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The Centre Brain: 5 Prompts To Persuasive Power
When facing a red light, what can you say to turn it green?
Hooking an audience? Sweating in a job interview? The results of what you say aren’t coincidence. Whether you persuade, or not, is down to whether you use the right prompts.
The Centre Brain – the body’s action centre – responds to what it hears. And, if the right prompts are used, the brain can be persuaded to act. This book explains why your communication works, or doesn’t. Why you prompt action, or don’t.
The result of a 20-year quest to discover what prompts action, this book offers readers a glimpse into the story behind their stories. Combining psychological insight, real-life experience and inspiring application, this book will empower you to really make the most of your message.
'This book will help you get to the heart of what makes people and their communication persuasive.' – Ram Gidoomal CBE, international businessman
Hooking an audience? Sweating in a job interview? The results of what you say aren’t coincidence. Whether you persuade, or not, is down to whether you use the right prompts.
The Centre Brain – the body’s action centre – responds to what it hears. And, if the right prompts are used, the brain can be persuaded to act. This book explains why your communication works, or doesn’t. Why you prompt action, or don’t.
The result of a 20-year quest to discover what prompts action, this book offers readers a glimpse into the story behind their stories. Combining psychological insight, real-life experience and inspiring application, this book will empower you to really make the most of your message.
'This book will help you get to the heart of what makes people and their communication persuasive.' – Ram Gidoomal CBE, international businessman
198 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 20, 2017
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97 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 11, 2018
This book provides advice on communicating persuasively, using advice and models that may well be familiar in industries like advertising but are probably not to the rest of us. It is generally well written and full of good practical advise on being persuasive. I learnt some things which I will find useful - or even if they were not completely new to me, were put into a practical model and set of simple tools to apply. But ironically, I had to concentrate hard as the book itself is not that persuasive at an emotional level and certainly did not speak to my "centre brain", (the core idea of the book). I also found it rambled a little at times. Some of the examples were a little off the subject - nice ideas the author could not help putting in, but which were not quite central to the topic of the book.
September 16, 2017
The Centre Brain makes bold promises at the beginning: "this book won't offer you a one-size-fits-all magic button to press whenever you need to inspire people to action. It will do so much, much more. By giving you understanding, it will enable you to create the 'magic button' suited to the situation, whenever you need to inspire people... By allowing you to understand the language, or prompts, that stimulate action, this book gives you the keys to the communication kingdom".
Does Steve Adams deliver on this bold promise?
Sadly, no. The Centre Brain is a light, engaging read with interesting quotations and anecdotes, but it does not deliver on the substance. It does not breakdown and unpack the five persuasion prompts in a scientific way in order to offer the reader the meaningful means and tools to implement the lessons in a practical way. In essence, reading this book is like trying to catch a wave without a surfboard.
With no hard science, no analysis of psychological studies, no particularity of research conducted, this book results in a threadbare approach to an otherwise fascinating subject.
A bullet point type approach to the hyperbolic promises of entering the communication kingdom, instead leaves us stranded on a deserted island, without the spark, fuel and oxygen to make the proverbial fire.
Does Steve Adams deliver on this bold promise?
Sadly, no. The Centre Brain is a light, engaging read with interesting quotations and anecdotes, but it does not deliver on the substance. It does not breakdown and unpack the five persuasion prompts in a scientific way in order to offer the reader the meaningful means and tools to implement the lessons in a practical way. In essence, reading this book is like trying to catch a wave without a surfboard.
With no hard science, no analysis of psychological studies, no particularity of research conducted, this book results in a threadbare approach to an otherwise fascinating subject.
A bullet point type approach to the hyperbolic promises of entering the communication kingdom, instead leaves us stranded on a deserted island, without the spark, fuel and oxygen to make the proverbial fire.
July 17, 2018
a good introduction - v practical for anyone who doesn't understand the shift away from rationalisation to emotion - this is old hat if you work in advertising but has been applied by the author to the charity field. I wish there were a clearer distinction between the mammal and the reptile brain - these 2 get muddled together. But if you're interesting in application rather than theory its a fast and compelling read.
April 4, 2018
Unlock the power of positive thinking and learn secrets to prompt action. Steve Adams delights readers with his innovative strategies and provides tools to see the world differently. When facing life's challenges, Adams's novel provides centering!
April 23, 2023
A very good book!
May 21, 2021
"this book won't offer you a one-size-fits-all magic button to press whenever you need to inspire people to action. It will do so much, much more. By giving you understanding, it will enable you to create the 'magic button' suited to the situation, whenever you need to inspire people... "
The author of this book comes from an advertising background, but has throughout his careers applied the dark arts of that world to helping charities hone their message and increase their funding and support. He rightly contends that the emotional impact of a message is the primary point of engagement, between speaker/writer and their audience, rather than the rational content. However the hyperbole of this statement near the beginning of the book, which he then boldly repeats towards the end, is, to me, an example of the overstatement, and indeed snake-oil salesmanship that too much of advertising, and sadly some elements of the church, have been guilty of over the years.
