Why your brand should spark a sense of wonder
It's not very often that we hear someone talk about the value of wonder (a.k.a. awe) inside of an organization. After all, it can feel too touchy-feely or even frivolous for many businesses.
That's unfortunate. Because a sense of wonder can have a pretty awesome effect (see what I just did there?)
Let's start with the people inside of those businesses. From Eric Barker, author of Barking Up The Wrong Tree:
In studies, awe makes people less selfish and more focused on the needs of the group. We become more generous. Writing about awe made people more patient and more likely to donate money or time to a good cause. UC Berkeley psychologist Paul Piff said, “Awe arouses altruism.”
And we need this feeling as we age. Children’s brains are alive with connections but post-adolescence a lot of those pathways – and that vibrance – get pruned. We go from wonder to wither. Our beliefs congeal and harden. Our consciousness gets narrow. The day-to-day becomes teeth-achingly banal and we fail to dream. Without a bit of breathtaking wonder, you lose things. Like your soul.
But that’s what makes awe so special. Awe isn’t just exciting; it also breaks our frame of reference. Studies show it creates a need for “cognitive accommodation.” We have to rethink things. It breaks us out of the everyday and makes us reconsider the boxes we put everything in. Awe moves the furniture in your mind. It doesn’t provide closure, it provides, uh… “open-ture.”
Imagine creating that effect with the people in your organization. Imagine what that could lead to. Ingenuity. Innovation. Passion. Those aren't things that you administer. Those are things that need to be inspired. And that's what wonder can do.
Your brand is the key
So how does an organization begin to embrace this sense of awe? Start with the one thing that can naturally embody and impart the wonder. The brand.
The brand has the ability to connect with emotion. This makes it the ideal catalyst for beginning to build wonder for your organization. Here's how I explain it in my book, Big Audacious Meaning – Unleashing Your Purpose-Driven Story:
We don’t often think about the value of wonder. There is no metric to evaluate its contribution. So grizzled leadership teams dismiss it as a baseless factor. It becomes some messy and emotional unknown that makes everyone a little uncomfortable because we can’t put it on a spreadsheet.
Yet, think about those moments when a business - a cold and unemotional entity - has brought us to the brink of tears. Or shared a thought that has made our hearts skip a beat. Taken our breath away. Or, given us goose bumps. At the core of those experiences is wonder.
It could be a something that shakes us out of our malaise and reintroduces us to a little bit of the magic in the world around us. It could be a thought that helps us rediscover something revelatory about the relationships we share. Whatever it is, it opens our eyes and helps us return to that state of wonder that we lost, yet we are so desperately drawn to.
These are the moments that organizations desire. They want us to have a visceral reaction at the very mention of their names. They want us to become fans, advocates, and even evangelists for them.
That kind of feeling doesn’t emerge from a spreadsheet. It doesn’t magically appear when we recite our litany of features. It arises when we reconnect humans with that thing that we are all longing for. A sense of wonder.
There are a lot of things that demand our attention. Things that are easy to prioritize over engendering a sense of wonder with our brand. But just remember that a rare few of these things could be described as something that people truly yearn for. Something that can have a profound impact on people's lives.