Should you be sinister?
Should you be sinister?
This was a delightful short documentary on the many (113) printings of Hokusai’s extraordinary image, The Great Wave off Kanagawa" (神奈川沖浪裏).
The twist, for me, was at the end when scientist and curator Capucine Korenberg pointed out that because the Japanese read right to left, the picture is more ominous for them, a looming danger.
You can see what she means in the image above, where I’ve flipped the picture, so that our Western left-to-right reading now has the same experience.
It does feel different, right? It’s coming in from our blindside, so we see it just a fraction later, and that gets our “fight, flight, faint or fawn” lizard brain all het up.
It reminded me of pantomime etiquette, where our hero will enter from “stage right” (left, as the audience see it), while the villain enters from “stage left.” (Oh no, they don’t! Oh yes, they do!)
The neuroscience of engagement
In the TERA model from The Coaching Habit, one of the four drivers of engagement is E for Expectation. If people know what’s coming, they feel safer, which helps them stay present and engaged. If they don’t, they’re scanning for danger.
There are times and places you want to play with this. For instance, when I do a keynote I try and do all sorts of little things to disrupt their expectations (having them talking to someone within the first two minutes, present from a flipchart, get off the stage and in amongst the audience) while also meeting some of their bigger expectations (I’m sharing something helpful, I’m finishing on time.)
The point is, you want to actively choose how you use surprise or not. Don’t scare people off by accident by coming in from “stage left.” It’s tricky enough to keep people engaged. You don’t want to end up sinister by mistake.
