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Welcome to this negotiation masterclass edition of Negotiate Anything.
With over 1600 episodes featuring some of the world's brightest minds, we've carefully curated three powerful conversations for you.
What makes this so special is that you'll hear how different experts from different industries approach the same challenge in their own unique ways.
Our goal is to give you multiple perspectives so you can build your own unique style.
Success doesn't look the same for everyone, and in this masterclass, you will see exactly why.
Let's dive in.
Phil, thank you for coming on the show today.
Kwame, thanks for the invite.
I've been looking forward to it.
Yeah, it is my pleasure.
And I really want to frame this as powerfully as possible.
And I want you to start off by talking directly to the person who's listening.
If they are able to take what it is that you are teaching today and put it into action in their life, how does their life change?
All of us in work and outside of work, we have the opportunity, every time we open our mouths, to communicate to other people.
There's a golden opportunity to not just inform them, but to motivate them, inspire them, influence them, persuade them.
And in our work as communication consultants, what we find is that opportunity is being squandered because people aren't aware of the strategies and tactics that go in to making what you say stick in people's minds.
And in the work environment.
A lot of that has to do with the fact that People are communicating in a very bland, boring and forgettable way.
And so the point of Speak Memorably is to give them the tools to be able to talk less and say more.
Oh, this is good.
This is great.
And I knew this was going to be exceptional.
And with this new book, first of all, kudos.
Thank you.
Number one new release right now on Amazon, correct?
Appreciate that. kudos.
This is great.
And I'd love to explore.
Before we get into some of the tactics and specific tips that you talk about in the book, I'd like you to opine on humanity for a little bit, because we all have the capacity to communicate in some way.
And yet, even though this is something that everybody does every day in some way, we still struggle so much with it.
And why is it that you think We still need to be coached and taught how to communicate effectively, even though it's something that we do every day?
Because most people communicate in a very spontaneous way in high-stakes situations.
And, for instance, you're going into a meeting Kwame and you're thinking I'm not going to have a speaking role in this meeting.
I'm just there to take notice of what everybody else is saying.
Even in those situations you should – sit down and figure out if somebody wheels around and says Kwame, what do you think of that?
You want to not have to talk off the top of your head.
You want to have a game plan for what you're going to articulate and how you're going to articulate it.
We find generally that people wing it way too much.
And I'll give you an example of how crazy I am when it comes to preparing.
Even if I'm calling a customer service representative on the phone and I have an issue I need to have resolved, I will sit down and I will figure out what's my opening salvo in this conversation.
And I will then anticipate how are they likely to come back and push back and try to have me not get the outcome that I'm hoping to get.
And then off of that, where do I go from there?
And I map it out like a bit of a chess game.
And I have found With that kind of preparation I get the outcome.
I'm hoping to get 50 more of the time.
And it's only because I am putting in the work to prepare and make sure that my communication persuades and influences them to the maximum degree.
This is so powerful because what we're seeing here is that the best communicators, the best negotiators, the best persuaders are do it with intentionality and preparation.
And this is the key.
They do it at such a high level, it seems as though they're winging it because they can communicate so clearly and authentically that it doesn't feel scripted.
And I wouldn't say that it's scripted as much as it is thoroughly prepared, right?
It is.
We call it feigned spontaneity, where you know the content so well.
But the danger of that is you're going to deliver it in a very robotic, rote way.
And when we coach people on delivery, we want them to reintroduce the sound of thoughtfulness, even if they know the content backwards and forwards.
And one of the traits we find as a common denominator among the very best communicators that we work with is they are relentless rehearsers.
They are relentless preparers.
And they do not fall into the trap that a lot of people do when they achieve a certain skill level on this and a certain level of seniority where they say, oh yeah, I know this.
I've got this.
I've talked about this subject dozens of times.
That doesn't mean you're prepared for the next opportunity.
Sometimes that wealth of knowledge can be an inhibitor.
You actually have to figure out what's the best of the best that I'm going to bring up in this conversation or leading this meeting.
Or giving this presentation.
Otherwise, you could just go on and on and on.
And lack of brevity is also an attention killer.
Yes.
And so I'm thinking here, Bill, it's interesting.
All roads lead to preparation.
So let's say you're new at this or whatever the circumstances, and you're nervous, you're afraid.
You say OK, I need to prepare prepare, prepare.
And then you prepare, and then you get to a point where you can appear as though it is off the cuff and natural because you are so well rehearsed.
But then on the opposite side of the spectrum, we have people who have they've they've seen it all.
They've been around the block.
And that might be the thing that holds them back, because they might be, they might've put themselves in a position where those ideas have become crystallized to the point where they're not nimble enough to make the adjustment in the moment.
So they need to prepare to be a little bit more open to surprise and be willing to flex and adjust to the circumstance.
So whoever it is that you are listening to the podcast, there's no excuse.
Preparation is mandatory.
Yeah.
Well we, when we coach people, for instance, to give a presentation, we tell them there are three things they should know cold.
One is what is the concise, declarative, punchy opening sentence that gets you into the slide?
It should not be a warning about what you're about to talk about in the slide.
It should be a statement of value.
And that's the habit we really look to break in people.
All this talking about what we're going to talk about.
It's all wasted breath, and we hear it almost in every presentation that we work with people on.
Stop warning people about what you're going to do.
Just inform them.
That's really our philosophy.
So that opening sentence is critical and it is a lens setter for which they're going to hear and interpret everything you go on to say in the rest of the slide.
So don't throw that opportunity away.
Then ask yourself, What's the big idea in this slide?
What is the one thing I want to have?
Sit up higher on a pedestal than all the other information in the slide.
Make that a concise, punchy sentence.
Then how do I close this out?
What does the finish line look like?
I want to make sure it's something declarative and concise.
We don't want a running out of gas, coasting rolling stop.
That You often hear in presentations, where somebody is standing in front of the deck and they say and yeah, so yeah, that's what that is.
That is makes it sound like there's no cohesive plan for this presentation.
And when you know those three things cold the opening sentence, the big idea and the closing sentence it gives your presentation a really crisp, well-produced feel and sound to it.
Everything you say in and around those three things.
I want you to know conceptually how it comes out of your mouth, but I don't want it to be memorized.
I want you to only commit three short things to memory.
You know, this is so fascinating, Bill, because we have 1,600 episodes plus of the podcast.
I'm a keynote speaker.
Wow, that's great.
Oh, thank you.
Thank you very much.
And I'm sitting here feverishly taking notes because you're dropping gems that I haven't heard before.
And I
I want to see if this is intentional, but it seems as though this tracks with the way that memory works with people as well, because we have the primacy and recency effect and then we have peaks and valleys.
So we're going to put disproportionate weight on what happens at the beginning, what happens at the end, the best thing that happens and the worst thing that happens.
And so it sounds like, by using this methodology and hitting those three points the opening, the closing and the big idea.
We are not just communicating clearly and powerfully.
We're also communicating in a way that maximizes positive retention of the message, too.
And studies have shown that that the opening sentence or thought and the closing sentence generate more engagement and more retention than something you say in the middle.
And this is true not just for an overall speech or an overall presentation, but we like to get people to think about that in terms of every slide.
And so throwing away the beginning or the end is really costly.
And so when we craft a presentation with somebody, that's crucial to the structuring of it.
Incredible.
Incredible.
And I Bill, I could talk to you about this for an eternity, but I want to make sure I respect your time, because there are some other massive ideas that we want to explore.
And one is, that has been getting a lot of play and attention is the idea of theftosterone.
Can you tell us about what that is?
Well, at the risk of mansplaining, I'll tell you that theftosterone is an offense that so many women have experienced in their careers.
They're sitting in a meeting, they share an idea or a strategy in the meeting doesn't really necessarily get a reaction.
And then a male colleague five, 10 minutes later says virtually the same exact thing, as if it wasn't raised before.
And people say, oh, that's a great idea.
We should do that.
And shamelessly takes credit for it, even though it's an out and out theft.
And this is a big problem that we talk about in the book that Women need allies to be able to prevent this from happening.
They need to together understand that when they raise an idea or a suggested course of action at work in a meeting, the other women in the room need to right on the heels of that say Rachel, that's a great idea.
And here's the reason why I think that's a great idea.
Reinforce it.
Validate it.
Now, Men have a role to play here too.
They need to be vigilant for not allowing this offense to go unchecked.
So if you're a man in the room and this is a call to all men if you see the testosterone happening, if you see something, say something, right.
You need to pipe up and say, Brad, that sounds like exactly what Rachel said like two minutes ago.
Don't you have anything...
To add to that.
You need to call it out as not an original idea on their part, but just echoing something that was said earlier.
So we we deal with this offense in the book in the hopes that it'll happen less often and that women will understand.
You need allies in the room who will prevent it from happening in the first place or call it out after the fact.
I really appreciate you bringing this up because it is what, once it is brought to your attention and you start to see it, it is remarkable, almost cartoonish, how frequently this occurs, you know, and unbelievable.
And you know, the other role that men should have in the room is, even if your idea and your input is mildly related to something a woman in the room has said especially younger men, more entry level positions you really need to say, you know, just to build on Rachel's thought, which I thought was really insightful, just credit the person.
I think it shows that you're secure, you're confident.
It's only really insecure people who don't have original ideas of their own who commit this kind of offense.
Agreed.
Agreed.
And it's, it is a significant problem.
Because I think, especially if you're not a person who has experienced something like this, it might seem trivial.
And the reality is it's not.
Because when you think about the advancement opportunities that exist within your occupation, a lot of that is going to be contingent upon your perceived contribution in these types of meetings.
And if every contribution that you are making is being stolen from you, then not only is it an affront to you personally,
It also could potentially stunt your career growth, while at the same time making you feel less included and less as though you're your voice matters.
And so there's a compounding effect, because the woman who's experiencing it sees this, and then other women are seeing this too.
And so you start to say to yourself, well, if I contribute, the contribution is taken.
And if I don't contribute, then there's no contribution.
So what's the difference?
And then people start to learn silence.
Yeah.
And it's, almost impossible to have what you say be remembered if you're not getting credit for it.
And the former editor in chief of cosmopolitan magazine, Kate white, has a great quote in the book where she had this intro line that she used to give in meetings before she revealed her idea, which was really just an announcement.
I have an idea of significance that I'd like everybody's attention for, and And I think that this will help solve problem X, Y and Z.
She would showcase it.
She'd billboard it instead of passively backing into the idea.
And communication wise.
That's something else that women need to be mindful of being bolder in in putting forth their ideas.
Yes.