I have a psychological and bioscientific academic background and am professionally fascinated with the power of story and particularly story within a Biblical/religious background, so the title and premise of this book appealed to me. Those of us in the business of preaching and the communication of messages of all sorts do need people like Steve Adams to help us craft messages at times and the “5 prompts” towards persuasive communication that he focusses on here are helpful, but the book as a whole is not. Ironically, despite some useful ideas and arresting anecdotes (but at least one that is ill-judged) the book is not that persuasive in itself. His illustrations of applying the 5 prompts were hard to follow, he mixes up all sorts of metaphors in an unhelpful way (moving from talking about fuel and fire, to brands, to trojan horses in quick succession) and his analysis of 5 persuasive speakers and their use, consciously or unconsciously of those prompts, were unconvincing, particularly the first of them, ie. Jesus. There has perhaps been more written about the communication techniques of Jesus, especially in his parables, than any other historical character, yet the author betrays no knowledge or understanding of this. Not a single book or article on that subject is cited. And indeed despite his repeated reference to neurology, which you would expect given the title of the book, there are only 3 direct citations of neuro-scientific papers/research. But actually the very term “Centre Brain” betrays the pseudo-scientific gloss of this relatively slight tome. Google the term “centre brain” (in the manner that he suggests his readers google all sorts of things) and you will find that this book is the only significant use of it. This is because it is essentially meaningless. He seems to have only a cursory understanding of the function of some of more established neuro-physiological terms he throws in to justify this ruling narrative, including “mirror neurons”, amygdala and hippocampus, especially regarding the establishment of memories, the role of emotion and the place of judgement (which actually involves the pre-frontal cortex which is just about as far from the “centre brain” as you can get).
I did return to this book to mine it for some of the quotes (which ANNOYINGLY ARE OFTEN PUT IN CAPITAL LETTERS AT THE BEGINNING OF THE CHAPTERS TO MAKE AN IMPACT... BUT IN ONE CASE CLEARLY MISUNDERSTANDS/MISREPRESENTS WHAT THE ORIGINAL AUTHOR WAS SAYING) and anecdotes, and, as I have said I will probably use his 5 “prompts” as I think about honing my messages better in the future, but I could not, in any way recommend the book to others. It’s hyperbolic promise was an empty one, at least for me. My only emotional response was annoyance.
The author of this book comes from an advertising background, but has throughout his careers applied the dark arts of that world to helping charities hone their message and increase their funding and support. He rightly contends that the emotional impact of a message is the primary point of engagement, between speaker/writer and their audience, rather than the rational content. However the hyperbole of this statement near the beginning of the book, which he then boldly repeats towards the end, is, to me, an example of the overstatement, and indeed snake-oil salesmanship that too much of advertising, and sadly some elements of the church, have been guilty of over the years.
I have a psychological and bioscientific academic background and am professionally fascinated with the power of story and particularly story within a Biblical/religious background, so the title and premise of this book appealed to me. Those of us in the business of preaching and the communication of messages of all sorts do need people like Steve Adams to help us craft messages at times and the “5 prompts” towards persuasive communication that he focusses on here are helpful, but the book as a whole is not. Ironically, despite some useful ideas and arresting anecdotes (but at least one that is ill-judged) the book is not that persuasive in itself. His illustrations of applying the 5 prompts were hard to follow, he mixes up all sorts of metaphors in an unhelpful way (moving from talking about fuel and fire, to brands, to trojan horses in quick succession) and his analysis of 5 persuasive speakers and their use, consciously or unconsciously of those prompts, were unconvincing, particularly the first of them, ie. Jesus. There has perhaps been more written about the communication techniques of Jesus, especially in his parables, than any other historical character, yet the author betrays no knowledge or understanding of this. Not a single book or article on that subject is cited. And indeed despite his repeated reference to neurology, which you would expect given the title of the book, there are only 3 direct citations of neuro-scientific papers/research. But actually the very term “Centre Brain” betrays the pseudo-scientific gloss of this relatively slight tome. Google the term “centre brain” (in the manner that he suggests his readers google all sorts of things) and you will find that this book is the only significant use of it. This is because it is essentially meaningless. He seems to have only a cursory understanding of the function of some of more established neuro-physiological terms he throws in to justify this ruling narrative, including “mirror neurons”, amygdala and hippocampus, especially regarding the establishment of memories, the role of emotion and the place of judgement (which actually involves the pre-frontal cortex which is just about as far from the “centre brain” as you can get).
I did return to this book to mine it for some of the quotes (which ANNOYINGLY ARE OFTEN PUT IN CAPITAL LETTERS AT THE BEGINNING OF THE CHAPTERS TO MAKE AN IMPACT... BUT IN ONE CASE CLEARLY MISUNDERSTANDS/MISREPRESENTS WHAT THE ORIGINAL AUTHOR WAS SAYING) and anecdotes, and, as I have said I will probably use his 5 “prompts” as I think about honing my messages better in the future, but I could not, in any way recommend the book to others. It’s hyperbolic promise was an empty one, at least for me. My only emotional response was annoyance.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews