star.
“Bleak House” by Charles Dickens, a classic book by any definition, and one of the finest books ever written concerning the law, has 3,760 reviews with an average of 4.4 out of 5 stars.
Yet, 4% of the reviewers give it 1 star.
Pick your own favourite book and check the reviews; you will
find that at least 2% of reviewers will give 1 star for the best book you have
ever read.
Do a search for the greatest book of all time and a Guardian newspaper list gives the number 1 slot to “Don Quixote” by Cervantes. Head over to Amazon.co.uk and you will find that the reviews show that 8% of reviewers give it 1%.
What can you take from this?
When you get a bad review from a client or customer, or
critical comments online, or unfair criticism, remember that even the very
best, the towering greats in any sphere of activity, are getting 2% of customers
to opine that they are crap.
Nobody can serve everybody; just remember this the next time
you receive an unfair review or criticism or someone doesn’t like your blog
post or YouTube video or service or product.
This is not an excuse for bad service, however, and if the
criticism is valid you should be thankful for the person taking the time and
giving you the opportunity to improve.
The older I get the more I recognise the power of story and
storytelling.
Take a look at the world in the last few years and the
stories that were successfully told:
The story Trump told the blue collar workers in
the ‘rustbelt’ states in the US during the 2016 presidential election
The story Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage and
colleagues told to the public in the United Kingdom during the Brexit
referendum
Perhaps you have told a compelling story yourself in the
last few years. Maybe you have been telling one all your life.
We tell stories to persuade and influence. Stories are powerful
and the human mind is particularly receptive to story.
The story we tell ourselves, our family, our friends and
colleagues, the Workplace Relations Commission, the Labour Court, Civil Court,
Criminal Court, our boss, our schoolteachers, the voter is a powerful tool in
whether we will succeed or not.
And when it comes to a dispute, regardless of the venue in
which it will be held, the dispute can be boiled down to at least two competing
versions of events-two stories.
Whose story will prevail? Whose story is the most
compelling? Whose story will the adjudicator ‘prefer’?
I was at an excellent event recently UCD. It was a competition
for PhD students to explain in plain language, to a lay audience, the research
they were carrying out.
This is not an easy task given the level of complexity of
much of the research, and the associated language and science vocabulary.
After each presentation the expert panel of judges asked a
few questions of each of the PhD students. One young man presented his interesting
research on feeding cocaine to rats as part of a project to look into cures for
addiction.
One of the questions from a judge was how the student would
persuade industry/business get involved and finance further research into an
apparently exciting area. The reply of the student, who would have had no forewarning
of the questions, replied, “I would show them the data”.
However, I fear that was the wrong answer because data alone
won’t sell anything; story, combined with data, will do the trick, however.
Story is one of the most powerful, and underutilised or
badly applied, tools we have at our disposal. We need to use it wisely.
And the first story we need to concern ourselves is the story we tell ourselves.
P.S. Proud to write that my daughter, Rebecca, won that competition.
It’s amazing where you will learn stuff if you take the time
to observe closely. Let me explain.
There’s a man on YouTube with his own YouTube channel.
Even though the views he espouses are, to my mind, pathetic,
odious, chauvinistic, right wing, misogynistic, and repulsive I have learned
something from him.
Before I share what I have learnt it is noteworthy that he
has over 100,000 subscribers, the vast majority of whom are men. He is a mature
man. Not only is he mature, he looks mature, too, for he has grey hair and a well-trimmed
grey beard and lives on his own.
I have not paid much heed to his back story or what he has
said about his living arrangements, but I gather from the titles of his videos
that he lives alone and has been through a great deal of relationships and a
divorce or two.
He gives advice to men about love, women, relationships,
what it means to be a man, why feminism is to be attacked, and spreads a lot of
nonsense bordering on misogyny. But his subscribers love him and see him as the
father or grandfather many of them never had.
So he gives this purportedly home spun, worldly advice about
all types of things to do with life, especially from a man’s perspective. He even
has a video on how to smoke a pipe and he has guys asking him questions about
smoking pipes, tobacco, and so forth.
In 2019, for young men to be getting advice on YouTube about
the benefits of, and techniques for, smoking a pipe is mind boggling.
Because this guy, from time to time, just sits there thinking
about choosing the right words to speak and puffing on his pipe. Not in any
hurry.
He waits until he is ready, until he has the right words,
and he doesn’t edit or cut out the natural contemplation or thinking or ‘dead
space’ or choosing of the right words to articulate what he wants to say.
His self confidence in this regard is stunning because the
most natural thing in the world for most of us is to either fill the space with
some words, somehow, or edit it out before uploading the video to YouTube.
And his YouTube subscriber count continues to grow and grow
inexorably with his subscribers and viewers giving him the most positive
feedback.
So, it’s amazing what you learn when you are watching closely with an open mind, even if you find the individual or his views anti-diluvian and odious.
(Photo by Paul Faith / AFP)PAUL FAITH/AFP/Getty Images
I’ts an easy one to make.
