minds, metaphors and (ethical) manipulation
Posts tagged attention
Listening, attention and fortune-telling
Feb 7th
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What happens when you pay someone exquisite attention? It seems to me that the effects can be truly “magical”.
A few months ago, my partner had his running gait analysed by someone on an exhibition stand. The guy used a battery of gizmos, but central to his approach was attention – he worked with Steve for more than half an hour before “prescribing” some orthotic shoe inserts costing more than £200. Steve wore the inserts for several weeks, completely convinced they were helping his backache… until a chiropractor friend told him that the prescription was the wrong way round (that’s her most charitable interpretation).
Interestingly, Steve remains convinced that the guy at the exhibition was a genuine expert. “Something in my body must have changed,” he says.
That’s the power of giving someone exquisite, undivided attention; treating them as if they are the most important person in the world. They’ll trust you recommendations implicitly, even in the face of opposing evidence.
Fortune tellers also have this knack. They have to pay full attention for “cold reading” techniques to More >
Harnessing the power of your attention
Feb 6th
I wonder if you realise just how valuable your attention can be? As Nancy Kline puts it: “The quality of your attention determines the quality of other people’s thinking.”
If you’re an expert in a particular subject, it’s easy to believe that people pay you for your expertise, your knowledge, your advice. But in fact there’s more to it than that – they may well prefer to pay for your expert attention.
- Yesterday I visited an expert in gait and gait-correction, hoping to resolve a nagging running injury. She paid full attention to the shape and movement of my feet and watched closely as I walked and ran up and down the corridor. But she paid no attention to me – she didn’t introduce herself, asked only closed questions, and actively discouraged conversation. I ended up thinking: “Can I really trust this woman to make intelligent recommendations for my body? She knows nothing about me or my life.”
- At a Learning Technologies exhibition recently, I led a friend over to a particular company’s stand, knowing that one of their software products could be the solution to a problem he has in his small business. Within seconds we were pounced on by an expert More >
