How you frame your idea is key. By selecting the right words to use, you can either enroll your audience in what you’re saying, or leave them disengaged and unmotivated to take action. In Shelle Rose Charvet’s book “Words That Change Minds: Mastering the language of influence,” she suggests each other of us has motivation traits (how our interest is triggered) and working traits (how we handle information, people, decisions, etc).
One motivation trait that stood out for me was direction. Carvet defines direction as a person’s motivational energy centered on goals or problems to be dealt with or avoided.
Carvet groups people into three categories for this trait: Toward people (40%), Away From people (40%), Equally Toward and Away From people (20%). Towards people are motivated and inspired to achieve or attain goals. They have trouble recognizing problems, but are very good at managing priorities. Away From people, on the other hand, focus on what may be and is going wrong. They are motivated to solve problems and may have difficulty managing priorities because whatever is wrong will attract most of their attention. Note: At the extreme, Away From people are often perceived as jaded or cynical – especially by Toward people, who are perceived as naive by Away From people.
How do you identify a Toward/Away From person? Listen to what they say after the word because. It will either be a Toward or Away From statement.
Example: “I want a promotion because I would get more money and more influential work” (Toward) vs. “I want a promotion because I would not have all this routine work and debt” (Away From).
How do you change their mind? Use specific words that will trigger their Toward or Away From mindset in that context.
Towards people are motivated by words like: gain, attain, have, obtain, include, get, achieve
Away From people are motivated by words like: avoid, steer clear of, not have, get rid of, exclude, away from, unwanted
Example: “This new technology will help us to achieve our goal of being more efficient” (Toward) vs. “This new technology will help us get rid of the inefficiencies we currently have” (Away From).
Same goal. Same problem. Two different directions. Inspiring someone to take action on starts with how you frame it.
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