You can be the smartest person in the room and still sound dumb and lose the room entirely because of the way you speak.
And I should know because I have had it happen to me too.
So today I am breaking down the speaking patterns that quietly sabotage us, especially high achievers, from founders and CEOs to everyday humans, just tired of not getting heard.
And once you know these, you'll start noticing them everywhere.
I'm Cody Sanchez, and this is The Big Deal Podcast.
This is how you get attention like a CEO.
All right, let's go to trap number one, excessive hedging.
People ignore everything you say before the word but.
Did you know that?
So if you say I could be totally off here, but and then you drop a perfectly solid point, neuroscience finds you're going to get ignored.
And this is actually, there's a word for this.
It's called linguistic hedging, and it's killing your competency score.
So every single human, immediately when we meet another one, gets graded on two things mainly warmth and competency.
If you want to be listened to, you better be competent, even above being warm in the world of business.
So the research on linguistic hedging shows that excessive qualifiers reduce perceived competence and authority, especially in high status environments.
To say that in English, if you use.
But I don't know, maybe could be I'm not sure prepared to be pushed around like a ragdoll, even when the content quality of what you say is unchanged.
So you could be saying really smart things, but you're gonna be tossed.
There's this classic persuasion finding where speakers who presented arguments confidently were rated as more credible.
Okay, that kind of makes sense, even when their arguments were identical to more hesitant versions.
But a really scary study.
They did a follow-on study that showed people who argued more confidently but were wrong were rated even more credible than those who argued not confidently but were right.
So confidence is actually a heuristic.
People don't consciously score your logic, they score your certainty.
So why do smart people do this then?
Why do we hedge?
Because you're aware of the complexity.
You know.
You and i both know reality is kind of probabilistic, and you know, so we hedge.
You don't want to sound like some sort of sycophant out there saying everyone should do this, you always do this, this never works, because that's not realistic.
But the problem do you want to win Or do you want to be right?
And now here's some important nuance.
Hedging isn't always bad, but it largely is.
I mean there's something called strategic hedging which signals?
Hey, I'm intellectually honest, but most hedging you're doing is insecurity.
Hedging which signals I'm scared of being judged.
You know, let's be honest.
What are we usually doing?
We're probably more scared of being judged than really strategically thinking about how to hedge.
So let me show you the difference between the two.
Let's say I say I think we should move forward with point A.
However, we have to take into account that there is a 30 failure rate.
If we do that, That could be an issue.
As opposed to.
I want to move forward with point A, but you know there's always a chance that it's not going to work.
And I mean, I can't guarantee it 100%.
Which one sounds more serious?
Obviously the first one.
I gave numbers.
I stated things as opposed to questioning things.
So here's the test.
Are you adding nuance for clarity or are you padding your statement to avoid social risk?
Okay, so how do we fix this?
How do we make you sound smart and people pay attention to you?
Instead of saying, I might be wrong, but I think we should cut this feature.
I want you to say, based on the data we have, cutting this feature is the right move.
And if you want to be even better, say what the data is.
Based on the data we have, we believe with a 70% probability, this is the right move.
Give numbers and specifics.
So this is the same thought, but just a slightly different posture.
I want you to avoid excessive hedging because it's making people stop paying attention to you.
Steve Job was famous for being the opposite of this.
He'd have one sentence that tells you what to think.
I call it his Twitter-length headline, So we'd have one for the whole talk or product.
So maybe like, today Apple is going to reinvent the phone.
This is the world's thinnest notebook.
An entire library of songs in your pocket, right?
Everything else was proof of that one line, one idea repeated, no hedging.
The second trap is over explaining.
Smart people love clarity and they hate being misunderstood.
So they explain, then they clarify, then they get an example, then they restate the example, then they summarize the summary.
Yikes, what happens?
You signal one of two things.
Your audience is either slow or you think your idea can't stand on its own, and neither is gonna help your credibility.