And this is, This is really empowering.
Let me start there.
Because even though it is a frustrating and unfair situation, the solutions are rather simple.
They're rather simple.
They can be a little bit scary to implement from time to time, but they are doable.
And again this is an example of your communication mastery to communicate the solution in a way that is easily digestible.
And I want to see here too, with the point that you just made, if there is a way that we can extrapolate that same finding or that same strategy to other ways that we communicate.
Because it seems as though a lot of times, when you are able to market what you're saying before you actually say it, it's almost like it creates its own positive placebo effect that amplifies the words that you are about to say.
Another strategy around theftosterone, as you said, how do you amplify, how do you tee yourself up, would be to send an email to everybody who's going to be in the meeting to just say, you know, it's my intention to use my speaking time today to put forth this idea.
Get it down in writing.
That could be another way to safeguard and protect the theft of your idea.
We have a device in the book that we talk about.
We call it a drumroll line.
And a drumroll line is a great verbal technique that makes sure that the audience is paying the maximum amount of attention at the moment that's most important for you to have their engagement.
Because it doesn't matter how great a public speaker you are, how terrific an orator you are, you are going to get drift from your audience.
It's just a law.
And so we're really, when we get up to speak, in the drift killing business.
We have to pull them back at the moments that matter the most.
So if you have an idea that you want to have land and stick, drum roll up to it.
So a drum roll could sound like.
But of all the things we researched, here's the technique that works best against the testosterone.
And then you create a half a beat pause and then you reveal it.
And the reason why the drum roll line works so well is because, even if people in your audience are daydreaming about what they're going to have for lunch, or did I leave the garage door up, or whatever, did I leave the iron on.
That happens with your audience.
They just start daydreaming.
Even if they are, they will hear out of the corner of their ear this drum roll line and they will lift their head up and say yeah, what's the one big idea.
They will...
Turn their attention back to you right before you reveal the big thing.
And so that is a warning.
Hey, pay attention because I'm about to tell you something of value.
Amazing.
And speaking directly to the listener now, I want you to know that the point that we are going to discuss next will probably be the most powerful thing that you will hear in the podcast.
And it is talking about... See, that was the drum roll line.
Ah, you saw it.
I thought you would like that.
Very well done, Kwame.
Thank you.
So I'd like to talk about the Magnificent Seven, because this is incredibly powerful and I think could really just change the way that our listener approaches communication and connection.
So can you tell us about the Magnificent Seven?
As a lawyer, this is something I saw in my clients all the time.
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Over the course of our careers coaching people, we've been able to study what it is that people say, that get repeated, that get quoted in the media, that get posted on social media by people in an audience when you give a presentation or you sit on a panel discussion.
And there are seven devices that work incredibly well.
And one of them is analogy and metaphor.
People love analogies because they take a concept that might be complex foreign, unfamiliar to an audience, and they help get the audience to understand it quickly and efficiently because it's been compared to something that's common to everybody's experience.
So years ago I was coaching a group of people who are going to be sitting on a panel at a financial investor day conference.
And the topic of the panel was Brexit.
It can be hard to be pithy and quotable on Brexit.
Not exactly the topic that lends to that, but one of the panelists said well listen, let's face it.
Before the last prime minister in the UK left office.
She was the chess player, only had the King left and she was just moving it around one space at a time until she got checkmated.
Now I don't remember anybody else who was on that panel that day.
I don't remember what anybody else in that panel said that day, but I still remember that guy because he was just about everybody knows chess or checkers.
And he was able to take maybe a complex domestic political dynamic that she was working against and break it down into a concept that everybody can understand.
And so that was powerful, but it was also an opportunity that he gave me to have a little mental vacation.
I had my fill of Brexit conversation by that point.
And now he gives me a little mental break where I can visualize a chessboard for 10 seconds and get a little mental refresh and be able to come back and re-engage, which is really important.
Same thing we did for people talking about the height of the supply chain crisis, which is another topic that has a lot of complexity to it.
And the analogy that we formed on that was The supply chain crisis was like having a six lane freeway merging into a one lane country road.
And maybe people don't understand the logistics industry, but everybody has sat in traffic maddeningly trying to squeeze past other cars, and just how nightmarish that is.
So that is really the concept behind analogies.
Powerful.
And it's like you said, it simplifies very complex topics.
And it's funny, we have a lot of customers who are in the procurement and supply chain world.
So that was something that we were very well versed in.
And just the way you described it gave me a deeper understanding and appreciation, too.
It's incredible.
And I want the person listening to this to realize, though, this doesn't happen by accident.
This takes a lot of time and thought to go through.
So actually, can you outline what that process could look like to come up with a metaphor like that?
And a lot of people do say to us, well, my mind doesn't think that way.
I'm not naturally inclined to come up with those things.
And I get that.
Ultimately though, the more you put yourself to the test to try to compare something that's involved to something that's simple and you start to develop the capacity to be able to do that.
And the more you do it, the easier it becomes.
And this is something that we work with clients all the time.
Maybe the first half a dozen times we're crafting the analogy for them.
And then it's so rewarding when we work with them, maybe a month or two later and they've come up with one on their own.
And it's just wonderful to be able to see that we're teaching them how to fish.
We're not fishing for them.
So I think that's really the key to think, what does this sound like?
What does it feel like in my everyday life that I could compare it to?
And that skill does build within you.
Amazing.
Amazing.
And so we have analogies and metaphors.
What are some of the other magnificent seven?
There's the creative label, which is basically an expression you coin.
The founders of Google years ago were famously asked What's the criteria for the decision you make as to whether you want to invest in or acquire another company?
And instead of giving all these boring metrics, they said well, it's got to be a product or service used twice a day, every day.
It's got to pass the toothbrush test.
That toothbrush test is a creative label.
And it became something that everybody was aware of.
Everybody knew what it meant.
Like everybody understands what the great resignation is.
Like everybody understands what quiet quitting is.
These are terms that take on a life of their own and they get repeated.
But the first time people hear them, they really sit up in their seat and think, oh, that's clever.
That's interesting.
I'll remember that.
So a creative label is another one.
We also love wordplay where you have two sentences back to back that are almost mirror images of each other, that play off one another.
So when we have discussions with clients around artificial intelligence and how it's going to help alleviate some of the burden of manual tasks and allow people to be freed up to do what really matters in the business, one of those lines is it's really hard to move your business forward if you're mired in the back office.
That's a word play.
We have forward and back playing off one another.
And it makes for something highly quotable.
Another one is what we call original definitions.
It is not defining a term as it is found in the dictionary.
It's defining the term in the way you want somebody to see it.
So, for instance, when we talk to people, we coach about being on stage and displaying energy.
What does that word mean to somebody?
Does it mean I want to talk louder, faster, flail my arms?
Our definition, our original definition of energy is your palpable enthusiasm for the value of the information you're sharing.
That is our original definition of that.
And there are a number of other things.
There's a twisted cliche where you take a common expression and you put a little twist on it to turn it into something new.
Like businesses that are in a highly competitive industry where it's survival of the quickest instead of survival of the fittest.
The play on Darwin.
There's a mathematical equation that.
Don't ask me why, but even people who are not great in math at school tend to remember things that are posed as ratios, as equations.
For instance, the more casual your tone, the more confident you seem.
That's a ratio. authenticity equals passion plus warmth.
These are sticky in people's minds.
Ultimately, what you realize is the common denominator is they're all brief.
They're all concise.
They're not wordy and clunky.
It's easy to remember them.
All right, Bill.
Now we've come to the part of our episode where we have a letter from a listener and we're going to allow you, the expert communication coach, to break this down and help them get through this situation.
Jordan, my recommendation would be to take your phone out and, instead of sitting down at a computer and writing your text and figuring out your content in a prosy way, which doesn't really work, because what happens is, unless you've worked in television or radio, instinctively people write for the eye.
They don't write for the ears.
And stylistically, those two things are very different.
When we sit down in a computer, we tend to write longer thoughts that are filled with introductory phrases and parenthetical clauses, and they wind up being three or four lines long.
That's not how we talk.
We talk in shorter, simpler fragments.
So the hack to help you attain that ability to write for the ear instead of the eye is is make yourself an outline on a big index card of what it is you want to say.
And you can make each card represent each slide in your deck.
Just make an outline of what is really important to convey here.
And then take your phone, and there are lots of apps that will record your voice and transcribe it at the same time.
Otter AI is one of them.
And just get up and let it rip.
Don't worry if it's full of starts and stops and mistakes.
It doesn't really matter.
What you're going for is a rough first draft.
So, when you're done with the recording, export the transcript that's on your phone to a Word document or whatever you're going to work from.
And sure, clean it up of the mistakes, but stylistically don't change it.
Because what that style is going to represent is something that sounds a lot more authentic, a lot more casual and a lot more conversational, and it's gonna connect with your audience better.
The other benefit to it is, when you get up to speak and perform it, you're never gonna be at odds with the content, because that content represents instinctively how it's meant to come out of your mouth.
It is not some artificial version of your ideas.
And my guess is that your audience is reacting to the fact that you're not telling it to them like you would tell it to them across a dinner table.
And the style with which you communicate should pass what we call the dinner table conversation litmus test.
Would I say it to a friend if I was having dinner with them this way?
And if the answer is no, then what's likely happening is your tone is too formal and too stilted.
You need to make sure it passes that litmus test.
Bill, what I love about this is you've essentially given us a way to construct our own authenticity, which sounds very strange.
Well, you know the Groucho Marx quote that three quarters of life is authenticity.
And when you learn how to fake that, you got it made.
But listen, authenticity is probably the number one characteristic and quality that people are trying to convey to an audience, because it is skyrocketed in terms of importance.
Yes.
And let's, let's talk about this too, because we have the necessity, the craving to of authenticity from the audience and our own desire to be authentic.
And now we have gotten to a point where people have shorter attention spans.
And this is a bit transitioning from the listener question to just a lot of the core communication work that you do now.
Because you've been in the business for a while at least two decades doing this work at a high level with massive companies, incredible celebrities.
And I want to get your perspective on how culture and society has shifted.
And, as a result, how some of your communication and advice has shifted, as it relates to just attention span in our capacity to listen.
We live in a TikTok world, that's for sure.
And people want to consume information in the smallest helping possible.
But that doesn't mean that you're going to get up in front of your colleagues when you have to present about an entire project and think you're going to do it in a snappy 60 second video style.
That's just not realistic.
But what we have found is absolutely essential is bringing variance to your performance.
And what I mean by that is you need to think about your voice in three qualities your pace, your pitch and your projection.
