Here are the five most important lessons we can learn from the world of acting about communications:
- Create an authentic connection with your audience by truly understanding who they are, what they want and where you fit in. Otherwise, your communication will be tone-deaf.
- Tell stories that resonate. You can find stories everywhere and use them in everything — emails, annual reports, videos, and even case studies. Especially case studies.
- Showcase the intriguing, relatable characters at the heart of those stories. Your employees, your customers, your public. You, too. You’re a character.
- Emotion is everything. Tap into its power to humanize yourself, create a connection and establish common ground.
- Show, don’t tell. Go beyond words with gesture, symbol, images and, especially, action.
Those lessons are captured in this post I wrote for Business Insider, the cheekily titled, What Hollywood Knows About Leadership That You Don’t. It’s basically the heart of the book in about 800 words. And it’s got a pretty lady accompanying it.
Of course, the book has lots of other lessons, like using humor, staying on message, listening, rehearsing, editing, the writer’s process and a bunch of other stuff. But if you want a quick primer, there it is.