Gravitas Archives - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Pete Mockaitis
Montana, welcome!

Montana Von Fliss
Hello. Pete, hi! Thank you so much for having me!

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. It’s great to have you here. I’m excited to talk about confidence. Tell us, you’ve done a lot of coaching with a lot of people. Is there a top thing about confidence that has really surprised you and your clients again and again?

Montana Von Fliss
Yeah, that confidence is not an innate trait. You don’t have to be born confident. It can be learned. It is a skill that you can practice and learn.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. That is encouraging. I guess that’s what we’re trying to do here. Otherwise, it’d be a very short interview, Montana.

Montana Von Fliss
I think so.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s learnable. Cool. All right. Well, so I’d love to hear perhaps an inspiring story of just that, someone who was not so confident, learned the things to do, did those things, and walked out much more confident.

Montana Von Fliss
I think I’m a great example of that. I certainly wanted to be on stage. From a very young age, I wanted to be an actor, and that was the path that I went down. But I also almost always felt nervous stepping on a stage, sometimes downright terrified, really. And yet I just kept doing it because I loved everything about it.

So, I just kept doing it, sort of stubbornly just kept doing it. And I am the poster child for, if you just keep going, keep practicing, keep giving it a go, keep going up for that next time at bat, you will improve in many ways, really, but certainly, I think, in terms of confidence.

And I can tell you a very specific story about how I sort of figured out a little hack to how I could reliably give myself the confidence I needed to get on big stages.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, so you’re feeling nervous. What happened next?

Montana Von Fliss
Well, at first, I just white-knuckled it like, “Uh, I don’t like this feeling. We’re on the roller coaster, but I guess the show’s about to start. So here we go.” And I just sort of would get through it, I guess. I didn’t have a plan. I just thought, “This is terrible.” And then, life would move on, and I would try to push it down, stop it from happening.

But over time, I just kept sort of banging my head against that wall, so to speak. And I came to this realization, like, “Well, that’s not working. So what else could I try?”

And I realized that I was memorizing my lines, I was working very hard on what I was saying out loud. So when I was an actor, those were memorized verbatim scripts, right? If I was a presenter or a speaker in a professional context, then I was writing those words myself and I was spending time crafting that narrative. But I wasn’t spending any time writing, crafting, exploring, playing with the narrative I had in my head, right?

And the moment I decided to apply what I do for my out-loud text to that inner text, everything changed. I was like, “Wow, you can do this? You can go in there and sort of tinker with how you talk to yourself?” And that began this really great ever-evolving, it’s still evolving for me, grand experiment in how you talk to yourself and how you can change that up and how much it really matters in terms of the result in your performance.

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing. So, thinking about the lines that you’re saying to yourself and then proactively reshaping them so you’re not just the actor, but the playwright. Nifty. Could we hear some examples of some common inner texts or lines that you said to yourself frequently and what you decided to substitute in, in the edit?

Montana Von Fliss
Absolutely. So, a common one for me was, and still sometimes is, something like, “You better be perfect. Don’t mess up. What if they find out that you’re not very good at this, that you’re not the person to listen to on this topic?” Definitely a lot of thoughts like that. “Don’t mess up,” a lot of things like that. And sometimes even kind of ugly or darker ones, like, “What if they don’t like you?” which is interesting.

But, anyway, I’m sure people can relate to whatever your own little unhelpful thoughts that come in. So, those would come in. And again, normally, I think I would just sort of be in the grip of these thoughts, like they would sort of take over and then, at some point, I would just walk out onto the stage with these thoughts running.

Now, still a win, I walked out onto the stage. But once I started making my own silent script for the moments before I stepped on the stage, then I would have an answer available to those sentences. So, for example, when I would hear something like, “You better be perfect,” the moment I became aware that I was getting that old message again, I would say, “Oh, I hear you. Thank you. Thank you for trying to protect me.” That’s a new one. I’m slipping in there, “Thank you.”

You know, it’s like my anxiety or whatever, trying to protect me, “Thank you. That is not my measure of success for this presentation. My measure of success is have I helped at least one person in this room?” Now that came out of me setting the silent sentence, the intention, that what I want to do with this presentation is help at least one person here today, right?

So, that was me sort of sitting down and, like, rewriting that silent narrative in my head and having that little silent script ready so that, when that ugly unhelpful thought came in, I actually had something there, memorized, practiced in the script.

Now, sometimes it turns into a little dialogue where it will go, like, “But, but, but have you thought of this? What about this other fear? Excuse me, what about tripping? Have you thought about tripping? Have you thought about what if the tech doesn’t work?”

At first, that kind of bummed me out, that like, “Ah, my little trick didn’t just make anxiety, you know, poof and disappear.” But then I realized, after watching Inside Out 2, seriously, I realized, “Well, what if all the emotions, including anxiety and fear, are on my side? They’re there to help me. So it’s just doing its job, right?”

So it says, “Be afraid of this thing.” And I go, “Thank you. Thank you so much for trying to protect me,” which, by the way, that immediately starts to change the relationship, “I’m doing this.” And then I say, I sort of take back my power by saying, “Here’s what I’m going to do. I am going for the goal of helping at least one person here.”

It usually doesn’t go, “Oh, okay, cool. You got this.” It usually goes, “But, but, but how about this?” And I go, “Thank you. I hear you. And I’m going to keep walking to that stage because I really want to help that person who’s out there waiting for me, right?”

So I, generally, have to insist gently, kindly, with gratitude, insist that I’m going to do the thing that I set out to do. And that, I have to be honest, I’m still shaking, like the adrenaline burst has already happened. The fear chemicals have been released. So I’m still shaking. I’m still sweating.

I’m still having those thoughts of like, “Well, why don’t we just run away instead? Wouldn’t that be better if we just didn’t do this?” And I just have to gently, almost like a parent talking to a child, like, “I hear you that you want to do that and we’re going to do this other thing instead. You are going to wear your jacket as we go out into the snow, yeah?”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, I like that a lot, the assertive, decisive, clear word to yourself. And I think that, just at the gym this morning, I was sort of annoyed by some things that are on the TV. I don’t even remember what it was. It was like an advertisement or a program that I just thought it was a waste of time, unnecessary, distracting, and irritating. I’d rather just not have all those screens going, you know?

So there was something going on. And I could go down a loop of, “Oh, why is this like this? I don’t like that. That’s so annoying. Why don’t people…?” you know, whatever. Just a whole whiny interrogation that doesn’t really lead to insights.

And I just found myself saying internally, “I refuse to spend a second attending to that.” And I did. And it was like, “I’m just going to look not at those screens, but elsewhere,” and it was a much more enjoyable experience. So I love that, that it’s decisive, it’s assertive, and you call the shots, you have the authority, and you take it and you deploy it with a definitive statement.

Montana Von Fliss
That’s a great example. And that, to me, was revolutionary. You know, realizing that, at any moment, I have the power to make a different choice and, especially, I have all the choice in the world about how I talk to myself. And how you talk to yourself really matters, and we do it all day long, right? Pick up glass. Take sip of water. We’re really good at following our own instructions.

But the trick is sort of noticing that and then going, “Oh, how would I like to maybe tinker with that?” especially if it’s not working very well for us, right? And I think that is not necessarily a new idea, the fact that we can edit our self-talk, we can practice positive and constructive self-talk.

But the idea that I’m adding to it is, “Why not put it in the script?” Like, it’s the silent part of the script before you begin speaking, or perhaps it’s in the pauses in between, or really anytime you need it, but put it in the script and practice it as much as you’re practicing the out loud bit.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I like that a lot.

Montana Von Fliss
So it becomes part of the script. It becomes default. It becomes part of you, just as easily as you can rattle off, I don’t know, the three points that you’re deciding to speak for this communication. You’re also just as able to access that silent instruction that is more constructive and is setting you up for where you want to go.

Pete Mockaitis
Let’s hear about practicing it, what does that look like in practice, the practicing of the internal dialogue?

Montana Von Fliss
Yeah, so, I mean it when I say it’s the silent part of the script. So, actually, write it down in your script or however you keep your notes. I put it in parentheses myself, just as a signal to myself that it’s an internal thought. It’s an inside voice rather than something I intend to say.

And so, whatever kind of notes you use, that can be, you know, the little speaker notes in PowerPoint or that could be, like, sometimes I’ll write it down on a sticky note and tape it to my monitor if it’s a virtual presentation. But, certainly, it is part of the script such that every time you run it, every time you practice it, you will start with a silent sentence, and then go to the out loud part.

So, an example of that, you know, mine, I have several. Now, the one that I mentioned in my TED Talk is, “I invite you to be here with me while I am here with you so that I can help you to the best of my ability.” Now, that’s long, but I’ve said it so many times that it’s just right there for me. Sometimes I will collapse it and just say, “Invite and help.” And it does the job for me because I have it so ingrained and such a habit, and it brings all the goodness.

Lately, I’ve been loving the silent sentence, “Let’s grow. Let’s grow.” So short, but it’s got the “Let’s,” which got the invitation part built in, which I love. And then “Let’s grow,” right, it reminds me that we’re both learning. I may be giving the presentation, but I’m learning, too, as we’re doing this and we’re partners in this, yeah?

So, the way that that might look, I’ll have, “Let’s grow” at the top of my script. So, inside my head while I’m doing a rehearsal or practice run, right, it’ll be something like, and this is the silent part, I would say, “All right, I invite you to be here with me while I’m here with you so that we can grow and learn together.” Or, perhaps it’s, “Let’s grow. Hi, my name is Montana Von Fliss. Prepare to be amazed,” or whatever my intro is, right, that I say out loud.

