Page 166 - The Voice of Authority

walk in here and wait 10 minutes before being greeted.
Then once we do help them locate what they need in the
store, they have to wait again at the checkout. Then they
wait again at the loading dock. The longer a customer stays
in our store, it’s like our cancer metastasizes rather than
goes into remission.”
If you were making a point to your colleagues about the
importance of living a balanced life, you might use a sports
metaphor. “Most of us would agree life has many dimen-
sions or tracks, all important to our overall well-being:
mental, physical, spiritual. But some of us are spending all
our time on one track and ignoring the rest, thinking we’re
going to find satisfaction and fulfillment along the way. It’s
not going to happen. That’s like entering a triathlon and
practicing only the bicycling for the three months prior to
the race.”
Author Malcolm Gladwell uses the metaphor of “conta-
gious disease” in his bestseller The Tipping Point to de-
scribe how ideas gradually “catch on” and spread in the
general population.
Metaphors and analogies, by their very selection, create
a powerful way of thinking about an issue and often evoke
a strong accompanying emotion that makes ideas memo-
rable.

Take a Point of View

Avoid hype as a form of persuasion. But remember that
the absence of hype doesn’t mean the absence of opinion.
Hired to help an investment company develop and shape
their message, I listened to four executive vice presidents
as they presented their segments of the “official” company
overview. The General Counsel presented his overview of
real estate investing and new regulatory laws relating to

154 The Voice of Authority