Projection just being volume.
And you need to think about those three qualities as something that you keep in a constant state of variance.
Don't drive all in one speed in cruise control where everything comes out of your mouth at exactly the same pace, because that'll lull the ear of your audience to sleep.
You want to be sections where you're both brisk and sections where you are slow.
And the rule of thumb is the more important the information you're conveying, the more deliberate, the more emphatic I want you going and the more pausing I want you to build in.
If you're just giving secondary information, the conversational connective tissue between one important point and another, sure step on the gas.
Be nice and brisk and conversational, but don't blow through your big point.
And it's that variance of pace that makes the voice interesting to listen to for your audience, as fluctuation of pitch does.
If you're talking about something positive, about something optimistic, maybe you're trying to project to your colleagues.
If we follow this strategy, imagine next year, if we're in this position.
You want your voice to reflect that optimism.
And sometimes it's not a matter of saying things louder and harder when you get to the big idea, sometimes pulling back and making people lean in and listen to you more closely, and as long as you keep up the intensity with which you're saying it.
It's a very counterintuitive strategy, but it works incredibly well.
And then the one last thing I would say about variance is even think about your content as something that stylistically, you need to bring variation to.
If you've had this longer, more full sentence that explains something on the heels of that, Make a very short punchy sentence that breaks up the monotony of the sentence structure in your presentation.
That's another thing that'll jar the audience's attention back into focus.
That's powerful.
I really appreciate this, too.
And I don't want to overlook the fact that it is easier said than done, especially if you haven't spoken like this.
I know for me, coming from law, I mean, we want to just get the point across quickly.
We're very logical and linear in the way that we're thinking.
We bill by the minute.
Well, you know listen, Kwame as a lawyer, you know that some of the most successful litigators are not the ones that are approaching a jury in this very academic abstract, theoretical way.
They're making...
The facts of the case come to life in short, choppy thoughts.
Yes, that's powerful.
It's powerful.
And one of the things that I that helped me to practice this is reading to my kids.
I have a nine year old and a four year old.
So I said, OK, listen, I am going to.
I'm going to crush this story.
You're going to hear this and we are going to be all over the place with the way that, with the variants being intentional about practicing it,
So checked a lot of boxes because I was saying, all right, I'm going to practice becoming a better speaker with more variants.
But then also my kids loved it.
Yeah.
Well, listen, you know, you're trying to keep your kids' attention.
Yes.
And you're trying to keep your audience's attention.
And interesting.
You bring that up because one of the things that we stress with clients is something we call the once upon a time thing cadence at the beginning of storytelling, because a lot of times people are flat in their pitch when they launch into a story, and you wouldn't do that with a bedtime story.
Once upon a time has a certain lilt to it, so does you know?
I was talking to some clients last week that should, as opposed to i was talking to some clients last week and this the two are very, very different.
So The traditional cadence that we associate with bedtime stories or any story needs to be replicated when we're providing anecdotal material in a work environment.
What I love about that point Bill, is that a lot of times we feel like we have to start a story by saying well, there was this one time or once upon a time, right.
Or let me share with you a story now.
That's the warning about what you're about to do.
Or to illustrate that point, let me share with you a data point.
All that is wasted breath.
And we can convey the same thing with our tone and our cadence, rather than ah incredible, incredible.
And before you go, we have one more listener question that came in just now.
Breaking news, okay.
And so in this new world, we've got the TikTokification of life.
If you are somebody who is a content creator- when you're creating short form videos and, let's say, you're transitioning from something that's a little bit more academic esoteric, to trying to connect to the masses via TikTok short form video, what pieces of advice would you have to the content creator to do that effectively while still being authentic?
And this one is from Kwame Christian.
Thanks.
Wow.
Namesake.
What a coincidence.
I would say Kwame, that the advice I just gave really fits there about go speech to text as opposed to text to speech.
But when I'm advising communications, people marketing, people who have to create content for an executive, let's say oftentimes that's created in a vacuum.
And I just advised a client this week to say Listen, before you develop a presentation or a speech for this person, just get 20 minutes on their calendar.
Go in with five or six questions.
Pepper them with the questions.
Record it.
Hear how the thoughts roll off their tongue and instinctively how they say it.
And try to replicate that when you write for them.
And try not to.
Try not to have the and so predicament.
And what I mean by that is if you catch yourself saying and so a lot, it means you're creating wrong thoughts where a period should exist.
Most sentences in presentations or speeches could be literally chopped into three separate thoughts.
So, when you're creating content, be your own ruthless editor and think not only how do I take 25 out of this right away, which most things can can accommodate, but also how do I chop this up and make it punchier, more succinct?
All of those things are really important.
Amazing.
Amazing.
So listeners, when you see my, my social media blow up, just remember.
Remember this moment here, Bill.
This has been fantastic.
And just one last note before you go with this with this book speak memorably, um.
I want to make one final pitch to the audience with this book, because it's not your first book and you've been in the industry for a while.
Just really quickly.
What was it that compelled you to write this particular book at this particular time?
Because so much has changed in communication since I wrote the last book.
We have this elevation of noise all around us in society.
And the competition for people's attention has never been greater.
And it's never been more difficult to make your voice stand out.
And these are the techniques that I have honed over the years that have followed the writing of the first book that I know work for people.
I know it makes them more quotable.
I know it makes what they say easier. stickier with an audience.
And when you have that opportunity to communicate to people, don't squander it.
There's such potential and possibility when you get up to speak to move people, to get them to think a certain way, or at work to get them to do something.
And you really have to take advantage of that.
Speak Memorably is a guide to how you go about raising your game and making your voice really stand out.
That was the first part of today's masterclass.
Up.
Next we'll hear from another expert with a different approach, giving you even more strategies to add to your toolkit.
Let's keep it rolling.
Michael, thanks for joining us today.
That's my pleasure.
Yes, we're excited to have you, my friend.
So how would you get us started by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do?
Most of my time is spent helping people speak well when it matters.
And so that usually looks like individual coaching with people who are in really high-stakes situations, like presidential candidates or deans at Ivy League universities.
But it's also high school students who are trying to kind of test the waters of public speaking in a certain situation.
Everybody in between.
And then, of course, most recently, I've been spending my time writing a book to try to take the same tools that I use to help people speak well and put it into something that can be found literally anywhere a bookstore around the world.
Amazing.
And what's funny is that you...
You set this up in a really simple way, but there is nothing simple about what it is that you teach.
There's so much depth to it, but I love how you set this up.
You said you help people speak well when it matters, because there are some embedded assumptions under this that are really, really meaty that I want to get into.
When you add those last three words, when it matters, why is that so important to put in?
Many many, many of us are very good speakers when we're not thinking about it, when we're just focused on reaching the other person, helping a friend, diving into a fun discussion with somebody, when we're comfortable.
But much of your professional life is determined, in fact, by a lot of situations that you may not feel as comfortable.
So obvious ones are the big interview or the big boardroom presentation, but there's dozens of these.
And for many people, those ones that they would say that's the one that matters the very most, that's the highest stakes one.
That's when their communication can get more challenging or even, in bad cases, actually crumble and fall apart.
And so my job is to help people speak better in those situations when they're not typically at their best, but to come across as well as they do when they're in those other situations, that they're much more comfortable.
Oh, this is fantastic.
And I agree.
One of the things that might be a good place for us to start is just understanding what it is that makes it so difficult for us to perform under pressure in these really tough situations.
It's that distinction that I just mentioned of being self-focused.
Meaning when we're at our most comfortable, the most relaxed.
By definition, we're focused on the other person.
We're trying to reach them and we're not thinking about what are my hands doing?
What are my lips doing?
What was that word I just said?
What is that person over there thinking about me?
We're not mired in that sort of chronic self-consciousness.
And yet, when nerves get the best of us or when we're feeling really self-conscious, everything falls apart, because all we can fixate on is that relentless self-focus and self-consciousness.
What that does is a whole bunch of bad outcomes.
It tends to make us contract, stop breathing, talk too quickly, avoid eye contact, all these different behaviors.
But it all starts with that first shift to being self-focused as opposed to other focused.
I love it.
I love this.
And this actually could be a good opportunity for a story too, because you've worked with all sorts of people on all sorts of different levels at from everyday professionals all the way up to presidential candidates.
Great job with Andrew Yang, by the way, underrated campaign, great job with Andrew.
Um, Can you tell us a story about somebody who was able to really upskill their ability to communicate just with this differentiation of orientation?
For sure.
Yeah, we can talk about Andrew in a few minutes if you want to as well.
He's a phenomenal communicator and also a phenomenal example of a growth mindset.
This is a person who always wants to get better, so transparently, in fact, that not only did he let me write about him in the book, but he actually hosted a launch party for the book in New York, because he's not someone who tries to hide the fact of you know, I've gotten coaching, or I don't want people to know that I've done this thing.
He's very transparent about that, which I think is an awesome model, because sometimes people don't actually seek coaching for this, because they have a level of, you know, shame or embarrassment or uncomfortability which is just completely unnecessary.
Many many, many people either struggle speaking in high-stakes situations or they don't get help because they think they should somehow be flawless or perfect.
But anyway, we'll get to Andrew in a second if you want to.
I'll give you an example about this self-focus versus other focus.
I one time worked with a woman who relentlessly had a habit of clasping her hands.
If you're watching the video of this, you'll see what I'm doing right now.
But if you're just listening, trust me I'm clasping my hands and sort of wringing my fingers together over and over again.
She would just do this all the time.
And I asked her at a certain point, I said, have you received some coaching about that?
Or is there a reason that you're clasping your hands in that way?
And of course, she didn't even know she was doing it.
So we watched some video together and, sure enough, she sees that her hands are relentlessly clasping like this
And what we began to discover was that that was her actually trying to prevent people from seeing that she was there, almost like her hands could be a shield or a bit of armor to hide the fact that she was even up there at the podium or in front of the boardroom giving this presentation, because she was that nervous and that uncomfortable.
And in that moment, all she was thinking about was, I feel exposed.
I look uncomfortable.
I I I, I.
Now, the amazing thing was, as soon as she opened her hands and allowed her hands to actually move and be free to speak and do what they wanted to do, which was to chime in and tell a story to, everything shifted.
So the way we actually unlocked that is the same tool I have in the chapter on gestures, which is I crumpled up a piece of paper.
And I made her put her hands around the piece of paper and feel the sharp crumpled points of that.
And said, I want you to imagine this is a puffer fish.
You know, one of those spiny fish that have inflated and your hands are getting stabbed.
