By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to help you communicate more visually and more persuasively. Reading time: 3:11.

Kiss my Atlas! The sarcastic words screamed throughout the scorned community of Yuba City, CA after Rand McNally (Atlas) erroneously ranked it the worst livable city in the United States. Yuba City residents were so infuriated they wore Kiss My Atlas T-shirts as they burned copies of the Atlas.

Their Kiss My Atlas T-shirts illustrated the power of the visual medium in the delivery of a meaningful and memorable message. Their Kiss My Atlas T-shirts also demonstrated what most effective leaders already know: be visual. Show more than tell.

Audiences see and feel a message long before they hear it.

Albert Mehrabian at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) conducted communications research, finding that 55 percent of information is received visually.

Only 8 percent of information is dependent on the words we use. And the remainder –37 percent- is communicated in the tone of voice we use to convey our message -the music behind the lyrics. So the most successful leaders orchestrate their message visually, nearly seven times more than verbally.

Consider the creative zeal graphic artists display in designing magazine covers.

George Steinbrenner, owner of the New York Yankees, dressed like Napoleon atop a horse for a cover photo of Sports Illustrated to mark his return to professional baseball in 1993. Continue reading →