communication – Amplifying Ideas with Anaik

Anaik In Editorial

Audacious mental models

Color-coding empathy so we can use it more intentionally

(6 min read)

The world comes into our consciousness in the form of a map already drawn, a story already told, a hypothesis, a construction of our own making. We perceive only the sensations we are programmed to receive, and our awareness is further restricted by the fact that we recognize only those for which we have mental maps or categories.

— Roz and Ben Zander, The Art of Possibility

Transforming intangibles into tangibles

Empathic Colormapping as a developing theory, is an audacious attempt to put some symbolism around what exactly empathy in communication looks like.

And the minute we start to explore intangible territories dealing with abstractions like, for example, empathy — and especially empathy manifested through disembodied mediums — it becomes clear that we need some memorable frameworks if we’re going to form any kind of useful frame of reference or mental model.

Empathic colormapping is behind the metaphorical concepts of frequency, resonance and nuance.

A theory comprised of many mental models

Empathic colormapping (a term I coined in order to give this particular form of data visualized communication) is informed by a growing body of mental models and data derived from systems thinking, behavioral psychology, information design, and more.

But most of all this theory has evolved from observing next-level communicators and the ways they show up to engage with avidly engaged audiences.

Making your entire being hum in recognition

The theory encompasses the concept of frequency — sending out certain frequencies — as well as resonance and nuance — depicted in the fairy tale about Frequency that is resonating with more and more people.

We’re not even close to talking about nuance (all the intangible ways we might communicate complex ideas across multiple channels to diverse audiences).

But resonance — the way that someone in a completely separate geographical location to you, can sing or say or write things that make your entire being hum in recognition — that’s the audacious territory we’re going into.

When Frequency dances with Resonance and Nuance, magic happens

There are a great many case studies in development, that can begin to demonstrate and test the application of this theory, this evolving mental model. But in this article we’re going to touch on a basic overview of the nine primary elements of empathic communication.

Ten core human desires a touchpoint for empathy

The overview also touches on the “ten desires that drive us” theory expounded by social psychologist Hugh Mackay (mentioned in a previous Medium article, “Engaging the Grey Matter,” in this Frequency series) and proposes which core desires each element might spark and speak to.

As a quick refresher, those ten core desires (these are proposed core desires beyond our physiological needs) are the following:

The desire to be taken seriously
The desire for ‘my place’
The desire for something to believe in
The desire to connect
The desire to be useful
The desire to belong
The desire for more
The desire for control
The desire for something to happen
The desire for love

Highlighting these core desires might begin to explain why, when genuinely caring teachers, mentors, communicators bother to show up, we resonate so strongly on their frequencies.

Nine primary elements of empathic communication

It’s a new theory. An evolving mental model. It’s medium-gnostic. It’s a work in progress. This is the latest iteration, from the lab, tested on a few dozen peers and mentors and presented from the reader/viewer/listener’s perspective:

Empathic connection 01: Say something remarkable

Grab my attention with something worthy of remark.

Speaks to my core desire: for something to happen; for more

Remarkable: Purple

Empathic connection 02: Say something reliable

Earn my trust with your credibility markers and experience.

Speaks to my core desire: for something to believe in; to be taken seriously

Reliable: Brown

Empathic connection 03: Say something relatable

Capture my emotions with your personal origin story, lows and highs.

Speaks to my core desire: to connect

Relatable: Dark green

Empathic connection 04: Say something memorable

Hold my interest with your stories, anecdotes, analogies and metaphors.

Speaks to my core desire: to connect; to belong; for something to happen

Memorable: Light green

Empathic connection 05: Say something motivational

Engage me directly with your affirmations and personal pronouns.

Speaks to my core desire: to be taken seriously; for ‘my place’; for something to believe in; to connect

Motivational: Orange

Empathic connection 06: Say something meaningful

Transform my perspective with a synthesis of your findings.

Speaks to my core desire: for something to believe in

Meaningful: Yellow

Empathic connection 07: Say something proactive

Reward my investment (of time, attention, resource) with actionables.

Speaks to my core desire: for more; for control; to be useful

Proactive: Red

Empathic connection 08: Say something personable

Draw the circle bigger with inclusive language.

Speaks to my core desire: to belong; to connect; for love

Personable: Blue

Empathic connection 09: Say something playful

Introduce delight by using humor and novelty and multi-sensory input.

Speaks to my core desire: for something to happen

Playful: Pink

Combining empathic signals adds resonance

So this is a start to trying to break down a little bit behind this visualizing-empathy theory. I began developing this theory within big-idea nonfiction books, but since those are much longer-form reading, I’ve begun introducing the concepts through this lens of a TED talk.

