Unlock Audience Empathy in 7 steps

Change public opinion, one conversation at a time

Happy Saturday!

This week I spoke at a conference in Vancouver on how to get big projects built in a polarized public opinion environment. On a couple of occasions, I made the point that nothing persuades like in-person engagement, ideally in a one-to-one context. I come at this view for two reasons:

1. It’s nearly impossible to persuade online. When people see an opposing perspective in the digital environment, they tend to get further entrenched in their own views.

2. I have so many memories of talking to voters on their doorsteps and being able to move someone from the “undecided” category to the “supportive” camp.

Recent studies have shown that deep canvassing is incredibly effective when done well. The gold standard? Getting the person to empathize with others. But to do that, we need to first empathize with the person we’re speaking with. Which is what we’ll do.

In today’s guide, I offer a sequence of prompts that can help you:

1. Better understand your target audience.

2. Place yourself in their shoes

3. Understand why they may object to your idea/project/campaign

4. Understand the values that could be driving those objections

5. Develop questions you could use in these conversations to demonstrate that you are open to hearing their story, with nuanced follow-up questions that can get them to empathize with others who may benefit from your campaign’s goal.

If you want my short take on this concept, I also spoke to it on my new podcast, Business is Politics. Each episode is a snappy ~3 minutes. Take a listen!

Now, let’s get prompting.

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Step 1: Put yourself in their shoes

Since this is an exercise in empathy, we need to put ourselves in our audience’s shoes. To help, we’ll get ChatGPT to identify the key moments or cycles in a person’s life, as it applies to the issue we want to engage them on: