5.5 Engaging hearts and minds

The combination of being able to make sense of the bigger picture, simplify complex ideas, use our emotional intelligence and inspire people with our passion and curiosity means dyslexics are great at engaging hearts and minds.

We know how to entertain, inspire, motivate and influence people.

Hear how this skill has shaped pivotal parts of history, through dyslexic thinkers like Winston Churchill and John F Kennedy, plus Muhammad Ali. And how dyslexic thinkers are tapping into it today, including politician and member of the British Government, Peter Kyle; entrepreneur and changemaker Simon Griffiths and iconic changemaker, Erin Brockovich.

   Learning to engage hearts and minds

Timing: 17 minutes

Learn the techniques top dyslexic communicators use to engage hearts and minds and connect deeply with their audience.

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KATE GRIGGS

The final reason why dyslexics make powerful communicators is… dyslexics engage hearts and minds. The dyslexic thinking skills of communicating and connecting. The combination of being able to make sense of the bigger picture, simplify complex ideas, use our emotional intelligence, and inspire people with our passion and curiosity means we are great at engaging hearts and minds.

We know how to entertain, inspire, motivate, and influence people. It's these exact skills that dyslexic communicators have drawn on throughout time to shape pivotal parts of history.

Famously, Winston Churchill used his dyslexic communication skills to rally a nation on the brink of defeat in 1940. When France had fallen to Nazi Germany and the British were evacuated at Dunkirk, he delivered his famous speech, "We shall fight them on the beaches", saying, “We shall go on to the end. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender”.

What Winston Churchill recognised was the power of language to lead, to engage hearts and minds and to galvanise people to achieve what seemed unachievable. Churchill said, "The art of communication is the language of leadership".

Another dyslexic communicator who understood the power of language to lead was John F. Kennedy. At 43, he became America's youngest ever president. His dyslexic communication skills helped bring about a thaw in the Cold War and inspired a nation to go further than man had ever gone before by landing on the moon.

He said, "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard". Muhammad Ali, one of the greatest communicators of all time, knew exactly how to use his dyslexic thinking skills of connecting and communicating to engage hearts and minds, including his own.

His positive self-talk built a core of self-belief that was undefeatable, with lines like “if my mind can conceive it, if my heart can believe it, then I can achieve it”. When it came to communicating, he was as quick with his wit and words as he was with his gloves and his feet. And he used this dyslexic strength to defeat opponents even before he got into the ring.

Most people will know that before his unforgettable showdown with George Foreman at the Rumble in the Jungle, he said, "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. His hands can't hit what his eyes can't see". But what you might not know is Muhammad's ability to win the hearts and minds of the people in the areas where he fought had a dramatic impact on fights, just like this one. I'll let his wife Lonnie Ali explain.

LONNIE ALI

He did travel and they would choose spots that, you know, to bring him to people that would not ordinarily have the opportunity to see him fight. And they were in some of the poor areas of the world, you know, in places in Indonesia when he did the thriller in Manila, in Zaire. Of course, he did a lot of fights in Europe, in Germany, London. Um, but he always he always loved going into the surrounding cities areas of where he was camped for a fight, like in Africa when he was in Zaire.

In fact, that that that fight got delayed I think a month or six weeks because George got cut during training one day during sparring practice and, um, so they had to delay the fight. So that gave him more time. But Muhammad see that's what I'm saying that to him that was not an obstacle.

But most athletes go, "Oh my god, I sort of primed myself to be at my peak at this point, you know, and now I'm going to lose that edge and whatever, you know, I'm not going to be able to compete at my top level, you know, of performance". He never thought like that. He thought, "Oh, okay. This gives me more time to, you know, go out and meet the people".

So, he went out and it really created a little, you know, fan base. I shouldn't say little, it was huge. He sort of melded with the people, you know, he went out and he he'd visit and he'd go and, you know, become one with them.

So, by the time that fight came that night, that whole country was yelling for him. He had won them over. I mean, it was the sheer energy of the people who surrounded that ring that, you know, I don't know, that was as much a force as his boxing skills and his ability to, as you say, adapt as dyslexics can do and overcome obstacles.

