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This is The Art of Charm.
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Learn everything you need to know to crush it in business, love, and life.
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Today we re talking with communication expert Francis Cole Jones, author of How to Wow, Proven Strategies for Selling Your Brilliant Self in Any Situation.
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We re gonna talk about the importance, of course, of reading others  body language and managing your own.
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If you re listening to The Art of Charm on the regular, you re no stranger to those topics.
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and we re gonna talk about how to listen for intent as well as content, sort of deciphering the meaning behind what people are saying, a tip to increase listener buy-in of what you re saying from 60% to 94%, very specific numbers there, and how to tell your boss something negative about your past during an interview, ways to generate camaraderie, and...
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the importance of your active listening face.
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This and more with Francis Cole Jones.
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And with that, welcome guys and gals to the Art of Charm.
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I m Jordan Harbinger.
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The Art of Charm brings together the best thought leaders, teachers, and exceptional individuals to teach you how to be a top performer in life, love, and at work.
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Imagine having a mix of experienced mentors teaching you their expertise
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packing decades of research, testing, and tough lessons into a curriculum.
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We may not have all the answers, but we definitely have all of the questions.
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Make sure to stay up to date with The Art of Charm and get some stuff that we don t slash can t share on the show by signing up at theartofcharm.com.
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We ll also email you our Fundamentals Toolkit that covers topics like body language, nonverbal communication,
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persuasion, business networking, public speaking, negotiation, and a whole lot more.
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I m also doing regular videos with drills and exercises to help you move forward every single week.
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I also want to encourage you to join our social capital challenge at theartofcharm.com slash challenge or text charmed to 33444, that s charmed, to 33444.
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it will make you a better networker, it will make you a better connector, and it s going to inspire more people to develop a personal and professional relationship with you.
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Of course, if you want some accountability, invite your friends as well.
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Theartofcharm.com slash challenge or text charmed to 33444.
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All right, let s talk to Francis Cole Jones.
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First of all, thanks for coming in.
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I appreciate this because communication is something that we teach a lot at Art of Charm.
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It s something that I don t think you can ever be so good at it that you never need help with it anymore because communication changes.
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As we get older, we get confident in certain areas and maybe less confident in others, especially if we re in a time of transition.
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So I feel like this is a skill set that s really evergreen and also really, really crucial to success.
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I really appreciate your time being an expert in this area.
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Tell us what you do in one sentence.
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I will help you present your best self in any situation.
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Sounds familiar to those of us that listen to Art of Charm?
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All right, perfect.
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Okay, of course I made you cram that into one sentence, but I think the key here that I ve gotten from some of your work is we have more control, especially in situations that seem outside of our control.
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Job interviews, sales pitches, presentations.
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even potentially dating scenarios, which we can sort of stay away from here.
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And that anybody and everybody, of course, has the potential to be charismatic.
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This is a learnable, teachable skill, which is why we have jobs here at AOC, and why you have a job as well.
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And this isn t something that you re born with, and it s definitely not something that you should shrug off as something that you don t need, no matter what stage of life you re in.
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So I definitely want to dive into this.
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And it looks like,
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One of the first things that you teach is exactly one of the foundations of the art of charm, which is namely nonverbal communication.
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Body language, managing your body language, reading others  body language.
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Is it something that you put a lot of emphasis on?
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I do.
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And one of the studies that I turn to, it s somewhat controversial depending on how long you choose to spend on Google.
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You ll find people who say, it s absolutely untrue, but it s helpful.
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It was a study that was done at UCLA of the three components of your message.
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And what they discovered is that people actually remember only about 7% of what is said.
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So 38% of your impact is your tonal quality, and 55% is what your body s doing while you re talking.
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Right.
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This is a Moravian study.
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People poke holes in this a lot because, as you know, or as you might want, if you want to test it, you can, it s frequently miscommunicated, you can, people say, oh, it s 7% words, but then you put on a foreign movie where you don t understand the words and you see the body language and you hear the vocal tonality and you have no frickin  idea what s going on.
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So it can t just be that, right?
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It isn t just that, but it is, it s just, you know what it is?
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Use it as a tool for awareness and recognize that there are some things that you can do that are going to make you seem, for example, more trustworthy.
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One of the things I tell everybody is we trust you when we can see your hands and we don t trust you when we can t.
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And that s why, you know, one of the first things they say to the alleged criminal is put your hands where I can see them.
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So, you know, you are going into a job interview, you wish to appear trustworthy, or a date or whatever, or a pitch meeting, I don t care what you re doing, should you wish to appear trustworthy, keep your hands on the table.
