When we think about our pitch for the very first time where should our starting
point be? Should it be our solution? Should it be us the people that are pitching?
The answer is it should be you our audience we should begin with knowing
our audience how they think and then shaping our pitch accordingly. The thing
is it's quite tricky to climb inside the heads of our audience to understand how
they think and feel so I sought out experts advice and I got to interview an
individual called Jonathan Marshall he's a psychologist and a psychotherapist and
an individual that knows a thing or two about how our brains work he either taught
or studied at Harvard and Stanford, he was an officer in the military and one
one of the founders of a company that went on to be called Yahoo Mail. I begin
my interview by asking Jonathan how then do we begin understanding how people's
minds work?
Welcome thank you thank you very much for taking this time to speak to me
today it's very very kind of you and I see from the background there that you
are a sporty man and I see a bike it's just a mountain bike it's a
mountain but in fact I'm embarrassed to say there are two. Yes those
are the sources of injuries. One of the questions I have for you is
around empathy because particularly people like
myself one of the things I realized is not everyone thinks like me. The sooner I
realized that actually a lot earlier in my life and I probably would
have been much better off. But I was talking to individual who's starting a
fin tech company with of very quantitative background and he said
actually the salespeople who know the customers the most that's why they often
the most successful people I think he had just seen the film, the founder, with that
story about the starting of McDonalds. So
they're able to to to interpret the needs and wants of other people and in one of
your blog's you talk about speaking to Kofi Annan the former Secretary General
of the United Nations and you asked him about the threats to mankind
it's getting pretty big now butI will come back to the point and he said to
you to the thing which we need to build to stop mankind being threatened is empathy.
So which I was a very thing and profound and I agree how then do you build that
sense of empathy say you're taken to someone who's in their early
twenties never or in at any age but never really had that front facing role
how do they quickly get to know the audience and resonate with them build
trust and build up that sense of empathy how would you suggest people do that? If
you can't feel your emotions it's very hard to feel somebody else'a emorion
and so what I'll often work on is sounds really rudimentary and perhaps not
useful is: what's going on right now so let's say
we were working together I'd say what are you feeling right now
and you're like nothing I'm like well can you feel the pressure of your seat
against the chair right yeah, so get really even even to the very concrete
and then getting more and more subtle where people may become more familiar
with their emotions often you'll find where people have a real lack of empathy
is they may be carrying trauma and there's something internal that has
meant that I don't want to feel my emotions you know something bad happened
well there are bad motions locked up in there I don't want to go there and so by
helping them work through whatever resistance there may be whatever
bruising it could. You know, neglectful parents a traumatic experience and it's
sometimes stuff which as a child who might feel was terribly painful. But
as an adult we look back and go come on that's not a big deal like how could
how could that be so such caused such an effect. But nevertheless we've stored it,
we've encoded it in our minds, as as things that wore us off from ourselves.
So the first thing is often becoming more sensitive to oneself
I'll then sometimes work with them to become sensitive to me and so I'll
describe what I'm feeling and they might go 'oh really feel that' and then
sometimes I ask them 'what do you what do you think I'm feeling?'
So we're practicing, they're practicing you know, we go sometimes I'll do 360s
with people so I'll interview their peers their superiors or subordinates
that our reports. And show them the reports, 'did you know that
people felt this way about you is any of this a surprise?' What can you do to you
think you're a draconian manager but here are five of your direct reports all
describing you as a softy how did you know? And so really trying to get very
very specific so I don't use any kind of big theory or overarching formula, it's
getting very concrete and very specific as soon as possible. So you begin
with one's own feelings to rhinj about one's own feelings and recognise
those and then move rapidly for example, I think you are thinking X and
in actual fact I'm thinking Y and I will start to recognize and attune myself that by
other people is not perhaps accurate. And the modeling's
is part of that so for example, and I think especially this is where being a
guy can be an advantage because I think a lot of men, you know kind
allow maybe three emotions anger last maybe one other you know where
we're very you know in terms of monetary and social power
we're definitely you know we have advantages but when it comes to
emotional expression and experience we are definitely way behind women and and
so in showing that I am able to describe what I'm feeling
including feelings of vulnerability 'oh why should I feel a bit intimidated
right now' and the client might go 'what you're intimidated you're the doctor
you're the one I'm paying' yeah the way you say that it makes me feel kind of
inadequate or am I gonna do a good job and they may kind of go I knew you were
you know I'm your softie and I get that sometimes but more often I have them go
'hmm okay, maybe I'm also allowed to feel vulnerable or weak at least with this
guy.' And that can help unpack some of the blockages that a person has. Right
okay so exposing you own vulnerabilities helps the other person feel
like it more human and they can reveal their own. OK, on that point
of vulnerabilities whenever I ask a big group of people a question I
recognize that because of there are other people around them
I'm not going to necessarily get an honest answer, say several hundred people in the
moment Oask a question of them only a few people typically will will raise their
hands in this and proclaim any issue. When I asked about fears particularly in
the world of pitching and trying to persuade other people
it's kind of like it's a form of public speaking. When I speak to people about
their fear of public speaking multiple people of have different resons
about why they might fear it, for me it was just a matter of building a skill so
I can become good at pitching but for some people when I speak to them
particularly after the event they'll approach me and they'll speak to me
one-on-one and they'll say actually a lot changes for me and I have real issues
and it's holding me back in my job or whatever. Those people
who seem to have a more deep rooted challenge with public speaking, do you
ever come across people that have that kind of fear and if so what do you say
to them is, what is the kind of thing that they can do?
