Are you an ‘attention speaker’?

Oh dear, I have noticed a trend. And it is something I think stimulated by a combination of basic human needs and the tools of social media.

There is a place in this world for people to stand up and speak. Whilst it isn’t everyone’s bag, we all need them. And we thank them. We rely upon all sorts of people making the case for a cause, leading new behaviours, calling for change, or simply entertaining us. We need people to speak on their specialisms, share their expertise, and/or explain their missions, ideas, or campaigns.

I am one of them. And I feel great privilege when asked, and aim to use the time and opportunity, so it benefits as many people as possible. Everyone’s motive should be altruistic, inspiring, enabling, and/or philanthropic. It most often is. The trouble is, sometimes, when I listen to people up there on the podium, or read their posts, it isn’t. Far from it.

This blog isn’t a criticism of any of that. It is a warning. Hopefully it offers some form of helpful guidance, indeed a checklist, to avoid the traps that have opened up.

It isn’t anyone’s fault. In these days of online dialogues and blurred boundaries between public, personal, and professional selves in the virtual, online, and physical worlds, we are lured into these attention-needing behaviours. We have become our own agent-, director-, and editor-free broadcasters. And this environment tempts us to chase more and more quantifiable gratification in the form of likes, followers, comments, and/or plaudits. We want to be liked, to be in like-minded company, and to be recognised in ever increasing quantities.

This contemporary pursuit is all too seductive, addictive even. Many of us are ostensibly needing regular affirmations, comments, re-shares, and other overt measures of engagement. We have become thirsty for all of that. It’s like pouring petrol on a barbeque. So much so, some platforms are actively hiding such data so not to add fuel to our fires.

The learned behaviour is our actions are being constructed, manipulated even, to stimulate all this glorious response. Content is more about the speaker than the message. The broadcaster is super interested and focused upon who is agreeing, listening, or noticing, and who is disagreeing, blocking, or even not engaging. And all that creates its own whirlwind of content, as the discussion plays out these noisy dynamics on social media in particular. All in the vain attempt for Warhol’s prophetic fifteen minutes of world-fame (more like fifteen hours of fame these days thanks to the world wide web). Personally, I take small hope and comfort in Banksy’s take on the matter “in the future everyone will want to be anonymous for fifteen minutes”.

An extreme example is how one ex-President exploits online content (through words and pictures) and how it builds his profile. No matter how extreme or shocking, their behaviours result in a reported growth in support and their approval ratings.

I call it ‘attention speaking’. We should all be aware of it. It is all about garnering a response, achieving attention, creating noise, generating agreement and disagreement in equal measure. It is polarising, not coalescing. None of this is altruistic, inspiring, enabling, and/or philanthropic. Therefore, it fails the test of the speaker achieving their primary objectives and key responsibilities.

The questions for all of us are, do we want and need this for ourselves? Are we mirroring these behaviours to any extent? Are we stuffing our content full-to-bursting with ego affirming noise? What’s important is we engage in ego-free dialogues. This requires us to put content before fame, or purpose before personality. Take a moment to take the temperature of behaviours, and the language used, so you can hold yourself and others to account and avoid its pitfalls. Ask others around you, what do they think? And don’t just listen to the likes, those who agree, or your followers. That is my well-intentioned advice.