There's nothing more infuriating to a competent person than having somebody over-explain an idea they already got on the first sentence.
So if you really wanna piss off somebody with ADD, OCD and high competence, then explain yourself a lot.
I hate to say it, this isn't PC, but ladies, we do this more than men.
And we have to work on it if we wanna be taken seriously.
There's actual, real research in cognitive psychology that has identified something called processing fluency.
So when something is easy to understand, people judge it as more truthful and more intelligent.
So ironically, over explaining actually reduces your fluency and makes simple things feel heavy.
And you've seen this like someone explains a concept for five minutes and you think what is this guy talking about?
Like the idea could be good, but the delivery well, that makes everything else get tossed out the window.
So what's the fix?
I want you to deliver the core idea concisely.
Pause, let silence do the work.
If someone wants more depth, they'll ask.
Authority ends up trusting the listener.
So let me give you an example, two explanations.
Low fluency.
Our vertically integrated infrastructure leverages synergistic distribution pathways to optimize cross-sector capital allocation.
Don't we all know somebody who talks like that, by the way?
That's low fluency.
High fluency.
We buy boring businesses that make money.
Which one sounds smarter?
Actually the second one.
Which one feels more trustworthy?
Number two, which one gets remembered, sure as hell.
Number two because smart people take complex things and make it simple, and it's not about this cognitive load or using a bunch of vowels.
Another fascinating study if if you look at stocks with easy names, researchers found that companies with the easiest to pronounce names, like car, outperformed those with hard to pronounce names like RDO.
Naming actually matters.
And in marketing, this is really true.
This is why Apple ads work so well.
Think about them, simple background, minimal text, one product, clear headline.
What do they do?
That reduces your cognitive load.
You don't have to think so hard.
Your brain just goes, that makes sense and it must be premium.
And processing fluency basically makes simple look smart.
And there's some dangerous sides to this, like it can make bad ideas look good.
That's why scams use simple language and conspiracy theories spread wildly.
It's why charismatic leaders will win.
We all know one, right?
You know one right now who is not as smart as you, not as good as you, but often wins because they're smoother.
And so how do you use this ethically?
If you wanna sound more intelligent, we want shorter sentences.
We want concrete nouns, no jargon, white space, speak slower, remove filter words.
This is one of those ideas that quietly runs the world.
So keep it stupid simple.
Trap three, talking too fast when it matters.
Ever seen someone's pitch get higher?
Their words speed up, their breath shortens why nervous system is firing.
When we're anxious, the sympathetic nervous system it activates.
That's like your heart rate rises, breathing shifts, speech accelerates.
Listeners unconsciously interpret that speed as uncertainty, even if actually you know what the you're talking about.
You just talk fast, like i do so.
Studies on vocal perception show that slower, lower paced speech is actually associated with higher status and greater credibility.
Now you gotta be careful here, because when you're talking to your boss, don't try to be profound.
You want to make sure you are tied to the right timing.
But when you rush your most important points, you subconsciously signal I need to get through this before you reject it.
What's the fix?
When you reach your most important sentence, slow down by 20.
Add micro pauses.
Breathe before the key line.
For example.
Instead of saying so, what I'm saying is we should pivot the whole strategy, because the data is clearly showing diminishing returns.
Try, I think we should pivot.
The data is showing diminishing returns.
You can make everything fast up until then, but when you've got your plane to land, land it.
I want you to remember the three S's.
Shorter, slower, stronger.
They use this on us in advertising.
Like listen to the speed of this part of the Apple speech.
Think different.
Here's to the crazy ones.
Here's to the crazy ones.
The misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.
They're not fond of rules and they have no respect for the status quo.
You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can't do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They push the human race forward.
While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.
They basically relaunched Apple's brand around creativity and nonconformity, but done really cleanly, slowly and strategically.
Trap four, story not specs.
So I'm using Steve Jobs a lot in this because he's one of my favorite entrepreneurs, but also because he's one of the best of all time.