Because George Foreman had flattened everybody who was in front of him before Muhammad, you know, but Muhammad realised that if he went a certain distance, George had never, nobody had lasted in the ring that long with George, but that energy that came from those people that he had taken the time to get to know, to become one with, and they, you know, they felt like Muhammad belonged to them, too.

He was fighting for them. That gave him more, um, energised him more I think and gave him more ability to overcome an opponent, you know, because he felt like he was not just fighting for himself it wasn't just for this title he was fighting for everybody around him.

KATE GRIGGS

Muhammad may have been the greatest heavyweight boxer of all time inside the ring but he was also a heavyweight campaigner outside the ring using his dyslexic thinking skills of connecting and communicating to fight discrimination and campaign for black rights.

Later he became an ambassador for peace too. And in those times, he wasn't just fighting for himself, he was fighting for everybody around him too and for a fairer society where everyone could be respected and valued for who they were.

Environmental activist, Erin Brockovich, is another great example of a brilliant dyslexic communicator and connector. Using her dyslexic communication skills, she won the hearts and minds of the people of Hinckley and persuaded them that if they got behind her, they could beat the corporate giant that was trying to silence them and went on to win a landmark lawsuit.

ERIN BROCKOVICH

So, what happened for me with these people and what I connected to, they were always being silenced. Nobody believed them. I did. And what we did for each other, I believed in them, and they believed in me. Was unbelievable. And what I learned in Hinckley was kind of my tools and my trade and what I was operating from. It was my instinct.

I learned that if I listened to my gut and I used those instincts, I would naturally logically work my way through an issue. And I learned that one plus one is not two. One plus one is a thousand or more. When I got one and I got one more and I got one more, we began to leverage ourselves in numbers. So, my leverage became the people. We helped each other.

KATE GRIGGS

It's important to remember that to begin with speaking up and speaking out, especially in front of an audience full of people, can be a dyslexic's worst nightmare. Taking us right back to that moment in the classroom when we were asked to read out loud. That was certainly the case for me.

Eight years ago, I stood on the TED stage at Brighton Dome. No notes, 18 minutes, a huge audience, to share my talk, the creative brilliance of dyslexia. I was terrified of public speaking. But I faced my fears because I wanted the world to see that dyslexic thinking was not just valuable, it was vital for the future.

Back then, Made By Dyslexia was just beginning. I had no idea that one talk would help spark a global movement. Today, eight years later, I'm so proud of what we've built together. A community that's changing perceptions, inspiring action, and teaching the world the brilliance of dyslexic thinking. So, it's good to remember that the moments that scare you most can become the ones that change everything.

Here's the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, Peter Kyle, to explain how he overcame his fear of public speaking with the help from his boss and mentor, Anita Roddick, who was also an amazing dyslexic communicator and went on to speak on behalf of the British government at summits and international gatherings all over the world.

PETER KYLE

I allowed her to push me very, very far out of my comfort zone. She came up to my desk one time and said, "Uh, how you doing?" And I said, "I'm terrified all the time". That wasn't the word I use. And she said, she said, "Why?" Because you're making me do all these speeches for you. The highest paid person in the company sending out the lowest paid and youngest person in the company to do speeches.

So, to Rotary Clubs, old people's homes, um, schools. I said, "You just made me do a school speech last week to Chichester High School for Girls". And I was wolf whistled. I said, "This is just the most awful thing in the world". I said, "I'm terrified all the time". I was like 19 at the time.

She said, "One day you are going to stand up in front of a group of people and the fear of standing up in front of people will be totally absent and all of that energy that you were wasting will be focused on looking at people, gauging their views on things, and you will just be able to interact directly with them and it'll be between you and them".

She says, "You'll thank me for it one day". And of course, you know, she died just before I was elected an MP, and I never got to thank her for it, but she always knew.

KATE GRIGGS

Like Peter and I, you might find that stepping outside your comfort zone means you'll discover you have a flair for communicating powerfully with people, and you'll never look back. Someone else who stepped outside their comfort zone to communicate powerfully was Simon Griffiths, founder of the groundbreaking toilet paper brand, Who Gives a Crap?

