Generating desire for something different is the most difficult aspect of leadership, because leaders usually have only seconds to make the case for a new idea and get the audience to begin exploring a different, perhaps radically different, future. The audience will be making their initial decision based on quick, intuitive, feeling-based processes. They will make their decision long before leaders can complete a set of rational arguments in favor of whatever is being proposed.
How can leaders win their audiences over to their way of thinking and get buy-in for a new future even before they have had a chance to present their arguments? It’s a matter of quickly stimulating desire for change. The following methods can work most easily with a difficult audience:
First, direct experience of the change successfully operating in an analogous context is one obvious way of generating desire for change. If it works there, then why not here? Thus in 1993, J. Allard didn’t just tell people what was emerging on the Web. He set up demonstration computers on a folding table in the halls of Microsoft and dragged people there to see the Web in use, to touch it, to feel it.
Often, leaders will not be in a position to confront their audience with the actual experience, so the next best thing is often a story about such an experience. A simple story about an example showing where the change is already happening can connect with an audience at an emotional level and generate a new story in their own minds that leads to action.
Another process by which leaders seek to generate enthusiasm for change is to externalize the forces impeding the change. Thus, Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg address in November 1863 declared “a new birth of freedom” for the nation. The “old Union” contained and attempted to retain slavery. The “new Union” would fulfill the promise of liberty. Lincoln here split the ongoing story of the United States into two, the “old Union” and the “new Union.” Here the underlying problem is objectified as an alien protagonist, who can be fought against as a kind of enemy.
Another method involves using a metaphor. The right metaphor loosens the blindfolds that have been covering the listeners’ eyes. Where the metaphor points to a relevant story, it may be able to stimulate desire for a course of action. For example, in 1999, the New York Times reported on the Sonagachi red-light district in India, where Indian prostitutes, who depended on their professions for their families’ livelihood and who needed to persuade their madams to insist on their clients’ using condoms, said, “If you want to enjoy the fruits of the tree, you must keep the tree healthy.”
A common memory story is one that draws on the audience’s shared recall of some phenomenon. It’s about something that all or most listeners would be familiar with. If the speaker can tell a story that reminds all listeners of a time when they had positive feelings toward the course of action proposed, or something analogous to it, this may be enough to stimulate positive emotion toward the course of action offered.