And whenever you put your hands together, it hurts.
So you can't do it.
We did that for a couple minutes with a paper.
And soon she had that sense memory, that kinesthetic experience.
And she didn't need the paper anymore.
All of a sudden, her hands opened and her self-consciousness went away entirely.
And she was able to put her focus the two places it actually should be, which are her audience and what she was trying to get her audience to understand.
So that's an example of that very specific shift from self-focus to other focus.
This is incredible.
And one of the things I love the most about this is the fact that there was minimal coaching on what actually needed to be said.
She already knew what needed to be said and how to say it, but there was something subconsciously holding her back.
Yeah, I'm nodding so much chomping at the bit because yes, in fact, the entire book is about delivery, not about content.
There's not a single chapter that is about what you say.
The entire book is about how you say it.
And there's a bunch of reasons why, but one of them is just what you said, which is, if you help people unlock what they actually already know how to do, you would be amazed at the dazzling stuff that comes out of their brain.
You'd be amazed.
But their brains are not free to think because their brains are literally in threat mode.
They're in protective attack threat mode, and they can't think.
They can't choose a word even.
So the first job is to get their bodies operating in a way that actually unlocks their brain to do what it knows how to do.
And when you've done that, our brains are incredible.
I mean, if you think about the, The number of words we sift through in any given moment to choose the right one is dazzling.
I mean, think of how long large language models have had to get trained to do that same activity.
And they get it wrong a lot, by the way, still.
It's a dazzling, dazzling activity that our brains are able to do when we get out of the way and let them do it.
And how do you get out of the way?
By setting your body up for success and doing some of the exercises, like the one I described with the puffer fish paper.
This is amazing.
And this, I think for a lot of listeners, is going to be a paradigm shift, because when you come to a podcast called Negotiate Anything, you think a lot of times you're just going to be getting tactics and strategies what to say, what not to say and focusing on that.
And it's going to really wake a lot of people up to just how much their own presence and delivery matters.
And I really want to hammer this one home, because there might be some intellectual people who are saying no, it's all about the content.
It needs to be perfect.
And that's exactly what's holding them back from truly connecting and delivering with maximum efficiency.
And so let's talk a bit about the science.
Why is it so important to focus more so on delivery rather than necessarily perfecting the message?
So why does delivery matter more?
Well, look, every bit of science ever run on this.
When they evaluate people's impressions of a speaker, delivery always matters more.
How you say it versus what you say.
Even to the point that people will have a more favorable impression of a job applicant if they hear the job applicant speak, versus just evaluating the words on the page of their resume.
I won't go into every single study, but trust me, lots and lots and lots and lots of studies show us that delivery matters more than content.
But crucially, I'm not actually interested in defining which one matters more and then babbling it out.
I'm actually interested in delivery for a very profound second reason, which is it's also the fastest way to unlock better content.
So I'll give you an example.
If you know you speak a mile a minute when you're the book, the chapter on conciseness, or in using some other kinesthetic tools, develop the physical ability, the muscle memory discipline, to actually slow your rate of speech.
Guess what your brain can do in all that extra time?
Think of smarter stuff to say.
So delivery can actually unlock content in a really profound way.
Other reason delivery matters, so much is.
I promise you anyone listening to this, you've probably spent a bunch of time on your content, like a lot, meaning you have spent probably months, maybe years, becoming a subject matter expert in whatever it is that you have to negotiate on.
And you've probably put a lot of thought into what you might say in a given situation.
And I also bet you, you've put very little focus at all on your delivery.
So it is literally like an undiscovered country, just potential just waiting to be grabbed.
So these are some of the reasons delivery matters so very much.
There's one final reason.
It specifically has to do with negotiations.
Those folks out there who get lots of guidance about their content and work very hard on their content.
You're missing a critical aspect of communicating.
You might currently think that speaking is essentially thinking.
If I think of smart stuff, if I can remember to say the really important thing in the negotiation, I'm going to win.
But this completely misses the point that speaking is actually a physical activity.
It takes more than 120 muscles to do this activity that you and I are doing right now.
Our diaphragm drops down, our lungs fill with air, the air flows past our vocal cords and then our mouth moves in this miraculous motion gymnastics, act of enunciation, to turn that sound into words that are audible.
It's a physical activity.
So if in a negotiation you know about yourself that you tend to ask a question and then you get uncomfortable and you ask a next question and a next and a next, and soon you give away everything because you've asked nine questions and not even let the person actually deal with a challenging question, it doesn't do you any good to read one more time.
Allow for silence or tolerate silence.
And I want to give you an exercise right now, and then I will stop talking on this subject, because I can keep going on this one.
I'll give you an exercise that the Wall Street Journal featured during our whole book launch because they liked it so much.
On remote meetings, when no one can see your hand on the desk.
When you're asking a question, walk your hand across the table like this, choosing each word that comes out of your mouth.
But importantly...
At the end of the question, use your finger and, in silence, draw an imaginary question mark on your desk.
Take as much time as you need to actually draw the question mark and force yourself to be silent, as you do, and live through that silence.
So you're training your body to actually ask a single question and then miraculously stop talking.
Brilliant.
Because essentially and listeners, if you're audio only he's walking his fingers almost like you know, with kids getting them to eat at dinnertime walking across the table right.
Essentially and tell me if I'm getting this right because what we're doing is we're working on pacing, but we're also turning this delivery of the question into a bit of a small meditation to keep us centered and, as we're asking the question, so our mind doesn't race for other things.
Then drawing out the question mark helps us again to stay grounded and remind us to just stay silent.
Am I getting some of these points correct?
Yeah, it goes even further.
So let's take the word meditation and even shift it to a fancier one called embodied cognition.
And all that means, cognition, thinking, using your body, embodied.
So the activity of walking the fingers... is forcing you to choose your words.
Take as much time as you need to choose those words.
And again to narrate what I'm doing for those who are just listening, I'm walking my fingers, step by step, across the table.
And then to your point when you finish the question, you actually do the physical activity of drawing the question mark, because it takes time.
You have to be silent while you're drawing it.
And that gives you an activity to do to navigate that moment of discomfort that you're so used to just talking right over and keeping going.
It forces you to actually have to pause for a moment and let that silence sit.
So yeah, it is meditative in that it gives you something very specific to focus on and to still that kind of mental noise, but it goes even farther into the category of embodied cognition.
Man, this is good.
This is really good because negotiating online is very difficult.
When we're in Zoom or Teams or whatever it happens to be.
It makes it more challenging for a number of reasons.
Less context, harder to read body language.
There's a lot of pressure, a lot of distractions too.
And so, if we can use this embodied cognition methodology, this really helps us to slow down and focus on what matters the most in a world where there are so many distractions pulling us in another direction.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Look, I appreciate you calling that out.
And I really want to encourage folks listening.
Yes, there's a lot about being remote that is terrible.
I mean, we've all lived through this the last five years or so, some of the challenges.
But I encourage you, take advantage of what remote can offer you, though, too.
And there are some gifts that you know about, but you already know there's some degree of work-life balance that can be different, or you can be in different geographies and that kind of thing.
You know all that already.
But what you maybe don't know is that it also does give you an opportunity to dramatically control the space around you in a way that you couldn't if you were in person.
And I will often describe to people that the border of your camera as a digital cloak of invisibility.
So if you know about yourself that you ask 15 questions in a row as opposed to one, try this exercise, because no one can see that you're doing it.
Draw a question mark at the end of every single question and be silent while you do it.
And if it's hard at first, make the question mark even bigger because it takes more time to do so.
You have to really desensitize yourself to that silence and build the muscle of tolerating it.
I love that.
Such a powerful exercise.
And I am very excited to learn more. about the work that you did with Andrew Yang.
And so for the folks who don't know, let's just set the stage.
Let's not assume that everybody knows, but I'd love for you to tell us that story.
But also help us to see where he started from, what he struggled with and where he was able to get to.
Yeah.
Well, I'll do you one better.
If people want to, you can click on our website, gktraining.com.
And we actually have a case study of him featured there.
So you could actually watch the like before and after footage of debate one versus debate two.
So video is pretty cool to watch sometimes too.
Feel free if you want to check it out.
He had a debate.
Well, let me go back.
So Andrew Yang was one of the something like 25 candidates who were running for the Democratic Party nominee nomination in the 2020 election.
By the way, he made it to the fifth candidate to drop out.
It was the last candidate of color in the race.
And he dropped out in February of 2020, just before the likes of Mayor Pete, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, et cetera, et cetera.
If my memory serves, I think that's all right.
Anyway, he does his first debate.
It's in Miami.
And By his own assessment, he bombs.
And I mean bombs badly.
Least amount of speaking time of any candidate on stage and very fastest rate of speech of anyone at any point.
7.2 words per second.
Now, you don't have to get a calculator out.
Trust me, folks.
That is too fast.
Officially.
Per second?
Per second.
Yeah, 7.2 words per second.
Little quick guidance.
Like we tend to speak in the call it two to four words per second kind of range.
Four words per second is already fast.
He was at 72, so his campaign calls me.
He said can you fly to portland tomorrow?
Fly to portland.
And we spent 10 days training intensively.
And the second debate, completely different, broke through, was garnered all kinds of positive praise by the pundits.
A bunch of folks declared him the winner of the debate.
And his before and after footage, it looks like a different person.
Now, that is a little bit due to me.
I will take a bit of a victory lap about that.
But much more of the credit is due to him.
And I'll tell you why.
I coach a lot of people.
And my coaching on a given day, it doesn't vary that much.
Some days I'm a little better.
Some days I'm a little worse.
I'm human.
That's how it goes.
What varies tremendously, though, is how willing people are to learn.
And if they have a growth mindset and if they're willing to put themselves outside of their comfort zone and try to improve.
And Andrew Yang is like the poster child of someone who is willing to learn and willing to get better.
Amazing.
And also here's one of the things that I want to call out here, because when it comes to the growth mindset part, we cannot overlook that, because I think there's this belief that a lot of people have where they need to.
It's like hey, I'll have a growth mindset to a certain point, but at a certain point I got this look at everything that I've accomplished.
Okay, so we can, we can shift to fixed because I'm perfect as I am right now.
But for somebody at his level to be open to such coaching and actually put in it into action, I mean that speaks volume to him as a person, his character and his willingness to compete and.
But then also something that's interesting and this isn't something that you said, but I'd love to see if I'm close on this, because it doesn't sound like you're saying okay, this is what a good presentation looks like.
Do this specifically with your body.
Do this specifically with your hands.
Talk with this type of cadence.
