How to Coach Yourself and Others Beware of Manipulation | Page 170

59. Creating Curiosity If you can create curiosity you can draw people towards you, making them want to know more. Two principles to use are stimulation and partiality. Stimulation Curiosity is a state of arousal, so you need to provoke them and spark their interest. Stimulation is like lighting a fire. Once you have got it going, it keeps going and becomes all-consuming. Novelty Stimulation can come from the interest created when we encounter something new. Novelty makes us want to explore further to identify opportunities and threats. We also get the buzz of learning from playing with new things ('Oh, that's what it's for!'). So talk about new things. Scan the news (a word that itself promises novelty). Look for gadgets to discuss. Ask what new things they have found. Be interested, amazed and surprised. Losing out When others have something that we do not, we become curious, wanting to find out what it is. The same effect happens with knowledge and is the driving force behind gossip and social chatter. When we go away and return, an early question we have is 'What's been going on?' So talk about other people, what they have and what they may be getting. Talk about what others have done and what their plans are. Play up (as appropriate) scurrilous chatter and impressed amazement. Puzzles Problems, puzzles and mysteries provide interesting stimulation where we enjoy exploring and trying out things to see what works. The phrase 'I wonder if...' is a classic example of puzzle curiosity in action. So present them with puzzles and other unsolved problems. Ask their advice. Ask for their opinion on why things have happened. Get them involved in brainstorming solutions and trying things out. Words Use words that stimulate and create a desire to know more. These should evoke emotion either by showing your emotion and thereby triggering empathetic emotion, or by rational appeal to needs and objectives. Stimulating words to provoke curiosity include: •Unexpectedness: surprising, amazing •Novelty: new, different, changed •Different: odd, unusual, weird, strange •Scarcity: special, secret •Benefit: exciting, interesting, thrilling, helpful, useful Partiality Curiosity comes from partial knowledge which promises benefit. Telling them everything satisfies curiosity. To get them going, give them a taste, not the whole meal. 169