Key Takeaways of this article:
Understand Post-Truth Communication – What is it, and why do the people you may be speaking to find themselves in a post-truth space?
Alternative Facts and their Impact – Understanding the impact of so called “alternative facts” on public opinion.
Why do we all believe things that aren’t true – We all believe things that aren’t true sometimes. Why do we do this?
Why does this all matter to Leaders and Public Speakers? – What is the impact of the post-rational or post-truth enviroment on you as a manager, team leader, presenter or public speaker?
What can you do about it? – How can you relate with the fact that some members of your audience may be holding on to cherished beliefs that aren’t true? What strategies will be effective here?
~
*Trigger warning* If you’re a huge fan of Donald Trump, Russell Brand, Jordan Peterson or Nigel Farage, you almost certainly won’t be a fan of this blog post. Ditto, if you think “we’ve had enough of experts” or we are being run by a secret cabal of “The Deep State”, or “The Woke Blob”.
If you are, you may well consider it to be outrageous, arrogant or just plain condescending. In fact, if you don’t like the phrase “trigger warning” you probably won’t like it either.
On the other hand, if you think that mainstream news sources are basically trustworthy and get it right a lot of the time, that experts should usually be taken pretty seriously, and that most conspiracy theories are actually rather ridiculous, you might find it interesting, helpful and hopefully insightful.
~
Are you still with me? Good!
I want to talk to you about communicating in the “Post-Truth” world.
This is a world where for some of the people you will speak to, some of the time, what they believe is more important to them than what can be shown to be objectively true
This clearly matters to us as Leaders and Public Speakers, navigating this world that is rapidly changing, where AI is evolving by the day, and where the ability to create false, yet credible images and information is becoming widespread.
This issue of people strongly believing what they want to believe, in the face of facts, is to some degree as old as humanity, but it’s been turbocharged by the internet and the latest computing advances.
And it’s brought into sharp focus by the current US Elections.
In that election we have a candidate in Donald Trump who:
- Lost the last election, but persists in denying that he lost it, despite launching more than 100 legal challenges to the result, all of which failed.
- When he lost the last election, incited a violent mob to storm the US Capitol, because the vice president was willing to certify the result for his opponent.
- Continues to refer to that violent mob as “our people” and the US Capitol Police as “the other side”.
- Also asked a governor of a US State to “find” extra votes for him 13,000 in order to try to steal the election fraudulently.
- Paid $130,000 to a porn star to keep quiet about their affair
- Was convicted of 34 counts of fraud (a felony charge) as a result of seeking to disguise the payment to the porn-star out of his campaign finances.
- Was found liable by a jury of sexually abusing and defaming a respected journalist and was ordered to pay her US $5 million.
And who, at the time of writing, currently enjoys the support of around 46% of the American People according to the latest polls.
This is notwithstanding the fact that a number of senior generals who served under him have recently gone on the record to say that they believe he is unfit for office. General Mark Milley who served under Trump in his last term has recently called him “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person to this country”, and said he “should go nowhere near the oval office again”.
Whether he wins or loses, that is by most standards remarkable. Certainly 15 years ago pretty much any these facts would have disqualified a candidate from running for office.
What’s going on here?
When asked about their continued support, some voters simply say that other issues are more important to them than those listed above (notably a belief that Mr Trump would be better for the economy and reduce illegal immigration), but a large number of his voters simply refuse to believe that any of the above are true.
This is an attitude that could be summed up as disbelieving mainstream (and essentially trustworthy) reporters of news, and preferring alternative sources that tell people the diametric opposite.
Donald Trump’s spokesperson in 2017, Kellyanne Conway coined the term “Alternative Facts”, to refer to this approach of simply denying or contradicting (what most mainstream observers would agree was) the observable, verifiable truth, often stating the opposite loudly and aggressively and blaming “The mainstream media” for orchestrating a vendetta against Former President Trump.
When Donald Trump finds facts inconvenient, he simply makes up “alternative facts” that he prefers, and asserts them very loudly and stridently.