The fear of public speaking by the way is rated as more evokes more anxiety
than death in surveys of things that cause anxiety public speaking is right
up there and for me it very much depends I tailor the work I do to
specific individuals so for example one client I had a long time ago suddenly
out of the blue developed an extremely debilitating fear of public
speaking. He was a suddenly terrified of it, having not had a problem for all his
career. and There he was in his and this late 20s early 30s I haven't done a
lot of public speaking and it was absolutely debilitating and causing him
difficulty to hold his bladder, like it was it was really bad news for him and a
part of what I do is I work a lot with trance tanks and we used some hypnosis
and what became quite quickly apparent was that this new experience had been
triggered by an event that happened a long time before in a hostile union
negotiation. Qhere he was in a room alone with multiple very aggressive union
representatives that regarded him as the ambassador of
the evil corporate world. So he was facing a lot of aggression, he was afraid
for his physical well-being and somehow that just got trapped inside him he went
on like a machine he continued to work on for a couple of years and then
suddenly kaboom this anxiety exploded and that's not as uncommon as it seems
sometimes when people get the opportunity to relax into what's really
going on inside these bubbles of anxiety or pain can come to the surface and
actually it was one of my my first experiences treating public speaking
through hypnosis and we had about five sessions together and then it was the I
think I was relocating so we couldn't continue our work and I got an email
from him about two months later and he said I just want to let you know I am
83% recovered and I was like how do you do that how do you know 83 and not 85%
you know but there he was he was a very you know management consultant type he
could he could turn anything into a number and he believed it was because of
getting the insight about what had caused the anxiety and I also reduce a
programming technique where he had a favorite coin and so we can have created
the favorite coin as a magic coin that he could hold I think it was he could
hold see that magic coin and squeeze it for three seconds while saying a
particular phrase to himself I forget what the phrase was and that when he let
it go the magic in the coin would fill his body and he would feel more calm
more content and able to speak fluently and he practiced and he and his book
magic coin became inseparable there's a downside to that which what happens if
he loses a magic coin but at least he knows that he has that that ability but
there are systemic protocols for how do you handle phobias you know ex public
speaking focus this would be a little bit more unusual but it was tailored and
specific in heck 83% in five sessions works for me
okay so someone did have a fear of public speaking it's because of sense of
anxiety laughs and skill actually actually you would recommend a speak to
a who's who they go I mean they'll say to me literally after the opacity a bit
of sex me who should I go has fainted what would you watch what would you
recommend I think there are two like phobias a one of the areas where
psychologists are good at treating them like there are lots of things
psychologists I'm not very good at we might be better than anybody else but
we're just simply not that good at it phobias wickeder so the standard
protocol for public speaking phobia is let's practice one-on-one
now let's practice with a few more people may be a safe group of people and
then finally a big audience oohs it's incremental it's behaviors so for most
people with public speaking you know just off the back of the envelope
I'd say see a psycho psychologist who specializes in this sort of thing or if
you don't want to go through that expense go to go to something like
Toastmasters which is a group I think they have that in the UK as well I'm not
sure where people practice giving speeches and I know some people who
think are Toastmasters is for lollies and people who can't public speak I can
public speak I just want to get even better at it actually
I've heard some amazing speakers who were trained to post master Toastmasters
so those are the two paths I could take either a psychotherapist who does this
sort of work or just go straight a place like Toastmasters okay cominius where I
where I learned my skills so I often recommend Toastmasters but online for
best bets that can work some and not all so I think you've come to know to go and
see some specialists in therapy okay and to switch slightly now some of your work
I know you have a song I wanted to ask you a couple more questions you speak
about something called persuasive computing corpus work yet so
as a computer what is it rusty sure I don't do a ton of it now
but I was very interested in the mind-body connection and a great fat
lecturer at Stanford was very interested in the human computer connection and so
this became the mind body computer thing and we did some of the first and biggest
research for example on what makes websites credible how do you influence
people through websites doesn't mass if you have a bogus bad saying you know
award-winning top five websites according to and you put some random
name there does it make a big difference if you have really cool gizmos on your
website does that make a difference and it turned out at the time that but
Northern Europeans especially Finn's and Norwegians and very North modern
European they loved the gizmos they loved the features that make created in
them a sense of the website be incredible whereas say to the North
Americans the badges was what created credibility for them having simple
things like an address if you had in the contacts page the address of your
organization that gave particularly angular populations the sense of relief