And he is one of the best speakers ever, so we should steal his homework.
And I think he followed a simple arc, status quo to problem to bold promise to proof to the future.
So he would start with words like the world before, you know, phones are clunky, laptops are heavy.
Then he'd raise the stakes to make a clear promise.
But in the future, you will hold all of the songs in your pocket.
Then he would show the solution live.
Bam, show, don't tell.
Because people remember the story change, not the feature list.
So you see, when you lead with ruthless simplicity, you can actually tell a story.
Steed's slides and language were stripped down.
Few words on screen, big visuals, almost no bullets.
I want you to think of short, concrete phrases instead of jargon.
Like, it just works.
Or once on stage, he just said, gorgeous.
Because the story was simple.
The audience, they had the bandwidth to feel it in their brain.
One of my favorites on Jobs was a speech that he gave on connecting dots at Stanford.
And he has a couple lines I love.
He's talking about when he does calligraphy and he learns computing and coding and he puts them together and he creates maybe the world's most valuable company.
And he says you have to trust in something your gut destiny life karma, whatever because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path.
And that will make all the difference.
Trap five, being a show-off.
This one hurts because it's actually hard for me.
It's really tempting to play it cool.
You should actually be a show-off.
The people who win in life are not the ones in the shadows.
They are the ones who actually demonstrate what they do.
I was just on a podcast with bill gurley, one of the best investors of all time, and he told me something fascinating about the founder of we work, adam newman.
He said when he first met him in his series a, so the company basically had nothing in existence.
His company Benchmark, had never done a real estate transaction.
That's what this guy was asking him to do.
But he goes within the first few minutes.
I knew I was going to invest in Adam and I was going to invest millions because he was such a showman.
Think about who the president is right now, whether you like him or hate him.
Donald Trump is a showman.
Think about who's the richest man in the world right now, whether you like him or hate him.
Elon Musk is a showman.
So you actually need to flex.
You know more than most people in the room.
You've read the research.
You understand the second order effects.
You're smarter than you're giving yourself credit for.
So flex it.
I don't want you to reference obscure frameworks.
I don't want you to add theoretical layers that aren't necessary, because I want you to get recognized.
But research on the illusion of explanatory depth and communication shows that the simpler you are, the more intelligent you are perceived.
So the smartest communicators, they actually reduce complexity.
They don't amplify it.
Einstein supposedly said, if you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
Whether he said it or not, I think it's true.
Smart, insecure speakers try to prove they're smart.
Secure, smart speakers make everyone else feel smart.
Think about that for a second.
That's the power.
So here's the fix.
Go big and show, but default to the show being simple clarity beats cleverness every time.
Trap six obsessive rehearsal.
Most people think great speakers are born with it.
They are not.
They are the ones willing to rehearse more than is reasonable.
Psychologist anders erickson spent decades studying world-class performers like violinists, chess players athletes surgeons, all of it.
And his conclusion and uncomfortable for everyone who likes the idea of quote-unquote talent the main difference between the elite and the average wasn't who they were, it's how they practice.
By age 20, the best violinists in his studies had put in more than 10 000 hours of focused practice.
The merely good ones had about 4 000.
Same instrument, same age, totally different outcomes.
And later research really refined the picture.
Practice isn't the only factor like deliberate practice that explains roughly one fifth to one quarter of the performance gap between pros and amateurs.
In other words, if you line up 100 people, a big part of why the top five look superhuman is they simply have done it more on purpose for longer.
Public speaking, no different.
Speaking well every day, no different.
You know, the speakers who don't rehearse are the ones who ramble, run out of time, panic and have a voice in their head telling them that they're not saying the right things coming out of their mouth.
The ones who run the talk out loud multiple times, well, they're calm and clear, baby.
So when you watch someone who seems effortlessly good on stage, you're actually seeing something else entirely.
Hours of practice, hours of cutting out weak examples, hours of practicing the pause after the key line.