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Yeah, not up in the air like you re under arrest, but somewhere on the table, right?
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Somewhere on the table, yes, please.
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I would imagine this is subconscious, right?
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We re not saying, hmm, I don t see his hands, so she must be up to something shady.
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Most of this is subconscious.
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However, I think what people don t realize is how strongly and quickly they are influenced.
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One of the things that I do a lot, just for fun, is if you ve ever watched videos of people making a public apology, and then watch them do it with the sound off.
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And what s really interesting is that you will be able to tell if, in fact, they are sorry.
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I think that s one of the reasons why Tiger Woods  apology landed so poorly.
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Because if you watch that with no sound, he doesn t look sorry.
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And if you watch the Kanye West, I m apologizing for grabbing the mic out of Taylor Swift s hand.
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Again, not looking sorry.
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How can you tell that Kanye is not sorry?
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If you look at the tape of him,
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And it s hard to find, because they ve taken it down, so you have to do a bit of searching.
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But if you watch it with the sound off, you ll see somebody who is leaning back in the chair, so all the way back against the back of the sofa, and shaking his head no from side to side.
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Ah, interesting.
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And I would say also his facial expression, to me, looks a little bit angry.
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But everybody can be their own judge.
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Right, he doesn t smile in photos ever though, right?
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That s his thing, he always looks angry.
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Well, again, if I were working with him, should he have to apologize, I would help him find the happy.
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Find the happy now.
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Gotcha, okay, so it s the shaking of the head no or maybe sort of a dismissive body language or posture or facial expression.
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Honestly, sitting with your back against the back of the chair.
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And again, I talk about this all the time, whether it s meetings or job interviews or whatever, the minute that you are lounging back against the back of the chair, you do not seem as committed.
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You don t seem like you want to be there.
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And so you really do need to, you know, I don t want you all the way on the edge of your seat, like, oh, you know, please pick me.
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But I do want the small of your back off the back of your chair.
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Interesting, and it s the same thing with leaning forward, being committed.
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You have to commit to the apology in this particular instance.
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You do.
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Where do you find yourself reading others  body language in the most useful way?
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Because it s cool to see if people mean or don t mean an apology, but where does this come into play the most in your daily life, in your experience?
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I use it with clients quite a bit.
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I mean, I use it day-to-day with people.
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They say, and again, you can do some of this road work yourself, but they say that right before people tell a lie, they look down and to the left.
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We know that eye access and cues are not accurate.
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I will tell you, move through your life, and that is one tell that I have found very useful.
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the eye-accessing cues, even though they re disproven?
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No, just the down and to the left, right before people lie.
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And again, a great place to see somebody do that is, I m just spacing out on his name right now, who was the candidate who was having the affair with the videographer?
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Oh my gosh, I don t know.
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You know, but anyway, and he went on and did one of the talk shows and was going on and on about, no, no, no, he wasn t sleeping,
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with her and it s actually almost hilarious because every time he says no he looks down and to the left.
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Is that switched around if you re left-handed or right-handed?
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I don t believe so.
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Oh, interesting.
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I ll have to look at that, because I do know that all of the other eye-accessing cues have been proven to be completely random and kind of made up by a certain branch of maybe irresponsible NLP practitioner types that aren t really even well-versed in their own pseudoscience.
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That said, you do have to consider the fact that it s one of the reasons why poker players wear sunglasses, professional poker players, because the eyes do have the ability to give you away.
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They do, but only against your own baseline, not against some sort of, okay, well, if he looks that way, he s got a good hand if he looks that.
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We ve talked about this with professional poker players here on the show.
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It s only against your own baseline, so you try to prevent other people from getting the baseline in the first place.
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Right.
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And then the other thing, again, just because it s interesting and it s just what my whole idea of what, you know, what I d like people to think about is just begin to pay attention.
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Yeah.
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If that s somebody s baseline, that s something that you need to know and figure out what your boss s baseline is.
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figure out what your girlfriend or boyfriend s baseline is.
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One of the other things that is just an interesting thing to think about is that when they interviewed, was it... Who shot Ronald Reagan?
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Oh, God.
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Okay.
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Jason will come back with it in a minute.
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Wasn t that John Hinckley Jr.?
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Yeah.
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All right.
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One of the things that he mentioned afterward, one of the things that he had found so disconcerting was that only because it was a sunny day were President Reagan s Secret Service wearing sunglasses.
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But when the people who debriefed him on his actions, I don t know if that s the FBI, whoever it might be,
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One of the things that he kept saying was the sunglasses threw him off.
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He didn t know if they were looking at him or not.
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And it s since then become a mandatory thing for Secret Service to wear sunglasses.
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Just an interesting fact, something to think about.
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Okay, well, when we talk about baseline, what specifically are we gonna look at?
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Let s say we re talking about our partner, our girlfriend or our boyfriend.
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How are we getting that baseline?
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What factors are you looking for specifically?
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I m looking for, again, where are they looking?
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Again, people who enjoy lying really, really like to look you right in the eye when they do it.
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So, I mean, I know that about a few people that I work with.
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That s something that they enjoy.
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They really make that earnest and meaningful eye contact.
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And then I m just waiting for a doozy to land on me.
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I ve noticed, you know, where people, you know, in terms of how are they crossing their legs?
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Are they crossed toward me?
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Are they crossed against me?
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Has the person created a barrier with their legs?
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So again, just something to keep in mind.
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I do pay attention to where people put their hands.
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Are their hands on the table?
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Are their hands in their pockets?
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something to think about.
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And these are all taken in groups, right?
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It s not like, oh, their feet are pointing away from me.
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A lot of irresponsible, sort of self-appointed body language experts say things like, oh, if their feet are pointed away from you, it means they want to go.
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But it doesn t necessarily mean anything at all unless it s in a group of other things.
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Maybe their arms are crossed and their feet are pointed away from you and they re not making prolonged eye contact and they re giving you short answers.
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Yeah, they probably want to go.
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But there are multiple reasons for everything.
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So it s putting together the aggregate of things.
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Again, my whole job, and I think what you guys are doing too, is essentially what is a body language expert.
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Anybody can become one, so enjoy a muzzle talk, just start observing your friends.
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Read a couple books, go overboard, accuse people of things they re not doing, et cetera, et cetera.
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You need to notice patterns in people.
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Perfect.
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Well, we have the nonverbal stuff.
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We talk about it a lot at Art of Charm, especially in our toolbox for new listeners.
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That s at theartofcharm.com slash toolbox.
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We ve got entire, multiple hour-long presentations on that subject.
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Let s talk about verbal communication.
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One of the distinctions that you make in your work is listening for intent as well as content.
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What is that, and how do we train ourselves to do that, and why is it important in the first place?
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I think the important thing about it is that very often, again, there is not a discrepancy, but there s an underlying layer to what s being said.
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So, you know, for example, you go in to talk to your boss about getting a raise.
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And, you know, if he or she is saying to you, you know, we re really sorry, we really just can t do it this year, but we re gonna get around to it soon, that, to me, tonality-wise, does not sound like someone who actually feels regretful that you are not getting what you want.
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Right, ending on that upward pitch, speaking a little bit, almost whimsically, about your request,
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And frankly, like, you know, essentially with one foot out the door while they re talking to you.
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But if I were to say to you, you know, Jordan, I m so sorry that we re not able to do this for you this year.
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And, you know, I would really, really like to be able to make it happen sometime in the future.
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And so I hope that you would stick it out with us until that time, because I really value the work that you re doing.
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You re a good liar, Frances.
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But one person is kind of saying, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, we hear you, and we value you, and we ll get back to you.
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And the other person means it.
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So again, it s listening for what s underneath.
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It s also a really useful thing if you re trying to diffuse someone who s angry or upset.
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And they re saying to you, whenever this happens, you do this, and you do this, and you do this.
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And rather than getting caught up in the particulars, because that can go nowhere of rebutting every accusation that s just been made, you can say to someone, you know what, what I m really hearing and what I m getting from you is that you re really angry and you re really frustrated.
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Am I right about that?
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And at that point, they re like, yes, I am.
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Okay, but now they re agreeing with you.
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And as small as that is, that s one small step toward the two of you working together toward a shared goal.
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So I work with clients a lot on listening, what is the emotion underneath what s being said?
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And sometimes you speak to that.
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Yeah, this makes a lot of sense.
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In fact, this is, and I m no expert on this particular subject, this is one of the areas where people on the autism spectrum have trouble because they re listening for content only in many ways.
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And forget autism, engineers like my dad have the same issue.
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They re like, well, you said this.
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And it s, well, that was sarcasm.
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How am I supposed to know that?
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And for some people, the tonality and the rest of their nonverbal communication make it really obvious.
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However, for many of us, we have to learn that.
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And some people who quote unquote have analytical brains or are used to dealing with analytical problems that are sort of content based, listening for intent, it s like listening for Chinese.
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It s just not something that hits the filter very easily.
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I mean, it s just something that it s good to know that it s an area you need to work on.
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Again, it s a great, great, great problem-solving tool.
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If you can flag the emotion underneath something, then you can actually get to the heart of what s going on.
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You know, if you are in a fight every single week with your partner about, I don t know, whatever, who cares, taking out the garbage, just for the most cliched example, if you can in that moment say,
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It seems to me that this is less about the garbage and more about you feeling like I don t pay enough attention to the requests that you make day to day.
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And again, so now you re in an actual conversation.
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Otherwise, it s like, no, because last Tuesday you didn t do it.
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And then, oh, yeah, yeah.
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You just go out with yourself with the garbage.
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Now, how do we begin to develop this habit?
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What if we re sitting here thinking, okay, I m definitely one of these people who has trouble listening for intent versus listening for content.
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How do I start listening for intent if I find myself, if I find that challenging?
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I think it can be helpful to begin to ask people that you trust to, you know, to say to them, I m going to, as you re talking, double check and say things to you, which might seem incredibly obvious to you, like, wow, you sound frustrated right now, or wow, you seem to, but I just want to make sure that I m hearing, again, the emotion and the subtext to what s occurring.
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And again, test your hearing, test your oral reflexes on people that you can trust to not get weirded out by this new game that you re playing.
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And then from there, you ll begin to trust that judgment and that new set of ears that you ve got.
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So almost approaching it from a scientific perspective as well, like, okay, here s what this person said, here s what I think I read from their emotion or their nonverbal communication, let s make a note of that mentally or even in your phone someplace, and okay, did that turn out to be correct?
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Or you can even ask questions, like, alright, I don t wanna seem this way or I don t wanna make you restate the obvious, but...
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Do you mean that, or is that sarcastic?
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So when you say that, are you serious about that?
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Because I really need to know what s going on here.
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You don t have to sugarcoat it for me.
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And a lot of times, I know me personally, when I ask that, a lot of people will go, well, yeah, truth be told, we just don t have it in the budget right now.
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And then you re like, oh, well, why didn t you say that?
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Well, you know, I don t want to make waves.
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And you re like, well, okay, I need you to make waves, because I m dense, right?
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we can start to make others communicate more clearly until we realize, okay, when I feel like this is what they re communicating and I turn out to be right 90% of the time, now I can rely on that.
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Right.
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And it s actually, you know, frankly, you can do it all the time with anybody because it s a great way to make people feel understood and heard.
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If someone s in the middle of going off about something, you just say, look, I m going to stop you for a second because I just want to make sure I m getting everything.
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So if I understand you correctly, this happened and happened and this happened and that happened and this happened.
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Am I forgetting anything?
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No, okay.
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But again, it s nice, because the person that s talking really, really all of a sudden feels like, gosh, that Jordan pays attention to me.
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Little do they know, it s a little tricky hack.
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SPEAKER_00
But, you know, as you know, and, you know, very often someone will be telling a story, you know, oh, my God, this happened and this happened and, you know, whatever, they just dragged a dumpster down along three panels of my car and you finish speaking and your friend goes, oh, my God, well, one time this happened to me.
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SPEAKER_00
So there s no recognition of the story that you ve just told.
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SPEAKER_00
So, I mean, it s a technique called looping, and if you can begin to loop people back, again, I guarantee they re gonna just think you are extraordinary.
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SPEAKER_03
Can you go over what looping is, again, specifically for people who are zoning out or driving and are like, wait, what was that?
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SPEAKER_03
Oh, I need to know that.
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SPEAKER_00
So, looping is, you know, if you started telling me a story about anything, whatever it might be, and then I would loop back what I believe I heard you say.
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SPEAKER_03
Can we try it?
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SPEAKER_00
Let s try it.
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SPEAKER_03
I ll tell you a little story that s probably a little boring and you can loop it back and we ll talk about why that worked and why you chose what you chose to say.
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SPEAKER_03
So this morning I went for a bike ride and it was awesome because it didn t rain and there was nobody on the trail and I got a really good workout and then I went out to lunch.
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SPEAKER_00
So I just, I m going to stop you for a second.
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SPEAKER_00
I want to make sure I understood everything.
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SPEAKER_00
Uh, you were, you got up this morning and jumped on your bicycle and the weather was clear and the path was empty.
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SPEAKER_00
So you were really able to go at your own pace and enjoy your workout and feel your heart beating and have some solitude and enjoy nature.
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SPEAKER_00
And then once you were finished with that,
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SPEAKER_00
Lo and behold, it was lunchtime, yay, and you could go right out and have lunch to recover from this bicycle ride.
