Our brains are wired to ignore information. Here are neuroscience-backed tips for communicating memorably
The human brain is engineered to ignore most of what it sees and hears, according to the neuroscientists I interviewed for the audio original Viral Voices. If that’s the case, how are you supposed to make a memorable impression?
The empowering news is that if you understand how the brain works, what it discards, and what it pays attention to, you’ll be far more persuasive than you’ve ever imagined. Persuasive people have influence in their personal and professional lives.
BRAIN RULES FOR THE WORKPLACE
“The brain doesn’t pay attention to boring things,” says John Medina, a molecular biologist at the University of Washington and author of the bestseller Brain Rules. “If the brain is bored with something, it’ll move on to something else. It has a lot of stuff to do,” Medina told me.
According to Medina, our brains lock onto stimuli that evoke an emotion. Medina says this stimuli acts like a mental Post-it note, telling your listener’s brain to pay attention to you and your ideas.
Imagine being able to identify the exact emotional triggers that will hold your listener’s attention.
Well, thanks to scientific experiments in the lab, we now know what grabbed people’s attention when they lived in caves. It turns out the secret to effective communication isn’t new. It’s an ancient formula that can be traced back some 2,300 years to a really smart guy named Aristotle, the father of persuasion.
ARTISTOTLE’S FORMULA FOR PERSUASION
Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher, said that a persuasive speech has three elements: ethos, logos, and pathos.
Ethos is credibility. These are the things that often precede you before you walk into the room to give a presentation. They are your résumé builders, your credentials, and your experience.
Logos is logic. These are the facts and figures you provide to support your argument.
Pathos. These are the emotional hooks that make people care.
Pathos is the tricky element, especially in today’s workplace. How do you connect emotionally with your audience through PowerPoint, Zoom, or an online video? Once again, the ancients revealed the secret that makes people stars on the TED stage and TikTok.
STORYTELLING IS YOUR SUPERPOWER
Storytelling is not something we do. Storytellers are who we are.
Yuval Noah Harari is a historian, philosopher, and author of Sapiens, one of the bestselling nonfiction books in the world. When I interviewed Harari about communication skills, he shared a theory that completely changed the way I teach public speaking.
It all starts—and ends—with story.
According to Harari, Sapiens—our species—dominated the world because they could use language to tell stories. We are wired for stories because narratives were the key to convincing large groups of people to cooperate.
Great stories follow structures. The three-act structure is the most popular. You’ll see it in nearly every Hollywood movie.
Act 1. Set-up: We meet the hero and experience the world they live in.
Act 2. Conflict: This is the middle hour of a film where the hero embarks on an adventure and encounters villains, hurdles, challenges, and near-death experiences.
Act 3. Resolution: During the final 30 minutes of most films, the hero resolves the conflict, slays the dragon, and returns with the treasure.
The three-act structure doesn’t just work for movies. It’s the foundation for great business presentations, too.
Steve Jobs followed the formula to launch the iPhone in 2007. In the first few minutes, he talked about Apple’s experience in designing great products. He then introduced the problem, or what he called “the usual suspects.” Jobs explained how existing smartphones were complicated and hard to use. The better path would be to get rid of the fixed keyboard and replace it with a giant screen customers would navigate—not with a stylus—but with their fingers.
The pattern is simple, and you can follow it for nearly any pitch or presentation: status quo, problem, solution. Describe the way the world works today for your customer. Explain the problem your customer might be facing in the current world. Reveal the solution to the customer’s problem.
Many content creators who find success on social media follow the structure, whether they know it or not.
Sahil Bloom, a former finance professional who now shares business advice to nearly 1 million Instagram followers, recommends following the three-act structure when pitching ideas.
“It’s very simple, really. First, paint a very clear, vivid picture of what the world looks like today. Then describe why the current world is bad, dark, and stormy. Finally, paint a very clear, vivid picture of what the world would look like in the future that you envision. Beautiful, sunny, clear skies. If you can take an investor on that journey, you’ll get all the money you need to raise.”
Did you spot the pattern? It’s no different from the three acts of a Hollywood movie. It’s just condensed from two hours into a 20-minute presentation or a 20-second Instagram reel.
Persuasion, by definition, means combining words and ideas to move people to action. You can have the greatest idea in the world, but if you cannot convince other people to take action on that idea, you won’t be nearly as successful as you could be.
Your ideas deserve to be heard. Sharpen your communication skills, avoid boring content, and keep your audience engaged, and you’ll transform both their world and your career.