Many years ago, my
art teacher showed me how to create
engagement by elimination.
Breathing down my
neck, he startled me by shouting:
“Stop trying to draw that horse, Andy! What you are sketching here is a
highly-strung Arabian thoroughbred, which will never stand still long enough
for you to get it down on paper.”
He had sidled up behind me, as I sat there in the little zoo behind the
circus tent, and proceeded to give me a lecture at the top of his voice, so that
all the other students and visitors could learn this lesson, too.
I cringed.
“Andy, what you need to do is to NOT
draw the horse. Don’t even look at it! Draw everything around it first and just
leave out the space where the horse will emerge!”
He was doing his zen thing again.
Draw without drawing.
See without seeing.
Uh oh!
But I complied, trying not to look at the horse as I sketched the
context around it until – swoosh!
It was as if the white space I had left out for the horse started
vibrating!
I touched the paper with my pen and within seconds it looked as if this
horse was going to gallop right out of my picture!
“That’s it, Andy! See! Don’t focus too single-mindedly on your
objective. Create the right context instead, and your desired object will
emerge! Now how’s that for an Aladdin’s lantern, eh?”
I later learned
that many leading artists applied the concept of elimination by creating white
space in their paintings to stimulate the observer’s imagination. By leaving
out key pieces of information in their works of art, they were able to get their
audience’s inquisitive mind to fill in the gaps. Creating a vacuum is
seductive, as our subconscious mind will invariably grapple with the fact that
something is missing. Our curiosity drives us to try and solve the riddle the
artist has presented.
Great art stimulates
the mind by creating cognitive tension.
Essentially, the
gap creates engagement.
As Matthew E. May
describes in his book In Pursuit Of Elegance, there are
three steps artists, designers, innovators, negotiators and business leaders
must use, in order to create an irresistible
sense of attraction to their product or solution. If you wish to create a
strong sense of engagement and commitment in the people you encounter, try
using the following steps:
First, arouse their
curiosity by demonstrating a moderate gap in their knowledge (without becoming
an obnoxious know-all). If they perceive the gap as being too large, it may seem
like an insurmountable problem, which their mind may refuse to take on. On the
other hand, if the gap is perceived as being too small, it may seem irrelevant
and again fail to create engagement. So the trick is to make the gap just the
right size, to generate optimum engagement.
As a second step,
you should provide your counterpart with just enough additional, relevant contextual
information to help them develop a solution to close the gap.
And finally, you
should give them enough time to really engage and grapple with the gap.
Essentially, you
want to allow them to draw their own conclusions.
This may sound
like a dangerous approach, as you might incur a loss of control, but if you
facilitate the process well, you will find the opposite to be true.
The great thing
about this process lies in the fact that our mind absolutely detests a vacuum. At
the same time, filling in the gaps is a satisfying process, which provides us
with a great sense of completion, accomplishment, and significance - feelings
we all deeply crave. By using this elegant process of engaging their creative
mind, you get the people you engage with to invest in the creation of the final
solution, for which they develop a strong sense of ownership.
In sales and
business negotiations, this creates opportunities to get clients to willingly
accept larger investments, at higher price-points, because they have already
created a bond with the solution at a deep level of their being.
So, next time you
find yourself working hard, trying to get people to engage and commit – don’t!
Instead, create an
elegant gap, and let the cognitive tension generate the desired engagement and
commitment for you!