With the zillions of subtle actions and reactions zapping back and forth between two human beings, can we come up with concrete techniques to make our every communication clear, confident, credible, and charismatic?
Determined to find the answer, I read practically every book written on communications skills, charisma, and chemistry between people. I explored hundreds of studies conducted around the world on what qualities made up leadership and credibility. Intrepid social scientists left no stone unturned in their quest to find the formula. For example, optimistic Chinese researchers, hoping charisma might be in the diet, went so far as to compare the relationship of personality type to the catecholamine level in subjects’ urine.2 Needless to say, their thesis was soon shelved!
Most of the studies simply confirmed Dale Carnegie’s 1936 classic, How to Win Friends and Influence People.3 His wisdom for the ages said success lay in smiling, showing interest in other people, and making them feel good about themselves. ‘That’s no surprise,’ I thought. It’s as true today as it was over sixty years ago.
So if Dale Carnegie and hundreds of others since offer the same astute advice, why do any of us lack the right stuff to win friends and influence people?
Suppose a sage told you, ‘When in China, speak Chinese’ – but gave you no language lessons? Dale Carnegie and many communications experts are like that sage. They tell us what to do, but not how to do it. In today’s sophisticated world, it’s not enough to say ‘smile’ or ‘give sincere compliments.’ Cynical business people today see more subtleties in your smile, more complexities in your compliment. Accomplished or attractive people are surrounded by smiling sycophants feigning interest and fawning all over them. Prospects are tired of salespeople who say, ‘The suit looks great on you,’ when their fingers are caressing cash register keys. Women are wary of suitors who say, ‘You are beautiful,’ when the bedroom door is in view.
The world is a very different place than it was in 1936, and we need a new formula for success. To find it, I observed the superstars of today. I explored techniques used by top salespeople to close the sale, speakers to convince, clergy to convert, performers to engross, sex symbols to seduce, and athletes to win.
I found concrete building blocks to the elusive qualities that lead to their success.
Then I broke them down into easily digestible, news-you-can-use techniques. I gave each a name that will quickly come to mind when you find yourself in a communications conundrum. As I developed the techniques, I began sharing them with audiences around the US. Participants in my communications seminars gave me their ideas. My clients, many of them CEOs of Fortune 500 companies*, enthusiastically offered their observations.
When I was in the presence of the most successful and beloved leaders, I analyzed their body language, their facial expressions. I listened carefully to their casual conversations, their timing, and their choice of words. I watched as they dealt with their families, their friends, their associates, and their adversaries. Every time I detected a little nip of magic in their communicating, I asked them to pluck it out with tweezers and expose it to the bright light of consciousness. We analyzed it together, and I then turned it into a technique others could duplicate and profit from.
In this book are my findings and the strokes of some of those very effective folks. Some are subtle. Some are surprising. But all are achievable. When you master them, everyone from new acquaintances to family, friends, and business associates will happily open their hearts, their homes, their companies, even their wallets to give you whatever they can.
There’s a bonus. As you sail through life with your new communications skills, you’ll look back and see some very happy givers smiling in your wake.
* The top 500 companies in terms of turnover every year, as listed in Fortune magazine.
There are two kinds of people in this life:
Those who walk into a room and say, ‘Well, here I am!’
And those who walk in and say, ‘Ahh, there you are.’
The moment two humans lay eyes on each other has awesome potency. The first sight of you is a brilliant holograph. It burns its way into your new acquaintance’s eyes and can stay emblazoned in his or her memory forever.
Artists are sometimes able to capture this quicksilver, fleeting emotional response. I have a friend, Robert Grossman, an accomplished caricature artist who draws regularly for Forbes, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, Rolling Stone and other popular North American publications. Bob has a unique gift for capturing not only the physical appearance of his subjects, but zeroing in on the essence of their personalities. The bodies and souls of hundreds of luminaries radiate from his sketch pad. One glance at his caricatures of famous people and you can see, for instance, the insecure arrogance of Madonna, the imperiousness of Newt Gingrich, the bitchiness of Leona Helmsley.
Sometimes at a party, Bob will do a quick sketch on a cocktail napkin of a guest. Hovering over Bob’s shoulder, the onlookers gasp as they watch their friend’s image and essence materialize before their eyes. When he’s finished drawing, he puts his pen down and hands the napkin to the subject. Often a puzzled look comes over the subject’s face. He or she usually mumbles some politeness like, ‘Well, er, that’s great. But it really isn’t me.’
The crowd’s convincing crescendo of ‘Oh yes it is!’ drowns the subject out and squelches any lingering doubt. The confused subject is left to stare back at the world’s view of himself or herself in the napkin.
Once when I was visiting Bob’s studio, I asked him how he could capture people’s personalities so well. He said, ‘It’s simple. I just look at them.’
‘No,’ I asked, ‘How do you capture their personalities? Don’t you have to do a lot of research about their lifestyle, their history?’
‘No, I told you, Leil, I just look at them.’
‘Huh?’
He went on to explain, ‘Almost every facet of people’s personalities is evident from their appearance, their posture, the way they move. For instance …’ he said, calling me over to a file where he kept his caricatures of political figures.
‘See,’ Bob said, pointing to angles on various presidential body parts, ‘here’s the boyishness of Clinton,’ showing me his half smile; ‘the awkwardness of George Bush,’ pointing to his shoulder angle; ‘the charm of Reagan,’ putting his finger on the ex-president’s smiling eyes; ‘the shiftiness of Nixon,’ pointing to the furtive tilt of his head. Digging a little deeper into his file, he pulled out Franklin Delano Roosevelt and, pointing to the nose high in the air, ‘Here’s the pride of FDR.’ It’s all in the face and the body.
First impressions are indelible. Why? Because in our fast-paced information-overload world of multiple stimuli bombarding us every second, people’s heads are spinning. They must form quick judgments to make sense of the world and get on with what they have to do. So, whenever people meet you, they take an instant mental snapshot. That image of you becomes the data they deal with for a very long time.
Your body shrieks before your lips can speak
Is their data accurate? Amazingly enough, yes. Even before your lips part and the first syllable escapes, the essence of YOU has already axed its way into their brains. The way you look and the way you move is more than 80 per cent of someone’s first impression of you. Not one word need be spoken.
I’ve lived and worked in countries where I didn’t