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SPEAKER_03
Yeah, so you said it even better than I did, which I think is useful, and I kind of expected that.
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SPEAKER_03
That s the reason I gave such a pedestrian example, because...
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SPEAKER_03
There s a pun in there with the biking and the pedestrian thing.
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SPEAKER_03
Anyway, the reason I did that and the reason I think it s important is because when I find myself doing this looping technique, especially with people who are a little quiet and I feel like I m dragging the words out of them, when you tell it better than they can,
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SPEAKER_03
it lets you fill in emotion where they might not have communicated any, even though you re kind of maybe just guessing.
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SPEAKER_03
Maybe I was in an urban trail, and maybe I didn t, maybe I didn t get any solitude whatsoever, but then they can correct you and keep the conversation going.
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SPEAKER_03
So I feel this is a useful tool when somebody maybe isn t as communicative as we want, or when their communication is actually confusing, either because it s too short or because it s too jargony or for some other reason.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and and or if they re really, really angry, because when people get angry, they get really monosyllabic.
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SPEAKER_00
So to loop somebody in that point, you know what, they ll be angry enough to correct you.
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SPEAKER_00
And then again, you begin to hear a little bit more about, okay, there s the problem that you re talking about.
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SPEAKER_00
And then there s an underlying layer of what s going on.
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SPEAKER_03
and we clarify that layer, that underlying layer for them, and they can either correct us or agree with it, which it seems like puts them back into a logical mode of communication, especially if they re really emotional, angry, whatever, which is good, because then it tempers their emotion a little bit, hopefully.
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SPEAKER_00
Right, and as you said, some people just feel better when they correct you.
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SPEAKER_00
So they get the opportunity to say, no, what I meant to say was blah, blah, blah, and you re like, okay, so I m glad you told me that.
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SPEAKER_03
One of the things I found interesting in your work is you ve got language which you assert increases listener buy-in from 60% to 94%.
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SPEAKER_03
One, I want to know what that is and how did you get those numbers so precisely?
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SPEAKER_00
That actually was from the because phrase, is what we re talking about.
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SPEAKER_03
Ah, okay.
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SPEAKER_03
Can we explain what that is and why that works?
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SPEAKER_03
Because that s, it s a big jump.
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SPEAKER_00
This isn t my work.
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SPEAKER_00
This is Ellen Langer, who s a social psychologist at Harvard.
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SPEAKER_00
And she did a study that showed that there s one word that increases the possibility of cooperation from 60 to 94%.
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SPEAKER_00
And that word is because.
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SPEAKER_00
Always giving people the because behind why you re doing something or why you re making a request of them.
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SPEAKER_03
Is this that study where they had, I guess, the students or the kids or the researchers saying, hi, can I cut in line in front of you?
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SPEAKER_03
And people would be like, no.
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SPEAKER_03
And then they would say, hi, can I cut in line in front of you because I have a deadline or because I need to do this?
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SPEAKER_03
And they found out that
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SPEAKER_03
having a reason after because turned out to almost be not even relevant, you know, can I cut in line, this is due really soon?
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SPEAKER_03
Sure, of course, most people would think, I would let that person go too, but you can even say, can I cut in line because I want to, and they ll go, uh, okay.
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SPEAKER_03
It just turned out to be like this magic password that got you what you wanted, at least up to the 94% compliance rate compared to 60%.
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SPEAKER_03
Is this the same study?
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SPEAKER_00
It sounds like the same study.
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SPEAKER_00
You know, again, it s what I always tell my clients is, you know, you re at the supermarket and someone cuts the line and you re angry, but if they say, do you mind if I cut the line because I m late to pick up my kids at school, you re gonna let that line cut go.
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SPEAKER_00
So, yes.
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SPEAKER_03
So, yes.
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SPEAKER_00
You know, very often people are concerned about going on job interviews
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SPEAKER_00
being asked a question to which they don t have the answer, right?
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SPEAKER_00
But if you said to your interviewer, I d like to think about that for a second, because I want to be sure to give you the best answer possible.
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SPEAKER_00
Who s mad at that?
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SPEAKER_00
A job person is like, I can t believe that guy, you want to give me the best answer possible.
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SPEAKER_00
What a jerk.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, you want to give definitely give the because in that scenario.
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SPEAKER_01
Now, when we re talking with other people, and when we re communicating with other people, you ve mentioned active listening, and you mentioned something called the active listening face.
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SPEAKER_01
What is that?
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SPEAKER_01
Because I ll tell you, I never think about my facial expression when I m listening to somebody.
