How to Make Them Lean In

(cursor clicks) (bright music) Headspace Studios. (gentle music) Hi, everyone. I'm Matt Abrahams, your guest host for the week. Welcome back to "Radio Headspace." Today, we're talking about engagement. Too often people think engagement means being flashy, funny, or performing. But real engagement comes from connection, from making your audience feel like you're speaking to them, not at them. We'll explore why people lose attention, how energy and presence make a difference, and what small shifts, like telling a story, asking a question, changing your tone of voice, can reignite curiosity. I believe attention is the most precious commodity we have in the world today. Our attention is constantly being pulled in different directions. It's hard to get attention, but what's even harder is engagement. It is critical to get engagement because when you do, you then truly can form the connection that you want. I'm often brought in to coach senior leaders on how to be more engaging in their communication. We've all been part of those all-hands meetings or planning meetings that just drone on and on. They're full of lists and facts and spreadsheets. And while that information is essential and critical, it can be delivered better. There's one situation I was brought into where I was working with a leader who was trying to unveil a new strategy, and his strategy had 14 pillars to it. Let me tell you, that was the first warning sign. What we did is we got rid of the 14 pillars. We found that they aligned nicely with three key values the company had, and with each value we made sure to have some kind of engaging point to it. In one case, he told a story that reflected the value. In another case, he used an analogy that we could all relate to. And then finally, what he did was he had a participative activity where he asked us each to think about something and how that could be reflected in what this particular strategic idea was about. We took a very boring, very dry, hard to understand communication, and made it interesting and engaging. When it comes to engagement, there are four primary ways that you can do it. One is by getting people physically engaged. Where people's bodies go, their brains will follow. So tactics and techniques might include taking a poll, having people write something down, sharing a video that they watch, turning to somebody and having a conversation. When you're virtual, it could be using the chat, the reaction buttons, maybe putting people in breakout rooms. Mental engagement comes in a different variety. We have lots of research from neuroscience that says when you ask somebody a question, their brain lights up and activates in a way that it doesn't when you just tell them things. So can you ask a question even if you don't want a response? The third is linguistic language. If you can refer to people by name or use inclusive...