Case study: Data viz of Shonda Rhimes’ 18 minute, 44 second TED talk.

“It’s all about the hum” case study: Data viz of Shonda Rhimes’ 18 minute, 44 second TED talk

Extrapolating the theory

The evolving theory involves the audacious question as to whether it was possible to build out a mental map that was truly medium-gnostic. Clearly, there would be special considerations for each platform. But when it comes to connecting — really connecting, engaging, learning to write or speak or sketch or audio-visually communicate words and ideas that resonate — might there be an overarching model for doing that effectively?

For creative allies

We’ll explore it more! Whether you’re a communicator or a reader, you might think about whether any of the signals —remarkable, reliable, relatable, memorable, motivational, meaningful, proactive, personable, playful — remind you of your favorite big-idea books, blogs, TED talks, events, workshops, or other informative and educational and entertaining types of communication.

I’d love to hear if this sparks anything in you, if it lights up your brain in any particular ways. And I can’t wait to share with you a visual case study of someone who’s been deeply embedded in working with resonant frequencies and colors that help to map light-up-your-brain communication.

(This is part nine in a twenty part introductory series exploring the intersection of frequency, resonance and nuance, first published on Medium.)

Anaik In Editorial

Engaging the grey matter

Think of light. Think of bright. Think what guides us through the night.

(3 min read)

Think of Light. Think of Bright. Think of Stairs in the Night.

— Dr Seuss, Oh, the Thinks You Can Think

When prolific author and social psychologist Hugh Mackay published “What Makes Us Tick? — The Ten Desires That Drive Us” (2013) he proposed that humans in general were driven by ten core fundamental desires (beyond the basics of physiological needs).
The ten desires that drive us

According Mackay’s explorations and research, the ten core desires that drive us are:

The desire to be taken seriously
The desire for ‘my place’
The desire for something to believe in
The desire to connect
The desire to be useful
The desire to belong
The desire for more
The desire for control
The desire for something to happen
The desire for love

Stripped of core desires

“Picture the audience naked” Remember that piece of advice?

Taking that list above, imagine your audience (or just the one reader or viewer in their home) stripped of those core desires.

Naked. Bereft.

This is what their inner narrative — a low hum of anxiety and angst back-dropping their lives — might sound like.

Nobody takes me seriously
I have no place
I have nothing to believe in
I’m disconnected
I feel useless
I’m haunted by un-belonging
There is no more for me
I feel powerless
I’m bored with life
I fear no one loves me

It’s an admittedly stark picture. In gamification terms, someone with all of these internal narratives, internal deficits, might have a very low health score indeed.

Most of us, thankfully, don’t suffer deficits on all fronts simultaneously. And (perhaps not just for me) it’s rather comforting to know that there is a universality to these secret fears we harbor from time to time.

Shiny exteriors notwithstanding

It’s also interesting, from a communication perspective, to evaluate the specific deficits our readers might be facing — no matter how shiny their exteriors.

We might do this by reflecting on our own lacks — different lacks at different times in our lives — and how acute those lacks were, no matter how shiny our own exteriors seemed at the time.

Connecting begins with empathy

Comparing Mackay’s research on our inner states, the way our grey matter operates, seems— like all psychology-of-persuasion and behavioral science — to be highly relevant to anyone who wishes to deeply engage with their audience.

Contemplating the last time we felt endeared to a communicator — what empathic signals they were sending to us, to speak to our longings for significance, identity, hope, belonging and compassion.

Connecting begins with caring enough to engage

Looking at Mackay’s list, and cross-referencing it with similar studies on behavioral psychology (this I’m still working on) seems to reveal why some communicators resonate with their audiences more than others.

It becomes clear that connection begins with caring enough to engage, with genuine empathy, those we seek to serve.

Secret sauce: empathy, caring, generosity

It seems like the way that communicators might speak to the unspoken longings of their audience is by keeping the desires that drive them front and center.

It seems like, upon closer examination of multiple communicators across diverse mediums, that there are recurring patterns of empathic and audience-focused connection.

Data-visualizing recurring patterns

I hope to use data visualization to unpack more specific case studies in the days to come, to test recurring patterns.

I’ve alluded to these recurring patterns throughout this introductory #Frequency series.

And it feels like every time I run a new piece of content through this mental model of recurring patterns, I learn something new.

(This is part eight in a twenty part introductory series exploring the intersection of frequency, resonance and nuance, first published on Medium.)

Anaik In Editorial

The magic of enthralling prose

The enchantment of resonance visualized

Sketch July 2018

(5 min read)

“The best stories and novels lead the reader not to an explanation, but to a place of wonder. How do we know that? Because the books and stories and poems that mean the most to us are the ones we want to read again, to re-experience and reconsider.”