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SPEAKER_01
I don t think I ve ever thought about that.
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SPEAKER_00
Here, okay, I ll try to talk you through it.
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SPEAKER_00
Some people, when you re talking to them, and they just, they go completely flat.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I think I m related to most of those people.
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SPEAKER_00
And it s what, you know, and I don t know if we re allowed to use the B word on your podcast, but it s called resting B face.
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SPEAKER_00
We ll just call it resting B face.
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SPEAKER_00
But we all know those people who have that face.
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SPEAKER_00
And, you know, it s not fun to look at and it doesn t give anything back to you.
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SPEAKER_00
So what I want is when you re listening, I really want you to have an engaged face.
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SPEAKER_00
It doesn t necessarily need to be smiling or nodding, but it just does need to be leaning in and you can smile if you want to, you can nod if you want to, but just to allow people to know that you are paying attention and that you haven t just gotten lost in the vortex of your own thoughts.
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SPEAKER_01
I guess we can t really do an active listening face on the radio, but I think that that does make sense, because for most of us, if I look like I m concentrating, that s fine.
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SPEAKER_01
But if I look like I m bored and that s just the way I always look, or if I look like I m angry or not agreeing with you and that s the way I always look, that s bad, of course, because when someone s communicating with us,
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SPEAKER_01
and when we re communicating with them, we re filtering that communication through our own emotional state at the time, and our own emotional filters at the time.
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SPEAKER_01
So if I think, well, you know, Frances might not like this idea, but here goes, and you ve got your resting bee face on, I m just thinking, well, of course, I was right, she s not even listening to me, she already had her mind made up before I even opened my mouth, and even though that might not be how you re feeling at all, you just didn t put any thought into how you look when you re receiving the information.
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SPEAKER_00
Right.
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SPEAKER_00
So I think an active listening phase, it s an astonishing thing how it, you know, how far it will go to help others continue to express themselves and tell you maybe more than they would have to begin with.
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SPEAKER_00
And there are some exercises you can do to wake up your face, which I do make all of my clients do, and I do myself before I go on television.
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SPEAKER_00
I don t know if anyone has had any exposure to acting classes, but if you have, it s usually known as the pumpkin raisin face exercise.
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SPEAKER_00
Have you bumped into this?
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, can you explain it on radio without showing us your pumpkin raisin face?
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SPEAKER_01
Is that something that you can teach?
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SPEAKER_00
So what you do in the beginning is you make your face as big as a jack-o -lantern.
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SPEAKER_00
So you open your mouth as wide as you can and you open your eyes as wide as you can and you just go for that kind of crazy
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SPEAKER_00
howl kind of a face.
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SPEAKER_01
The prisoner face, the maximum security prisoner face, got it.
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SPEAKER_00
Like you re screaming.
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SPEAKER_00
And then the next thing you do is you tighten up every single muscle as much as you possibly can, so your face looks like a teeny tiny wizened little raisin.
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SPEAKER_00
And if you do that five or six or eight or 10 times, you ll notice you do have so much more mobility and so much more expression in your face.
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SPEAKER_00
So I highly recommend that.
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SPEAKER_00
Again, very often these days people do job interviews on Skype.
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SPEAKER_00
So do your pumpkin raisin face exercises ahead of time and you re just going to look that much more animated and that much more appealing to the person you re talking with.
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SPEAKER_01
Just don t do it while you re talking with them.
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SPEAKER_01
Definitely could go over poorly.
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SPEAKER_01
Jason, you doing this right now?
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SPEAKER_01
You doing the pumpkin raisin face?
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SPEAKER_01
I was totally doing it while you guys were talking about it.
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SPEAKER_01
It was great.
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SPEAKER_00
It feels good, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
Yep.
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SPEAKER_01
I think I just threw my headphones off.
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SPEAKER_00
It feels weird, but it feels good.
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SPEAKER_00
The other thing that s just fun to know, and again, this isn t a study that I did or I was done, it s in Malcolm Gladwell s book, The Tipping Point, but it was done at the University of Chicago.
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SPEAKER_00
It s just an interesting thing to note.
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SPEAKER_00
They told two groups of students that their tuition would be going up.
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SPEAKER_00
And with both groups, they used exactly the same language.
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SPEAKER_00
And with one group, while they were speaking, they were nodding their head up and down.
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SPEAKER_00
They were saying, you know, your tuition s going up, and this is why, and blah, blah, blah, and blah, blah, blah.
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SPEAKER_00
And with the next group, they gave, again, exact same language, but they were shaking their head from side to side as they gave that information.
