My relationship with communication shifted when I understood and absorbed what I call the first rule of design, which, in my view, holds everywhere:
Always put the most important thing first, and very, very big.
It's not very complicated, and yet everyone gets it wrong.
It's built on a simple idea: people don't care.
About your site, your business, your idea.
I once read this advice in an article on website design:
Imagine your visitors will spend seven seconds on your website, and that they're blind drunk.
So anything that isn't very, very clear, and written very, very big, is going to fall through the cracks.
Then I realized it applied everywhere else.
In articles, notes, posters, drawings, speeches, presentations, relationships...
In fact, that's one of the main goals of my professional coaching: helping people who are very good at what they do find those two sentences.
Make no mistake, the bulk of the work isn't there.
The real work is the years of construction it took to build the foundation of knowledge and craft they offer.
And yet, without those two sentences... all that work can go unnoticed.
And remain a dead letter.
That's the connection I made this morning with prophets.
Prophets are often accused of lying.
"He said one thing to this person, and the complete opposite to that one. He's not consistent, he's lying!"
But what scholars explain is that the prophet tells each person the truth they need to hear at that moment.
Not everyone is at the same stage of development. Not everyone has the same defenses.
The prophet's role is to move the person in front of him to the next level.
To do that, he uses the right words. Words that only work for that person. At that moment.
Just as a math teacher doesn't explain vectors the same way to a middle-school class as to a graduate seminar, the prophet adapts his speech to trigger action.
It's a problem that fascinates me.
Knowledge isn't enough. Truth isn't enough.
If you drop the full, naked truth on a passerby's head, you knock them out. And they'll resent you for it.
Even if that truth is good for them. Even if it could save their life.
Truth has no value in itself. It depends entirely on how it's delivered.
In that sense, we're all a bit like prophets.
We've all understood something that could help our neighbor.
But often, we don't know how to communicate it.
We're blinded by the idea that the truth speaks for itself.
That once laid bare, it will dazzle everyone and be unanimously embraced.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Everything plays out in the relationship, in the moment.
In the choice of the two sentences I'm going to say.
To help this particular person.
Here and now.