Amplify Your Influence

8Tie-Downs: The Master Influencer's Secret Weapon

“Assume nothing; communicate everything.”

—René Rodriguez

Because I have your attention doesn't mean I have influenced you yet. Influence happens through the tie-down.

As we've talked about, communication is complex. There are so many ways a message can get lost from one person to another—in an email, via social media, and even face-to-face. The tie-down is the most powerful way to ensure a message is not only received but also that it is understood exactly as intended.

The tie-down easily cuts through confusion and erroneous or negative frames and locks in the exact message. The tie-down explicitly outlines the precise value of the message in the context of what is important to the audience and their current needs. When you can accomplish all that, the magical outcome is influence.

Information Floods Our Brains

Every waking second our brains are flooded with stimuli. We're bombarded with everything from colors, textures, and depths of field to emails, advertisements, sounds, text messages, thoughts, and everything else in our sensory field. The brain must sift through all this and decide what requires attention and what is important.

Making Sense of It All

As we discussed earlier, the brain's first job is to monitor for potential threats. To understand how this relates to tie-downs, let's assume the brain doesn't perceive any potential threats. Once we're safe, the brain now tries to make sense not only of the world around ...