They're on a mission to provide access to clean water and toilets for everyone and donate 50% of their profits to nonprofit organizations that build toilets and improve sanitation in developing countries.

He spent 50 hours on the toilet live online to crowdfund his first 50,000 rolls of toilet paper. It was a viral phenomenon. Not only did the stunt raise awareness of the bigger humanitarian problem he was trying to fix, it built a loyal base of customers who believed in his mission and wanted to help solve it.

Both in the short term by helping to crowdfund the 50,000 needed for storage and production and in the long term to tackle the bigger mission of making sure everyone has access to clean sanitation and clean water. Here's Simon to explain more.

SIMON GRIFFITHS

We were trying to see if there are enough people out there that believed in what we were doing for us to spend what we thought would be the next 5 years of our life. It's ended up being, you know, a lot longer than that and will continue to be a lot longer than that.

Investing in in turning this into everything it can be. Um, and so we needed $50,000 to kind of get started and place our first production run. Um, I had about $700 in my bank account at that point in time. Uh, and probably the bigger problem was that if we placed that first production order, it would give us 50,000 rolls of toilet paper, which was enough to fill the shared house that I was living in from, you know, floor to ceiling with toilet paper the entire way through the house.

So, we kind of needed a way to get the capital, but also to find our first 10,000 customers. And this was just as crowdfunding was starting to become kind of a known household sort of concept. Um, and we said, this is the perfect idea to try and crowdfund and see if we can get people to kind of pre-purchase our first $50,000 worth of product.

And so, we went about to launch the crowdfunding campaign and Jay Hahn and I shot the video together. When we watched it back, we realised it was just super boring. Like, we were kind of, you know, crowdfunding probably the most boring product ever. It is toilet paper after all. And so, we said to ourselves, you know, we're going to have to do something different in order to get people's attention. And we ended up working with a marketing agency and one of the people that worked on that campaign, um, was called Lach Hall, who now runs, uh, Vacation, a sunscreen brand in the US. And he's a brilliant kind of viral thinker.

And as we were kind of getting ready to shoot the campaign, I think we were like three or four days out, he said, "You know what? I've got the idea that's going to really take this from where we are to 100, and you have to sit on a toilet on a live web feed until you've pre-sold the first $50,000 worth of product". And as soon as I heard it, I was like, "Yes, I'm all in". Like, this is the, you know, the perfect idea.

And after 50 of the most horrible, never ever to be repeated, hours of my life, we eventually hit that pre-sales campaign target and we're in business, which was a pretty amazing moment. I think we ended up doing about 2.5 million social media impressions and it was just as the share button had been added to Facebook.

And so, I remember opening Facebook and my whole feed was just a picture of me sitting on the toilet that my friends were kind of posting over and over again, which was totally terrifying. Um, but an amazing way to get started.

KATE GRIGGS

100% social media connects the world, giving us the power to build communities or tribes instantly. Simon’s stunt enabled him to engage the hearts and minds of prospective customers and instantly build a tribe of mini philanthropists who could help him make change happen.

But in today's oversaturated media world with messages coming at us constantly on every channel and device, being able to create communications that cut through the noise and truly resonate with your community or tribe is absolutely vital. You need a clear, compelling narrative that creates an emotional response, one that people want to share. Bold and empowering.

One great example of dyslexic thinking at play is here at Made By Dyslexia. Our charity is run by dyslexic thinkers. Our mission is to help the world understand and value dyslexic thinking and to empower it in every home, school, and workplace.

We started out bold with a risqué launch film, The Dyslexic Sperm Bank, that was unlike anything any dyslexia charity had created. It creatively conveyed the message that dyslexic thinking is a strength by featuring images of famous dyslexics. It was a powerful piece of storytelling that was watched by 70 million people in just three days and put the charity firmly on the map.

In just eight years, we've built our tribe to be the biggest global community of dyslexics and their allies who stand alongside us to create change and amplify everything we do. Using the power of our team, our partners, and our incredible community, we engage hearts and minds.

Here are three key takeaways from this section. One, dyslexics know how to communicate in a way that engages hearts and minds. Two, we know how to entertain, inspire, motivate, and influence people. And three, we understand the need to make bold disruptive communications, to get noticed and cut through the noise.

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