— Peter Ruchi, A Muse and a Maze

The intangible qualities of our favorite books is something most of us don’t have to think much about. But if we’ve been lucky enough to experience what Ruchi describes as “a place of wonder,” how do we repeat the experience? How do we find that place of wonder again?

My best guess is that these kinds of books and stories — the ones that lead us to a place of wonder — come across our radars in tragically random fashion.

Algorithms determining our wonder

In some ways, the question of “the best stories and novels” is answered for us. It has to be. Tens of thousands of new books are published each year (is the number knowable?) Thanks to the democratization of publishing, those numbers are sure to grow exponentially.

And I’m not forgetting that many of us obtain our knowledge — discover a sense of wonder — almost exclusively on alternative channels (hello Google, Youtube, Wikipedia, Netflix and other existing, national, and still-in-development monolithic challengers).

Because there’s so much noise in the datasphere — all that noise on all those different channels — we get really good at:

blocking out most of the noise (cave-man-era interruption-marketing noises)
skimming through the noise (whether daily or weekly or on an as-needed basis) in search of frequencies meaningful to us personally
getting a bit “lucky dip” about the frequencies worthy of our time and attention

Because there’s so much to skim through, we have no choice but to rely on word-of-mouth and happenstance, returning to a few reliable sources, media outlets and cultural curators, but mostly leaving it up to algorithms to decide what we might be interested in on those multiple channels.

Explainers, elucidators, enchanters

Cultural curator Maria Popova has devoted a great deal of time and energy seeking out those kinds of “books and stories and poems that … we want to read again, to re-experience and reconsider.”

In one particular infographic published on Brainpickings.org, she created what she called a visual taxonomy to “dismantle the magic of enthralling prose” especially in regards to science writing, where she proposes “the stakes are even higher” because “the standards of truth and beauty are such that the precise and the poetic must converge in order to yield both comprehension and enchantment.”

Infographic credit: Maria Popova

Popova first defines in those outer rings, the important foundational requirements for an effective transference of knowledge:

Explainers make information clear and comprehensible. Good textbooks are the work of good explainers.

Elucidators go beyond explanation and into illumination — they transmute information into understanding …

Then she gets to the golden chalice, the glowing core, of the characteristics of certain kinds of writing:

Infographic fragment: Maria Popova

Enchanters do all of the above, but go beyond the realm of knowledge and into the realm of wisdom. They don’t work merely toward superior levels of understanding, but toward a wholly different order of meaning…

She expounds:

Enchanters bend the beam of illumination through a singular lens that furnishes something richer and greater than the sum total of knowledge — a kaleidoscopic view of previously hidden layers of reality, or an integration of previously fragmented insights and shards of awareness. The result is nothing less than a firmer grasp of one’s place in the universe, producing in turn a transcendent enlargement of being.

It seems that Popova is proposing that we — at least some of the time — would rather be enchanted than merely informed or even equipped.

My theory, from ten years of dedicated reading and seeking and searching, is that while we appreciate explanations and elucidations, while we’re delighted by novelty and moved by the emotional (in books and other media) a good many of us would swim in a heartbeat towards a frequency that spoke of “a transcendent enlargement of being.”

It lights up all the best parts of our brains.

So long as it’s from a trustworthy source.

We long to enter into a state of wonder, guided by an artist or innovator who has invested a great deal of emotional labor to create something worthy of our time.

But how do we even begin to “dismantle the magic of enthralling prose”?

How do we even begin to untangle the wildly subjective nature of our unique receptivity to different signals? And the difference between our own receptivity and that of our reader’s?

How do next-level communicators enhance their unique frequencies with the magic of resonance and nuance?

And why even try to unravel these things?

I have been asking some really big, audacious questions for the past few years as my personal literary pilgrimage evolved into something much bigger than myself.

Some of the research has led to observations similar to the above, that books that come across our radars can fulfill needs for explanation (good) and elucidation (great) or enchantment (good plus great, and much more).

And because my research has been around big idea nonfiction (not solely science writing) as well as reader-focused nonfiction — this is one way I’ve come to visualize the good and the great frequencies:

But the stakes are higher. It’s easier than ever to get lost in the noise.

So what of enchantment?

What of wonder?

How might we evolve our understanding of “the magic of enthralling prose”?

How might we harness even more resonance to connect with those we seek to serve?

Big questions that might take a lifetime to explore.

(This is the fourth in a twenty part introductory series exploring the intersection of frequency, resonance and nuance, first published on Medium.)