Quote-A-Day: Day 195

No matter how loud you say it, if it doesn't matter to people, they won't hear it. #QuoteADay #Day195 #edchat #edu

You can say things as often as you want, and as loudly as possible.

But, if people don’t care about something, no matter how loud you say it, it won’t make a difference.

They still won’t hear you.

Repetition and volume does nothing but annoy others if they aren’t interested.  If people can’t see why they should care about something, then saying the same thing differently won’t cause it to register.

So, what is a leader to do?  Shout louder?  Repeat the same thing again?  Something else?

Clearly, something else.

The best leaders understand that it isn’t how you say something that makes the difference.  In fact, it also isn’t always what you say.

Rather, it is whether you’ve built the capacity for stakeholders to see the importance of what you’re saying. 

Which means that before you say what you deem to be important, first collect data to determine whether others truly care about it.

If they do, great, then feel free to shout your thoughts to the world.

But, if not, before you even share the information, lay the groundwork for people to see why it is connected to them.  This can be done easily, simply by sharing thoughts on the topic or querying the community on what they think about the topic at hand.

Once you’ve started to make people aware of why the issue is important, half your work is done already.  The key though, is to never try and push through an idea that no one cares about.  Those ideas are doomed to fail no matter what.