So, it would, literally, if someone were watching me, it would look like me looking around at my imagined audience. Then they would hear me say, “Hi, my name is Montana Von Fliss,” etc. Yeah, so it might not look like much, but what you’re doing there is you’re saying that silent bit in your head, the silent part of the script, you say your out loud part. And then when you go back to start again, you start with that silent sentence.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s really cool, in terms of thinking about integrating the silent sentence in any place you are doing a meeting, a speech, a presentation, or just, like, a one-on-one conversation with someone that you’ve done some prep for because it’s part of it and it’s to yourself and then it shapes what follows. And I just think that’s a cool thing where you might integrate in all kinds of conversations. And I think that’s really nifty.

Montana Von Fliss
Absolutely. Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
I guess I was curious to hear with practicing internally, if what I imagined was when you said you’re in your internal script, you might go with, “Oh, what if I mess up? You better be perfect.” And then you have your response that you’ve practiced internally, which is, “Well, hey, I succeed if I’ve transformed just one person,” or that kind of a response.

What’s funny for me is, I think, because I’ve been there, and then I’ve had the worry. I’ve had the response about one person. And then I’ve got the counter response like, “Well, Pete, if there’s 300 people in this audience, and you’ve only transformed one people, then 299 people have wasted their time. And that’s really a failure for what you have done to all of these people.”

So, not to diminish that very powerful, hopeful, useful thought, but when the brain is in scared, anxious zone, or just snippy, grumpy, and goes there, do you practice the counter counter-response, or do you just redirect like, “Well, we’re doing this now”? Or, how does that work internally and how do you practice that?

Montana Von Fliss
I always have a counter response, but it usually stems from what my base thought or my initial silent sentence was. So, for example, if my silent sentence is, “I’m here to help at least one person in this room,” and then the counter thought is, “Yeah, but it’s a failure if you don’t help the other 299.”

I’d say, “And I said, I want to help at least one person. Everyone is invited to this information and these new ideas. But my personal goal is that I want to reach that one person who gets me, who needs to hear what I have and really plugs into my way of looking at it.”

So, do you hear that counter response is really just an emphasis of my original thought?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I hear you and I just wonder about, and maybe I’ve just got a nasty mind.

Montana Von Fliss
No, keep going. I love this. Keep going.

Pete Mockaitis
But I can counter, counter, counter the response is like, “Well, your goal is lame and you should raise your standards.”

Montana Von Fliss
Yeah, you can totally, oh, man, have I had all of those thoughts, “Your goal is lame.” Yes, you might, “Thank you for protecting me. Thank you for helping me to think of that.” And I would say, “I’m making a doable goal. And if I get more, then I have a higher likelihood of success.” And that helps me, right, to go, “Oh, I can get at least one person.”

The other thing it helps me to do, and I might remind myself of this if I’m having this little internal talk, is it always helps me to think of, regardless of how many people are in the room, it helps me to think of the power of one-on-one communication. Like, I do better in one-on-one communication. So I’m going to borrow that superpower of mine, and I’m going to activate it by thinking of this as a one-on-one, even though everyone in the room is invited, right?

So that is part of what I’m doing, is getting the best out of me by thinking of it this way. So we’re going to keep going with the idea of, “I’m going to help at least one person,” so I can activate that one-on-one communication style. And I also know, like it might go, “But, but, but, but,” I also know that I can’t control other people. I can only invite them. So all 300 are certainly invited to the information.

But I know that I’m very achievement-oriented. So if I make it a doable achievement, meaning, like, this is a goal that I am more likely to attain then I do better. That’s another part of just knowing myself and knowing what motivates me, right? So I might say, “I’m just making an attainable goal for myself. All 300 are certainly invited.” Does that make sense? Does that help?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yes, thank you.

Montana Von Fliss
Like, I mean, and I go on, like I have conversations with myself, or, I don’t know, my other selves. They could be my other selves, maybe my younger self. It could be my anxiety or fear, but I have full-on dialogues. So, don’t be surprised because it makes sense that it wants to continue to bargain with you in this way.

Like, because imagine you’re walking into a burning building, right, and you’re like, “Oh, I’m going to go save my Macbook in that burning building,” and your fear is going, “Don’t go into a burning building. Don’t do that. You could die. Don’t do that.”

Imagine if you just went, “Hey, it’s cool. I got this.” It wouldn’t stand down. It wouldn’t say, “Oh, okay.” It would keep trying to stop you because that’s its job is to keep you safe. And going up to speak in front of many people, and it activates a similar sort of fight or flight fear mechanism in us, right?

So it’s not unusual for it to keep fighting, to keep you safe, keep you from going on that stage. It’s just, “Do you have a prepared sentence and sort of the surrounding logic that you wholeheartedly believe in to respond to it in that moment?”

And I have found that it works best when they are tied to what you care deeply about, like, “Why are you doing this?” And even sometimes, “Why are you here on this planet? What is your purpose on this earth?” Like, I feel genuinely, I am here, in part, anyway, to help others be able to step on a stage, and to feel a little bit of ease, maybe even just find a process and a way to manage through it so that they can do it more effectively, right?

So when I attached to that in my own personal example of, like, “I’m just here to help one person,” that’s activating something extremely powerful in me. I will walk through hot coals, Pete, to help you for your next presentation. Like, that’s just how I’m built.

So, when I remind myself of that in that moment of extremis, in that moment when I’m sort of hijacked by fight, flight, you know, that fear, it acts like this override switch and I will do it kind of no matter what, is how it feels. And so, when you dig around for that for yourself, you’ll sort of know it when you feel it. Like, “Why did I say yes to this presentation? Well, my boss told me so.”

But then dig further, “Well, I like keeping my job. I like feeding my family. Well, maybe that’s it. Maybe the image of my little daughter is the thing that pulls me onto that stage or up in front of that group of people.”

Maybe you’re like me and you really love helping people, you love sharing information. Maybe it’s like problem solving. I love sharing a solution to a problem that you might have. Like, that just lights me up. Like, problem solving and puzzle solving, yeah?

When you find out what that is, that has energy, huge energy. And when you get that, like, you grab it, you write the silence sentence down, you practice it, when that voice that wants to argue with you comes in, I promise you, if you’re attached to that deeper why, you will have all the right answers to, essentially, redirect yourself to what your priority actually is in this moment.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so we’ve covered the internal dialogue. Excellent. How about practicing the actual external speech?

Montana Von Fliss
So practice is probably my best piece of advice as a speaker coach. It’s also probably my most ignored piece of advice. And I understand. I don’t feel like practicing pretty much ever, but I just learned as an actor, that was my first profession. I learned through that job that practice is everything. Practice is how you get ready for any type of performance, speech.

And, by the way, we already know this. We apply it easily to something like if you want to learn a musical instrument or if you want to learn a sport, right? We never go, “Okay, everybody, we have a big soccer game on Saturday. So let’s all go home and just think about how we’re all going to do well on that day, right? And then see you on Saturday,” right?

No, we would practice it as much as possible. We’d practice specific plays and all sorts of things. And yet, when it comes to public speaking, presentations, for some reason, we don’t automatically apply that. And I’m not exactly sure why, but that is another thing I’m here to tell the world. Truly, the best thing you can do is practice.

So, what that looks like is actually standing up, saying it out loud, running through your script, however you have your notes, have those up, run through your slides if you have them, imagine the audience, invite them in, make it all be like it will be on the day. If you’re going to be seated, if it’s something like a virtual presentation, open up whatever virtual platform you’re going to be on and be seated how you’re going to be seated.

Test your tech, but also run through your presentation out loud as if the audience is there. And that’s what it looks like. Really actually doing it. It’s like if you were going to learn the piano, you would actually play that piano. You would play it, right, to get better at it, to prepare for that concert on Friday.

Pete Mockaitis
Very good. And so, that’s the practicing of the external speech. And just a side note, I remember we had Diane DiResta some time ago on the show, and I said, “How much should we practice?” And she gave a very definitive answer, “Six sticks. Do the whole run through six times.” It’s like, “All right, that’s very precise.” What’s your hot take on how much practice is the right amount?

Montana Von Fliss
Yeah, it’s different for everyone, but I’ll tell you what I do. If there’s a presentation coming up for me in about a week, I will start practicing once a day.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s about six, seven. Yeah, that’s about six or seven times. There you go.

Montana Von Fliss
Yeah, so I definitely agree with that advice. So a week or two before, put it in your calendar. Practice a little bit every day. I would do, personally, I would do a full run through every day. I would also take the intro, like whatever that is for you, could be like the first 30 seconds or so, and your final sentence. So those two bookends. And I would run those three times in a row out loud, multiple times a day from wherever.

So, like, if you’re in the shower or cooking dinner or exercising. Because if those are strong and ready and available to you and they’re really boiled down and just exactly what you wish to say to tee up the entire communication, as well as to close it out strongly and stick that landing, oh, my goodness, that is so effective. So effective. So that’s how I would practice.

And then you have to figure out how to make yourself do this. And that goes to digging into, like, what motivates you. And you can go back to that great recent episode you had with Chris Bailey. I loved that one about figuring out how you particularly are motivated through your own principles and your own levers.

And so, what is that for you? And then build that in. So maybe I don’t get a second cup of coffee until I do my run through. Maybe I go, “Oh, I’ll just do five minutes.” And then, of course, I end up doing 15. Whatever that is for you to get you to just do it.

Pete Mockaitis
In a way, that’s the mini game or challenge in and of itself. It’s like, “What needs to happen for me to do it? Okay. All right. Well, let’s just do that real quick. All right, now we’re set.” As opposed to just getting in a loop of, “Oh, I don’t want to. That sounds hard. It’s uncomfortable. It’s boring. There’s a really great show I want to watch.”

You know, it’s sort of picking a new question, a new game, it’s like, “All right. Well, what’s it going to take to do this shortly? Coffee might be the answer. It could be something else.”

Montana Von Fliss
Yeah, what is your driver? And, really, you are the only one who knows that. I know some people also feel kind of funny either seated or standing up in their office or wherever, by themselves running through it. Like, that can feel silly or strange to them, especially if they don’t have a lot of performance experience.

And I get that, right? But you just have to kind of get over it. Just do it a couple of times and get over it. Because, again, doing the thing is how you will get better at the thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly.

