The Science & Art of (Ethical?) Persuasion

We are all enjoying reading “YES! 50 Secrets from the Science of Persuasion” by leading academics Goldstein and Cialdini with Martin making it pacy and very readable. Even Bea (8) snaffled it to swot up, priding herself on the ability to convince her parents of just about anything.

What I’m liking about the book, other than the credibility of its empirically based contents, is its ethics.

Reviews say “earnest and honest… Jedi-like… perfectly pitched for smart business people…charmingly practical.”

I’ll be quoting from it often.

“Constructive tools that help build authentic [there's that word again] relationships with others, highlight the genuine strengths of one’s message, initiative or product, and ultimately create outcomes that are in the best interests of all parties.

“When these tools are instead used unethically as weapons, however – for example, by dishonestly or artificially importing the principles of social influence into situations in which they don’t naturally exist – the short-term gains will almost invariably be followed by long-term losses… the long-term reputational consequences are dire when such dishonesty is eventually discovered.”

In a post-Cluetrain world where the blogosphere and online consumer ’sharing’ can bring down the biggest or the smallest bullshit artistes, the time has never been more ripe for telling it straight – and well.

The Science of Persuasion is a great read to help you do so. I am not surprised it made it into Britain’s most prestigious award for science writing from the Royal Society.

Let’s hope Bea wields her new-found knowledge with kindness and wisdom! Let’s hope we all do… with carrots not sticks.

COMPETITION FOR NODESTONE READERS

Examples please people… let’s start adding up the real-life situations of positive persuasion, and the costs of unethical propaganda… A copy of Naked Conversations by Scoble and Israel or Yes! for the best entries (with links to case studies ideally) in the comments section.

Marketing With Heart

31 January, 2009
10:00 am	to	2:00 pm

  Sarah James of Art of Becoming is running another Marketing with Heart workshop on January 31st at the Cornerstone Community Centre in Hove.

I was lucky to attend the first one and I really recommend this workshop and follow-up session with Sarah.

It ain’t your standard marketing workshop. Sarah uses a variety of techniques to get deeply into what you want to communicate about what you do and then leads exercises that help explore what is stopping you getting the word out.   We all want to be communicating honestly and authentically about who we are and what we do, and this workshop explores that in a surprising, supportive and fun way.   And the followup one-on-one is great for cementing that new direction or going deeper.

Sarah says:

In the Workshop:

We will explore a different way of looking at marketing that offers a bigger picture of where your business is, and where you would like it to be.  We’ll use a systemic perspective and open up the idea of business communication as a flow of energy through your organisation.  Approaching your business at a deeper level helps you check that your marketing messages are coming from the heart and are targeting the right people in the right way.  This is a creative session with a small group in a friendly, supportive environment.

In the One-to-One:

Bring all your ideas from the workshop and use my professional experience to help you tailor your perfect marketing strategy.  Channel your creative energy through your practical business plans.

I loved it, and I’m not one for marketing workshops. There was depth and authenticity in this approach that worked for me. You’ll see some of the results of my insight here on Nodestone in the next few months.

More info from Marketing with Heart

Everyone’s Blogging

These slides from the training session for the Brighton & Hove Chamber of Commerce last week. Let me know if you want us to come to your event or run a bespoke event or Masterclass.

More details on our Social Media for Good course soon (looks like next date will be Oct 3 in Brighton).

Covers a bit of an introduction to social media and blogging, plus some questions to get you thinking about your own context, opportunities and challenges.

Some good thinking in the room and animated conversations. Quite a few organisations ready to get blogging and exploring integrated social media in more depth.

A few of you made pledges are you walked out the door about your goals and intentions, so let me know how you get on!
Thanks to all for your warm feedback and to those who helped make it a positive event, especially Lorraine Bell (BCP), Tania “Radiance” Fullerton (Brighton Steiner School) and Fay McDonald.

Orwell on sincerity

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity

When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.

- George Orwell

…

Added 9 July

This post has sparked some intriguing debate. Makes me want to suggest people read Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson. And of course Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones and Manjushvara’s Wolf at the Door.

Any other recommendations?

Social Media – A Learning Journey

By Michael Leunig

Suggestion 1: Think of your blog and other social media in this way.

Suggestion 2: Always relate things back to the real world, meeting yourself and others face to face.

Authenticity Online at Shine this Sunday

Some tickets are still available for the Shine Unconference for social entrepreneurs this weekend in London. Having just heard I will be running a session on Sunday, seems a good idea to let people know about it.

Do come in and contribute to the discussion if you are there, take home some new insights, find a path on which to travel. Rather an expansive and wonderful topic. Many of us touch on these core issues and opportunities – or are hit over the head with them. Now here is a chance to go deeper.

Tickets are still available and start from just £20 per day. There is much to be learnt and passionate, happening people to meet.

Authenticity in the New Online World

* Who: Libby Davy
* When: 2:00pm – 3:00pm SUNDAY
* Where: Classroom

Description

How to be yourself and make your social media become a path for learning and becoming – for personal, team and enterprise expression.

To show your facebook page or not? How to be real without looking like a prat.

