Say More: Lessons from Work, the White House, and the World

I've spent time with a lot of very busy people - business leaders, prominent journalists, and multiple presidents. Despite the unusually high demands on their schedules, something they all have in common is that they carve out time for reading, and for consuming information that may not seem to have anything to do with their jobs.

I've spent time with a lot of very busy people: business leaders, prominent journalists, multiple presidents. Despite the unusually high demands on their schedules, something they all have in common is that they carve out time for reading, and for consuming information that may not seem to have anything to do with their jobs. When President Obama released summer reading lists or his top book recommendations for the year, a chorus of 'yeah, right' could occasionally be heard from certain corners of the internet, where skeptics who doubted he had time to read contemporary literature liked to hang out. But President Obama read all those books, and many more. Taking time after a long day to sit down and read some Chinese science fiction, a novel by Jesmyn Ward, or even one of Ron Chernow's biographies was an escape, but it also oxygenated Obama's brain. There may not have been a specific moment when he consciously connected the dots between a novel he read two years earlier and the issue at hand, but moving beyond your own experience is an important part of developing the kind of perspective that helps with decision-making. It's also how the most effective people connect. Developing broad general knowledge gives you the flexibility to adapt to your audience on the fly, as well as the ability to naturally relate to diverse groups. And besides, have you ever recommended a book to someone who ended up really loving it? It's a unique way of understanding someone better, and that kind of communication goes both ways.

If you’re leading a room, you need to be aware that your effectiveness with your audience has much in common with how an actor is viewed. If that actor forgets his lines or freezes onstage, or even if he just stumbles, the audience will recognize that he’s a performer going through the motions and some of the magic will be lost. They might get distracted. They might even sneak a peek at their phones. If you “break character,” it sends a message to the audience that what you are delivering is not authentic. And if you’re not an actor onstage, but someone whose authority might be questioned or complicated-if you’re giving a sales pitch or conducting a press briefing, say-they’ll feel you’re just pretending, and they’ll think you’re trying to trick them.

Developing broad general knowledge gives you the flexibility to adapt to your audience on the fly, as well as the ability to naturally relate to diverse groups.

you may be trying to sell something that is unsellable, and no amount of spin will convince your shrewd audience that they should seriously consider what you have to say.

There was also a large crew of people who tried to nickname the previously mentioned Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework "BIF". If you would like your audience to start making fun of a big, serious, and important piece of legislation, start calling it BIF.

Neuroscience of Change, says that she tries to foreground