Montana Von Fliss
So that means doing it on your own. I will say, like, whatever kind of little ladder you need, like what is the smallest step you can take, and then slowly work up that ladder. So, for example, maybe you just do your intro and you’re all really like, “What do I want to say? It’s kind of…No, maybe I should sit and write it out and just think about it a whole bunch.”

I would recommend instead, just say it. Say it imperfectly out loud. Say it to the cereal boxes. They are rather – what – non-judgmental. And then after you’ve done that a couple of times, move to some art on the wall. Go to a lovely piece of art. A little more judgment there. Say it again. Then move to a beating heart, right? Do you have a pet? Say it to them. Start with the cat, then move to the dog, right?

Or, the other way around, maybe start with the dog with a little more love and acceptance, then move to the cat, then move to a human, a human being who loves and trusts you would be a good choice, I would say, right? And then maybe a dry run with your colleagues and then the wider audience.

Somewhere in there, by the way, too, you have a video camera in your pocket. Video yourself, watch it back. And I know everybody at that moment goes, “Ugh, that’s the only one, Montana, that I am not willing to do.” And I hear you and I want to tell you, every human, I believe every human feels that. Pretty much everyone feels that, “Ugh, I don’t want to watch myself, whatever that is,” that kind of discomfort.

It might feel a little funny, but wouldn’t you rather see it in advance and be able to have the opportunity to make an adjustment before you share it with a wider audience?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, a lot of good stuff there. Excellent. Thank you. Well, you also mentioned in your TEDx Talk, we’ve got five techniques to appear confident even if we’re not feeling it. We talked about the silent sentence and some purposeful practice. Can you give us a quick pro tip on energy levels, strategic pauses, and confident body language?

Montana Von Fliss
Yeah, well, they’re two sides to the same coin, right, if you want to look confident, sound confident, be confident on a stage. One side that we’ve spent most of our time on so far is about sort of building that confidence. You can’t always have or make yourself have a feeling, but you can invite it, right? And that’s what the silent sentence is about.

The other side of that coin of confidence is how to look and sound confident regardless of how you’re feeling, regardless of how much sleep you got the night before. And that really comes through the physical and vocal choices that you make on a stage, whether it’s virtual or in person, because we read a lot about each other based on our body language, facial expression, vocal dynamics, all of that kind of stuff, right?

So, the cool thing is that knowing that, that we read so much about that and that we can’t yet read each other’s minds, so we won’t ever know if you are actually nervous as a speaker, unless you show us or tell us. So you can use these three tips to look confident, regardless. And that is number one, turn up the energy and speak up. Number two, pause like a boss.

Number three is walk in there like a superhero. Stand in superhero. Sit like a superhero. How would a superhero sit, you know? And so, that first one is volume. Speak up. It’s hard for a lot of people to do that, truly, especially if they have maybe some cultural, different cultural background, or sometimes some stuff from childhood with parents who thought you should be seen and not heard. There’s a lot in there.

But I will tell you this idea. First of all, if it’s on a scale of one to 10, just shoot for a five. Just one notch up. That’s all you got to go for. You don’t have to shout. In fact, you know, unless you’re on some keynote stadium, you really don’t. Please don’t shout. But just turn it up one notch maybe or shoot for that five.

And the other thought there I find helpful is it really makes your audience feel more comfortable. So, for example, if I walk out and I’m like, “Hey, Pete, my name is Montana, and I’m going to give you this awesome tip about how to be better at your job,” you’d be like, “Okay, no thanks,” right? And that’s just for the most part volume.

If I move from, that was down here, maybe like out of three, and you move it right up here to a five, suddenly, it sounds prepared, confident, like I want to be here. And that doesn’t mean I actually feel that on the inside. You might be feeling hungry or tired or nervous, but if you raise the volume just a bit, they will never know. They will never know. How cool is that?

Pausing. The second one is it takes some practice, but it’s a totally learnable skill, and it sounds so confident. Just think about any great leader, any great speaker. They can pause like a boss. And it is the antidote to verbal filler. If you video yourself and watch it back, if you actually do that tip and you, “Uh-oh, I’m doing all kinds of ums.” A few ums, who cares? But if you’re doing ums every time there’s a pause or between every sentence, just pause instead, take a breath instead. So powerful.

And the third one is body language. And, I mean, that encapsulates a lot, like how to master confident body language. But that’s why I say just walk in there like a superhero, because it sort of does it all, right? It’s better eye contact. It’s a more commanding posture rather than like a closed body language, making yourself smaller or crossing your arms in front of you. It’s more open body language.

And it’s also a vibe. It’s a vibe of, like, “Yes, I got you. I got you.” And all of these, again, might feel a little funny or uncomfortable if they’re new to you. But if you really focus in on what will make the audience feel more comfortable, then you find you might be able to do these. You might have more incentive to do these, I should say.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. Well, now let’s hear about some of your favorite things. Can we hear a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Montana Von Fliss
I have one from the Dalai Lama here. And it says, “If a situation is such that you can do something about it, then there is no need to worry. If it’s not fixable, then there’s no help in worrying. In fact, there is no benefit in worrying whatsoever.” Thank you, Dalai Lama.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, and a favorite book?

Montana Von Fliss
A recent book that I absolutely loved. Let’s see, my certainly my favorite book from last year was James by Percival Everett. It is a reimagining of the story of Huckleberry Finn from James’ perspective. Brilliant.

But I also love, this one is a little bit more in line with what we’re talking about, my personal Bible is called Art & Fear, and that’s by David Bayles and Ted Orland. And it’s all about how to deal with perfectionism and not let that stop you and how to just practice even when you’re not feeling like it. It’s wonderful. Check it out.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you share that seems to really resonate with people, you hear them quote it back to you often?

Montana Von Fliss
Oh, yeah, “Pause like a boss.” T-shirts have been made.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Beautiful.

Montana Von Fliss
People love that one. But also I get, “Confident Captain” quite a bit, “Montana, I’m going to be the Confident Captain.” And I’m like, “Yes, do it.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Montana Von Fliss
They can come to my website, MontanaVonFliss.com, sign up for the newsletter, and get just monthly tips and offers for free coaching from me. Also, all the socials if you like to consume great tidbits that way. And I have just started a YouTube channel. So if you like watching helpful videos that are also fun and entertaining, come find me there.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Montana, this has been fun. Thank you.

Montana Von Fliss
Thank you so much, Pete. This is really great.

Pete Mockaitis

Sheena, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Sheena Iyengar

Thank you for having me.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, I’m excited to dig into your book Think Bigger: How to Innovate but, first, I want to get your take. So, you’re regarded as one of the leading experts on choosing. I’d love to hear about one of the trickiest decisions you’ve ever made and how you thought through it.

Sheena Iyengar

Wow, the trickiest decision I ever made. Well, I would say there were two really big choices I made in my life. The first was what was going to be my career. And I would say the best choice I ever made was to study choice. It wasn’t an easy choice, and it was a long path and, in many ways, I used…at that time, I didn’t know I was doing it, but I, essentially, created Think Bigger as I created that choice for myself. The second tricky choice I made was that I ended up getting divorced after 18 years of marriage, and that was not an easy choice to make.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, I bet. Wow. And thank you for sharing. And to the extent that you feel comfortable digging into that, how does one make such a choice?

Sheena Iyengar

Well, I, actually, in many ways, used my learnings in my own research to help me make that choice. I kept asking myself the question in lots of different ways. I kept looking at my own data, as in “What would be the worst-case scenario for me if I did X versus Y? What would be the best-case scenario? How would I handle it?” And I looked at what had happened to other people. And so, what did the science show about the consequences for other people?

And then I would ask myself, “If those consequences were to happen to me, what would I do about it?” And I found that no matter how I asked the question and how I framed it, I kept coming back to the same desire. And so, then I realized that I didn’t really know how it was all going to work out but that was enough to tell me, after about two years of going back and forth on it, I realized that I had made the choice.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, thank you for sharing that, and that’s certainly thought-provoking.

Sheena Iyengar

But you don’t want to make a decision like what career are you going to do for the rest of your life, or whether you’re going to get a divorce in a second.

Pete Mockaitis

Certainly. Well, so now let’s hear about your book Think Bigger. Any particularly striking discoveries here that have really stuck with you?

Sheena Iyengar

I would say that the most important thing about Think Bigger for people to understand is that, up until now, everything we’ve been taught about how to innovate, how to come up with your best ideas, is old, it’s outdated. What Think Bigger does is takes advantage of recent research in neuroscience for the last 20 years that, literally, tells us how the mind works when it forms thoughts that we haven’t been leveraging it to help us actually become better ideators.

And Think Bigger is the first book that does this. It brings together neuroscience and cognitive science to give you a new way of ideating. And so, for most people, the go-to method, when they need to solve a problem, or when they want an idea, is they engage in some form of mind wandering, or they say, “Look, I’m stuck. Let’s get a bunch of people together, and let’s do a brainstorm.” And Think Bigger says, “You know what, you can do better.”

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, so I’m intrigued. Fundamentally, is there a key factor, or factors, that distinguish those who come up with amazing ideas from those who don’t? Is it just about the practices they’re engaged in?

Sheena Iyengar

You mean what distinguishes the people like the Einsteins and the Bezos and the Bill Gates, so to speak?

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah.

Sheena Iyengar

I would say, yes, we tend to think that the great innovators were special people that happened to be in special places or in special moments. And while you can often tell a lot of people’s stories that way because those are really good narratives to tell, I think, in truth, when you look at all the great innovations throughout history, there is actually a common denominator as to what the method is.

Until now, the great innovators did it subconsciously but we actually know how they did it, and having that knowledge enables anybody to do it. And that’s, essentially, what Think Bigger is. It shows you the framework and it gives you the toolkit so that whatever problem you have, you can actually just, in a very disciplined way, go about and come up with an idea. So, think of Think Bigger is offering the alternative to brainstorming, or sort of uninhibited or uncensored mind wandering.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, so I’m eager to go into each of the six steps here for a bit of time. First, maybe could you kick us off with a cool story of someone who did just that, they walked through the process and saw some great stuff at the other end?

