You've Got to Be Believed to Be Heard

Google Books: goo.gl/BfHTEW
Goodreads: goo.gl/o5YUAs

Winner: Steve Gonzalez

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Make personal contact with your listeners.

"Talkers have always ruled. They will continue to rule. The smart thing is to join them." -Bruce Barton (1886 - 1967), scholar, editor, author, congressman, sales executive, businessman, and founder of ad agency Batten, Barton, Durstine and Osborne.

The ability to communicate is the single most important skill determining your success in life.

Communicating is a contact sport. They failed to make emotional contact with their audience. They failed to reach the hearts as well as the minds of their listeners. More specifically, they failed to reach the "heart of the mind" - what I call the First Brain - the emotional part of the mind.

It's essential to be liked, believed and trusted. It's a matter of making emotional contact. Be natural, unfeigned, genial.

Her certainty, a lot of energy in her voice and her manner, great posture, an authentic smile. She radiated confidence and competence.

Communication is selling. Everytime we communicate we are selling. And we're selling ourselves. We had better get serious about communicating effectively if we want to be successful.

We want to influence our listeners to make a decision in our favor.

People buy on emotion and justify with facts. Most of our major decisions are overwhelmingly influenced at the emotional level, the preconscious level. If you want to reach, persuade or motivate people, you have to make emotional contact with them.

Kennedy arrived at the debate looking calm, assured and dashing. He was animated and totally in control.

3 Fundamental Truths:

1. Writing versus speaking.

The spoken word is almost the polar opposite of the written word. Written communication is linear, single-channel input. Spoken communication is multi-channel input.

Information channel. In the spoke medium, what you say must be believed to have impact. If all you want to do is transfer information, don't say it, put it in writing. But if your goal is to influence, to persuade, to get your point across, then you've got to say it - and say it with impact.

Action channel. Believability is overwhelmingly determined at a preconscious level. The speaker's posture, expression, energy level, eye contact, inflection, intonation, volume and actions are just a few of the many cues that accompany and modify the words of the message. Spoken communication carries energy, feeling, passion, and goes right to the emotional centers of the brain. To convince and motivate, we must say it with impact.

2. You've got to be believed to be heard. What you say must be believed in order to have impact. You must be believed.

3. Belief is determined at a preconscious level. Believability is an emotional quality. She has a strong, distinctive voice, with a wide dynamic range. Instead of planting herself behind the lectern, she moves freely about the platform, making eye contact around the room. She has an interesting smile and open gestures.


An open smile with just a touch of wry wit behind it. An honest sense of humor. A delightful sparkle. A bit of girl-next-doorishness.

The first brain is the nonreasining, nonrational part of our brian. Simply put, it is the seat of human emotion, composed of the brainstem and the limbic system. To reach the New Brain, our message must first pass through the First Brain, the emotional part of the brain.

You must persuade your listener's First Brian that you are trustworthy - that you are likeable - that you represent warmth, comfort, and safety.

Be natural. Learn to use energy, enthusiasm, motion, expression. Become freer - less inhibited - more naturally ourselves.


Getting to Trust

In our communication with others, trust and believability are virtually synonymous.

You must win the trust of your listeners. Belief is a first brain function. It comes from nuances of behavior, not from facts or logic. It is perceived and felt rather than analyzed.

Does the voice quaver - or does it project authority? Do the hands gesture nervously - or forcefully? Do the eyes flicker hesitantly - or gaze unfailingly? Is the posture diffident - or confident?

We instinctively believe and trust someone whose face is an outward display of inner feelings; we distrust the person who wears a mask.

In communicating, our emphasis must be on making ourselves first brain friendly. Our goal is to become open, unaffected, spontaneous - in short, we want to disclose the natural self within us. A natural communicator is confident and at ease.

Likability is the key to trust and believability.

Be gentle but firm.

With all those handouts in their grasp, everybody was too busy reading to listen to the speaker.

If you want to be memorable and persuasive, the primary variable is your behavior.

End your presentation on a high note.

Remove the "ums" and "ahs".

Step out from behind the protective barrier of the lectern, and walk boldly to the center of the stage.

Standing on the edge of the stage, moving easily from one side of the room to the other, he looked directly at each person in the room, his eyes communicated with each individual. He stood tall and smiled easily. He gestured comfortably and confidently as he moved easily across the platform. His voice rose and fell dynamically, sometimes to underscore a point, sometimes to rivet attention, sometimes to convey emotion.

9 skills areas that relate to two keys principles: eye factor and energy factor.
1. eye communication
2. posture and movement
3. dress and appearance
4. gestures and the smile
5. voice and vocal variety
6. words and nonwords
7. listener involvement
8. humor
9. natural self



The Eye Factor
"What you do speaks so loud I can't hear what you say."

The visual sense is very, very powerful. The eye is the only sensory organ that contains brain cells. It is the visual sense which dominates all of the senses. The language of the first brain is a visual language. The eye factor dominates.

Eye communication is your number one skill. It ranks first because it has the greatest impact in both one-on-one communications and large group communications. It literally connects mind-to-mind.

Good eye communication is more than just a glance. You are actually looking at an individual - making a first brain-to-first brain connection - when you genuinely communicate with your eyes.

Use involvement rather than intimacy or intimidation. For effective eye communication, count to five. A feeling of involvement requires about five seconds of steady eye contact. When we talk to another person and are excited, enthusiastic, and confident, we usually look at them for five to ten seconds before looking away.