This is not new, but it appears to me that politicians around the world have started doing this much more deliberately, aggressively and effectively in the past 10 years.
A simple example of this “Alternative Facts” approach is the (relatively inconsequential issue of) the number of people who were present at Donald Trump’s inauguration as President 2017. Trump claimed that the number of people attending this ceremony was the largest ever in history, when photographs showed that his crowd was significantly smaller than for President Obama’s inauguration in 2009.
For details on the claim, counterclaim and the evidence read this article.
Trump’s spokesperson, Sean Spicer simply accused the highly respected news agency Reuters of falsifying the photographs, despite them being the only news organisation to have a photographer on the Washington Monument.
In order to believe Donald Trump’s version of events, you would need to believe that (a) respected news organisations had falsified photographs of the event, and (b) that they had all colluded in a conspiracy to do so.
On a more serious note, Trump has accused the Democratic Party of “stealing” the 2020 Presidential Election, despite the fact that an exhaustive review has shown no evidence of this, and despite the myriad failed legal challenges listed above.
In 2024, 30% of Americans and two-thirds of Republican Voters still believed this to be the case.
This reliance on “alternative facts” is substantially aided by a pro-Trump media eco system that is happy to repeat these falsehoods as truth. An example is the false accusation reported by Fox News (one of the most watched news channels in the USA and one that is almost slavishly pro-Trump) that the vote counting machines provided by a company called Dominion were involved in “stealing the election”. Fox eventually settled the case out of court with Dominion for $787M dollars. Most of the 2.5 Million Americans who watched Fox, would have understandably believed that allegation to be true, because their trusted news outlet said it was.
This is amplified by the fact that many of us exist in “social media bubbles”. We tend to connect on Facebook or Twitter/X with people who think or feel similarly to us. So in the USA, people who vote Democrat will have mostly Democrat friends on the service and people who vote Republican have mostly republican connections. This means that we tend to see narratives that amplify our existing points or view of prejudices. To make matters worse, the algorithms know what we seem to be interested in and show us more of that. (Social media makes its money by selling advertising, so the more time we spend reading things that interest us, the more money they will make).
People who are big Trump supporters will mainly be friends with other people on Facebook or X who feel similarly and will share memes, tweets or stories that reinforce this point of view. And they will be additionally shown extra content by the sites that reinforce these views. To put this in context, in 2024, over half of all adults in the USA said that they got some of their news from social media.
If we add to this the ability to create deepfake images and videos using AI, and the ability of supporters of “Alternative Facts” to create inaccurate and untrue social media posts using these faked images to support these perspectives, we have a potent cocktail.
To put it in a nutshell, if you are a Trump supporter most of the information that you will have received about the 2020 election from your trusted sources will have supported the point of view that it was stolen. This isn’t true, but we can’t blame people for believing that it is.
Why do we believe things that aren’t true?
So, I’ve already given you one good reason – that we’ve been bombarded with information in support of these propositions from sources that we trust that is deliberately incorrect.
We will also gravitate to be friends with people who think similarly to us, and in extreme cases let go of people who think very differently from us, especially on very polarising issues. Think about Brexit in the UK, the debate over vaccines and lock-downs during Covid, or indeed strong political allegiances in a country that is strongly polarised on these issues like the USA.
There is comfort in having our worldview reinforced and discomfort in having it challenged. Some of us like this challenge, but my sense is that most of us don’t!
The more vulnerable, anxious or scared we are, the more we are going to want to hold steadfastly to our existing beliefs and be unwilling to have them challenged.
We can get very invested in our points of view, and they give us a sense of safety and certainty in an increasingly uncertain world.
We are all post-rational sometimes
This isn’t a them and us issue. We are all post-rational sometimes, preferring to hold on to our existing beliefs rather than having them investigated, challenged or interrogated.
And the more emotional or vulnerable we feel about an issue, the less likely we are, in my experience, to want to have our beliefs challenged.