Sheena Iyengar

So, one of my favorite examples is Nancy Johnson mainly because we don’t really talk about her very much and, yet, she actually produced one of those rare products that is universally liked. It’s very hard to find somebody who doesn’t like what she put together. It’s accessible whether you’re rich or poor. And it’s hard to find anybody that hates it.

So, Nancy Johnson was the one who made it possible for every single person, no matter where you are in the world, to have ice cream. In the early 1800s, ice cream was very expensive. In fact, George Washington paid $200 for ice cream. That’s expensive today. Just think how expensive it was back then.

Pete Mockaitis

And it rotted his teeth so he had to have wood ones.

Sheena Iyengar

Exactly. And so, Nancy Johnson lived in Philadelphia. She was a woman in her 50s. She was the wife of a chemistry professor. She was also an abolitionist, so she was part of the underground railroad. And so, she’s noticing how ice cream is being made, and why it’s so expensive. And so, back then, they would have a big bowl, they would fill it with ice, and then they would put a smaller bowl in there, fill it with cream, and they would stir, stir, stir, stir, stir.

And while they were stirring, the ice cream would start to melt, and it would also form lumps, and it was also backbreaking labor. And so, here’s what she did. And, in fact, I’ll describe to you the story in a way that also essentially gives you the method. So, she said, “Okay, how do I make the process of making ice cream easier and, essentially, cheaper? Well, what’s getting in my way?”

“First, it’s backbreaking labor. Second, how do I keep it cold as we’re stirring it? And third, how do I prevent lumps?” So, those are the subparts of her problem that she needs to solve for in order to solve for the bigger problem. Well, how do we keep it cold? You take a large water pail that had already been around for 400 years, you fill that up with ice, and then you find something that you put in it that knows how to keep things cold.

Well, what was something that people regularly used to keep liquid cold? In the taverns where she was, as a woman, not really allowed to go, they would serve beer in pewter mugs. Well, what about putting the cream in pewter? So, now you have a pail filled with ice, and the inner bowl made of pewter. You put the cream in there.

Now, how do I make the labor of stirring it not as arduous? What if we take a grinder, a hand grinder that was used for making coffee, for grinding coffee or spices? Now, how do we prevent the lumps? I’m going to attach to that grinder spatulas that have holes in them. So, one of the things that she learned from the runaway slaves that often came from the sugar plantations was that when making molasses, they would have to stir really hot liquid that could easily form crystals.

And what they found was that if you put holes in the spatula, the liquid would go through and it would be less likely to form crystals. Why not do the same thing with a cold cream? You put these elements together – the pail, the pewter, bowl, the hand grinder, the spatula with the holes – and you have a new technology that was deemed a disruptive technology in 1843 by the Library of Congress.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. There you have it.

Sheena Iyengar

I happen to love ice cream and I love the example of Nancy Johnson.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, that’s a cool one, for sure. And so, I did see that outline, we got six steps. Step one, choose the problem. Step two, break down the problem. Step three, compare wants. Step four, search in and out of the box. Step five, choice map. And step six, the third eye. So, I’d love for you to elaborate on each of these a bit. But, first, I’m just going to say, I noticed none of the steps, nor in the story, is there a, “Oh, have a eureka moment in which a thunderbolt of insight arrives out of nowhere.” Where does that fall into the things?

Sheena Iyengar

We love eureka moments, and I certainly want you to continue to have eureka moments because they’re powerful in terms of helping us keep motivated. But when you actually look at people and you follow them over the course of weeks, whether they’re a scientist or an artist, it turns out that about 20% of your ideas happen as eurekas, about 80% happen not as eurekas, they’re just happening during your work.

We tend to initially love those eureka ideas because they feel special somehow and it happens in your dream or when you’re doing a jog. Over time though, most of those eureka moments are less likely to actually be adapted. So, we do tend to overweigh the aha moments. That doesn’t mean that they’re irrelevant because those aha moments can help us in reframing the question, and they just remind us why we care.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah. Okay. Well, so if it’s not a eureka moment, then is the moment in which the new idea appears more like, “Oh, let me try this. That didn’t quite work out. Maybe if it were a little bit longer or maybe if it had holes in it”? Is it more like that, “So, let’s make a modest adjustment to this thing I just tried”?

Sheena Iyengar

So, that’s when you’re talking about being purely experimental. You can actually be more strategic and more deliberative about that. A great idea is “I’m having a problem with X.” So, let’s say in my case, I am blind. I remember when I first started to teach, nobody knew how you could have a blind person get up and start teaching. Nobody had the answer to that, like, “Well, I don’t know, you can’t engage in eye contact,” or, “You’re not going to see people raise their hands,” or a gazillion things came up as to what a blind person could or could not do.

And so, the way you frame the problem is you say, “Okay, how would one engage an audience if you can’t see them? What would you do?” Well, what does an audience want? And what other kinds of people can help you with that? So, for example, you couldn’t give them eye contact, but what are other things, that other kinds of entertainers, different from teachers, use? And so, I actually learned quite a few tactics from actresses, from personal trainers, from comedians, and that’s how I pull together a teaching style.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, now I want to know. What do they do? And what do you do?

Sheena Iyengar

What do I do?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Sheena Iyengar

Oh, well, lots of things. For example, I had an actress that taught me things like body language and hand gestures. Rather than having people raise their hands, I’ll often have them clap their hands, “If you agree with me, clap your hands. If you disagree, now clap your hands.” And then I’ll let them tell me which side was louder. It’s actually, in some ways, better than having them raise their hands.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay, cool.

Sheena Iyengar

Those are just two examples.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Well, so, yeah, let’s hear about each of these steps here. Step one, choose the problem. That sounds pretty direct and straightforward. But is there some nuance here, Sheena?

Sheena Iyengar

So, most companies end up, about 72% of companies end up failing in their solution because they end up discovering, after they’ve created the solution, that it’s actually the solution to the wrong problem. We’re terrible at actually defining our problem right. As Einstein once said, “If I had an hour to save the planet, I would spend the first 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about the solution.”

And there’s a lot of wisdom in that statement because a lot of your solution really depends on defining that problem well. We either define our problem as too vague, or too big such that it’s unsolvable, or so trivial or irrelevant that nobody cares. It’s really defining it in a way that’s both concrete and meaningful. And you want to define it in a way that’s a question rather than embedding a solution in it because it’s only when you define it as a question that you’re going to be open-minded.

Pete Mockaitis

Can you give us some examples of well-defined problems versus their poorly defined counterparts?

Sheena Iyengar

Oh, that’s a great question. Okay. Well, “How do I solve the problem of climate change?” Terrible question.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay.

Sheena Iyengar

“How do I create a car that’s affordable?” That’s a doable question.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. So, the first one is just so huge.

Sheena Iyengar
It’s just too big.

Pete Mockaitis

It’s not getting us anywhere helpful from an innovation perspective.

Sheena Iyengar
“How do I know if somebody is passionate?” Not a good question. Too vague.

Pete Mockaitis

And then what would be the better version of that?

Sheena Iyengar

“How do I find something that I want to spend many hours doing?”

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And can you give us some better versions that are climate-adjacent to sharpen the contrast?

Sheena Iyengar

Sure. “How do I create a substitute for meat that people want to eat?” And we already see companies doing that.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, let me get your take on this one. “How do I create market incentives for automakers to reduce their emissions?” How’s that feel? Pros, cons.

Sheena Iyengar

So, for that one, you have to first know, “Is the problem emanating from the car companies or from the buyers?”

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, got you. Yes, so there’s a solution or assumption embedded in it.

Sheena Iyengar
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. So, it sounds like choosing the problem, we’ve got to do some homework before we can even hope to make a statement that is a good choice. Is that fair to say?

Sheena Iyengar

You’re going to do a lot of work, and you’re going to probably keep tweaking and tweaking and tweaking the problem you’re trying to solve till the very end.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay.

Sheena Iyengar

It’s just like writing a paper. You often write your first sentence at the very end.

Pete Mockaitis

Understood.

Sheena Iyengar

Although you knew what it was, generally speaking, at the very beginning, and you keep writing towards it, but you’re still tweaking.

Pete Mockaitis

Okey-dokey.

Sheena Iyengar

So, then just like Nancy Johnson, after you’ve defined the problem, you then break it down into its most important subparts. Now, every problem has many, many layers, so you’ve got to be able to identify the most important ones. And I say somewhere between three and five, sometimes I let you go up to six, but beyond that it’s cognitively paralyzing so you’re not going to do a good job. You’ve got to make this doable.

Actually, the way to think about Think Bigger is that there are, essentially, two tools. The first is a choice map, and the second is what we call the big picture, it’s where you compare wants. And so, the choice map is where you define your problem, you break it down. And then for every subproblem that you have, you then go search. You search first in industry, and then you search across to many other industries that have nothing to do with your industry, but you’re searching for the way in which they have solved for an analogous problem.

“What other objects do people use to keep liquid cold?” for example. “What other sorts of backbreaking labor is there that has the problem of things getting lumpy?” Another example. So, you look in totally different industries that have to deal with an analogous problem, and you see what they’re doing, and then you obviously have to, in some ways, adapt or edit their tactic but you’re importing it in.

And so, you do that for every subproblem. You’re searching. So, we often think that the part of ideation is just sitting there and reflecting. I’m not doing that. I’m saying the actual ideation process itself is its own exercise, a mental exercise. And so, you create a choice map where you have your problem, you break it down, and for each subproblem, you find ways of solving it that has worked in the past. And now you combine those tactics, just like Nancy Johnson did to create a machine. That’s how you have your greatest innovations.

That’s true whether you’re looking at Nancy Johnson’s ice cream machine, or Henry Ford’s car, or Netflix, or Amazon, or Paul McCartney’s great song “Yesterday.”