How to use your blog as a magnificant learning tool, that helps you find and travel your path, plus connects you with likeminded people along the way.

Authenticity Quotes – which resonate with you?

Truth, authenticity, integrity. Big stuff. But where would we be without it? Which one’s resonate most with you? Any more to add?

“No one man can, for any considerable time, wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which is the true one.”
- Hawthorne

“Our view of reality is like a chart of the sea – the truer it is, the less likely we will become lost.”
- Al Watts

“If any man seeks for greatness, let him forget greatness and ask for truth, and he will find both.”
- Horace Mann

“Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but usually manages to pick himself up, walk over or around it, and carry on.”
- Winston Churchill

“Honesty and transparency make you vulnerable. Be honest and transparent anyway.”
- Mother Theresa

“No legacy is so rich as honesty.”
- Shakespeare

“If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything.”
- Mark Twain

“The men who succeed best at public life are those who take the risk of standing by their own convictions.
- James A. Garfield

“To find yourself, think for yourself.”
- Socrates

“How desperately difficult it is to be honest with oneself. It is much easier to be honest with other people.”
- Edward F. Benson

“There is no wisdom save in truth.”
- Martin Luther

“What is true is invisible to the eye. It is only with the heart that one can see clearly.”
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

“Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.”
- Albert Schweitzer

“Only in quiet waters things mirror themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world.”
- Everett W. Lord

“Nothing more completely baffles one who is full of tricks and duplicity than straightforward and simple integrity in another.”
- Colton

“The sincere alone can recognize sincerity.”
- Carlyle

“Just be what you are and speak from your guts and heart – it’s all a man has.”
- Hubert Humphrey

“To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”
- William Shakespeare in Hamlet

“How shall we learn to know ourselves? By reflection? Never; but only through action. Strive to do thy duty; then shalt thou know what is in thee.”
- Goethe

“All worthwhile men have good thoughts, good ideas and good intentions – but precious few of them ever translate those into action.”
- John Hancock Field

“Best keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you see the world.” – George Bernard Shaw

“Like an ability or a muscle, hearing your inner wisdom is strengthened by doing it.”
- Robbie Glass

From http://www.integro-inc.com/authenticity_quotes.htm

RSA (Renewal, Sharing, Advancement)

Gra and I went up to the Royal Society for the Arts recently to hear Charlie Leadbeater talk about his new book We Think. We were also keen to find out more about the RSA as they have approached me to become a Fellow.

Mum bought a copy of We Think while she was visiting… keen to get her head around the space we are in, and perfect for her ilk, among others. There are many major ommissions and doesn’t come much from deep, personal experience (Charlie doesn’t blog or facebook), but is a fine point of reference for many at this point in time. I am recommending it widely.

Highlights of the evening were…

Blogging as Gardening

Talking with Charlie and Tessy Britton afterwards about blogging. Our message that “the first audience for your blog is you” (blogging as a reflective, learning tool or private/public path on which to travel) got Charlie mentioning “zero-audience blogging” and gardening as a metaphor for why and how some people blog, ie. the cultivation of your blog is a meditative pleasure in itself, towards the cultivation (and harvesting?) of the self… plus others can stroll by and enjoy it too.

Mary Harrington (aka Seb Mary) from School of Everything has talked about this in the past and present too. Interestingly, her garden is out back and not visible to others except when invited in. Mine’s a bit like that too. Maybe I could do with a bit of improvement out front (aka let’s finish the upgrade!

What’s Happening in The RSA

Looking around the crowd afterwards, I spotted Felix Velarde from Underwired. (To be honest, I was just looking for a model to do a nice juxtaposition shot and vox pop, note: interesting facial hair and piercings). He had many positive things to say about the benefits of RSA membership, as did Tessy, who we spent an expansive evening with.

The RSA, it turns out, are making special efforts to attract new media folk, new paradigm folk to their hallowed halls. When I first got their letter, I thought it was a mass marketing effort. Turns out they are serious about engaging Fellows (erk, the feminist in me gasps) in opening up debate and moving forward a very progressive, authentic, connected vision.

There is much emphasis on education which resonates deeply Glad to see Roland Meighan and friends trying to keep them on track as outspoken agitators working from within… Ian Cunningham is also a Fellow.

They are about “removing the barriers to social progress” and state their recently revised manifesto challenges as:

• Encouraging Enterprise
• Moving Towards a Zero-Waste Society
• Developing a Capable Population
• Fostering Resilient Communities
• Advancing Global Citizenship

If we were courting each other, I would have to say the feelings are strongly reciprocal and we will be getting hitched, if for no other reason that to follow Richard Sennett’s call in The Craftsman to cultivate our skills and higher self in the company of like-minded people.

I used to think the UK was impossibly BIG. Now the multiple connections between RSA, School of Everything, Richard Birkin (Biff), Ian Cunningham, Richard Sennett, Michael Fielding, Tessy, Roland, John Grant, Andy Gibson, Seb Mary, MA in Person Centred Education, blogging, progressive education, and Everything are so rich in the potential patterns they create – it’s almost fractal in it’s beauty. Feeling very connected and safe within the spaces opening up and the paths between them. In permaculture terms, there is edge, there is diversity, the soil is rich, the system is in harmony.