It sounds like what you're doing is you're helping the person to reveal their authentic self that is already there, that's been inhibited by all of the overthinking or fear that can hold them back and make them play small.
I'm going to snip that part of this interview and I'm going to put it on our website.
Yes, that is exactly what we're doing.
Exactly.
I'm quite proud of the definition that we use at my firm of what is executive presence.
And our definition of executive presence is not some mythical superman or superperson, that or some normative ideal.
No,
Our definition of executive presence is you, whoever you may be, but ironically you, when you're at your most other-focused, not mired in self-consciousness, not thinking about every single thing you're doing, focusing on reaching the other person.
So you're exactly right.
I wasn't trying to coach Andrew Yang to sound like every other politician.
I was trying to coach him to sound like him, but him, when he's at his best.
And I'll give you a fun example.
One of the ways I helped him to learn how to speak at a more manageable pace so his audience could actually digest what he was sharing, was an exercise called silent storytelling.
And it is exactly how it sounds.
You have to tell a story to someone, but they have to be able to understand it without the benefit of sound.
It's essentially like you have been put on mute, okay?
So you're lip syncing, but you have to allow your face to be expressive, to tell us how you feel about things.
You have to move your hands as much as is necessary to get these ideas across.
And you have to move your mouth so emphatically that we could almost read your lips.
Now, when people do this exercise, what happens is, of course, their gestures come alive.
That's pretty clear.
And also their eye contact improves because they have to look at the audience to see if the audience is actually digesting what they're saying.
But for an For Andrew and for other people.
What happens is totally magical.
Is you slow your rate of speech by a lot?
Why?
In order to mouth words effectively so someone could read your lips, you have to do it more slowly.
So it's a very organic way of changing your rate of speech without it feeling like you should talk like politician X, Y or Z, because they're masterful in their communication.
They have gravitas.
So do an impersonation of someone else, which makes people look authentic and stiff.
This is brilliant.
And it's also empowering.
It's very empowering, because when people are on stage, sometimes they feel like they need to be like somebody else.
And then also when people are negotiating, they have this really kind of – a lot of times it's old school mentality on what a negotiation should look like and what – connected to that, a negotiator should look and sound like.
And then they put themselves at the door.
They check their authenticity at the door.
And then they try to be some kind of robotic version of themselves.
And they wonder why they cannot connect or persuade.
And so I really want you to hammer this home.
When it comes to executive presence, as somebody who's having a negotiation or difficult conversation of any type, what are the key elements that they need to keep in mind so they could show up as their best self?
Yeah.
Work. physically.
And what I mean by that is figure out what your weakness is as a communicator in those situations that undermines you.
And for most people, this means you contract.
You contract in some way.
You breathe less.
You take up less space by crunching down your posture, perhaps, or restraining your gestures.
You contract by not opening your mouth and not enunciating your words.
You probably contract in some way, and it's not helping.
So instead, find ways to work physically.
And if you want to use the book, by all means, use the book.
Buy a copy.
It's jam-packed full of exercises like this.
But even if you don't, take something you've learned from this podcast and use it and try it physically, because I want you to treat yourself like a negotiation athlete, not like a negotiation thinker or scholar.
No, like an athlete.
Because remember, a lot of what's going to determine what happens is how you speak and Yes, the terms will matter, but a lot of it is you actually saying these things out loud in connection with somebody else.
So if you speak too quickly, try that silent storytelling activity.
If you know that you ask 15 questions and can't tolerate silence, try the question mark activity.
And I'll give you one more.
One of the quickest ways to help people be more concise and this is brutally important in negotiations is I have them stack Duplo blocks or Lego blocks.
They pick up a Lego block.
They say the first idea or the first term they want to communicate.
And at the end, as opposed to racing on to the next idea at the end, kind of like where the period might go.
At the end of the sentence, in silence, they put down the Lego block.
Then they pick up a second Lego block, say the second idea, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
The end of that idea, They put it down, they click it in place with the first.
Third idea, same thing.
So they discipline themselves to say one idea at a time and then tolerate silence at the end of each idea to consider do I need to keep talking?
Or actually, does that suffice?
Am I done?
So these are examples of how you can work physically like an athlete to build muscle memory and So that you have skills you can rely on, even when you're feeling nervous or feeling a little uncomfortable or in that really high stakes negotiation situation that, of course of course, you're a bit anxious about.
This is so good.
This is really good.
And I really appreciate that term negotiation athlete because it does help us to to focus more on our bodies, our presence, because I think that's lost.
We focus so much on ourselves thinking that we get to the point of overthinking and we, you know, get to a point of diminishing returns very quickly and we forget how much our presence can convey.
Executive presence is kind of a buzzword, but leave off executive for a second and just use the word you said about presence.
When we talk about presence all the time, we talk about being present.
Well, in a negotiation, has there ever been a situation in which it's more important to be present than Think of those negotiations when you're so in your head that you missed a moment?
You missed an opportunity which actually you could have been done.
You actually had the thing that you wanted, but you just were so in your head you got all stuck on something else.
You were carried away.
You were not even noticing.
And look at that.
You actually lost the opportunity or talked yourself into worse terms.
And one of the reasons people are not able to be present is they don't breathe.
They hold their breath.
They speak a mile a minute.
They're highly nervous.
And that Lego block activity that I just described, or the silent storytelling one, or the question mark drawing one.
All of these are things that give you a moment to actually tolerate the time, to breathe and to be in the now, as opposed to in the past thinking about all the things you screwed up, or in the present, about all the things in the negotiation you're about to screw up.
No.
No.
In the present, where you can actually make real-time decisions and do better.
Amazing.
Oh, this is great.
And now it just unlocked another question for me too, Michael.
Now, I want you to – this is a book that helps people to build skills.
And now I want you to think like you are creating a horror story for me, okay?
I really want you to hammer this home.
So let's imagine there's somebody whose content is pristine.
Everything they say is golden, but they struggle with presence.
And I want you to walk us through what the other person sees, feels and hears when they see somebody saying the right things.
But when their presence is off, when they're not really focusing on being in the moment and they're not thinking like that negotiation athlete, what do they see?
That undermines everything that they're saying?
Yeah.
Well, here's the brutal truth.
If it's an adversarial negotiation, they see a sitting duck.
And if it's a collaborative negotiation, they see someone who's beyond their depth and they want to ask to get a different representative of the organization in the room.
That's what they see.
And what does it look like in terms of behavior, how it manifests?
Normally, it looks like someone using a much reduced bandwidth of themselves.
So what do I mean by that?
They walk in as one person.
Hey, how's it going?
Shake hands.
Hi.
Yeah, let's get a cup of coffee.
They sit down.
All of a sudden, everything goes away entirely as they shift into what I call presentation mode.
Now, some of us have been taught badly.
Actually, I wasn't, so I shouldn't say some of us.
I was taught pretty well.
Some of the royal us meaning our society gets taught quite badly and they get a bunch of that reductive coaching that you're talking about.
Like, this is what you should always say.
These are the three rules.
And in communication, that often sounds like silly stuff, like hold eye contact for 8 to 12 seconds.
Make broad, sweeping gestures to emphasize key points.
Always speak in the lower third of your voice to exude gravitas and calm.
You sound like a robot.
It doesn't seem like anyone's home.
What people show up as when they're in those situations is they look reduced.
So fewer gestures, less facial expressiveness, more monotone, less vocal variety, less dynamic enunciation.
Typically like that.
Or let's say their nerves or their anxiety is so much worse.
They may not look reduced.
They just look nervous, uncomfortable.
What does that sound like?
They're speaking a mile a minute.
Their voice is very shallow and light and quick like that, and maybe even a bunch of gravel in their voice because they're not actually breathing.
And their enunciation tends to have a lot of nonfluency, stumble nonfluencies and ums and uhs, because their brain is working much faster than their physical communication instrument.
So what I was doing right there is throwing in a bunch of nonfluencies, stumbles and mistakes and things like that.
That's what the person who shows up who's not working effectively, that's what it looks like often.
You've persuaded me, Michael.
You persuaded me.
Are you going to read my book?
Absolutely.
Are you going to read my book?
Are you going to read it now?
Yes.
This is great.
Absolutely.
And again, listeners, the book is Don't Say Um.
Fantastic book.
And, as you can tell just from this little sample we got from this episode, you are going to get a lot out of the book.
But also if you have the opportunity to work with Michael, check his firm out.
So Michael, before you go, I want you to just give one last closing argument for the book, but also let them know about how they can get in touch and work with you too.
Yeah, sure.
So I'll do that in reverse order a little bit.
My company's name is GK Training. just like it sounds G K training.
And the URL is deadly simple.
It's just G K training.com.
And if you want to reach out to me personally, LinkedIn is the best place to do that.
Michael Chad Heppner.
And then, of course, the book is called don't say um how to communicate effectively to live a better life.
And that URL is very simple too.
It's just don't say, um, dot com.
So that's all the places to find things.
Now, in terms of a, A closing case for why the book.
Here is why.
There is a very good chance.
Any of the ways you have tried to improve at communicating in the past have failed.
And it's not your fault.
It's probably that the ways of trying to improve were terrible.
And they probably failed in one of these three ways.
One, it was a negative.
Two, it was general.
And three, it was mental.
So negative.
Sounds like this to all the fast talkers out there, you know, referencing back to Andrew Yang's first debate.
The negative sounds like this.
Hey, listen, just don't talk so fast.
As soon as I've done that.
Now, all you're thinking about because humans can't do thought suppression, all you're thinking about is yourself and talking too fast.
So that's the negative aspect.
Thought suppression doesn't work.
It's why I titled the book Don't Say Um kind of a trick.
You realize that's what i hear.
It doesn't work.
Open the first page, you find out that the title was a trick.
The second thing is it's general.
That's the other bit of feedback we tend to get.
So they say don't talk too fast.
What comes next?
Just slow down, just slow down.
Okay, but if just slow down was going to work, it would have worked the first time you heard it, 30 years ago.
It's way too general.
And then the third thing is you get a mental reminder for what is a physical activity.
The mental reminder will be like this.
Remember to breathe.
But speaking is physical.
So would you tell an athlete to remember to do something?
Would you tell a musician or a dancer to remember to do something?
No.
You would train.
You would rehearse.
You would build that muscle memory.
So you add these three things up.
And what you typically get is don't talk so fast.
Just slow down.
Remember to breathe.
And you probably failed to do all of those things.
And it's not your fault.
It's because the advice was bad.
