Communicating Across Time Horizons
There was a time in my life when I sold life insurance. Well, to be frank, I tried to sell life insurance. With little success.
And while I didn’t sell any insurance, I did learn a thing or two, and I’d like to explore one of them with you today – time horizons.
Some of the prospective policyholders I met could visualize themselves well into the future, say 20 or 30 years into the future. They were obviously good prospects for life insurance. Others focused more on the coming year or few years. To them, something that might or might not happen 20 years ahead was a pure abstraction with little relevance.
Now, let’s put these perspectives into a communication context: When you send or receive messages, do you factor in the time horizon of the person who sent you a message or gets one from you?
Let’s consider an example that’s similar to