The connection between the simplistic thinking demonstrated by Mary Lou McDonald’s carrying of a banner “England get out of Ireland” in New York on St. Patrick’s Day and the crude, one-dimensional thinking which led to riots in Derry at Easter culminating in the death of Lyra McKee is discernible.
Yet that connection did not prevent Mary Lou from holding up
an LGBT banner in Derry when speaking about the tragic loss of the young woman’s
tragic death whilst condemning the killing.
I envy the individual who, without the need for coarse or vulgar or oversimplified language, or the need for vocal stumbling and stuttering and ums and ahs and vocal fry, can fully articulate his views on a topic about which he feels strongly.
For example, if I tried to explain my opinion of how odious
and repulsive an individual Donald Trump is I get so tongue tied that I do one
of two things:
I refrain from entering upon the question at
all, or
I revert to bad language and verbal and vocal inarticulation.
I am tremendously frustrated about this, and it’s not just
Donald Trump that causes this-no, anything about which I feel strongly has this
effect.
I want to conquer this problem, if not entirely, at least to
some extent.
Unfortunately, this problem developed years ago when I was
going to school and I have never had the desire to do anything about it.
I do now, though, because I appreciate the value of crystal-clear
communication through the use of cogent, well chosen, appropriate, accurate
thoughts and words. I hope it’s not too late; I don’t think so if I work at it
but the first step in addressing the problem is to recognise it.
The next step is to do something about it, and I suspect,
but may stand corrected, that the first step may be to articulate the thoughts
and feelings in words. I say ‘may’ because there is a danger that the two
disciplines-oral communication and written communication-are completely
different and one will not necessarily be improved as a consequence of
improving the other.
From time to time I fantasise about writing blog posts in
the style of Dickens or Tolstoy or Dostoevsky.
I write a good deal of content for consumption by people on
the internet who have limited, and narrowing, attention spans.
To counter this I have employed a technique which writers
for the internet, bloggers, and content marketers are advised to use. This
involves short words, short sentences, short paragraphs, and lots of white
space.
One of the objectives of this technique is to make the content
as snackable and accessible as possible. And I know it works because people frequently
tell me they love reading my stuff, that I make it easy to read and understand,
and so forth.
This is not an accident for this is precisely what I set out
to do.
But sometimes I dream about writing a blog post in one or
two long sentences-in the style of Charles Dickens, for example.
And I imagine throwing in words that are not short and
simple and have only one syllable. But words that are difficult, obscure, rarely
used but appropriate for the situation. Words and phrases like ‘dissipation’, ‘urbanity’,
‘agreeable’, ‘disagreeable’, ‘displeasure’, ‘much engaged’, ‘prodigiously’, ‘melancholy’,
‘admonition’, ‘withering scorn’, ‘much occupied by his sagacity’, ‘unreserved
intimacy’, ‘unquiet spirit’, and so forth.
Maybe one day, for the sheer hell of it, I will ‘fall to
prodigiously’ and break loose.
P.S. All the words and phrases in the paragraph above are from ‘Dombey & Son’ by Charles Dickens, a novel I would recommend enthusiastically.
Using story is one of the most effective ways of communicating and persuading.
A story can be as short as 3 seconds, or as long as a lifetime.
The video below is a 5-minute story and you will probably recognise the 3 “acts” or “stages” in it. Making this video is the product of a challenge I set myself on a Saturday morning in April: make a story out of something ordinary around my home on an average Saturday.
If you need to influence or persuade, and let’s face it-who
doesn’t, you will probably benefit greatly by thinking about how you can use
story in your aid.
If I was accused of murder I would hate to see Michael
Bowman SC prosecuting me. Although if I had Bernard Condon SC defending my
chances of acquittal would be greatly enhanced.
My attention has been arrested by the word pictures these
two men have been painting for the jury this week in the Patrick Quirke murder
trial-that is, the trial involving a so called ‘love triangle’ in Tipperary
involving Patrick Quirke, Bobby Ryan, and Mary Lowry.
Leaving aside a close examination of the evidence what I
have found fascinating and educational is the ability of these two senior
counsels to communicate with the jury in a way that is easily understood.
By painting word pictures.
Let me explain.
Circumstantial evidence
Much, or all, of the evidence against Patrick Quirke is
circumstantial.
Anyone who has watched a tv programme involving law/crime
knows that circumstantial evidence is not the best evidence you can have. In
fact, it can be hugely problematic.
You may have heard the phrase that the evidence was ‘only circumstantial
evidence’ and therefore a conviction could not be safely arrived at.
Michael Bowman SC appeared, to this lay observer’s eye, to
address this problem when addressing the jury this week. He met the problem
head on and dealt with it up front by telling the jury “The human condition can
only tolerate so much coincidence before we shake our head and say that is not
coincidence – that is planned”.
In other words, he seemed to feel their pain but gave them a
perfectly reasonable out: a reason for conviction. He told them it wasn’t their
fault, that the human condition could only accept so much as coincidence.