like ah that's we know this isn't some 17 year old in the Bahamas who's
published this website it's published by some group we can sue in London so there
were these funny little things that made a big difference but and that's that's
going to what's a big field now hasn't it that whole every website designing
huge and and how do you create trust on the website is now yeah yeah that's
really anything and we're saying you did that that was I think my with 2002 I
think maybe when I looked at the other
percent of my time doing that the ninety percent of my research was in the
totally different area that nobody whereas that ten percent really did
quite well okay final two questions for you I have
five more minutes leadership you focus on leaders and what do you say to people
that are in a leadership position how do you explain persuasion to those people I
think it's their employees or stakeholders or people above them
whomever how do you explain to them the basics of getting other people to do
things for you've already touched on it with the Kofi Annan's point is empathy
that by being able to empathize with the situation that we say my subordinates my
reports whatever are in I have a better sense of what to do which doesn't mean
being very empathic in my style I may have to fire people I may have to
give people bad news but if I can put myself in their situation I can have a
better sense of what would be useful I'm trying to give some good examples of it
having said that there are I think there are hard and fast rules there are some
which you know for example some of my former students early military positions
or are in government positions where they've had to handle very ugly
environment so you know one is you never fire live rounds on your own population
like that is never gonna be a satisfactory thing to do like that there
are certain forms of persuasion that I just simply not okay
that will you know and never mind being Mikey of that like if you just take a
Machiavellian perspective that will come back to bite you see again ass rubber
bullets like maybe but live rounds I cannot think of an occasion think of you
know what happened to didn't don't start being when he fired live rounds on
unchallenging square I think but generally speaking I think by yeah
connecting with that environment how would I respond well you know what would
I want if i was your subordinate in this situation how would I want to be spoken
to I think is it when Kofi Annan said to me
that the solution ride lies in empathy I told them I was just incredibly
disappointed I thought not the best you've got really like empathy
we're not empathy is just so not a strong thing so many people and we have
to rely on that and she said that that's the best we've got
and now having reflected on a lot and at first with some sense of dismay I think
he's right I think that's what we've got and cultivating that's going to be very
important for all of us so you've managed two hundred people mailing and
one of the things that people will often say to me of course if you're in the
army or the military your peoples do things you say can do it or I'll kill
you or so again it's a kind of command structure people believe that force is
employed but for my experience that's not how big people get things find the
village fee how do you or how did you get things done with the people that's
were during a model in the military I think only civilians believe that you
have this remarkable control I mean some of it is true you can lock someone up
for disobeying an order but the penalties you're gonna get are so
enormous that it's never going to be worth you know it's rarely going to be
worth being so intimidating so I think for example when working with my peers
in for example Midshipmen school or as an officer you had to use relationship
you had to use one occasionally maybe you had to be a bit intimidating in
feeis and with I remember I'd been in my last six months I was put to a base
which occasionally was joked has been called Hawaii camp because there are a
couple of top brass and there were a lot of men of the lower ranks and myself and
a colleague were put in as the Indian between one and so it was an interesting
place where there was a real discipline problem
and my colleague came in very fierce giving people punishments threaten
people with putting them behind bars I found myself I was really wasn't
finding myself doing it it wasn't deliberate I took about two weeks just
being a wallflower which meant my credibility tanks where I was 20 years
old in charge of men up to they almost the age of 40 or 42 I think was the
oldest but most of them were around the age of 20 in an environment
everybody was sassing me out who was this guy was the other fella really
going to be you know so much harder to deal with than me and then finding after
two weeks when I learned the ropes and I watched one of the senior
non-commissioned officers try and bullshit me on something I I ripped him
to shreds and they ripped him to shreds in the summer private environment of the
senior NCOs and the other officer and it was a certain amount of kind of looking
at myself doing it and learning the wisdom and I think what I was doing is I
was learning what was necessary and when I was sure of what I was doing I was
then being very firm and I did something similar to what we called the other
ranks about two days later and it was as if I was once I understood what was
going on I realized there was an urgent problem of charm and warmth and the gris
ability was going to take way too long and that no one was going to respect me
in fact I probably lost a lot of the respect that I naturally came in with
and that by being fierce and intimidating just once or twice was
enough to completely change the standard which meant my next few months became a
lot easier so that period of observation that you described where you didn't do
anything for one or two weeks you just observe and assess that must be