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SPEAKER_00
And what they did is they pulled the students afterward, and the students who had gotten the nodding, you know, while they were getting, were like, that s okay, we get it.
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SPEAKER_00
It seems like a reasonable, you know, price increase.
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SPEAKER_00
And the students who had gotten the, you know, head shaking, were like, this is ridiculous.
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SPEAKER_00
And it s something you ll notice, hopefully you won t be in a courtroom, but you ll notice if you watch any of the kind of the crime shows, whenever the attorneys do their summation arguments, you ll notice that they all nod.
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SPEAKER_00
And that is definitely a trick that s being used to get the jurors to believe that what they re saying is plausible.
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SPEAKER_01
Sure, I am an attorney and I ve definitely done closing arguments where I walk up close to the jury box when it s something I need them to remember and I walk back and I m nodding my head when I m trying to get them to buy into something.
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SPEAKER_01
I used all kinds of nonverbal communication when I talk to juries and a lot of times you can tell they re just like, I trust this guy and I have my witnesses do it too.
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SPEAKER_01
which is kind of, it s not unfair, but I mean, I m supposed to advocate, but at the end of the day, if you know this stuff and opposing counsel doesn t, it s their problem, right?
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SPEAKER_01
It can definitely make a difference.
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SPEAKER_01
When I was in law school and we had mock trials, we actually had cameras in the jury room, and over and over again, the juries would say, ah, I trusted that guy, I trusted that lawyer, I trusted his witnesses more than everybody else, and we always just crushed it.
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SPEAKER_01
And a lot of it came down to nonverbal communication.
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SPEAKER_00
It s so much fun.
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SPEAKER_00
That s what I love about it is that the more you watch, the more you re gonna learn, and the more you learn, again, the more in control you re going to be.
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SPEAKER_00
So it s just great and interesting all day long.
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SPEAKER_01
Can we use this persuasive technique and this nonverbal communication to generate camaraderie at work, among our friends, even within our family?
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SPEAKER_01
Are there ways we can utilize this for those purposes?
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I mean, I think you can use it with anybody, anytime.
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SPEAKER_00
There are ways to actively create camaraderie in meetings.
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SPEAKER_00
So, you know, one of the simplest ways to get people to like you is to write down what they say when they say it.
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SPEAKER_00
Because, you know, it makes the person who s talking feel important.
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SPEAKER_00
If you are in a job interview or if you re in a meeting and you want your boss to think you re really paying attention for you to be taking notes furiously while they re talking, you re like, that Jordan really was paying attention to me.
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SPEAKER_00
Again, I like him.
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SPEAKER_00
That s an easy thing to do.
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SPEAKER_00
One of the other things I talk about is if you re going into a meeting or an interview and they say, you know, do you want coffee or water or anything?
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SPEAKER_00
I always want people to accept because there s something about sharing that, that activity that puts you on a more equal footing.
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SPEAKER_00
You know, I don t want someone to say, yeah, I d like a half caff mocha, you know, frappuccino with six blenders.
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SPEAKER_00
No, but yes, yes.
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SPEAKER_00
Thank you.
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SPEAKER_00
You know, it s a nice thing to do.
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SPEAKER_01
Okay, so we can write down what people say.
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SPEAKER_01
I like that, but you can write down anything.
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SPEAKER_01
You can just draw.
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SPEAKER_01
Well, not if they can see your notes.
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SPEAKER_01
Okay, well, obviously if they can see your notes, no, that won t work.
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SPEAKER_00
No, my brother used to speak Russian, and he used to sit there and write terrible things in Cyrillic so that people, you know, but they thought he was busily taking notes.
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SPEAKER_01
Nice, yeah, I like that one, yeah.
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SPEAKER_01
Especially if you can write in a different alphabet your money.
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SPEAKER_01
Or just really messy cursive like me.
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SPEAKER_01
How else can we generate that trust, that camaraderie, or the likability?
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SPEAKER_01
I like the writing things down.
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SPEAKER_01
I can definitely see that working on me and others.
3
SPEAKER_00
I think that, again, it sounds incredibly pedantic, but if you re going in for a meeting or an interview, I want you to pick three small talk topics ahead of time.
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SPEAKER_00
Because you can have a really, really good meeting and your adrenaline is up and blah, blah.
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SPEAKER_00
And then they say, oh, let me walk you to the elevator.
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SPEAKER_00
And you re standing there waiting.
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SPEAKER_00
And you just pick a topic out of thin air because you re tired and the adrenaline is now wearing off.
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SPEAKER_00
And you can just watch the whole thing explode in your face.