So, as opposed to listening to the same bad advice, why not instead try to unleash embodied cognition and use kinesthetic learning to train your body to speak differently and treat yourself as a profound and nuanced and rigorous communication athlete that you actually are?
My gosh, you're so good at this.
I know you know this.
I know you know this.
But just as an aside, the fact that you focus on communication and delivery is so clear.
And it's funny because it's just striking to me as a podcaster.
We hit 1,500 episodes today.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Congratulations.
The way that you communicate and deliver is amazing. is the best advertisement for your book.
I'm telling you, man, you are special.
This is great.
This is great.
I really appreciate you.
Thank you very much.
I do hope, I have one small hope in terms of what the life of this book is.
And also if what you say is true.
I also hope, if there is a small way in which I can be at all inspiring or motivating to others.
I do have this hope that people can learn how to speak better from this book and from my work.
And not just because...
I like to help people improve, but also because they have stuff to say and we need a world of people who care about the circumstances of the world and and want to get their ideas out there.
And all too often people feel stymied and stuck.
So if I can help them do it just a little bit better, that's a very meaningful thing.
Amazing.
Oh, listen, I am, I'm here to help proud to promote and, um, thanks for coming on the show.
And also I know Simone's probably going to come up uh, pop in here because he always listens and he always has a couple little follow-ups from things that I missed and maybe we stitch it in.
Yeah, sounds good.
Yes, Kwame, I have a question.
Thank you for the opportunity.
My question is about self-consciousness, because you say that it's better to forget about ourselves, but I'm trying to do it now and it's very difficult actually.
I am talking to you and I'm making my biggest effort to to forget about myself, but I can't avoid looking at myself at the webcam.
So I don't know how to do that properly.
It's very difficult.
Right, right.
Do you want to?
Just you can.
It depends, it's up to you all, but we could even use this in the podcast if you want to, as like a little instant, real-time coaching diagnostic.
Yes, that'd be great.
I'd love that.
All right.
So you put your finger on something very profound.
This can't happen instantly.
That's the first part.
And what you're sharing is the exact argument as to why you have to make this muscle memory.
So people should not listen to this and have a checklist of like okay, I have to breathe, I have to pause, I have to make sure I slow down.
No, no, no.
What you're going to do is build a muscle memory pattern of breathing differently.
Practice it for a few days.
And within... days, not even weeks, you will have some greater skill with it.
So I'll give you a couple examples.
I talked about the Lego exercise during this.
You should try that exercise.
And what you do is at the end of each thought, you place the Lego down.
That placement is your reminder to, I can allow air to come into my body.
So you actually use the exercise to remind yourself to breathe.
That's one example.
Another one from the book is a fun activity where you practice blowing up a balloon and you can even do it pretend okay.
So you basically blow into the balloon like that and then the third time you do it, breathe in all that air into your nose like you're gonna blow up the balloon, but then move the imaginary balloon out of the way and all of a sudden you have this huge surplus of air to use because you've inflated your lungs in a very different way than you typically do.
So you do these exercises that are akin to an athlete training.
And what's going to happen is your body is going to learn this differently.
So it's not a mental memory thing or a remembering.
So give yourself three days, use the Lego exercise, use that balloon exercise, and then call me back in three days and then tell me the questions you have.
Wow, it's great.
It's like, okay, I build the memory.
And then when I'm about to talk, I forget everything and I just go, right?
Yes.
Well, here's a perfect.
Any athlete out there, anyone who has ever studied a musical instrument, it's the same process, isn't it?
Learning a musical instrument.
You practice the scales, you practice the fingering.
You do these things that feel like rote learning, but you do them to change the patterns.
You don't even have to think about that in the performance.
And this is true of us as speakers, because as a speaker, we are essentially a musical instrument.
We have a reed in our throat, that The reed vibrates and it gets altered and amplified throughout the musical instrument that is our body.
So we're training it to speak better.
And this is partly because we have developed, all of us, bad muscle memory somewhere along the line.
Maybe it's we hold our breath too much.
Maybe we stumble over our words.
Maybe we restrain our gestures.
Or maybe our posture is all crumpled over.
Modern life has exacted a toll on us.
And so we have to use muscle memory to build different habits.
And then to your point, you don't even have to think about it.
You just do differently.
Man, Michael, I appreciate you.
And kudos.
Kudos.
I know you know this already, but the work is exceptional.
It's exceptional and it stands out.
So I just I'm really glad that you chose to be on the show.
And I'm really excited to share this with the audience because it is top notch.
Well, I'm a big believer in what you're doing too.
So thank you so much.
Thanks for having me.
I really enjoyed it.
Thank you for a really fun and lively discussion.
I hope people get a lot out of it, but I know whether they get something out of this episode or others.
I know they get a lot out of what you do.
So thank you for that.
You've just heard one powerful perspective and now we're moving on to the next.
A fresh voice with a new angle on the same challenge so you can keep expanding your skills.
Let's dive in.
Charles, thanks for joining us today.
Thank you for having me.
This is really exciting for me.
Yes, likewise, my friend.
So how about you get us started by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do?
Sure.
My name is Charles Duhigg.
I'm the author, most recently, of Super Communicators, which is a book about the science of connection and conversation.
Previously, I wrote a book called The Power of Habit about 10 years ago and another book called Smarter Faster, Better.
And right now I'm a reporter at the New Yorker magazine and I used to be a reporter at the New York Times.
Very nice.
We're excited to have you.
We at ANI, we're fans of your work.
I've gobbled up your books.
So I'm excited to chat with you about this.
And when it comes to your most recent book, just tell us about the central thesis of the book.
What was it that you had to accomplish with this one?
Absolutely.
And let me say, I'm a fan of ANI as well.
I think the work you guys do is wonderful.
So this book Super Communicators kind of started for me a couple of years ago when I found myself falling into this, this pattern with my wife that I did not like.
And the same thing was happening at work.
I would come home from a long day at the office and I would start complaining to my wife about my boss and my coworkers.
And they don't understand me.
Nobody appreciates me.
And she very practically would give me this good advice.
She would say something like you know why don't you take your boss out to lunch and you guys can get to know each other a little bit better.
It's good advice, right?
But instead of being able to hear what she was saying to me, I would get even more upset.
And I would say like, you know, you're supposed to be supporting me.
You're supposed to be on my side.
Why aren't you outraged on my behalf?
She would get upset that I was attacking her for giving me good advice.
And I think anyone in a relationship, I'm assuming yourself, we all fall into this pattern, right?
This is just part of what happens, that the conversation should go well.
It's clear how we could make it easy.
And instead it does not go well.
And so I started calling up researchers and asking them like, why?
My wife and I have been married for 20 years.
Like, why does this keep happening?
And they said well look, we're actually glad you called, because we're living through this golden age of understanding communication, because of advances in neural imaging and data collection.
And they said one of the big things that we figured out is we tend to think of a discussion as being about one thing, right?
We're talking about my day, or we're talking about our kids, or we're talking about next year's next quarter's budget.
But actually every discussion is made up of different kinds of conversations.
And those kinds of conversations, they tend to fall into one of three buckets.
There's Practical conversations, which are about making plans and solving problems.
But then there's also emotional conversations where I might tell you what I'm feeling and I don't want you to solve my feelings.
I want you to empathize.
And then finally, there's social conversations, which is about how we relate to each other, how we relate to society, the social identities that are important to us.
And they said what we figured out is, if you're not having the same kind of conversation at the same moment, you have real trouble hearing each other, right?
That's what was happening with my wife and myself.
I was coming home and having an emotional conversation.
My wife was responding with a practical conversation.
They're both legitimate conversations, but we couldn't hear each other because we were having different kinds of conversations.
And this has given rise to what's known as the matching principle in psychology, which says successful communication requires knowing what kind of conversation is happening and matching each other.
Me matching you, inviting you to match me, and that when we get aligned, we can move from emotional to practical, to social, back to emotional altogether.
But that alignment has to occur at some point.
Oh, Charles, there is so much to explore here.
And the future Kwame thanks you for your contribution.
This is great.
And I think if the listeners are anything like me, as they were hearing you say this, they're saying, oh my gosh, it makes so much sense.
And so it's incredibly empowering to be able to see with such specificity why these conversations break down.
And now one of the things that I'm hearing as well is responsibility too.
Because if we now have this information, because most people don't, this isn't intuitive.
It's our responsibility to be the person who then steers the conversation in the right direction.
Because at the end, when you said the matching principle, now it's my responsibility to match you and then invite you to match me.
Yeah.
And I think it's kind of one of those responsibilities that you're happy to have, right?
Because it's going to make things easier.
I mean, particularly for negotiators, right?
I think that the best negotiators know that your goal when you walk into that room is not necessarily to bludgeon the other person, not to convince them.
Your goal is to understand what they want and help them understand what you want and see where that zone of possible agreement, that area of alignment, exists.
Negotiation is an act of creativity.
It's an act of art.
And I think that what this does is it gives us a new tool or an opportunity to try and understand when we're not connecting with each other why, and a responsibility or a superpower to hopefully make those moments better and easier.
Absolutely.
And now for us.
As we try to be super communicators, I think one of the things we would need to do is effectively diagnose what the problem is.
And I think even before that, recognize that there is a problem.
And so, in your opinion, what are some of the things that we should pay attention to to be that are signals that there might be an issue?
So I think the best thing to do is that there's a technique for kind of figuring out what's going on.
Many of us tend to use without understanding that we're using it or realizing that we're using it.
One of the things that we know about super communicators and we're all super communicators at one time or another but consistent super communicators people who can do this in almost any setting and with almost anyone.
They tend to ask more questions than the average person.
They tend to ask like 10 to 20 times as many questions as the average person.
And some of those questions are questions that are kind of designed to invite us in like oh, what'd you think about that?
Or, oh, what would you say next?
But some of the questions are what are known as deep questions, right?
And a deep question is something that asks me about my values or my beliefs or my experiences.
And that can sound a little intimidating, but it's as simple as if you meet someone who's a doctor, instead of asking where do you practice medicine.
Asking, oh, what made you decide to go to medical school?
What do you love about being a doctor?
Do you enjoy it?
Those are easy questions to ask, but they're actually deep questions because what I'm really doing is I'm saying I'm inviting you to say something more meaningful about how you see the world.
Now, I'm not mandating it, but I'm inviting.
Inevitably, what I'm going to hear is a couple of things.
I'm going to first of all hear if there is a problem here, if there is some tension, if there is something that we don't recognize, it's going to give you the freedom to put it on the table right.
The second thing that's going to happen is you're going to tell me what kind of mindset you're in, whether you're in a social mindset or emotional mindset or social mindset because the same person might answer that doctor question just depending on the setting and the mindset that they're in and how they're feeling that day.