quite difficult to do that mustn't a to sit stand on the sidelines and not
intervene because you say you can see feel your your respect
have you ever way yeah it was a difficult situation because I was I was
completely foreign to this environment I was trained to navigate warships all of
a sudden I was in charge of of three platoons of amphibious trained men in an
environment that was very different for me so it was hard to feel that I could
engage in a reasonable way and the discipline problems were so severe it
was kind of like where do you tackle them so it was tough I certainly hope
I'm not in that situation again because in two weeks you can lose an awful lot
of the respect you might otherwise have but I think it was helpful to me was
just that by the time I made a stand I didn't have to rely on I knew who to
trust and I knew had a sense of what was going on there's a mix there between
exercising the power of the office as exercising your relationship power to
getting it to you once yes and one on one I think it was why heavily on
relationship on connection so if in front of a group of people Shane was the
fastest way in the Singapore culture it seemed to me to create order and so
you'd see officers who would target one person shame them like crazy in front of
160 and then you have compliance but you've now really hurt one person and so
that process of titrating how much brutality can you exhibit in a public
arena where you need as say an 18 19 year-old in charge of people older than
you and many of them how much of that do you really need to do it how do you
repair in the one-on-one interactions afterwards to make everybody go okay
that's just part of what we do because that goes back that kind of senses to be
feel to be loved but in machiavelli example and people do what you say there
won't necessarily volunteer our information but in fact don't love you
yeah okay okay it's not an answer there is that if
there are time people understand or at least in that environment it seems me
they understood why people were fierce there were people who were jerks when
they were fierce and they were assholes they were egotistical and they you know
did it for their own pride and then there were people who I found myself
respecting because you know that officer needed to do that there was a real
problem you needed to get in line and at some level maybe even appreciating the
discipline that was restored because we all there's a certain anarchy that
nobody wants and so I think by being able to do the dance in summer eanes I
am predictably hard-assed and in another arena I'm warm and you
guys know when to expect what then you even hopefully got the dance of the best
of both worlds make sense so as long as it's justifiable and be
people stretching for that yeah I think so okay and now Yulia how how do you
then deploy yourself in that world but imagine considerable massive couldn't be
more right now I'm only sort of one day a week in academia I used to be
full-time but yeah we're in the Armed Forces you could write an email that was
say five words long and none of the police and the thank-yous and the tears
and the sun series and going that's just simply not gonna fly you're gonna hurt
people's feelings and there's no you know they might turn away from the job
they might you know like it's whereas in the Armed Forces as a sense of this
person's in a contract they're not going to leave for the next five years if I've
hurt their feelings we'll work it out but then we'll get to know each other
but no as an academic realizing it's it's very different timeframes are very
different in the military everything is hurry up and wait in academia it's yeah
timeframes and massive you do all your research you send your article off for
publication six months later you hear back
response so learning that but there is a similarity and that people judging for
the quality of your work they see through the charm quite quickly - is
this guy serious is this guy serious thinker or not yeah yeah okay and and
then see between this one day a week you are now in academia so the other sort
days have become a shooting here you could coach it and you helped people in
leadership positions to separate that's right that's right
leadership training so then with leadership training how do you is secure
that I always ask the Lions you how do you attract people in the first place
and then how do you get them to hear you or well how do you get people to work on
themselves that can be tricky leverage is very very important and if I don't do
that well it probably won't go far I think of one of my first International
coaching engagements where I was asked by a colleague to work with a
multinational based in the Philippines and there were two executives I was
working with there one had just been promoted to general manager and he was
suddenly as they put it misbehaving he was throwing files at the top team he
would get on his knees and implore people to do things
he was very extravagant in his emotional outbursts and most of the top team
within that first four months had resigned and so the head of HR said to
me very straightforwardly he has said you have only one job within six months
the general manager will be fired I just want from you a less painful six
months that's all your job is and I was like well that's not a very you know I
saw the hi tall order so I met the guy after having done a lot
of research I interviewed the CEO CFO a head of HR dude a lot of people before I
met him and he was very arrogant he was talking about how great he was how
knowing it was that he had to come to this meeting on the head of HR was full
of shit and you know I was getting a lot of kind
of blowback of okay white guy what the fuck are you doing here forgive my
language that's okay you know you're taking my time I'm
general manager of this major I was major outfit and I thought it's time to
spill the beans I said do you know why I'm here and he goes yeah to make me