Push for longer eye communication - beyond your comfort zone - for it's too easy to revert back to "short" eye-contact habits unless you work at it.

Beware of eye dart.

Beware of slo-blink.

Contact eyes, not faces. Look at people for four, five of six seconds. And exercise particularly on elimination rapid and/or distracting eye movements.

Posture and movement. Stand tall. The difference between towering and cowering is totally a matter of inner posture. It's got nothing to do with height, it costs nothing and it's more fun.

Dress for success, but the most powerful visual first impressive you make comes not from your clothes but from your posture. Confidence is best expressed through good, upright posture. How you hold yourself physically is an indicator of how you hold yourself mentally - and a decisive factor in how other regard you.

Stand tall. Stand with your shoulders back and your stomach in. Imagine a string from above tied to the center of your scalp and pulling you upward. Stand straight, but not starchy, and move naturally. Remain fluid rather than locked into a rigid position.

Watch your lower body. The second part of posture that often gets neglected is the lower part.

Get in the "Ready Position". The ready position means basically weight forward. Lean slightly forward, knees somewhat flexed, so you can bounce lightly on the balls of your feet.

Lean forward to give yourself more impact. Just make sure you move as you speak. Movement adds energy and variety to your message and imbues you with an aura of confidence. When talking to a group, move naturally - a few steps at a time rather than just a single tentative one-step. With eye communicating motivating you, take natural steps toward one person, pause as you complete your thought, then move on to another set of eyes. Beware of repetitive and mechanical movement though - it can be worse than standing still.

Movement is a reflection of energy, excitement and enthusiasm.

Dress and appearance. After posture, the most immediate visual impression we make on our listener's first brain is that of our dress and appearance. Our goal is to enable the listener to feel a comfortable sense of identification with us. The impression others receive from you is largely influenced by the way you groom yourself from the neck up.

Test out your first two seconds. People form their first and often lasting impressions of you in the first two seconds after meeting you. Those impressions are primarily from your dress and appearance.

Open gestures and a warm open smile. Your smile dominates your listener's impression as you communicate. It demonstrates openness and likability.

Keep your hands and arms relaxed at your side when you are at rest. Learn to smile under pressure. Cultivate the same natural smile when you're on the hot seat as when you are at ease among friends.

Find your nervous gesture and stop making it. Your hands should fall naturally to your sides when you are not emphasizing an idea or point.

It's virtually impossible for you to over-exaggerate. Big positive smile! Big energetic gestures! Don't worry about overdoing it. Exaggerate!

Without pause he flashed the first slide on the screen, strode across the stage, and used his pointer to bang against the screen, making his points. He roamed the stage like a restless tiger.

Good persuasive communication is driven by energy.

Your voice is the vehicle of your message. Learn to drive that vehicle like a Lamborghini. Push it, open it up, "Floor it"! Transmit the energy you have inside you through the vehicle of your voice!

Make your voice naturally authoritative. Work on bringing it down into a lower register. People associate a rich well-projected voice with authority and competence. Visualize your voice as a roller coaster: life it over the summit, then let it plummet.

How do you put a smile into your voice? just smile, and then talk. If you feel happy, excited and enthusiastic, let your voice show it.

Learn to project your voice.

Practice varying your pitch.

Practice varying your pace.

A good way to drain the energy factor out of communication is through a bad habit I call nonwords.

Build your vocabulary. Use synonyms.

Paint word picture. Paint intense, colorful word pictures by using metaphors and vivid expressions.

beware of jargon.

You must be aware of nonwords that obstruct your message. They make you appear hesitant, uncertain, incompetent.
uhh
ahh
umm
so
well
you know
and
okay
like
sort of

Replace your nonwords with something more powerful. Use the power of the "pause". The planned pause can be one of your most dynamic communication tools. You can pause for as long as three or four seconds, right in the middle of a sentence - and it will not only seem perfectly natural to your listener, it will give extra punch to your message.

Exercises in pausing probably have the second biggest and most immediate payoff in your communications effectiveness - eye communication is number one.


8 basics to listener involvement:

1. Use drama.
2. Maintain eye communication.
3. Move.
4. Use visuals.
5. Ask questions.
6. Use demonstrations.
7. Use samples and gimmicks.
8. Create interest.


Humor. Humor creates a special bond between you and your listeners. It's virtually impossible to dislike someone who makes us laugh, who helps us enjoy ourselves. It makes you appear more genial, more warm, more likable.

Don't tell jokes. Leave comedy to comedians. Fun is better than funny. Your goal is not comedy but connection - creating an atmosphere of fun, friendliness and openness. You want to put your listeners at ease.

A warm genuine smile always works.

Think funny. Think friendly.

How to test a hunch.
1. Don't trust your first impression. Don't make a decision until you take a second look.
2. Compare your hunch with the objective facts.
3. Never substitute hunching for doing your homework.
4. Never confuse a hunch with hope.

Real communication is always a two-way process. Always. The irony is that in order to get people to really listen to you, you have to listen to them. And I mean really listen. Listen when they talk. Listen when they ask a question. When you open your gate, you open your listener's gate.

Grow antennae, not horns.

Because a company is made up of real people, and real people need real communication. They need feedback, interaction, and attention. They need contact.

We need to listen with our eyes.

Nod your head.

Make vocal responses.

Make a mental list.

Respond at the emotional level. Use warmth, a smile. Respond with positive words.

Let another person talk. You invite them to talk. You find ways to draw them out.

Mastery comes from doing, pure and simple.