“Good communicators understand that, even if they have their own agenda, they need to understand the viewpoints of the people they want to influence” (Jeff Kavanaugh, “Consulting Essentials”).
What if you knew that 95% of what you said and did will fall on fallow ground.
Imagine if you knew from the very start that what you said to key decision makers and influencers not only missed the mark, but missed by a wide mark.
Too often, lobbying amounts to getting a client in front of a key decision maker or influencer and speaking at them.
Little time is spent in advance is given to thinking what the viewpoint of their audience is.
Value Communication helps explain why this is unlikely to work.
Key civil servants and politicians tend to be pioneers. What drives this group in Europe tends to be consistent across countries and mainstream parties. Their values and the language they use is similar.
I recognise that some parties, like UKIP, are deep settler territory. Some countries have more settlers. France has a large settler population – around 30% – which explains quite a few things.
Too often campaigns are paid for by prospectors and sometimes settlers. They just go and speak with and target pioneers with language and an agenda that is absolutely alien to their audience. They don’t even take the time to adjust their prospector or settler language and agenda to resonate with the pioneer audience.
This can happen for three reasons. First, they are not aware of value communications. Second, they think the whole world, or at the very least, key decision makers and influencers, see things as they do. Third, they are not actually interested in the business of persuasion. Instead, they are modern-day zealots, who are pathologically focused on the mass conversion to their ideology.
Further reading