Spring has sprung.

Free School Joins Dots

Really enjoyed (as you can see) experiencing Free School this week. Congratulations to Seb Mary and all from School of Everything for making it happen. Some fine folk took a short course in Advanced Raving & Merriment to be sure. We also learnt and taught some very tangible things about…

• Public relations and marketing (thanks Heleana)
• Social media, authenticity and learning
• Taking egalitarian education to the streets.. cafes.. anywhere, anytime.

Find out more here.

Better still, try getting along to the next one.

I Am An Activist – Tribute to Anita Roddick

I am a big fan and sometimes apologist for Anita Roddick. I am also an activist.

I have grown up with Anita’s strong voice and heart, strong actions, in my life. She is like an inspiring, very sympatico Aunty, always there, always putting the fire in my belly.

The day she died was a day I remember well. It was a shock that hit me in the guts. I had no idea Anita was even sick. I happened to be joining with Sarah James, a fellow activist, to begin a new initiative. We dedicated our meeting to her memory.

I dedicate large chunks of what I know and am to Anita.

I only met her once. She came to talk at a Business School I was teaching at in Australia. I hate allocated seating and, like my young daughter, usually sit right at the front if I can. I know it’s rude, I know it’s not fair. But as a kid, the older I got, the more I knew what I wanted to know. The more passionate I was about finding out about it. If (and I mean if) I went to class, I sat at the front. I worked hard. I listened.

So when Anita came to talk, I sat right next to her… where no-one else dared sit.

I wanted to see her hands. That’s what really mattered at the time. I thought I could see inside her soul and find out if she was true, and real and worthy of my sometimes teenage adoration, if I could only see her hands. At the risk of sounding like a tosser, I have to say – they were beautiful. They were the hands of a worker, but still somewhat refined. They had balance. I’m not saying she was perfect, or a saint by any means. She made tough decisions, was perceived to be in control of stuff that was way outside her control, but she did her best. She got under people’s skin, one way or another. The way she fanned her own fire sparked countless 1000s more to ignite. She made things happen. Good things.

When she died, I realised I would not be working with her – as I had planned . We moved to Brighton in 2005, birthplace of Body Shop store No. 1 and close to Anita.’s new base and mother. A place for activists. When friends asked “why are you moving back to the UK, to Brighton. What will you do?” I said casually, “Oh, I think I’m going to be working with Anita Roddick. Now she’s out of The Body Shop, I think she’ld be great fun to work with. She’s got doing loads of good stuff and someone’s bound to introduce us to each other. It’s destiny.” I was only partly tongue in cheek. Stranger things have happened, and she did live just down the road – and we do have friends in common.

Alas, it was not to be. In one sense. In another, we are all working together – towards similar goals, wherever we are. Social justice, sustainability of life on earth, human and animal rights. The work needs doing, so we unite to do it. With or without Anita, her spiritual forebears or descendants. We are one point in the continuum, all linked going through time and space. We are not alone. There is bamboo.

Here are some tributes given during the I Am An Activist event on 23 October 2007, when “thousands of thinkers, artists, activists, and other heroic saboteurs of the status quo gathered to celebrate the remarkable life and legacy of Dame Anita Roddick.”

“[Anita was] the human equivalent of a flag, a claxon, a torch, a flare, an alarm clock. … Uncompromising, inspiring and visionary, an active world citizen, but still funny, sexy, and overflowing.”

Alan Rickman, actor and activist

“Beethoven said, ‘If it comes from the heart, it goes to the heart.’ That quote speaks volumes about my mum. I believe it is the reason my mum touched so many people. Whether you agreed with her or not, or whether you liked her or not, the one thing that is really non-negotiable, the one thing that is not up for discussion, is that all she did as a parent or as an activist, it really all did come from the heart.”

Justine Roddick

My mother treated life like each day was her last, and this gave her the permission for incredible bravery. … Tonight I am personally pledging that I Am An Activist, and within that, I also will have a lot of fun, and I also will be silly. I will not be polite and I will never, ever, ask for permission.

Sam Roddick

“Many have the resources Anita had, but few have the moral fortitude to use those resources to achieve the only truly important goal of social and environmental sustainability.”

Herman Wallace, member of the Angola 3 Louisiana State Penitentiary, Angola

“She was, in my opinion, one of the world’s greatest communicators.”

Adrian Bellamy, Chairman of The Body Shop

“Watch and listen to figures from Amnesty International, Greenpeace, Reprieve, The Body Shop, as well as family and close friends, as they laugh and cry and ultimately take to the streets to launch a new movement in activism inspired by the one and only Anita Roddick.”

DVD of the I Am An Activist event available here at, what was, Anita’s blog.

Reposted from the community blog at Authentic Blogging’s online network. All activists welcome to join.

I think, you think, we create (better) together

“We’re here to make a positive difference through blogging – and other social media – for ourselves, for our organisations, for others.”

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