If you want to go fast, go alone; but if you want to go far, go together / You’ll never walk alone

A few weeks after his release from Robben Island prison, Nelson Mandela attended the benefit concert ‘Nelson Mandela: an international tribute for a Free South Africa’ at Wembley Stadium, London, on 16 April 1990. Triumphant and with his fist clenched, he walked onto the stage. The audience reacts enthusiastically and honours the great freedom fighter with rapturous applause. After a few minutes, a song can be heard: “When you walk through a storm, hold your head up high, and don't be afraid of the dark, at the end of a storm...” Mandela then asks Adelaide Tambo, anti-apartheid activist and wife of Oliver Tambo, the ANC chairman. “What are they singing?”. “Just a football song” she replies. Watch the lovelyexcerpt here.

‘You'll never walk alone’, written in 1945 by Rodgers and Hammerstein for the musical Carousel and best-known for its version by Gerrie and the Pacemakers in 1963, is more than a football song or the anthem of Liverpool Football Club. The song has touched millions of hearts and supported people throughout struggles and sufferings. In 2001, Barbara Streisand sang the song at the end of the Emmy Awards in memory of the victims of the September 11 terrorist attack in New York. And more recently, on the initiative of the Dutch radio station 3FM, the song was played simultaneously on 183 radio stations to give a helping hand to healthcare providers and patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. “Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart. And you'll never walk alone”.

Strange then that Mandela, a man who has moved so many people and whose autobiography is entitled Long Walk to Freedom didn’t know this song. Perhaps he’s heard of the expression “If you want to go fast, go alone; but if you want to go far, go together”. According to the internet, this quote is of African origin. Well, ‘African’?... The internet might just as well have described the phrase less accurately as “a saying from planet Earth”, because Google doesn’t tell us from which African country the phrase originates. And when you search for references, you get mostly white Americans using these words.

Just like another African saying, “It takes a village to raise a child”, “If you want to go fast, go alone; but if you want to go far, go together” underlines the importance of the collective; it’s better to adapt to the speed of the slowest walker in the group than go it alone, because alone you won’t achieve anything.

En avant, marche!

The Jamaican Usain Bolt is still the record holder for the 100 metres with an unearthly time of 9’58”. And the American ultramarathon runner Dean Karnazes ran the longest distance ever without sleep in 2005 – 560 kilometres in 80 hours and 44 minutes. It’s not only exceptional sporting achievements by top athletes that remain in our collective memory. Certain great marches, such as the Salt March in India in 1930, the march to Washington on 28 August 1963 or, more recently, the climate change marches in Western Europe, have generated a great deal of debate and influenced the course of history.

You want to go far and you want impact. So the key question is ‘how do you get people to buy into your message and sacrifice time and energy to achieve the goals you have set?’

Aristotle, the Greek philosopher and founder of the art of reason, stated that a convincing message must satisfy three conditions – ethos (the speaker’s credibility), logos (the strength of the argument) and pathos (the speaker’s ability to move the audience emotionally). Aristotle names the head (the cognitive) and the heart (the affective). In the next model, 3H, we add the hands (the behavioural). The head – heart – hands model is an easy checklist to see if you are playing all the elements to move your audience to action. The head represents our thoughts and intellect – it wants to be convinced by evidence, facts, logic. The heart represents our feelings and passions – it wants to be convinced by inspiration, perception, trust and experience. The hands represent action and implementation – they want to be convinced by a concrete ‘handy’ plan.

The great Indian politician Mahatma Gandhi was a master at playing the head, hands and heart. Of course, his struggle against British oppression, poverty and civil rights was logical, legitimate and supported by a large part of the Indian and world’s population. Gandhi very publicly clarified what he expected from the hands – they were not to commit violence but show other forms of resistance. In the 1920s, he called for a boycott of British goods. British clothes were burned and he himself sat at the spinning wheel spinning yarn. On 12 March 1930, he and 78 followers started the Salt March to protest against the British monopoly on salt production in India. A few weeks later and having walked 390 kilometres, he arrived with 50,000 followers at the coastal town of Dandi, where he boiled seawater and extracted salt. Thousands of Indians followed his example. The British occupying forces tried to break the non-violent resistance by imprisoning more than 60,000 people but were eventually forced to start talks with Gandhi and his Congress Party. The British negotiator Lord Irwin said to Gandhi: “With all due respect Mr Gandhi, without British rule this country will fall into chaos.” To which Gandhi replied, “Mr Irwin, I ask you to accept that there is no nation on earth that does not prefer its own bad government to a good government of a foreign power.”

It’s generally accepted in the 3H model that you first make an emotional connection with your audience before convincing them with logical evidence. First you reach the heart, then the head and finally the hands come into action. But you can also start with your head or your hands. For example, in his book Influence, American psychologist Robert Cialdini demonstrates that certain actions are not as innocent as they seem. (See also the article on ‘Don't Ask, Don't Get’). For example, your hands sign a petition against animal abuse without really thinking about it. Research shows that these people are subsequently much more sensitive to all kinds of issues concerning the environment and food.

So hands usually follow the heart and the head... Usually, but not always. We can go from head, heart and hands to any of the others, with a very reasonable thought process as shown in the table below by British author David Straker.

Why, how and what

If you can convince people by appealing to their head, heart and hands, you will never have to walk alone. Because, as it is written... if you want to go far, go together.

The link between head, heart and hands and Simon Sinek’s golden circle concept is easily made. The golden circle concept is well known. About 55 million people have seen his Tedx Talk on how great leaders inspire us to action (watch his clear exposition here) and noticed how he switched microphones at five minutes and eleven seconds so that the audience was finally free of the annoying background noise.

In his bestseller Start With Why, he explains that when you want to convince people, it’s best to start with the ‘why’ question and not with the ‘how’ or the ‘what’ questions. Sinek states that leaders and smart marketers first want to connect with you emotionally (heart) and only then explain how they do something (head) and what they do (hands). His example of Apple is well known. A traditional computer company tries to convince you with the what: “We make great computers. They have a beautiful design, are easy to use and user-friendly. Do you want to buy one?” But people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it, Sinek argues. That's why Apple starts from the why: “In everything we do, we believe in breaking the status quo. We believe in thinking differently. We break the status quo by making our products beautifully designed and easy to use. And we also happen to make great computers. Do you want to buy one?” Sinek concludes that this effective approach makes it much easier for Apple to market other products such as smartphones, timepieces and music.

King has a dream and Abernathy has a plan

Martin Luther King was an inspired speaker who fought for equal rights for the African-American community in the United States. Night after night, he moved and inspired hundreds, thousands of Americans in churches, schools and squares. In his speeches, he preached about why anger at the unjust system should not lead to violence, that they should keep faith in the Word of God and that the future will only be better if the community remains fraternal. After King’s warm and moving speech, his mentor – but also financial secretary and treasurer of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference – Ralph Abernathy climbed onto the stage. “Now”, he said to the audience, “let me tell you what this all means for tomorrow morning”.

Abernathy's and King's different styles masterfully played the heart, the head and the hands. For the hands usually follow the head and the heart, but the heart and the head are nothing without the hands. So Abernathy’s importance to the movement cannot be underestimated.

On 28 August 1963, the march to Washington took place, where some 250,000 people demonstrated peacefully for equal rights for the Afro-American community. Martin Luther King gave his historic “I have a dream” speech and, a year later, the Civil Rights Act was signed which prohibited most forms of discrimination based on skin colour or sex in the United States. “If you want to go fast, go alone; but if you want to go far, go together”.