So I don't want you to feel like you either have talent or you don't.
You can make it.
And if you wanna see nobody better, go look at Steve Jobs.
I mean one of the best speakers of all time, but did you know he would say the natural delivery?
He engineered it.
People inside Apple say he rehearsed keynotes aloud for hours and even was so specific down to fonts and demo beats.
Because the material was internalized.
He could look at people move and improvise around this sort of solid spine of his speeches.
But the best shorthand for how he speaks and why he's heard is the fact that he practiced for a really long time.
Trap seven, constant self-deprecation.
This one is common among us high performers.
You joke about being bad at things.
You downplay wins.
You undercut compliments.
I know sometimes it feels humble and maybe sometimes it is, but overuse of this is nothing but self-sabotage.
So research on impression management shows that strategic modesty works when balanced with being super competent.
But the problem is chronic self-deprecation actually lowers your perceived ability, especially among people who don't know you yet.
So there's actually a fabulous study on self-promotion versus modesty in job interviews.
It's by Godfrey Jones and Lohr.
And what they studied.
The researchers wanted to test how different self-preservation strategies affect how people perceive you.
Like does modesty increase likability, for instance?
So how did they do it?
The participants acted as evaluators in a mock hiring scenario.
They watched videotaped job interviews where applicants use different communication strategies self-promotion ingratiation modesty neutral, controlled condition.
The actors delivered identical qualifications, no different, right?
Same resume, same background, same everything, except the style of delivery changed.
After watching, evaluators rated the candidates on competence, likability, hireability.
What do you think happened?
Self-promotion, increased ratings of competence, intelligence and recommendations for hiring.
Slight decrease in likability if too strong, but not that much ingratiation and modesty.
Increased likability but actually didn't increase competence.
Reduced perceived capability and also reduced likelihood of them being referred for hire.
The key insight strategic self-promotion actually gets you hired.
You being modest isn't helping anybody else but your competitors and you know.
I really want you to think about this because a lot of times somebody will give you a compliment like you did a great job.
That was a great presentation.
And you reply, honestly, I totally winged it.
It was kind of a mess.
You just rewrote their perception.
Upgrade move, accept the praise.
Thank you.
That's it, you don't need to shrink to be likable.
Confidence with warmth is magnetic.
Insecurity disguised as humor, nothing but transparent.
So the pattern behind all these traps, if we're gonna zoom out, is fear of social rejection, being wrong, fear of being judged, not being liked.
Smart people feel this more because you actually see all the complexity of this.
Oh, to be a beautiful idiot, right?
You know how much you don't know.
And so here's the paradox.
The people who win rooms aren't the ones who know the most.
They're the ones who manage perception of others best.
And perception is heavily influenced by delivery, not just content.
It's not about pretending.
It's not like the fake alpha energy.
It's really about aligning to how you can get the outcome you want.
Your job isn't to pre-defend against every possible criticism.
It's to communicate clearly and let your ideas stand.
And so I want you to ask yourself a couple questions.
A simple speaking reset framework.
Before important conversations, run this checklist.
Am I hedging unnecessarily?
Am I over explaining?
Am I rushing?
Am I overcomplicating?
Am I landing statements confidently?
Am I comfortable with silence?
Pick one thing to improve per week.
Don't try to fix everything at once.
Awareness alone is going to upgrade you 15 20 30, because practice actually will help you upgrade the rest.
Most smart people are not held back because you're dumb.
You're held back because how that intelligence is delivered.
If you fix the delivery, suddenly the room treats you like the smartest person there, because now you sound like it.
So if you wanna outperform your peers in anything that involve words, there's a simple, unfair advantage available to you.
Rehearse more than they do and rehearse with intent.
Run the talk through out loud, fix one thing each time.
Do that obsessively and people will start calling you unnatural.
That's it for today.
And next time you're in a meeting, listen for these traps.
You're gonna hear them everywhere.
And once you do, you'll come back here and we'll figure out your next step.
