Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation
By Sally Hogshead
Rating: 6 of 10

How do you hold people’s attention by fascinating them more?  That’s the question Hogshead tries to answer in her book, Fascinate.  Fascinate is essentially a book about marketing.  Hogshead points out that her research has shown that people are willing to pay more to be fascinated.  She sees this as a marketing tool that companies can explore to gain and hold the attention of possible customers.

Hogshead describes seven triggers to fascination: power, prestige, mystique, passion, alarm, rebellion, and trust.  You can take an inventory online www.howtofascinate.com and learn what your top two natural triggers are, your “F Score.”  (When I took the test several months ago it was free, but now it costs $17.)

My primary trigger is “power,” and my secondary trigger is “trust.”  My dormant trigger is “rebellion.”  Here are a couple of sentences from the profile description of each:

Power – “You’re a natural leader, and comfortable with authority, making you well-suited to creating messages that inspire large groups.”

Trust – “You’re stable, reliable, and you relax others with your steady personality. you don’t like feeling off-kilter, and work hard to achieve consistency. Over and over, you let people know they can count on you.”

Rebellion – “Yet consider how rebellion might improve your thinking. A dash of irreverence and curiosity sparks fresh creative thinking. This trigger encourages people to break out of strict norms and find more innovative solutions.”

I found the dormant trigger information more helpful than the dominate triggers.  Hogshead did get me thinking how as a communicator I might tweak my communication style to hold the attention of groups of people more fully.  I’ve continued thinking more about how I might add some rebellion into my thinking and speaking.  Lately, our church has unveiled a vision for developing seven satellites in seven venues on seven days of the week.  Perhaps this is a bit of the rebellion trigger coming out.  This vision isn’t satisfied with keeping the steady hum of the status quo.  At the same time, it’s a little breathtaking.  All rebels aboard!