Linchpin_ Are You Indispensable_ - Seth Godin [94]
The attitude of the artist.
What Moby Says About Art
Moby, multiplatinum recording artist with a great haircut, had this to say about art:
Ideally, the market should accommodate art, art shouldn't accommodate the market . . . I
know, it sounds idealistic. I had been trying to make myself happy and make radio happy
and make the label happy and make the press happy . . . and it made me miserable.
I also don't really aspire to selling too many records. See, my friends who are writers sell
20,000 books and they're happy. My friends who are theater directors sell 5,000 tickets
during a run and they're happy. I like the idea of humble and reasonable metrics for
determining the success of a record. And I like the idea of respecting the sacred bond that
exists between musician and listener.
The irony of this statement is that this plan will probably lead to Moby's selling more
records, not fewer.
The Problem with the Script
When your boss gives you a script to read, or when you crib something from a how-to
book, it almost never works. That's because you're not telling the truth, you're not being
human, and you're not being transparent.
You might be parroting the words from that negotiation book or the public-speaking
training you went to, but every smart person you encounter knows that you're winging it
or putting us on.
Virtually all of us make our living engaging directly with other people. When the
interactions are genuine and transparent, they usually work. When they are artificial or
manipulative, they fail.
The linchpin is coming from a posture of generosity; she's there to give a gift. If that's
your intent, the words almost don't matter. What we'll perceive are your wishes, not the
script.
This is why telemarketing has such a ridiculously low conversion rate. Why corporate
blogs are so lame. Why frontline workers in the service business have such stress. We
can sense it when you read the script because we're so good at finding the honest signals.
Honest Signals in Everyday Life
Sandy Pentland is a researcher and professor at MIT. His latest work involves the ways
that humans figure out what is really happening around them. His new book, Honest
Signals, is named after his term for information that flows back and forth between people.
Research has shown that we can easily distinguish hundreds or even thousands of
microgestures. We know that people all over the world smile in similar ways that have
nothing to do with culture and everything to do with neural programming.
Talking is more than words. Communicating is more than a speech. It may represent what
the sender meant, but it might not.
Dialogue, the words on the page, the words we hear, by themselves have almost nothing
to do with what we believe, how we feel, or how we respond. We can hear an
announcement repeatedly and do nothing. The words aren't sufficient. On the other hand,
we can watch a movie with no sound and understand precisely what's happening. We can
read between the lines and understand exactly when a boss is lying to us and when
someone is disrespecting us, regardless of the words being used.
Your wife opens her anniversary present and of course you know how she feels, long
before she says a word. Her body language and breathing patterns and the way she looks
at you communicate everything.
Pop photographer Jill Greenberg took a series of photos of gorgeous little kids, but she
snapped the photos moments after she had ripped a lollipop out of their hands. I don't
need dialogue to know what's happening in the photo. The honest signals are apparent. I
can hear the wailing from a thousand miles away.
Pentland's research shows that speaking quickly after someone has addressed you has a
fundamentally different impact from leaving room between the words and sentences. He
has researched speed dating and other interactions and can now accurately predict the
outcomes of interactions