The 2024 US elections are therefore an extreme example of something that to some extent we all do, at least some of the time.
When and why this matters to speakers and leaders
This matters to us as speakers and leaders when we are seeking to persuade people of things that they may already have pre-conceived ideas about, and where they may have an emotional attachment to their point of view.
We may be seeking to persuade an employee (or group of employees) to change their beloved working methods, to persuade vulnerable people to take a vaccine, or seeking to sell a new product to people who have got very accustomed to their current product.
We may be wanting to give difficult feedback to a member of staff who has been making mistakes, and would feel very badly about being picked up on this.
These are communications that matter, where we as the communicators care about the outcome, and yet we may be speaking to a group where some or all of those in the audience are approaching the issues in a post-rational way.
So, what can we do about it?
This starts with respect. All the people we are speaking to, regardless of their pre-conceived ideas about the topic that we are presenting to them are human beings just like us. Just like us, they can get attached to certain beliefs, and can be very reluctant to let them go.
We need to start by meeting people where they are, and understanding where they are coming from. What they believe and why they believe it. What their emotional attachment to those beliefs may be.
If you are speaking to people one to one or in a small group, take the time to ask them questions about their point view and really take the time to listen. If you are speaking to a larger group, it can be worth doing research beforehand to understand the make-up of your audience, and their belief-structures. Really take the time to get curious.
Recognise that you are not going to be able to persuade everyone to change their mind. There is a concept in the game of poker of the “Bad Beat”. You can read the other player(s) perfectly, and play the hand in the absolutely optimal way, but the other player can still get absurdly lucky on the final card. 99 times out of 100 what you did would cause you to win the hand, but this time it didn’t.
When I was a lawyer, I felt that if I was winning all the cases that I “should” be winning and a few of those that I “shouldn’t” be winning, I was doing a pretty-good job.
The more emotionally involved someone is with a point of view and the more they are embedded in a network of contacts that reinforces that point of view, the less possible it will be to have any impact on what they believe. When you can’t change someone’s mind that’s usually not your fault – perhaps it simply wasn’t possible in that moment with that person.
Show them that you understand where they are coming from, and that you respect that, and respect them as people, even though you may be about to try and change their minds. It can often be a good idea to go as far as explaining why you understand their perspective, giving details. In other words, “Show, don’t tell”. The more that you can show people that you share their values and concerns, the more connection you will be able to create with them.
Speak with passion and conviction. When it comes to share your point of view, really connect with why you believe it and allow yourself to feel the strength of that conviction. I’ve written about this bit before – If you want to convince others, get behind yourself!
Celebrate the wins. Be curious about the losses. Rather than focussing on those you were not able to persuade, allow yourself to enjoy the fact that you were able to persuade some of the people you were speaking to. When you are not able to persuade some people be curious about why this is. Perhaps it had something to do with how you met them and what you said, perhaps it didn’t.
Remain open to having your own mind changed! A really good place to come from is a strong belief in what you believe (if it is well supported by good quality evidence) and yet a willingness to be persuaded otherwise, if you’re presented by really good reasons to do so. We are always in a conversation with each other and the world, and the more that people can feel both your passion and your openness, the more respected they will feel. And the more chance there is of us learning something surprising and new!
Bringing it all back home
In some ways the 2024 US election campaign is a really extreme example of communicating in a “post-truth” environment. Points of view are really calcified and polarised, and exist in media bubbles that support more of that. Hopefully, you’re not going to find yourself speaking about such charged issues to people who are potentially so difficult to persuade. But I think it’s a good lens to view at least one key aspect of the world in which we live now, because it’s a challenge that is going to be increasingly relevant to all of us.
Hopefully, my thoughts have been interesting and helpful to you. As always, let me know your responses by email or in the comments below. Good luck and happy exploring!
- I and Thou:The Secret to Truly Connected Communication - June 4, 2026
- Presence and Self: The same place, different paths - April 9, 2026
- Where we’re coming from. The source of leadership and communication. - March 12, 2026