Pete Mockaitis

That’s intriguing. So, songwriting, you follow the same process.

Sheena Iyengar

It’s the same thing, yes. Most innovators though are not being as deliberative as I’m saying. Most innovators are doing what I’m talking about subconsciously. What Think Bigger is about is making you more conscious so that you can do it whenever you want. You can do it on command, and you can practice it and get better and better and better at it.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, I’m really intrigued with the example of a song. Can you walk us through how those steps apply when the innovation doesn’t feel so much like a patent or invention but a work of words put together?

Sheena Iyengar

Let’s take something that’s a little more visual that might be easier to explain. So, let’s take, say you want an example from, say, Picasso or Lady Liberty, let’s take Lady Liberty since that’s a piece of art that everybody, no matter where in the globe, would have seen. So, everybody knows the Statue of Liberty.

And we love the Statue of Liberty for all that she stands for and what she means, etc. Now, we assume that the person who made her was a genius, and certainly what he did and what he created, ultimately, is a masterpiece. But how did Frederic Bartholdi get the idea? So, I’m going to strip away, I’m not going to tell his life story, I’m not going to tell you all the hardships and struggles he had. I’m just going to answer the question, “How did he get his idea?”

So, he loved the massive sculptures that were guarding the Egyptian tombs so much so that we have seen earlier drawings of a big lady dressed in robes, carrying a light that he wanted to be made for the Suez Canal entrance. So, Lady Liberty kind of has that feeling to her. There was, at the time, when he was building Lady Liberty, a very famous painting in Paris by a painter by the name of Lefebvre called “La Verite,” “The Lady of Truth.”

There was also Libertas, the Roman goddess who was on every five Franc coin at the time when Frederic Bartholdi was making Lady Liberty. And so, you now have Lady Liberty, the posture which we get from “La Verite,” Libertas, which was how he get the crown. Now what about the face? The face of Lady Liberty, there’s many poems written about those eyes that are inscrutable yet kind. That face was that of his mother.

So, what does every person do when they generate a solution, whether they’re an artist, whether they’re a scientist, whether they’re someone who’s making a new patent or product, whether they’re just trying to come up with an idea? They are combining elements that they have come to become aware of, and they’re combining them in a new way, and that’s what makes them creative and unique.

Now, of course, it’s not mere combination because many combinations are clunky. And so, there is an artfulness to the combination where the whole has to feel greater than the sum of the individual parts.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay, that’s cool. Understood. So, combination, that’s what makes it creative. And then the steps are means by which that unfolds.

Sheena Iyengar

That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, yeah, could we keep cruising here about step three, compare wants.

Sheena Iyengar

So, compare wants is where you get away from the choice map or you get away from the gathering of information that’s both in your industry and out of your industry. Compare wants says, “You know what, let me also ask, what is it that I want the feeling to be like if I were to come up with a solution? What do I, the creator, want? What would my customers, or whatever, my target audience want? And who might be my gatekeepers and allies? And what would they want?”

And so, think of these as those emotions. So, emotions don’t go into your choice map, which is where you’ve got your problem, your subproblems, and your strategies. The big picture, the compare wants, is where you are really highlighting, “Okay, I, as the ideator, I want to be famous. I want it to be used by everybody. My customers, well, they want it to be affordable. They want it to make their life feel more luxurious. Gatekeepers, might be, ‘Well, how do you deal with competitors that might try to thwart you?’ Allies. Well, who else would care about this and want to help me make this happen? So, what do they want.”

And so, once you collect up the desires of all these different entities, what you do is you now look at your various solutions that you’ve created, and you ask yourself, “Which one fits the most number of these desires?” and that’s how you pick.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And then, I’m curious, within the choice map, do we have a specific picture, diagram, document that that looks like?

Sheena Iyengar

Yes. So, I know we’re doing a chat here on audio but, yes, we do have. I think of the prototypic choice map as a five by five where you have, let’s say, on average, five subproblems, and, let’s say, on average, per subproblem, I really try to get people to at least get five different ways to solve that subproblem because you need choice, and only one or two of them can be within an industry. The bulk of them should be out of industry because that’s how you get out-of-the-box ideas.

And so, what you then do is you now, let’s say, have a five-by-five matrix filled out, and now what you do is you take one tactic per row, and you line them up in your head, and you ask yourself, “What could I imagine doing? How would I combine these?” That’s how choice mapping works. I have different strategies by which I teach people how to imagine and how to take strategies that you wouldn’t ordinarily combine together.

So, there’s also like a random component to really get you to come up with some really unusual solutions. But in a five by five, you can generate about 3,125 unique solutions. That’s actually far more than your typical brainstorming session.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. So, could you give us an example there in terms of what might be five columns and then five rows, and then a couple combinations?

Sheena Iyengar

Okay. Well, that’s going to be quite a bit to keep track of. So, let’s imagine Netflix. So, when Reed Hastings, so what was the problem he was trying to solve when he initially got started, “How do I make movie-watching more pleasant at home?” That was his irritation. And so, he had the first was, “Well, how do I make it so that I don’t have to lift my butt and go down the block to return a movie every day, otherwise I get a late fee?”

“How do I reduce the cost of, say, the inventory of actually having a store at every block, that actually cost money in terms of rent? And I also want to, while I’m at it, increase the number of options that people have.” So, let’s just take those two. So, let’s say the first, like, “How do I reduce the inconvenience of having to raise my butt, move my butt?” Well, he could have it in every building, maybe have it as a soda pop machine, but now you’re going to give people movies. That could be one solution.

Or, he could do what Bezos was starting to do, which was, well, he was sending books to people, vis-à-vis, online. So, any one of those tactics could be used. In fact, there is a company that sells videos, or you can go rent videos using a soda pop machine. “How do I create a fee structure that isn’t annoying because I really find it annoying to have late fees?” Well, there are other options that you could use other than late fees to make sure you get enough revenue.

“Well, it could be that I use the gym membership model where you can use it as much as you want, and you just have a flat monthly fee. Or, I could say, ‘Look, I’m only going to give you a certain number of movies per week.’” The list goes on in terms of how many different ways in which you could create your fee structure but you had to go out of industry. At that time, it was unheard of to do anything other than what Blockbuster was doing.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, I’ve got some specific tactics that can meet the no travel or no late fees.

Sheena Iyengar
Yeah. And so, ultimately, what did Reed Hastings do? He takes the fee structure of gym membership, plus the no inventory cost, and yet a lot of movie selections, or not no inventory, less inventory costs and yet a lot of variety through going online. And then he takes advantage of a brand-new technology that had just come into the market called the DVD, and that creates your first mail-order movie. People often forget that it actually started with mail-order movies.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. So, the Netflix as a whole is the combination of several tactics that each are solving a key subproblem.

Sheena Iyengar

Yes. And so, Netflix, when it first got started was just a combination of Planet Fitness plus Amazon, plus the DVD.

Pete Mockaitis

And I’ve heard that, is it called the high-level pitch or the concept pitch, which is often how a lot of things are explained? Like, “It’s like Airbnb, but for your car.” It’s like, “Oh, okay. I understand what you’re saying.” And then, in a way, that concept of pitching or summarizing an idea is just sharing the combinations that are popping for the choice map.

Sheena Iyengar
Yeah, you’re extracting the most relevant tactic but you’re not, like, stealing all of Amazon, you’re not stealing all of Planet Fitness, but you’re extracting the most relevant tactic that applies to your subproblem. And so, yes, analogical thinking is relevant. You’re absolutely right.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And then step six, the third eye. What’s this about?

Sheena Iyengar

So, the third eye, a lot of times people spend a lot of money once they have an idea, and they decide they’re going to either pretotype or prototype, and they end up prototyping a lot of mediocre ideas. And I don’t think you need to rush to do that. There’s actually very inexpensive and fun way to actually learn how your idea will be perceived because we all have that feeling where you’ve got an idea, and you think it’s great, and yet you go describe it to your spouse, and they’re like, “Huh?”

And so, what the third eye is it’s a unique way of learning how others will perceive your idea. I call it the good way of getting feedback but it’s not getting feedback by asking people, “Hey, I’m going to describe this to you. Tell me what you think.” No, I never ask you what you think because that’s actually not helpful to me to know if you like or hate it. How is that useful to me?

What I really need to know is, when I describe my idea to you, what questions do you ask me? If I were to ask you how you would describe my idea back to me, how would you describe it? Because that’s how I learn what you heard and what you’re seeing, and what stuck out at you and what didn’t, and what were the gaps. And that then helps me to further flesh it out.

And so, to give you an example, if that would be helpful here, let’s take Paul McCartney’s legendary song “Yesterday.” If you read the folk stories about it, it’ll say that he just woke up one morning with the tune in his head, and the rest is history. It’s true that he woke up with some tune in his head, and he immediately got up and he wrote it down, but he didn’t actually know whether it was a good tune or not.

He had that insight to understand that he just had no idea if he had just reinvented the wheel or what. By the way, most of the times when we have a new idea, it is often redundant with whatever is already out there. So, that was actually a very useful insight on his part and a useful worry on his part. But what he did was he created some nonsensical phrases to just hold the tune in his head. And he started to just hum the tune to different people, and say, “Hey, have you heard this before?” He didn’t ask them, “Do you like this?” “Have you heard this before?”

“No, no, it sounds familiar but, no, I don’t think I’ve actually heard it.” And every time he plays it and he hums it, he starts fleshing it out a little more, “Hey, have you heard this before?” “No, no.” Eventually, after he’s built it out enough, he realizes, “Hmm, let me start putting some real words to this.” And he put some words, and then he takes a guitar.

