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Ignite a Shift
Engaging Minds, Guiding Emotions and Driving Behavior
Stephen McGarvey
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eBook - ePub
Ignite a Shift
Engaging Minds, Guiding Emotions and Driving Behavior
Stephen McGarvey
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About This Book
How effective leaders use communication to spark transformation: "Terrific insights and tools on how to create behavioral shifts." —John Howlett, President, Bunzl Canada The ability to persuade and influence is the cornerstone of successfully navigating change management. In Ignite a Shift, internationally acclaimed speaker Stephen McGarvey explores the subtleties of effective communication and highlights the essential fact that thinking impacts emotions, which drive behavior. Ignite a Shift is the quintessential guide to communication, positive persuasion, and influencing with integrity. It reveals the proven techniques that the world's most effective leaders are using to motivate themselves and others to excel professionally and personally. "An insightful guide that supplies readers with practical tools to help influence, persuade, and motivate the people around them. The focus on the power of positivity, linguistics, and storytelling are crucial techniques whether you are leading a team, negotiating a contract, or simply attempting to better frame conversations in everyday life." —Michael Baghramian, Financial Advisor, Forbes List of America's Next Gen Advisors, 2019 & 2021
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Réussite personnelleChapter One
Are You on the Right Road?
“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” Alice asked.
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where—” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
“—so long as I get SOMEWHERE,” Alice added.
“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”
—LEWIS CARROLL, ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND
Let’s start our journey in the most logical place—at the very beginning—by exploring the human mind. In our daily lives, thoughts and various other cognitive processes impact the emotions we experience moment to moment, and these emotions ultimately drive our behaviors.
As we shift thinking, we can alter emotions which then drive a different set of behaviors. When we understand how this process works, we can create more congruent and purposeful behaviors both in ourselves and in others.
This knowledge is far from new. Throughout history there have been many examples of successful people who have understood and harnessed the power of thoughts and emotions to influence behavior. As we begin our journey together, take a moment to think of some of the amazing masterminds of generations past. Now, ask yourself, “Who was the greatest escape artist of all time?”
Did Harry Houdini come to mind?
Harry Houdini is considered by many to be the greatest magician and escape artist of his time, and although he began astounding audiences well over a hundred years ago, his name is still well-known today. Indeed, the word “Houdini” has come to mean “one who can get out of anything.” Like most words though, there’s more to the meaning, and like most iconic people, there’s more to the story. Even for Houdini, the success he achieved was far from instant or magical. He used specific processes to achieve his goals.
In their book, The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America’s First Superhero, William Kalush and Larry Sloman tell of a young boy full of ingenuity, confidence, and assertiveness, and with an interest in magic. Although a lack of funds initially prevented him from practicing magic beyond simple card and coin tricks, Harry got his hands on every book about magic that he could. His technical knowledge grew quickly, and over the course of his lifetime, he amassed what has become one of the greatest libraries of magic in existence today.
After a while, Harry’s friends grew tired of hearing his explanations about how tricks were done at the magic shows they attended together, and they challenged him to go onstage himself. Harry accepted their challenge and began performing as “Ehrich Weiss” (which was his real name) or “Eric the Great.”
Then, Harry found a book that changed his life: Memoirs of Robert-Houdin, Ambassador, Author and Conjurer, written by Himself. The French magician Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin was obsessed with reading about magic, just like Harry. His book described marvelous stunts and tricks beyond belief. Harry was captivated. “My interest in conjuring and magic and my enthusiasm for Robert-Houdin came into existence simultaneously,” Harry wrote. “From the moment that I began to study the art, he became my guide and hero… I accepted his writings as my text-book and my gospel… To my unsophisticated mind, his ‘Memoirs’ gave to the profession a dignity worth attaining at the cost of earnest, life-long effort.”1
With this devout admiration for Robert-Houdin, it’s clear where Harry got the inspiration for his stage name. According to Kalush and Sloman, a friend told Harry that “adding the letter ‘i’ to a person’s name in the French language means ‘like’ that person. And since “‘I asked nothing more of life than to become in my profession like Robert-Houdin,’ [Houdini wrote] the transformation was complete. Ehrich Weiss was now Harry Houdini.”2
The French magician gave Houdini more than just his name: Robert-Houdin’s theories about magic also had a significant impact on the young Harry. According to Robert-Houdin, “a magician is an actor playing the part of a man who has supernatural powers. Further, that even though fundamentally what a performer says during his performance is a ‘tissue of lies,’ he has to believe it himself for it to be successful.”3
With this philosophy in mind, Houdini honed his craft even further, studying acting and debate in New York in order to best persuade his audiences. While we think of Houdini mostly as an escape artist, he was much more. He was an actor, an observer of human behavior, a performer, and above all, an artist.
So now we ask: How did Houdini mystify the masses?
