You might have an idea or message to share, but most people aren’t automatically ready to listen. They are busy, distracted, and thinking about their own priorities. For your message to land, you first need to shape their frame of mind. That means answering the four questions already running through their head: Why you? Why me? Why this? and Why now? When you address those questions upfront, you build credibility, relevance, and urgency – and your audience is far more likely to pay attention to your message.

https://swiy.co/go-attention-first

When you’re sharing an idea with somebody for the first time, how do you grab their attention so they listen to your message?

I’ve been doing a lot of work recently with teams and organisations about the skill of sense-making, which is one of the most important future-ready skills we all need.

Sense-making is about making sense (surprise!) in three areas:

* Intel: Making sense of the world around you and filtering what’s important and relevant to you, your team, your organisation, and your community.

* Insights: Using that intel to gain insights into what you need to change, adapt, or keep the same.

* Influence: Sharing those insights with others so they take action and make a difference.

Some teams want help in all three areas; others choose one or two. Most commonly, I’m asked to help with the third part: Influence.

Clients say something like this to me:

“Our leaders know what’s going on in the world. They know what action we need to take. But they need to be better at communicating that message.”

This could be in any context: standing on stage in front of a large group, speaking up in a team meeting, having a sales conversation with a prospect, or many other interactions.

In all those situations, you have a message to share and you want to get their attention quickly.

The most important thing to understand is they don’t care about you!

They have many other things competing for their attention, and they aren’t in the right frame of mind to listen to your message. If they are, that’s lucky, but you can’t rely on it.

So it’s your job to shift and create the right frame of mind for YOUR message.

Before your listener will be ready for your message, they are asking four questions in their head:

* Why you (authority)? Why should I listen to YOU?

* Why me (relevance)? Why does this matter to me?

* Why this (benefits)? Why is this idea worth my attention?

* Why now (urgency)? Why is this important to me right now?

Let’s look at the first (Why you), which is about your authority and credibility in delivering this message. Even for people who know you, you need to answer this question for THIS particular message.

To answer this, consider three E’s: education, expertise, and experience:

* Education is about your qualifications, which could include school, TAFE, university, your professional organisation, or professional development.

* Expertise refers to your areas of expertise.

* Experience is usually about numbers – for example, “You’ve been doing this for thirty years”, “I’ve worked with 100 clients in 20 countries”, “I’ve been on the board of six companies in this sector”.

Together, these three things answer the “Why you?” question in your listener’s mind.

The other three questions (Why me? Why this? Why now?) are just as important. I won’t go through them here, but download my worksheet that covers all four questions. Whenever you’re delivering a message, use this to answer those four framing questions for your listener, so they’re in the right frame of mind before you deliver the message.

And if you’d like to talk about how we can implement some of the skills of sense-making for you, your team, and your organisation, let’s have a chat!

Download the worksheet:

https://swiy.co/go-attention-first

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