This is why the best preachers don't preach

I get back home with the kids, they put away their school stuff and take off their shoes. 

Olivia rushes off to play but Alice hangs back. 

“Dad, are you doing your exercises today?”

“Yep, I was going to work out on the terrace right after I organise your dinner.”

“Can I do them with you? I know I’m small, but I want be in good shape. Just in case.”

“That’s alright. You’re only 8, you can’t do everything I do, but you can do something.”

Later I text my wife about the conversation, and say, “She takes after her mom.”

I follow that with a GIF of a woman rolling on the floor laughing.

A few minutes go by without a reply.

I start to worry I overdid it, Patricia might think I’m nagging her about exercising.  

But she responds with a laugh, so it’s all good. 

I’m tempted to say something else about it... but I hold off. 

Perhaps just this once I’ll try not taking a joke too far 😅

If you don’t want to preach… 

I never told my kid to exercise, but clearly my example was enough for her. If I tried convincing her she should, she’d probably ignore me - that seems to happen with almost everything else I tell her 😩

Tell anyone what they should do, and they’ll get defensive or ignore you. Preaching is boring, and it doesn’t even work. 

But if you show them what you did, you have a much better chance of moving them to action - - that’s why even preachers tell stories ;-)

…Put stories in your speech

With most communication, you’re trying to push your ideas, your way of doing things onto other people. That’s why you get pushback. 

But a story is a pull strategy: you’re not trying to tell anyone how to live their lives, you’re just showing them how you lived a little bit of yours. 

Storytelling can be very persuasive… unless you mess it up. 

Tell the story, say what you’ve learned or how you’ve changed, and that’s it: shut up! Resist the temptation for a call to action or any type of direction - if you told the story well, you won’t need that – and if you haven’t, it won’t work anyway. 

I’m all for exercising, but when it comes to persuasion…

Let your stories do the heavy lifting 🤘

-Francisco 

Whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

1. Getting clarity through your story to stand out from all the other coaches, speakers and entrepreneurs out there 

2. If you dream of speaking on the Red Dot, take this Scorecard and instantly discover how likely your idea is to be accepted by a TED-style organizing committee

3. If you (or your team) got any storytelling challenges, I’m sure there’s something we can do together ;-)

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