The secret to making people pay attention

He picked up the newspaper and opened it to the first page.

“See? Houses burning.”

He flicked over: “War”

Another page: “Train derailed”, then “Celebrity scandal”

He carried on like that to about page fifteen, then stopped and looked at me.

“People buy newspapers because of basic human emotions like anger and sadness. That’s what holds attention. So when you play, you have to hook the listener with what you are feeling. What story is this telling? The moment there is no emotion, you have lost me.”

This was a flute lesson. I had just played a piece I had prepared - but instead of talking about details of the piece, my professor reached for the newspaper on his desk.

I’ve thought about that lesson a lot since, because the same thing happens at work.

Remember the last time you gave a project update? Chances are, people nodded, but they didn’t really pay attention. A couple of days later, very few people remember exactly what the status was, and what you did.

This doesn’t mean the meeting attendees have a bad attention span or a memory like a sieve. It actually all comes down to how you delivered your update. And it’s one of the reasons why good work often doesn’t translate into career progression.

Holding attention is a career skill
 

The decisions about your next promotion often get made in rooms you are not in. Someone has to speak on your behalf. And they have to remember what you did and achieved, even months after you gave your update.

So the real test of your project update is whether it survives being retold by someone else. That only happens if you held their attention in the room. What people don’t take in, they can’t pass on.

“She facilitated alignment between the platform and product teams” does not survive. Nobody can repeat that with any conviction, because nobody knows what it means.

“She ended an argument those two teams had been having for eighteen months” survives. You might be wondering why?

What makes people hold attention

After that flute lesson with the newspaper, I started researching how other people hold attention. The most helpful I found are the storytelling principles used by Johnny Harris, one of the most watched documentary makers on YouTube.

His work is worth learning from - because it’s been stress tested. On YouTube, in contrast to your meetings, losing your audience is measurable. People click away and you can see exactly when. To grow the channel, you have to make sure you know exactly how to capture attention.

I will share with you three principles that you can implement to make your meeting attendees pay attention and remember exactly what you achieved.

#1: Universal language: the facts that make people feel something

Johnny Harris uses ‘universal language’ - the things any human can connect to, the emotions behind the facts.

My professor was teaching the same idea. Find the basic feeling in the music, put it in the room, and people are hooked.

At work, most of us go the other way. We get rid of feelings as much as we can.

The vanilla version:

“I facilitated alignment between the platform and product teams.”

That could mean anything from a workshop to two years of work. So it means nothing, and it disappears.

The version with universal language:

“Platform and product had been repeating the same argument every sprint for eighteen months. That’s over now.”

Everyone listening has sat in that argument, and they feel it.

How to find it in your own work: 
Ask yourself, “what would have happened if I hadn’t done this?” Whatever comes up is usually the feeling you’re looking for, e.g. frustration, risk, relief.

#2: Forward motion: the order you say things in

For Johnny Harris, forward motion means each piece of information pushes you to the next one. The audience feels like they’re on a train that’s going somewhere.

In music you can hear when it’s missing. The notes are correct but you start feeling bored.

At work, this is almost entirely about the order you say things in.

Most updates are told in the order the work happened, June, July, August etc- that’s fine for you, because you went through it like this. But for everyone else, this is a story without destination, and they lose attention.

Try this order instead:

1. Where things stand right now

2. What had to be solved to get there

3. What happens next, and what you need

Same information - but now they have a reason to keep listening.

#3: Your angle: what you want the takeaway to be
 

Johnny Harris calls this your angle. Your particular lens on the subject, the thing that makes it your story rather than a story.

In music, it’s knowing what you actually want to say with the piece.

At work, it’s the sentence most people leave out: what you make of it.

There’s a good reason it gets left out. A view isn’t correct or incorrect yet, so offering one means you could be wrong. Staying with the facts feels safer.

The problem is that the feedback of “be more strategic” and “be more senior” often refers to exactly this.

It only takes one sentence at the end:

• “My read is...”

• “The risk I’d watch is...”

• “If it were my call, I’d...”

• “What I’d want us to decide before October is...”

For your project update:

“My read is we’ve got about a quarter before the old system becomes technical debt that we can’t ignore.”

That sentence tells the room you have been thinking, not just reporting. In a world where anyone can generate a summary in seconds, your judgement based on what you’ve actually watched happen is the valuable part.

Let’s now put all of the principles together.

“Platform and product had been repeating the same argument every sprint for eighteen months. That’s over now, and the integration work is moving again.

The reason for this? The two teams were measured on different things, so neither could agree without losing something. We changed how the work is counted, and the argument stopped.

Next is the migration, starting in October. My read is we’ve got about a quarter before the old system becomes debt we can’t ignore, so I’d want that date protected.”

Read that back and notice what someone could repeat about you afterwards. That’s the whole point.

Your action this week

Take the next project update you are giving. Write it down, and then look for the lines that sound vanilla, like “I facilitated alignment between the platform and product teams.”

Ask yourself the question: what would have happened if I hadn’t done this? Then rewrite your sentence to make your listener feel something. That’s what will make them remember you.