even better thank you very much I said no I'm here because you're
already fired however your age of head of HR once a less painful six months and
my guess is if you and I work well together we can get you more and so it
was a very strong strike a very big blow to his ego and I think he could tell I
was being straightforward and when he realized I'd spoken to every single
person in the company including the owners that I knew an awful lot about
him that he didn't realize then he was like ah it's probably time to play play
ball as a junior as fairly young person the profession I discovered kinda by
accident a similar formula so I was working for one of the top business
schools in the world and I was there as a psychotherapist but I was getting
these high-performing people coming in who were not looking for the treatment
of psychopathology they were treated they were looking for peak performance
but they valued their time his resume in the 90s or early 2000s at about I
kinda calculated about eight nine hundred US dollars now is how much they
valued their time so seeing me which was 1 hour and half an hour on each side for
transport they're like am I getting $1,600 worth of benefit from this goofy
postdoc and i found with the men that I needed to intimidate them or strike them
in a way that made them afraid in about the first 40 minutes I had to say
something that was shocking for them to suddenly kind of go oh maybe I can
respect this guy now I got so feed each other you had two TV exposure you get a
violate expert patience I think that's actually what I
was doing but I violate expectations in a way that made people go on the back
foot so it wasn't a positive expectation that I was you know it made people feel
like oh god how did he see that so quickly and and from there I could move
forward now maybe it's the environment maybe because I'm older I don't have to
do that I can be much more gentle but it was a similar thing of striking hard
with credibility very very quickly and then having people go okay now I'm
listening to you what do you have success so your voice to others how
would you apply that there's lots of other people like to come to me and say
I focus on pitching but lots of other people want to talk to me about
persuasion in a broader context it's very difficult people in the workplace
success that they want to influence and persuade depending on where you are in
your life and depending on your position you would adjust accordingly but it
sounds to me like you use certainly where they would say to you or to
clients but they felt like you had their number but you got them really quickly
and oh okay a bit like your mother might have your number yeah change Owens you
so what advice then how would you transpose that into the workplace for
people who are trying to manage difficult people oh I wouldn't use that
in the workplace that way it's way too aggressive the deal with me is let's say
I'm working on a 50 or 60 minute hour I know at the end of that hour everybody's
thinking do I want to see that guy again and the it's going against me nobody you
know there isn't that much incentive it may be expensive it's time-consuming if
you are an important person with a big influential job it's just an awful lot
of effort and so I have in that small window of time gotta get to know someone
and if what I'm getting in response and I really it was only the men who would
give it to me especially when I was younger the sense of contempt like I'm
only here because my boss tells me I have to be
I had two inviolate expectations in a way that made them feel like that I may
have something more than they realized but in if let's say it's your
subordinates at work you do something like that it's too much people will will
hate you for being such a smartass they'll hate you for being so too the
fact that you can see through them faster than they they'd hoped for yeah
does that make sense it makes complete sense - today today my last question for
you is what on earth is being a certified master yoga teacher I just
took a weekend course in laughter yoga and I put things on my website but I
gotta say it was brilliant fun I a very good friend who has done every kind of
psychological and spiritual course and she was an army major UK for the UK army
and she's interested in Christianity and Buddhist mindfulness I said to her one
day I'm like what has helped you most and she said laughter yoga and I'm like
so I signed up for a weekend and really all I can remember doing is trying to
find dumb ways some excuses to laugh more and I felt great I was like
laughter truly is a brilliant medicine I mean you know if all the leaders of the
world like you know to do the next year of leadership had to laugh for half an
hour to pass an exam where you just required all of them to laugh for half
now every morning before they could go to work there won't be a much better
place I do this dumb game of some of my classes where if things have been a bit
heavy and I can be a bit intense as an instructor will do sort of psychological
simulations and some of those simulations are really pretty hard and
you know we'll take a break we'll come back from the break matter to change
energy I'll just say that next door is my colleague so answer and I'll find out
who it was I said I really liked making him feel jealous because I want him to
think I'm a better instructor than he is so at the count of three please
everybody laugh really loudly and as they laugh I open the door which they
all find funny because I'm actually trying to make the sound of laughter
carry over to the room make stuff and and so then the laughter becomes
unnatural laughter from being a fake laughter in a few moments like all of a
sudden nobody needs the excuse they're just laughing and when you combine it
with like that jealousy thing people find it kind of amusing absolute
pleasure
you
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