And he was lefthanded but he was given a righthanded guitar, and he just played it with the wrong hand because, in part, he just wanted to hear how it was sounding, and let other people hear so that he could see whether they were hearing what he was hearing. Was it a song? And so, that’s how, little by little, he’s forming the song.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. Well, Sheena, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention about innovation, key steps, best practices before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Sheena Iyengar

I think, too often, we think that creativity is like magic, and that it’ll just happen. Like, when you least expect it, it’ll happen in this flash of a second, and that it’s kind of out of your control, it happens to special people or in special moments. And I guess what I most want people to take away is the idea that it actually is not magic. You can train yourself to do it, and you actually do get better and better with practice, and it is something you can practice doing.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Well, now, could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Sheena Iyengar

Well, my favorite quote is by Bob Dylan, “Life isn’t about finding yourself. It’s not about finding anything. It’s about creating yourself.”

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Sheena Iyengar

I still really am surprised at how good the jam study was that I did so many years ago. I didn’t realize how important a study it was even when I did it. But if you show people six jams versus 24 jams, when they see 24, they’re more likely to get curious and stop and sample it than when they see six, but they were 10 times more likely to buy a jar of jam when they encountered six than when they encountered 24.

And that, I did in the year 2000, and I didn’t know that it was actually a moment, it was a tipping point that we were actually entering a world where we really were having exited the amount of choice we had in the ‘90s was high but that it was really going to get even higher. And so, yeah, I think that ever since, if anything our world has become more complex, more information, more choices, and that understanding that we do have cognitive limitations, so that the best way for any of us to get the most from choice, to get the most from life, is to actually be very mindful about what kind of choices we want and for what.

In fact, the choice map that I was describing to you, it’s a tool you can use for ideation but it’s, ultimately, a decision-making tool. You can use the choice map to help you discern which choices are better and worse, to help you figure out what are the most important criteria you need for any choice that you’re looking at to fulfill. So, it’s not just a choice-creation tool, it’s also a picking tool, choice-selection tool.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Sheena Iyengar

I suppose whenever I need inspiration, and I’m feeling down or anything, I always love, one of my go-to books is The Prophet. I also really love Emerson’s essay on Self-Reliance.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Sheena Iyengar

My favorite tool then probably is my Apple Watch. It keeps me on time. It has actually made my life a lot easier. And actually, this might surprise you, it’s now old fashion to use paper and pen. The equivalent of that for a blind person is Braille paper and a stylus, like slate and stylus. It’s like handwriting Braille, almost no blind people will handwrite Braille anymore because your Braille, just like give a laptop for normal typewriter, you have that for Braille. But I still find being able to hand-Braille to be really, really useful. It just helps me think better.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And a favorite habit, something you do that helps you be awesome at your job?

Sheena Iyengar

Every single day, the first thing I do when I wake up is I ask myself, “What are the three most important things I need to do today?” And that helps me reduce the clutter because there’s so much coming at you every single day.

Pete Mockaitis

And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Sheena Iyengar

To get the most from choice, you have to be choosy about choosing.

Pete Mockaitis

And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Sheena Iyengar

Well, you can find me on LinkedIn. You can come find me at the Columbia Business School where I’m a faculty member. You can email me.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Sheena Iyengar

Never feel that you can’t make your life better. There’s a lot of times we have dreams, and not all our dreams get fulfilled, but the great thing about dreams is they come in in endless supply pack. And if you’re able to pick other dreams and figure out which dreams you can make come real, do it.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Sheena, this has been a treat. I wish you much fun and many big thoughts.

Sheena Iyengar

Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis

Heather, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Heather Younger

Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, I’m so excited to dig into your wisdom of your book The Art of Active Listening: How People at Work Feel Heard, Valued, and Understood. That sure sounds handy.

Heather Younger
It is very much handy, yes.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah. Well, I’m intrigued. I love that you’ve really done your homework here. I saw that you had done surveys of over 30,000 people here in your research putting this bad boy together. I’d love to hear, when you have this rich treasure trove of data, any particularly striking, surprising, counterintuitive discoveries popped out at you there?

Heather Younger

I’ve got to say that this is an evolution, and of the 30,000 surveys were surveys I did on behalf of clients where we reviewed every single comment inside those employee surveys, and hundreds of focus groups I did personally facilitate. And so, in that, I have to just say that it came down to listening, like it was the lack of feeling heard that was a huge determining factor as it related to internal employees and external customers.

And I’ve known it for a while. I started off doing kind of customer experience and listening to customers, and doing that in a variety of ways but also with surveys. I would just remember one particular gentleman, he was a lab tech at a hospital, and this has been, like, probably 14 years ago. And I remember him giving some feedback, and then he asked us to adjust some things related to this conference we were doing, and then we went back and we made the changes and requests based upon the tweaks he was requesting in the conference, and how we had things set up changed.

We told him that they’re going to change, and he came to the conversation, he saw that the flow changed. And he came to me after, and he said, “I’m going to be honest. We’ve been working with this company for years but this is the very first time I’ve ever felt heard.” And it was because we took in the feedback, we sat as a group to figure out what we were going to do about the feedback, we acted, and decided we were going to act, we let him know we were going to act, acted, told him we acted, he saw we acted, and then we followed back of each other to determine if that action was good enough or not, that we followed a process.

And I noticed ever since then when I was working with internal customers and external customers, that using that process for active listening is what, in the end, make people go, “Aha, I’ve actually been heard.” It made all the difference.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, Heather, it’s funny, that doesn’t that revolutionary, no offense, and yet I have a hunch that this sensical approach may not be so much common practice if that client said, “This is the first time I felt heard.” Is that your vibe? Like, what proportion of folks do feel heard versus unheard?

Heather Younger

Well, I think there’s many of us that don’t. If you think about, particularly in the workplace, customers often are left feeling like they’re just a means to an end of us arriving at a number on our end goal, of our revenues, so they’re often not feeling heard. Then you have employees who feel like they’re victims inside the workplace, like things are happening to them all the time and they have no say with how that’s all going to happen, how it’s going to roll out for them.

What I would say about the five, the cycle of active listening is that most of the steps are super intuitive and most people do about 60% of them, 60% of the framework, and 40% they don’t. And the 40% that don’t is where they drop the ball and why most people don’t feel heard. As we walk through the process, I would say decoding and closing the loop are the two that seem to be the most foreign for most when I was speak from stages about it.

Decoding is this idea that, after we receive feedback from someone, after we listen to someone, we lean in to hear what someone is saying to us, and we think we got it, we think we know what’s going on. Most of us jump straight to the fourth step, which is action. We want to go act upon what they just asked us to do. We want to go act on what we heard to solve an issue.

And what I’m telling people is not to go act immediately, unless it’s a life-or-death situation. You need to pause. And the pause could be two days, two weeks, normally it’s two months, but it’s some time to process what it is we heard, to reflect by ourselves or with other people, to research maybe what our response should be based upon what the people are telling us, and then act, or then go back to the client and tell him you want to act, or then go back and tell him you can’t act.

And after you’ve acted, go back to the person and say, “Well, I listened to you, I heard what you said. You wanted this thing and we went and did that thing. And I don’t know about you, but it seemed like the results are great. What do you think? Okay, because we did this based upon your feedback. Thank you for giving us that feedback because it helps us get better, and you helped us get better by using your voice.”

That is a complete foreign concept, Pete. Most people are not doing that. Most people, most organizations do not do that process. They don’t close the loop. They don’t go back after they’ve taken action on behalf of another person, and tell the other person that they’ve taken the action because of them.

They don’t go back and thank them for that feedback. They don’t go back and tell them about the tweaks they’re making in the process as they’re making them. And that is where we drop the ball and there’s the gap between when we think we’re listening and when people feel heard on the other side.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, that’s really powerful. And I’ve been guilty of that myself. I’m thinking about one of my producers, Ria, who’s great, and she did a really great job of proactively highlighting how my vocal processing sounded a little different under certain circumstances on the podcast, and I was completely unaware. And so, I dug deep and did all the stuff and through quite a process of sort of thinking through what are all the steps associated with how the audio gets mixed and mastered and whatnot.

And then it’s sort of like, “Oh, yeah, by the way, thanks for mentioning that because we did this whole thing and changed it up, and now I think it’s a lot more natural.” And she’s like, “Oh, well, thank you for letting me know. I had no idea.” I was like, “Yeah, I guess you wouldn’t unless I would say it, and I didn’t say it.” It’s funny, I don’t know what the holdup is. Maybe it’s just the time gap there in terms of it’s like, “Oh, we had that conversation months ago,” and then I’m off to another thing.

Heather Younger

Yes, that’s exactly right. That’s exactly what happens with most people, too. Time goes by, they think, “Oh, do we really need to give them that? Do they really need to know about that? I don’t think I have time for that. It’s not that important to that person that I do that,” and that is the wrong way to think about it.

We actually give people a gift by doing this whole process. When they see that we’ve taken the time to reflect on their feedback, that we’ve processed it, that we’ve done our research, that we’ve decided how we’re going to act, and we go talk to them about it, we do that action and we tell them that we’ve done it, and they see the direct correlation between their voices, they’re actively using their voices, and our response to them.

It’s powerful, because, otherwise, again, we’re just kind of sitting around like this, like in the world wondering, like you did wondering, “What? I didn’t know that.” We think we see something change, we think it’s based upon our feedback, but we have no clue it’s directly tied to us until the person or the people who did the thing tell us it was because of us.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah. And that feels so great because I think all of us like to contribute, feel like we matter, made a difference. And if you can feel like you are a part of having made a real difference or contribution, by merely having maybe a quick conversation, it’s like, “Hey, remember we chatted about 15 minutes about that thing one time? Well, now, look how the world is completely different for thousands of people based on that conversation.” Like, “Oh, awesome. That’s the coolest thing, huge impact, low effort. Can I get some more of this, please?”

Heather Younger

Oh, I love it. Yes, exactly. So, I think that’s exactly right. You feed the need for people. And when we think about that baby who’s in the crib, you think about us when we’re babies, we’re in a crib, and we start making noises, and we go, “Ooh, ahh,” we make all kinds of noises, and our parents come, and go, “Oh, how are you, sweetheart, dah, dah, dah.” And, all of a sudden, we’re just like, “Ahh,” we’re just like, “Oh, they heard me.”