They might say oh, you know, I always wanted to.
It was important to me to have a steady job and I knew there'd always be demand for medicine.
Okay, that person's in a practical mindset right now.
But that same person in a different setting might say oh, you know, I saw my dad get sick when I was a kid and I wanted to be one of those healers.
I saw the people help him.
And that person is probably in a more emotional mindset, maybe a social mindset.
When we ask deep questions, what we're really asking is, tell me how you see the world.
Like, tell me what's important about you that you want me to know.
When we open it up with a question that'll invite someone to do that, inevitably, if there is a problem, if there is an issue, if there's something that they want to get across, it'll help them get it across.
And that helps us diagnose, what are we really talking about here?
Why are we having this conversation?
What's our goal?
That is powerful.
And I love the data that we're bringing this to, right?
Asking 10 to 20 more questions or times more questions did you say times more questions yeah times more questions super communicators they're literally asking questions on stop and you don't even register it most of the time because they're they're questions that you welcome you enjoy hearing them yes that's powerful because that's a skill set that's an art a blend of art and science too because i think we've all been in those situations where we're talking to somebody who is just peppering us with questions and it doesn't feel like an inviting conversation.
It feels like an interrogation or a cross-examination.
And so, as we start to embody these new habits of communication, how do we make sure that we don't tip into that mode where it feels more like a cross-examination?
Yeah, it's a great question.
And I think part of it is when we are asking questions, and particularly deep questions.
We need to remember to answer our own questions.
And the nice thing about a deep question is it's very natural to answer your own question and to create space for the other person to ask questions.
So if I ask you, why'd you decide to become a doctor?
And you say, oh, I saw my dad get sick.
It's very, very natural for me to say, oh, that's so interesting.
I became a lawyer because I saw my uncle get arrested, right?
Now, instead of me conducting an interview now, what I'm doing is I'm sharing something about myself.
And what's really important in creating a sense of the connection is what's known as reciprocal authenticity.
That if you say something meaningful, I should honor that by saying something meaningful myself.
Now, that does not mean that I need to mimic you, right?
Matching is not mimicry.
So if you say oh, you know, it's been a tough week because my aunt passed away, it's not appropriate.
It's not a good idea for me to say like, oh, I totally understand what you mean.
I had a dog that died seven years ago.
And like, right, like that's not, but also that's not me trying to match you.
That's me trying to steal the spotlight from you.
Like the most matching thing I can do in a situation like that is say, oh, I'm so sorry.
I know how hard that is.
Like, what was your aunt like?
Tell me about your aunt.
That doesn't feel like an interrogation.
That feels like a conversation.
Because what I'm trying to do in that case is I'm trying to show you, prove to you, that I'm listening.
I'm processing.
I know that losing someone is hard.
I know that it's top of mind for you.
And then I'm going to invite you to share with me what your aunt was like, what you're feeling.
But I'm not going to mandate it.
Right.
Just saying what was your aunt like is gives you a chance to say oh, let me tell you about her, or just to say oh, she was wonderful.
I don't really.
What you're really saying is I don't want to get into it right now, but I'm inviting you to say something more meaningful.
Whereas a question like, did you live with your aunt?
Were you financially supporting her?
Like those are mandates to get deep.
But an invitation to get deep feels very different.
This is powerful.
The nuance here is just incredible.
Because again, as I'm listening to you, I'm thinking about my own experiences, conversations I've had that did not feel good, conversations where I did not perform as well as I would have liked.
And it's these slight distinctions that can really make or break that connection.
Let's go deeper into matching versus one-upping a story, because this is something that comes up a lot.
And especially when you're thinking about really sensitive conversations, maybe conversations relating to identity, and you talk about a hardship that you experienced because of your identity and somebody that doesn't share that identity says I know exactly how you feel.
One time, I didn't get picked for the team.
It's like, yeah, it's not the same, right?
So how do we balance that, showing that reciprocal authenticity and being a generous conversationalist, without tipping into one-upping them?
Yeah, it's a really, really good question.
I think oftentimes, when this happens, that instinct to say like oh, I understand what it's like to be excluded from getting a job because I wasn't chosen for the baseball team.
What we're trying to do there is we're trying to focus on our commonalities.
I'm trying to find something that I have in common with you, no matter how ham-handed or clumsy it is.
But what's really important, particularly about a social conversation a conversation that's about our respective identities is not only that we acknowledge what we have in common, but also that we acknowledge how we are different.
Because it feels disrespectful to ignore the fact that, because of your religion or your political beliefs or the color of your skin, you have had different experiences than I have right.
You're aware, and I'm aware, that this difference exists.
And to leave it unacknowledged is to basically say, I don't want to hear this aspect of who you are.
Now, what's hard, though, is that It's very easy to do this in a way that feels alienating.
I'm white and you're black, right?
And in a conversation, if I said to you, as a black man, I'm wondering what do you think about policing?
One of the things that I'm doing is I'm kind of backing you into a corner, right?
You're like suddenly, like okay, I guess I have to represent all black men on the question of policing.
By choosing just one identity.
What I'm doing is I'm trying to kind of push you a little bit into the stereotype that you're supposed to represent.
But there's a better way of doing this, which is to recognize the many identities that both you possess and I possess.
And instead to ask this question, to say look Kwame, I'm wondering.
As a black man, you probably see this policing issue a little bit differently than I do, but I also know you're an attorney, you're a father, you're a brother, you're a manager, you're a podcast host.
By introducing, by bringing all of these different identities to the table and saying look, with all those different hats on, you probably see policing in a really interesting way.
Can you tell me about that?
What I'm doing is, instead of trying to push you into a stereotype, push you into a corner.
I'm basically saying look, I recognize you contain multitudes, as do I Tell me which of those multitudes informs how you think about this topic?
And that makes that conversation feel so much better, right?
Because I'm not saying, you're You are a thousand things and I'm a thousand things.
And some of those things are things we have in common.
And some of the things are that we don't have in common.
And it's really interesting to discuss those differences as well as those similarities.
How does that feel to you?
Would that feel, if I asked the question that way, would it feel better?
Well, for the folks who are listening only on audio.
You missed the grimace that I had as you phrased the first one.
Yes.
It felt so much better.
So much better because I think what we're recognizing here is that in these conversations, what we want to do is respect the complexity of the person in front of us.
And it's really reductive to just say, oh, you are this thing and that thing alone.
And that's how I see you, because it makes you feel really small.
Like that's all you see in me.
But then the person feels seen and appreciated when you say, no, I recognize you're not just this.
You're so many other things.
Tell me about that.
And what's interesting is and a lot of this research comes from conversations around race watching people have conversations around race.
I think oftentimes, particularly today, we avoid mentioning race when we're having a discussion.
But if policing came up, the fact that you have lived the life experiences of a black man and I have the life experiences of a white man, it is not something that we are going to forget, right?
Like it's something both of us are thinking about, but it shouldn't be the thing that defines the entire conversation.
It should be an element, an opportunity to share.
And the truth is that, whether it's policing, whether it's race, whether it's politics, we probably do see some things differently, right?
And understanding that difference does not mean that we can't connect with each other.
In fact, everyone we connect with in the most profound way.
It's because we recognize what we have in common and what we don't have in common.
That's what makes the relationship feel meaningful.
That is powerful.
And the key word here is opportunity.
It seems as though the folks who are the super communicators are the people who see these similarities and these differences as opportunities to connect.
That's exactly right.
And who have the skills to be able to take advantage of that opportunity, right?
The mistake that I think a lot of people make is and that I made myself is thinking that communication is this art, or it's something we're born with, or we either have the gift of gab or we don't.
What we find from the research is anyone can be a super communicator.
It's literally just a set of skills that you can learn.
And in fact, we are all communicators.
And in fact, I'll ask you a question.
So if you were having a bad day and you wanted to call someone who you know would make you feel better, do you know who you would call?
Like, does that person pop into your mind?
Oh, yeah, 100%.
It would be Paul Balaji.
I called him yesterday.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So for you, Paul is a super communicator and you are super communicator back for Paul.
I would imagine.
Oh yeah.
Oh yeah.
And what's interesting is that there's a set of skills you guys are using with each other, right?
Like Paul probably knows you how to ask the right question.
Like he knows how to ask you the deep question.
Paul probably knows when to listen and when to prove that he's listening.
He knows how to give you feedback that maybe you don't want to hear, but you know, you need to hear.
Those are all skills that Paul can use with anyone, right?
The same way that we learn to read by reading fiction, that doesn't mean we can't read nonfiction.
Reading is a skill that is cross-applicable.
Communication skills are also cross-applicable.
And what consistent super communicators do is they recognize the skills that they're using and they say to themselves okay, I use this with Kwame because he's a close friend, but actually I can also use the same skill the guy I see in the bus, or with my boss, or with a customer.
It's just a recognition that these are skills that any of us can learn and practice and make into habits.
I love how you tied it back to habits.
And now I want to meet Paul.
Paul sounds like a great guy.
He's a great guy.
And what I love about this is it's very empowering.
When people are having tough conversations, a lot of times they're afraid they have stress anxiety.
Lacking in confidence.
That's the key word, the confidence.
And what you're showing us here is that, in different relationships, in different times in our lives we, at different points, have shown the skills of super communicators.
It's that we just struggle to bring it into this particular moment at this particular time.
And in particular, because we don't even think of them as skills, right?
It's not so much that we struggle to bring those skills in as much as we're saying like I don't understand what's going wrong.
Why isn't this working?
Because we don't even understand that we have those skills because we don't see them as skills.
It's interesting.
So people who are consistent super communicators, and there's a lot of these folks.
When researchers.
You know, when I started writing the book I figured they'd all be like extroverts and really charming.
And it turns out that's not true at all.
Basically, some are extroverts, some are introverts, some are charming, some are curmudgeonly.
One of the things that they tend to have in common is that if you ask them if they were always good at communication, they'll tell you no.
They'll say things like, when I was in high school, I had trouble making friends.
And so I really had to study how kids talk to each other, because it was just totally unnatural for me.
Or my parents got divorced and I had to be the peacemaker between my mom and my dad.
What's going on there is that they had something in life that forced them to think about communication just half an inch deeper than the average person.
And it's that thinking about communication that makes us good at communication.
And so, in a lot of ways, if we want to become super communicators, all we really need to do is just recognize that we have these skills, but then think about them.
Think about like, when I'm talking to Paul, what am I doing with him that I could do with a client or do with a coworker?
