Replace Your Hook with Big Ideas
My favorite place to find common ground, these common points of connection that can open up doors, break through barriers and invite others into a conversation is your big ideas and the themes that interest you. This is the case whether I’m reading a book, listening to a podcast, or attending an event, or joining a program.
I often bristle when I hear the term ‘hook.’ I find it strange that we equate people to fish and feel comfortable introducing our hard won ideas to bait and reducing them to sensational statements. Sharing our big ideas is both far easier and far more difficult. It requires us to look inside and be authentic.
While sometimes I go with a surprising statement, something that either contrasts my audience’s current thinking or reinforces it but only more drastically, many times the stories I tell and the stories I choose to read or the events that capture my interest are not about surprise, they are about familiarity and uniqueness. Many points of common ground are based on a string of big ideas or themes.
These big ideas or themes can be simple like food, complex like empathy, intriguing like listening. Let me share a few combinations that have impacted me recently.
Food
Places of Rural Practice, Workshop Cooking and History. Cooking and history share many things in common. They both tell the story of colonialism and they both are dirty practices.
For someone else this invitation might have no resonance. But for me, someone who has been interested in the ideas of colonialism and its impact, this fascinated me. There are many angles of entry. For me food was interesting but the history was captivating. For you the food and travel to Brandenburg might be captivating and the history might make it intriguing.
Empathy
My current season of the podcast, This Beautiful Shot is Not an Accident I am looking at the topic of empathy and storytelling and its ability (or inability) to help bridge divides. I’ve reached out to three academics working on topics of bridging divides and each one of them has agreed to be interviewed and commented on being interested in the topic.
I think providing a new angle from which to discuss their work gave them new ways of thinking and expressing their ideas. I feel that people enjoy being given an opportunity to think and discuss ideas.
Listening
This week I interviewed communication designer and artist Leila Benbaouche about her current art project, which is about listening. She set up a sign in a neighborhood of Berlin that has a large Turkish population that said “hello, I’m listening to you, you can tell me what you want. I’m here now.”
In her practice, she did not speak, she only listened. Any communication from her side was nonverbal. One gentleman spent seven hours speaking with her. It is amazing what the combination of concepts of listening, two chairs and a carpet can open.
The Power of Combining Big Ideas
I think we go for a hook when we do not trust that our collision of concepts will be interesting or inviting enough for others to want to step forward and spend time in our story. But the more time I spend researching by looking at the stories, videos and ideas that capture my attention the more I see it is those stories that are simple and authentic that have the most resonance.
Getting to that simplicity and authenticity is not easy because we have many voices in our head that tell us, this is not enough, this is not interesting, people won’t care, what if nobody reads/watches/attends, what if people read/watch/attend.
The work of finding common ground often starts with self-compassion and self-reflection.
BIG IDEAS WORKSHOP
Join me for a free hour-long workshop where we will talk about the concepts that light us up. This is a workshop for sharing and listening, getting closer to yourself and delighting in the humanity and curiosity of others.
Sunday, October 17, 7-8pm Berlin; 6-7pm UK, 10-11am Pacific, 1-2pm Eastern