I’m thinking about I have four children, so I don’t know who’s listening, who has any kids, but I have four children, and as I think about each of them, and a couple of them are more rambunctious than others, as they would make those same sounds and I would not respond to them, they would start to throw things out of the crib. They would kick the crib. They would make all kinds of noises because they were like, “Wait a second. You usually come. You’re not coming now. Are you hearing this thing I’m using? It’s called a voice. Are you hearing me?”

That is innate in us. Our voice is a significant part of what makes us, us. So, the more we use that and people respond to it in kind, it makes us feel powerful. It makes us feel important. That’s a gift we give to people.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, now, we talked about the five-step framework a bit. Could you share with us each of the five steps and maybe a demonstration or a case of it unfolding in action?

Heather Younger

So, the first step is recognize the unsaid. And it kind of speaks for itself but it’s kind of like those unspoken cues, the signs within a culture, the signs within our office that something is just not right, and we don’t recognize those signs if we’re running around with our heads chopped off, if we don’t take time to pause, but those signs could be blind spots in a really big way into relationship failures, conflicts that are brewing, customers that aren’t happy. There’s a lot of things that we are missing if we don’t take time to pause and recognize those things.

So, recognize the unsaid is the first step because we need to get there for our awareness to expand so we can then go to the next step, which is seeking to understand. Once we see the signs, now we have to go deeper, have the courage to go deeper, and start asking and leaning in and asking questions, and going back and forth, and trying, with curiosity, figure out what’s happening, what the person needs from us, what took place, whatever. But we can’t do that until we recognize the unsaid. And so, the seeking is that whole reflective listening, it’s the empathetic listening, it’s the leaning in, it’s trying to understand what the other person needs from us.

That third step is the decoding phase, which is what I talked about earlier, which really is the time we take to go reflect. We pause and reflect on what the person told us in the seeking to understand phase. We go reflect. We research. We do it by ourselves. We do it with our management team. We do it with our team, our colleagues, whoever we need to, that’s what we do in that phase.

And the decoding says to the person on the other end, “I think you are so important that I’m not going to rush to a decision. I’m going to pause. I’m going to take some time with what you said. It’s important what you said.” And then action is the next step. So, okay, you’re going to take action, or you can’t action but maybe you can come to a compromise. Or, what kind of action are you going to take? So, you’ve got to take some kind of action because people will say, “Oh, the dots really start to be connected then. Oh, they actually changed something. They did something different based upon what my voice said to them, what I said to them. Oh, okay.”

And then the closing loop is that last step, which is to come back full circle to say what you’ve done, what you plan to do, or what you can’t do but how you might be able to come to a compromise so that they know, “Okay, Pete took time. He sat with me. He took the view that he told me I was going to take a few days before he could research and come back to me.”

“But he came back to me when he promised he’d come back to me. And then when he came back to me, they had a solution. And the solution was better than what I thought it was. And they told me they’re going to go about kind of putting the solution in place, and they did it. And Pete told me when they did it, and I looked, and I saw, and it was great, and it was because of me.”

That’s the five-step process. That’s kind of how that comes together, and that is kind of a real-life working because there’s stuff that’s happening all day to us. How we respond in a moment that makes all the difference.

Pete Mockaitis

That’s cool. That’s cool. Well, could you give us a demonstration?

Heather Younger

Well, I think part of it is just, like, you come to us, you say something to me. Let’s just say, a customer is complaining about a process. So, let’s say you’re a customer who complains to me about there’s a process that’s happened and I’m leaning in, “So, tell me more, Pete. Tell me more what’s happening?” and I’m asking all the questions.

And I get to the point where I’m like, “I think I understand. So, Pete, I just want to make sure I understand. This part of the process was really frustrating you and your team. It’s making the whole relationship kind of go downhill. You’re frustrated and you’re at your wit’s end at this point. And you’re coming to me because you feel like I’m the last person that you can listen to you, that can maybe do something about what’s happening to you, right? Is that what I’m getting to? Is that what’s happening, Pete?”

Then you say, Pete, “Yeah, that’s exactly right.” “Okay, Pete, thank you so much for that feedback. I need to go and talk to a few different departments and maybe even, like, my manager, to see what we can do, and, actually, just to look into this more fully. Is that okay if I come back to you within the next 72 hours with what we found, and maybe a solution?” And Pete says, “That’s great. Thanks, Heather. Thanks for at least trying.”

Okay. So, I go about and I’m talking to the shipping department, and this department, and I go talk to the manager, and I go, “Here’s what’s happening to the customer. They’re not happy. Here’s what they’re really wanting. Here’s part of the process that’s really broken. And I talk to these different people, and I look at this process, and I think the client is onto something. There is a part that’s broken but I don’t think you can give the person exactly what they wanted but we can maybe give them this. What do you think about this?” And this is what the person’s talking to the manager about.

And the manager goes, “Yeah, I think that’s possible. Research a little bit more here. Go over here. Go over there. And if you think you can come up with this, then go back to the customer and let him know we can do it. We can do this thing, this more narrow part of the thing they want me to do.” “Okay, great.”

So, I go back do the thing, come back to the manager, “Yup, manager, it’s good. I think I’m going to go ahead and tell the customer we can’t do the entire big thing but we can change this back.” So, now, I go back to the customer, and I go, “Customer, thank you so much for that feedback. I told you I’d be back in three days. I’m here. I’m here with you. I did a lot of research, talked to all different people, and here’s what we think we can do.”

“We can’t quite do all of this thing, but, as we looked at it, you’re right. There was a part of the process that is really a problem. So, here’s what we’re thinking we can do, and I wanted to come back with you to see if you thought this would work.” Then I tell the person what it is, and they go, “Yeah, I think it’s possible. Or, can you go a little further?”

Okay, I don’t know if you can see how it can go, but it’s going to require us to go more back and forth. It’s a tennis match of requests and meeting a request, and communicating back to them. And, at the end, let’s say you get to the point, and you boil it down to what it is they really, in the end, that you’ve met their need, and now they’re happy. Now they’re like, “Great. Thank you for being one of the very first people ever to hear me.”

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And during the course of those actual conversations, are there any particular words, phrases, questions, that you just love and seem to really go a long way?

Heather Younger

one tip I would give you as it relates to the seeking part of that cycle is when you’re listening to someone and you want to go try to paraphrase what you heard, paraphrase, do not parrot. So, don’t go back to them with exactly what they just said.

Instead, take in all of the emotions that are going on as they say it. So, you sense their frustration, you see their hesitation, you can sense their anxiety. What you do is when you go back to them, you make sure that you reflect back kind of the gist of what you heard them say and how that makes them feel, or how it made them feel, or what you sensed they felt.

This is going to take more effort for some people than it will for others, but if you pay close to attention, you’re going to see, like, there could be shifting in their body language, you’re going to hear the tone of their voice, you’re going to see the grimace in their face, knowing that there’s anger, frustration, whatever the feelings are.

Because when they see that you recognize this, like part of what they said, you recognize the thing that you’re seeing kind of what you’re experiencing and what they’re saying, now it starts to add up for them, they’re like, “Okay, what I’m saying, they’re actually hearing. They’re not hearing something different. They’re hearing what I’m saying and they’re sensing what I’m feeling about what I’m saying.” It’s powerful.

So, I would say that’s kind of a big one. Do not parrot. Don’t parrot back because that’s super frustrating. What I mean by that is this, “So, Pete, what I heard you say is…” dah, dah, dah. And then they say, “Yeah, because this…” And then you go, “Okay, so what I heard you say just now is…” dah, dah, dah, and they say some more. And you go, “And what I heard you say just now is…” that’s the parroting. That’s actually super frustrating, very irritating, it feels very robotic.

So, just calm yourself in the interaction, don’t feel the need to respond to every single sentence, calm yourself, take it all in, what you see and what you hear, and then start to ask thoughtful questions, and then wrap in the emotions of the thing that you’re doing.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That’s good. That’s good. Anything else we should avoid?

Heather Younger

I would say that’s probably the biggest thing. There’s probably a lot of other little things that you should avoid as you’re in them. For example, you’re really not going to be in conflict for long. Don’t go into something with your desire to be right or your desire to respond. Go into listening with your desire to find a connection, your desire to find a midway, your desire to land on solution, not to be right. I would say that to be the other thing.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And if we do have conflict, disagreement, tension, any pro tips on how we can listen effectively there?

Heather Younger

Sometimes you have to just agree to talk about it later, and there’s nothing wrong with that. You don’t have to be in a superheated situation and handle it right in the moment necessarily, unless, again, it’s life or death, or something. For example, even if it’s a client, a customer at a counter, I’ve done this before where it gets a little heated, and they’re, like, yelling, and I go, “Excuse me, I just need to take one moment. Is that okay? Just one moment.”

And then I go in the back, and just kind of go, “Ahh, ahh,” because I really want to strangle the person. I just go, “Ahh,” process it, and then come back out, and go, “Okay. Sorry about that. I just needed to kind of gather my thoughts or whatever it was. Okay, so now I want to make sure I hear you,” and then you can kind of go into it.

I would say the biggest thing is seeking and going in with curiosity because, in conflict, in most cases, we want to be right. We’re seeking to win our side. So, in conflict, if you feel yourself like in it, remove yourself from it for the moment, or totally table that discussion for later if you can.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, tell me, Heather, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Heather Younger

No, I would say that’s it. As we think about it, active listening is a gift, and our presence and undivided attention for people is the biggest gift we can give them. So, we just have to remember that, as we ask ourselves, “Well, I don’t have time,” or we say to ourselves, “I don’t have time to listen like this,” or, “Listening is not that important,” or, “I think I’m a pretty decent listener. That’s all I need to be.” Think about what kind of gift you want to deliver.

