How to avoid that you audience’s minds go on autopilot and keep their attention …

Read more thoughts on the art of communicating week-daily at https://michaelgerharz.com/blog

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Our audiences have a lot of bad habits that affect us.

Although some might argue that they could even be good habits.

When they read a boring hotline, the scroll further habit kicks

in, or when they see a PowerPoint deck, the boring PowerPoint let's

check Instagram habit kicks in.

Or when they read a generic first paragraph of a blog post, the this

is irrelevant let's just skim over it habit kicks in, or maybe even the

let's check my phone and get lost in social media instead routine.

Habits are a big deal because they take over an audience's

brain more or less automatically.

Once someone experiences a trigger, for example, a boring headline or the agenda

slide of a PowerPoint presentation, the habit kicks in, automatically.

From that moment on the brain is on autopilot.

The most effective way to avoid this behavior is to avoid the trigger.

And that's why it matters to find trust in your own voice so that you

speak with a distinct voice that's unlike all the other voices out there.

And secondly, understand what matters to your audience, because if you speak

about what matters to your audience in your own distinctive voice, the just

like everything else trigger can't fire.

It's different.

There is no trigger that triggered a habit before.

And so, your audience's attention remains with you and you can work with it and

you can lead them to a meaningful place.