While Houdini’s performances appeared to be either magic or technical trickery, in reality he had a deep understanding of human psychology. Equipped with knowledge and experience, he knew which tools and techniques to use in specific situations.
Best known for escaping from any handcuffs, straitjacket, jail cell, or locked box—no matter how strong or technologically advanced—Houdini seemed like a real-life superhero. Neither the number of ropes or chains wrapped around him nor the box he was locked inside were of any consequence. Even when he was dangling upside down from a rope a hundred feet in the air or locked in a safe that was tossed into the ocean, Houdini always miraculously escaped.
Like Houdini, with the right knowledge, tools, and techniques, and with the skill to deliver your messages congruently, you can become a master of your craft—persuasion. By engaging minds, guiding emotions, and driving behavior, you’ll find you have the ability to ignite a shift.
As Robert-Houdin advised, the first step is to believe you can.
My brain is the key that sets me free.
—HARRY HOUDINI
SHIFTING FROM CURRENT STATE TO DESIRED STATE
In the 1970s, a crisis was unraveling on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia. The Amazona versicolor, a parrot found only on St. Lucia, was on the verge of extinction.4 In 1975, there were fewer than a hundred of these birds left in the wild and the parrot population was decimated even further by Hurricane Allen in 1980.
Aside from hurricanes, there were more pressing threats to the parrot’s survival. Like quail and duck in North America, the parrot was considered a culinary delicacy on St. Lucia. In addition to hunting them for food, islanders were also tracking, catching, and selling the birds into captivity. The parrot’s survival was further threatened by deforestation, as the island’s rainforests were cleared for agricultural use.
Alarmed by these declining numbers, the nation’s forestry department hired a newly graduated, twenty-one-year-old conservationist named Paul Butler to help them save the parrot. Butler had good ideas—including establishing a parrot sanctuary to be funded by special, licensed rain forest tours—yet the project seemed doomed from the start and the number of parrots continued to decline.
In addition to budgetary constraints (his budget only ever amounted to a few hundred dollars), Butler realized a major part of the problem was that the parrot was for the most part irrelevant to the people of St. Lucia and the island’s economy. And what’s worse, the citizens’ Current State meant they seemed to care very little for the parrot itself.
Were the people of St. Lucia capable of changing their ways to save the parrot? Of course! Yet no matter the logic or statistics Butler and his colleagues used, they failed to shift citizens’ behaviors or motivate them to change. Shifting the St. Lucians to the Desired State continued to elude Butler.
So, how did Paul Butler get the people of St. Lucia to raise money and pass protection laws for a bird that was insignificant to them? He changed their beliefs and perceptions. He transformed the parrot’s identity—and its fate—by renaming it the St. Lucia Parrot.
Beyond changing the parrot’s name, Butler and his colleagues hired a band to write and sing songs about the parrot, persuaded ministers to preach sermons about humans’ duty to protect animals, and distributed T-shirts printed with pictures of the parrot. He even enlisted a telephone company to create “St. Lucia Parrot” calling cards. Soon, the St. Lucia Parrot was on postage stamps and bumper stickers.
And it worked!
By 1979, the parrot had become the country’s national bird. The people of St. Lucia had adopted the parrot as one of their own. Butler had moved an entire nation from a Current State of thinking (“this bird has little value”) to a Desired State of thinking (“this bird is important”). He convinced St. Lucians that the parrot was “one of us.” Rather than being just another bird, it was their bird: a symbol of pride, a symbol of St. Lucia, and a species worth saving.5
People stopped hunting, trapping, and even eating the parrots. St. Lucians supported new laws that protected the birds and their habitat. And slowly but surely, the parrot’s numbers began increasing. Today, with an estimated 500 St. Lucia Parrots living on the island,6 the Amazona versicolor has been removed from the endangered species list and is now considered a vulnerable species.7
Paul Butler thus led an entire country from a Current State to a Desired State by instilling new beliefs and thoughts that dramatically changed citizens’ behaviors.
BEGIN WITH UNDERSTANDING
Before Butler could shift St. Lucia’s citizens to the Desired State of caring for the St. Lucia Parrot, he first had to understand their Current State. Reading a person’s Current State requires an understanding of what that person is thinking, feeling, and doing. But how easy is it to understand a person’s true thoughts and feelings?
You can uncover a person’s Current State by learning three things about them:
- Thoughts are beliefs, values, and criteria that are expressed through language. How does the person think? Is their language more visual, auditory, or kinesthetic? What mental strategies do they use to interpret and interact with the world around them?
- Feelings are the whole range of positive or negative emotional states. People can feel happy, sad, confident, hesitant, shy, eager, or any other emotion. All emotions, major or minor, impact a person’s Current State.
- Behaviors are actions. They can be small (like making eye contact) or large (like running on a treadmill). Behaviors that a person fails to exhi...