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SPEAKER_00
So I want you to have that kind of in your back pocket.
3
SPEAKER_01
I know you train a lot of folks with interview tactics and things like that for promotions, for jobs, you even have an app on the iPhone which is free and we ll link to that in the show notes to kind of go over nightmare scenarios or stumbling blocks that people might hit during job interviews, but one question I have that I ve gotten from a fan
4
SPEAKER_01
recently, and me not having a real job over the last maybe basic decade here, I m not in a position to answer it, but he had something happen in his past that was negative.
4
SPEAKER_01
He d gotten fired from his last job.
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SPEAKER_01
It was for various reasons that were pretty bad, I think.
4
SPEAKER_01
somebody he was dating, that he worked with, she had stolen something, and he was with her at the time, I don t know if he knew about it or not, and now he s looking for a new job, and he s like, I ve gotta fill this two, three year gap in my resume, and I have to tell them something about this.
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SPEAKER_01
How do I handle that?
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SPEAKER_01
How do we tell a prospective new employer something negative about our past, especially something really negative, like a dismissal or termination?
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SPEAKER_02
I think there are a few things you wanna keep in mind.
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SPEAKER_02
The first is, you know, very often you ll sit down in an interview and your interviewer will say to you, so, you know, Jordan, where shall we begin?
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SPEAKER_02
I really recommend if you ve got something funky in your past, that you open with it.
4
SPEAKER_02
So I would say, you know what, Frances, if you look at my resume, you ll see that I was terminated from my last job.
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SPEAKER_02
So I m sure you have some questions about that.
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SPEAKER_02
Why don t we start there?
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SPEAKER_02
What that does is now you re not waiting to be pounced on.
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SPEAKER_02
Okay, you re in control of the situation, you re running the table.
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SPEAKER_02
And you know, you ve been frank, and you re going to get points for that.
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SPEAKER_02
when you do talk about whatever it is that occurred, you know, you want to be very factual.
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SPEAKER_02
So just to use the example that you gave, you know, in my last job, I was at the time dating someone, unbeknownst to me, while she stole X, what occurred was, you know, my boss rightly felt that because I had been present,
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SPEAKER_02
and he didn t know whether or not I was complicit, made the decision to terminate me.
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SPEAKER_02
You know, what I learned from that experience is, well, for starters I broke up with her,
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SPEAKER_02
But, you know, going forward, what I ve learned from that is to, if I m in a situation of that kind again, I need to, you know, if I have the opportunity, alert my boss to what happened.
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SPEAKER_02
You know, a lot of people adopt, gosh, I hope they don t find out.
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SPEAKER_02
You know, and what I tell everybody is hope is not a strategy.
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SPEAKER_02
So you need to be proactive.
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SPEAKER_02
But when you are in that situation, tell the story of what occurred, and then talk about, this is the lesson I learned.
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SPEAKER_02
and that becomes the conversation.
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SPEAKER_01
So you can start it off that way, and that way you re doing it on your terms.
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SPEAKER_01
There s no real way to deliver this any smoother other than, because otherwise it s gonna come up, or worse, it won t come up, and they ll just find it later if they didn t find it, and they ll go, oh, well, I guess that disqualifies this person, we didn t notice that.
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SPEAKER_02
And they ll knock you out without you ever having a chance to speak about it.
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SPEAKER_01
Right, so meet it head on.
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SPEAKER_02
meet it head on and be scrupulously honest about what occurred because I mean what s at stake here is usually you know it is a conversation around honesty so if they get the sense that you re hedging or lying or whatever
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SPEAKER_02
then of course they re not going to believe you.
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SPEAKER_02
You know, if it s something, you know, for example, say you were caught taking money at your last job and now, you know, you could say, this is what occurred.
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SPEAKER_02
I was terminated.
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SPEAKER_02
I ve obviously learned a lesson from that.
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SPEAKER_02
I recognize that if you hire me, you re not going to want to put me in charge of the cash drawer the first day.
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SPEAKER_02
I get it.
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SPEAKER_02
And my recommendation would be just so that you feel comfortable until we get to know each other and you can trust me, that you put some kind of system of checks and balances in until we ve gotten over this hump.
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SPEAKER_02
But be forthright.
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SPEAKER_02
Again, talk about the lesson you ve learned from it and hope for the best.
4
SPEAKER_02
What I really do know is that more people than you would believe have a similar story of their own to tell.
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SPEAKER_00
Thanks for listening to the Art of Charm.
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SPEAKER_00
Get more confidence, relationship skills, life hacks, and more at theartofcharmpodcast.com.