In fact, he planted the image, in my mind anyway, of someone
shaking their head and saying ‘enough is enough, this evidence might be
circumstantial but this cannot just be explained as a coincidence’.
He then went further and addressed what they the jury had
seen during the course of the trial: Patrick Quirke, the accused, appearing as
a loving husband and father.
And even then, using their critical faculties, they would be
justified in bringing in a guilty verdict.
Mr. Bowman then painted the picture of the victim, Bobby
Ryan, as a man “living a quiet and peaceful and content life in a small
village, a man who lived his job, a man who loved music, a man who loved to
dance, who loved his girlfriend and who very dearly loved his two children.”
He said “Who would want to take the life of such a man?
To strip him naked of his worldly possessions and his dignity and leave his
body to decompose in a sealed chamber on a farm in Fawnagowan?”
The defence and the train
Then later Mr. Bernard Condon SC for the defence addressed
the jury. He, too, painted vivid word pictures for the jury. He told them about
a train and train stations. Everyone understands what a train is; nobody will
be left behind by being asked to imagine a train station.
But first, he told the jury that much was being made of
circumstantial evidence, but he warned that “circumstantial evidence is
not a shortcut to convict”.
And then he turned to the train images. He told the jury that
when they looked at the evidence, they were taking a journey in the
“forensic equivalent to a train”.
He said, “You are being invited by the prosecution to
go to the last station on the line, it will be uphill and will twist and curve”.
And he said the prosecution should be able to bring them to the very last
station on the journey with evidence as the fuel.
“If it isn’t the sort of evidence that you yourself
would be happy to be convicted on, if it is not grade-A fuel, you will not get
to the station at the top marked guilty,” he said.
Mr Condon said Mr Quirke was “parked in the train
station marked innocence” and it was up to the prosecution to move him out
of it and they had to do that with evidence.
But he said there was a problem here because “the
evidence is thin”. He said, “You will have to pass through several
stops, you may go past suspicion station, likelihood station and even
probability station, but if you get out there you are in the wrong place for
conviction”.
Word pictures and persuasion
I don’t know what the jury will do and, quite frankly, I don’t
envy their task.
But the value of images and story in the science and art of
persuasion has again been brought forcefully home to me by the powerful use of
words and images of these two lawyers at the peak of their powers.
I have written many times before about the value of story:
I was delighted when I checked the latest reviews of my
books for sale on Amazon and Kindle.
Reviews, especially bad ones, can break a book’s life; no
reviews at all are not helpful either and it is challenging to get readers to
leave a review.
I have 6 titles for sale which can be purchased in paperback
or Kindle format and all of them have received positive reviews. (You can
check them out yourself here).
I intend rectifying the situation in the next few weeks by
updating it with new material. You may think that the strategy I set out in that
book must be outdated now and changes in the digital marketing space would
render the strategy worthless or irrelevant.
That is not the case at all.
I carried out a review at the weekend to see how my method
as outlined in that book compared with the strategies and methods put forward
by other digital marketing practitioners/teachers at that time.
And I am still executing the same strategies with a great
deal of success and the three contemporaries who I researched at the weekend
have quit what they were recommending back in 2015/2016.
I am certain that what I have set out in my book is sound
and works like gangbusters but there are some significant improvements that I
have made in the years since first publication. So, my strategy is essentially
the same but I would recommend some tweaks and enhancements, especially in the
area of advertising on certain social media platforms.
These are the areas I will be focusing on when I update in
the next few weeks. Meanwhile the 5 steps I have enunciated in the original book
are as sound and relevant today as they were then. Not only am I taking the
same 5 steps now on a weekly basis, but I have added some enhancements which I
am looking forward to sharing in the updated version.
From August 2018 to date, April 2019, I have lost 3.5 stone weight.
And the most important thing I have
learned from the exercise has not been about the food I eat or the exercise I
take.
No, these things are important, alright, but they are not
the most important thing. The most important thing I will tell you later but
first I will tell you how I managed it.
There is no mystery, no huge secret, no fad diet, no ‘Hollywood’
diet; I followed the RTE Operation Transformation programme. I stuck rigidly
with the eating plans and the exercise and the weight slowly but inexorably reduced.
My target is to lose 4 stone and I am confident I will
achieve this provided I apply the one lesson I have learned-that is, the weight
loss is less about what I eat and all about something else: habit(s).
Habit formation is the key.
Losing bad habits, developing good ones. This is the one
critically important lesson I have learned and taken from the exercise.
It is a lesson that is applicable in all parts of life and
there have been countless books written about habits, getting rid of destructive
ones and creating new, useful ones. Two popular and well-regarded books dealing
with habits are:
The takeaway for me is often you must look for the “thing
under the thing” to alter your behaviour and win the outcome you are seeking.
In my case it was the development of good habits and the eradication
of destructive habits around food that was the primary step in losing the weight,
and not an all-consuming focus on calorie counting or other method of score
keeping what I was consuming.
