Start with why

Manipulation and Inspiration Are Similar, but Not the Same
Manipulation and inspiration both tickle the limbic brain. Aspirational messages,
fear or peer pressure all push us to decide one way or another by appealing to
our irrational desires or playing on our fears. But it’s when that emotional
feeling goes deeper than insecurity or uncertainty or dreams that the emotional
reaction aligns with how we view ourselves. It is at that point that behavior
moves from being motivated to inspired. When we are inspired, the decisions we
make have more to do with who we are and less to do with the companies or the
products we’re buying.
When our decisions 
feel
right, we’re willing to pay a premium or suffer an
inconvenience for those products or services. This has nothing to do with price
or quality. Price, quality, features and service are important, but they are the cost
of entry in business today. It is those visceral limbic feelings that create loyalty.
And it is that loyalty that gives Apple or Harley-Davidson or Southwest Airlines
or Martin Luther King or any other great leader who commands a following such
a huge advantage. Without a strong base of loyal followers, the pressure
increases to manipulate—to compete or “differentiate” based on price, quality,
service or features. Loyalty, real emotional value, exists in the brain of the
buyer, not the seller.
It’s hard to make a case to someone that your products or services are
important in their lives based on external rational factors that 
you
have defined
as valuable (remember the Ferrari versus the Honda). However, if your WHYs
and their WHY correspond, then they will see your products and services as
tangible ways to prove what 
they
believe. When WHY, HOW, and WHAT are in
balance, authenticity is achieved and the buyer feels fulfilled. When they are out
of balance, stress or uncertainty exists. When that happens, the decisions we
make will also be out of balance. Without WHY, the buyer is easily motivated
by aspiration or fear. At that point, it is the buyer who is at the greatest risk of
ending up being inauthentic. If they buy something that doesn’t clearly embody
their own sense of WHY, then those around them have little evidence to paint a
clear and accurate picture of who they are.
The human animal is a social animal. We’re very good at sensing subtleties in
behavior and judging people accordingly. We get good feelings and bad feelings
about companies, just as we get good feelings and bad feelings about people.
There are some people we just feel we can trust and others we just feel we can’t.

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Those feelings also manifest when organizations try to court us. Our ability to
feel one way or another toward a person or an organization is the same. What
changes is who is talking to us, but it is always a single individual who is
listening. Even when a company airs its message on TV, for example, no matter
how many people see the commercial, it is always and only an individual that
can receive the message. This is the value of The Golden Circle; it provides a
way to communicate consistent with how individuals receive information. For
this reason an organization must be clear about its purpose, cause or belief and
make sure that everything they say and do is consistent with and authentic to that
belief. If the levels of The Golden Circle are in balance, all those who share the
organization’s view of the world will be drawn to it and its products like a moth
to a light bulb.

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