It's the thinking about it that helps us see the opportunity.
Let me take a quick note here.
Kwame, your origin story is not unique.
That's so funny.
Yeah, because I struggled as a people pleaser for a long time and I had to work hard to study it and figure it out.
And now that you mentioned it, I hear this all the time.
People struggled for so many different reasons.
And now, this is an aside, but I'd just be interested to get your thoughts on this hypothesis I just created right now.
I think, like you said, when somebody struggles with communication, it forces them to focus on it and then they get better.
What I've noticed is that sometimes, when people think very, very highly of their communication skills and think they've always been good at it, a lot of times they have gaps that they can't see, but other people feel.
So it's really interesting.
The CIA actually did this study.
The CIA is essentially a communication agency, right?
Like when you go to the farm, you're learning how to communicate with others.
And so they did this survey where they asked people to rate their own communication ability.
And what they found is that people who are bad at communication would put themselves in the like zero to five range.
They knew that.
They would actually put themselves in the zero to five range and they were right.
They were bad at communication.
But the second worst group of communicators were people who put themselves in the nine to 10 range.
People who thought they were great at communication who would say, I'm really, really good at this.
They were people who had real gaps.
The absolute best communicators would rank themselves from five to eight.
And I think what's going on there is that, exactly to your point, that part of communication, as I mentioned, is thinking about communication.
When we think we're really good at something, we stop thinking about it, right?
Like if I'm great at making layups, I stop thinking about layups.
I stop practicing them.
But it's the Michael Jordan who says, like you know, on a layup, like I'm a 10 on coming from the left side, but only a seven coming from the right side.
And I'm going to work both of them really, really hard.
That's what makes him Michael Jordan is saying I'm never going to let myself stop thinking about something.
And the only way that I can keep myself focused on it is to be very conscious of, when it doesn't go well, my weaknesses, and I need to think about those.
So you're exactly right.
The first thing to do to become a super communicator is to say there are places where I am not a super communicator and I want to work on those and I'm going to get better at those.
And once I get better at those, my job is to find the other places where I'm not a super communicator and start working on those as well.
Absolutely.
It makes sense.
It makes sense.
If you think you're perfect, there's no need to improve.
And so it just completely shifts your mindset.
So I know you're an author, an incredible writer.
And I know one of the toughest parts of writing a book is the process of writing a book.
And then for me I don't know if it's the same for you finishing the book was really hard, because your thoughts always develop.
And so, since publication, since you were done, what is something that you wished you could have gone back and put into the book?
So I wish I had talked more about online communication.
And there's some stuff in there about online communication.
There's a lot of stuff in there about online communication.
There's a story about this experiment where they brought together gun rights advocates and gun control activists.
And they basically taught them how to speak to each other face to face.
And it went really, really well.
And then they went online and it fell apart immediately.
People started calling each other jackbooted Nazis.
And they were able to learn from that, to learn how to make online conversations better.
The thing that I think really resonates with me is that I hear from a lot of parents who say how do I teach my kids to communicate?
Should I be worried about my kids' communication?
And what I would say is this when our parents were in school, they usually they probably took a class called like home, ec or interpersonal communications.
We used to practice conversation in schools.
And we do less of that now because curriculums have become more technical and that's fine.
But that means that it's up to parents to really spend time.
And by parents I also mean coworkers and I mean friends to spend time teaching people how to communicate.
And the best way we do that is through modeling, right?
So I have this thing with my kids where we play this game called the questions game.
I ask them a question and then they have to ask me a question and they can't ask me the question that I just asked them, because otherwise that's what they'll do.
And like the thing is that like they have to ask a question.
They have to get good.
So we practice asking questions and then we'll go to a restaurant and I'll tell them After we order the food.
You can't come back and eat your food until you have found out one thing about a stranger in this restaurant.
So they'll go and they'll go from table to table and be like, my dad's making me do this thing.
Can you tell me something about yourself?
And we always say, don't bother people who don't seem like they want to be bothered, right?
But they're cute kids, so it's easy to do.
And what I'm really doing is I'm just getting them to practice asking questions, right?
Sort of like an awkward question.
And so I think the thing is, as parents, as friends, as coworkers, as mentors, as employers, one of the best things we can do is we can model what good communication looks like.
And when we do that, even if it feels awkward, even if it feels a little bit hard to us at first, we're actually helping those other people learn how to communicate better.
Powerful, powerful.
Also stealing that My boys, that's great.
Oh yeah, how old are your boys?
Eight years old and three next month.
Okay, so the eight-year-old could probably do it.
The three-year-old might have a little, might be a little bit more challenging.
What do you do with them?
Like, how do you model communication?
Like when you're teaching them how to talk to adults and how to talk to strangers.
What do you think about?
Man, that's a great question.
I love when guests ask questions.
Yeah, I think it's, first of all, I've always talked to him just the way I'm talking to you.
I'll talk to him kind of like in an adult type of way.
And I would recognize when I need to kind of take it down a level and just kind of try to do a little bit of scaffolding in that type of way to pull up his communication skills.
Recently.
One of the things is just making sure he gets out of the house and start to play with neighborhood kids.
Because now even there are times where he's playing a video game and he's like I'm playing with my friends online.
I'm like, they're next door.
And so one day I said, I told him to go and play with his friends.
He's like, dad, why do you keep telling me to do this?
I'm like, Kai, because I don't want you to be weird.
That's why.
Do you need to go out there, and But it's really just making sure that he is having these conversations because I see, I recognize that the studies and then also just in my experience, children are more likely to connect digitally with each other now than in person.
They're opting for that because of its ease and also encouraging him to talk to adults and encouraging the adults to talk to him in a more mature type of way too.
Absolutely.
And it's interesting that this digital thing that you mentioned, because there's a lot of anxiety about this.
A colleague of mine, Jonathan Haidt, has a book out, The Anxious Generation.
So one distinction that is important to make is there are many things about digital life that aren't great for kids, right?
If you're watching TikTok, if you're watching, looking at Instagram, if you're not engaged in a conversation but you're just kind of scrolling.
That tends to have a fairly negative impact on kids.
But there are many things that kids do with their phones or video games.
That is an act of communication.
And those are actually things that we can encourage.
Now, you're right.
If you're playing a video game with someone who's next door, go outside and go next door, right?
Even if you're sitting in front of the screen, side by side is better than over the phone.
But it is interesting to note that when kids are texting with each other, when they're Snapchatting each other, when they're engaged in conversation as long as those conversations are positive conversations, it's not bullying then they're actually learning to communicate.
And, in some ways, they're learning to communicate in a way that is less intuitive to you and I.
Their parents,
And think back to like when you were in middle school.
I'm sure your parents, you would be on the phone, right?
Until like for like five hours a night.
And your parents are like, get off the phone.
Like that's not, go have real conversations, right?
Or you're wasting time.
But what you were actually doing is you were learning to use a format That's going to be very central to your life, because you're growing up in a different environment than your parents did.
Our kids are learning to communicate digitally, and we can't let that be the only form of communication.
But learning to communicate digitally is an acceptance of the form of communication that they are going to use far more than we do, even if we use it a lot right now.
That's so smart.
No, that's great.
You're absolutely right.
You're absolutely right, because it's almost it's somewhat similar to code switching.
Because if you're talking to somebody in a different generation, you have to adjust slightly.
It makes a lot of sense.
That's absolutely true.
And I think that helping our kids be aware of that code switching, which I'm sure you do as a parent, when you're modeling for them, you talk to your mom differently than you talk to other people.
We have to be respectful of our elders.
When we explain code switching, what we're doing is we're helping them think about communication.
And in our perfect world, we wouldn't have to think about some type of code switching, right?
There's some types of code switching.
That's kind of burdensome, but we don't live in a perfect world.
And so helping our kids think you have control over how you communicate.
You have control over a situation that might seem alienating or hard to you.
You have a control over making it better.
That's really powerful for that kid.
Absolutely.
Oh, I love that.
Yeah.
And that's one thing I haven't explicitly said.
This is, I've hinted at it, but not that explicit.
So I think that's really good coaching for me, because that could be really helpful to just bring that to the fore.
Because there's sometimes you, everybody does it.
It's like, okay, I have to turn it on.
This is professional mode.
This is friend mode.
And just making that adjustment consciously can be really helpful.
And also specifying, it's not inauthentic.
And this is something that I think trips up a lot of people is that When we talk about these skills and they're practicing these skills they often say this feels clumsy.
It feels non-natural.
It feels performative.
And that's true.
But the thing to keep in mind is communication is a performative activity.
And the truth is that when you were learning to read, when we first start learning to read, it feels clumsy.
It feels awkward.
It feels performative.
But then we learn to read and it feels natural.
Communication is the same thing.
When we practice these skills.
Just because it feels a little like awkward the first couple of times you do it, that does not mean it's not gonna feel natural the fifth and sixth and seventh time.
And then eventually it's gonna be a habit that you hardly even think about.
Yes, yes.
Oh, this is good.
And Charles, I could talk to you about this forever, but again wanna be respectful of your time here.
So let me wrap up with this last question.
So let's say we wave a magic wand and everybody in the world reads your book and adopts all of the principles and puts them into action.
If that happens, how does the world change?
I mean what I hope, and one of the reasons I wrote the book, is that it becomes a world where we have more conversations with people who are dissimilar from us.
The truth is we're living through this polarizing time, right?
There's an election coming up.
People feel very passionate about both sides of it.
We've lived through the George Floyd era and the racial reckoning and racism.
And there's backlash to that now.
And it feels like conversations about race or politics or religion feel very dangerous now in a way that they didn't previously.
And yet the truth of the matter is we want to connect with the people around us.
I want to be friends with my neighbor regardless of what sign he has on his lawn.
And if I have the opposite sign, that shouldn't preclude us from having a relationship, because the sign on our lawn is about like 1 of what we think about every single day, right?
What we share is much more powerful.
The fact that there's potholes on our street and it's driving us crazy, or kids go to the same school, or just that.
We just want to be able to have a nice relationship with the person living next to us.
We want to connect with the people around us.
The way that we connect with the people around us is through conversation.
And that doesn't mean we have to agree with each other.
It doesn't mean we have to have conversations where we both walk away saying like, oh, we're in alignment because the act of conversation itself brings us into enough alignment to live side by side.
And that's what's important.
That's what's meaningful.
That's what I hope the world becomes.
Incredible.
Charles, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
Thank you for writing this book.
And we appreciate it.
Best of luck to you in the future and with all the book sales.
Thank you so much.
Thanks for having me on.