Do you want to deliver one that’s frayed in a box that’s been, like, banged up? Or, do you want to deliver the gift that’s, like, it is beautifully wrapped box with a bow, where someone goes, “This person really thought a lot of me.” And that would be for you to answer.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Now, could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Heather Younger

So, it’s by Marianne Williamson. It’s the deepest fear quote. Do you know what I’m talking about?

Pete Mockaitis

Yup.

Heather Younger

Here’s part of it. It’s not the full thing. “We ask ourselves ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are we not to be?” And it’s actually a much longer quote so I would definitely invite everybody to go look at it, but it really is this idea of not minimizing ourselves for the benefit of others, not making ourselves smaller so that others can feel bigger, that’s really up to them to do, that’s not up for you to do.

I absolutely love that quote so much because, often, depending on your personality, if you have kind of a personality that’s bigger than life, or you have goals that are really big, oftentimes, we want to minimize because we can see other people aren’t in a good place, or they may not take in whatever it is you’re going through and they may be negative about it. And I say, well, that’s their issue, not yours.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And a favorite book?

Heather Younger

I love pretty much anything John Maxwell, so The Leader Within, all those leader books by John Maxwell are the best. They’re thin so you can get through them really quick on an airplane ride or while you’re at home. Anything by John Maxwell is, what I would say, books I love.

Pete Mockaitis

And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Heather Younger

This is a love-hate relationship but I’d have to say my iPhone. I probably do 90% of my things from there, like emailing, texting, social, just everything. So, when people are like, “Oh, when you do this on the desktop,” and I’m like, “I don’t do much from the desktop so I don’t know what you mean.” So, iPhone would probably be my best tool.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And a favorite habit?

Heather Younger

I like to eat the same breakfast every day.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, what is this breakfast?

Heather Younger

See, now you’re intrigued, right? Two eggs with spinach with a little bit of parmesan cheese and, like, a Pico de Gallo on top, and a piece of sprouted grain toast and natural peanut butter, and some blackberries. That’s my breakfast.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate, folks quote it back to you often?

Heather Younger

I think the idea that listening is…being present is, in fact, a gift to others.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Heather Younger

I’d say go ahead and go to LinkedIn, just look for Heather Younger, and, boom, I’ll be there. That’s probably the biggest way for them to kind of follow me, contact me is LinkedIn.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Heather Younger

I would say that we all have the ability to own the listening that we do and how well we do it. And be really reluctant to give away your power. Don’t point the finger or blame your manager or somebody else in the organization. Instead, stand in your own shoes and own your own presence when it comes to people around you.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Heather, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you much luck and fun and gifts of active listening.

Heather Younger

Thank you so much for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Richard, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Richard Newman
Thanks, Pete. Good to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I’m so excited to talk to you about your book and wisdom and insights associated with body talk and You Were Born to Speak, but, first, I think we got to start with tell us the tale, you, Tibetan monks, six months, nonverbal communication. What is the story here?

Richard Newman
So, what happened was that when I was at school, high school, I was planning on going straight to university just like all of my friends, and I knew though while I was there that I was not great at communication, and I didn’t know why. I just really struggled with it. I’d grown up being called shy. I didn’t realize I was an introvert at the time, but I’ve since come to understand that term more. And I’ve only very recently been diagnosed as autistic.

And so, anyway, when I was back at school, I was struggling in communication, thinking, “I really want to do something about this, and I want to do something good for the world as well.” And I was starting to read books around communication, and I read this book all about body language that I was fascinated by, and I thought, “Wow, I want to do something with this and explore where this can take me.”

So, just before I was about to leave high school, I had my university places organized, and this guy who’d been at our school a few years prior, he came back and he did a speech to all of us, saying, “Look, if you’re thinking about maybe taking a year off before university, here’s something you could do.” And he had been on an adventure to go to Katmandu or somewhere near there to work in an orphanage. He gave his story, and I thought, “That’s the kind of thing I want to go and do.”

And so, I put myself forward to different organizations who arrange this sort of thing, and one of them told me about this monastery where they never had a teacher before but they really wanted help with connecting with the outside world. So, it’s a group of Tibetan monks who were in exile, living in the foothills of the Himalayas in India, and they needed a teacher. So, I said, “Yup, that’s the one for me.”

And so, I ventured across India, I’d never been on a holiday without my parents at this point, so I’d never been overseas without them, and it took me days to find this monastery. And, eventually, when I got there, I then realized that the monks couldn’t speak any English, and I thought I was there to improve their English, but it turns out they didn’t speak any English, so I had to use body language and tone of voice just to connect with them to understand “Where am I going to speak? Where are we going to do a lesson together?” that sort of thing.

And then I was teaching them for six months, so I spent six months with them learning how to use nonverbal communication in a way of being able to explain myself and help them to learn my language. And so, by the end of that time, they could then have a good conversation in English with me, and I’d learned how to speak Nepali, which is the main language of the area we were living in, and it was also the easiest language to learn because Tibetan is quite challenging in comparison.

And so, I came back to the UK with this sort of profound feeling about nonverbal communication, wanting to do something with that, which then started me on the journey of building up my communication training business.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, wow, Richard, there’s so much I want to dig into there. That’s cool. So, one, congratulations, mission accomplished. I don’t know if I’d spent six months living with folks who didn’t know any English whatsoever, where we’d be at the end of that. So, that’s cool that you pulled it off. So, I’m curious about that right there in terms of how did those breakthroughs occur exactly? I guess you could maybe pick up stuff, “Bowl, this is bowl.” Or, how is that even done?

Richard Newman
I started to realize that I could explain myself better if I was being really congruent, meaning that if my body language and my tone of voice and my words were all headed in one direction, they understood me. And if they weren’t, they had no idea what I was saying.

So, for example, if I wanted to teach these words, teach the monks how to say the word excited, I needed to look excited, sound excited, and say the word excited. Whereas, if I wasn’t doing those three things in unison, going in one direction, I could’ve been saying pineapple and they wouldn’t have any idea about the difference. So, it really taught me that sense of congruency.

And so, there were elements that I taught. One of the most fun lessons that I did actually was where I was teaching them about texture, and I thought, “How am I going to teach them? I wanted to teach them about smooth, and wet, and rough, and hard, and so on.” And so, what I did was I got a big bucket, and I got a blindfold. So, I blindfolded them and I put their hand into this bucket, and then they would touch something that was hard, something that was wet and so on, so they would understand when I’d say the word, and so they’d suddenly learn those pieces.

But other pieces were much more visual, which people won’t be able to see listening to the audio recording. But I would do this where I would point or gesture as I was talking to them about prepositions. So, where I would say up, down, into, onto, over, under, out, in front, behind, next to, opposite, round, and roundabout, and I would mimic those pieces to give them those sort of physical senses of things.

And so, it was a gradual buildup of a sense of using props, using very specific directive gestures, and then, primarily, using congruency in communication that was enabling them to build that up. And that’s what I then gone on to teach people in my career is particularly that congruency piece, which is really missing in day-to-day communication in business and people’s careers, where I find people might really think carefully about their words, but they don’t necessarily think, “Well, what tone of voice do I put with those words? What body would I put with those words?”

And so, this is where you’ll have people attending conference, and the CFO gets up on stage, and says, “Hi, everyone. Really excited to be here today. We’ve had some really good financial results.” And what people are seeing and hearing is they’re thinking, “Are we about to go out of business? Are we about to go bankrupt, because he doesn’t look very excited? Like, what is he not telling me here?”

And so, that congruency piece has been one of the major pieces I’ve focused on for clients over the last two decades to make sure that everything is matching up so that people really believe everything that you’re saying, and get the right message in the end.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, now, at the same time, you mentioned you’re recently diagnosed as autistic, and so my knowledge of autism and the spectrum is somewhat limited to a few things I’ve read on the internet. But isn’t that not often associated with missing these very things that you are speaking to? Tell us how that fits into all this.

Richard Newman
Yes. So, my diagnosis has been a long time coming, actually. So, when I was a teenager, friends noticed that I was having challenges with communication. So, one of the big challenges for me would be, as you mentioned, around sort of figuring out the nonverbal side of communication. So, an example of that is banter. So, banter, being when, from my perspective, what I see is I’d see two neurotypical people engaged in banter, looks like they are insulting each other, and then laughing at each other’s faces.

Pete Mockaitis
“Oh, you old sandbagging SOB, how are you doing? Uh-oh, look what the cat dragged in, this guy.” Yeah, I love old people is my favorite, watching them banter.

Richard Newman
Right, yeah. So, I’ll watch this sort of thing, and I think, “Oh, that seems to improve their relationship.” And whenever I try it, people get really insulted. And, just like you said, what I hear is…

Pete Mockaitis
Could you give us an example, Richard, of how you blew it? That sounds like an interesting scenario.

Richard Newman
So, I think back to about sort of ten years ago, I was at an event with a couple of colleagues of mine, and I can’t remember exactly what they said to each other but it was along the lines, from my memory, of one of them said, “You’re just so ugly that blah, blah, blah, ha, ha, ha, ha,” and the other one said, “No, no, no, you’re so ugly that blah, blah, blah, ha, ha, ha, ha.”

And I thought, “Okay, I think I can engage in this conversation. I’m going to try this.” And I said something like, “No, no, but you’re so ugly that blah, blah, blah,” and they both looked at me, like, “That is so offensive. I can’t believe you said that.” And I was thinking, “But I just did what you did, didn’t I? I didn’t mean it. Obviously, I didn’t mean it. You didn’t mean what you said.” So, I thought, “Okay, banter is not for me.”

And so, yeah, from teenage years, I realized that I wasn’t very good at that but I started studying books on body language, and I was originally reading books by people like Allen Pease and Desmond Morris, were sort of the forefathers of the areas that people look at now with body language, and also people like Joe Navarro, other people that I was reading up about.

And it got to the point where I’d realized, “Well, hang on a second, I’ve studied so much on body language, I now understand more than the average person about what these things mean, what nonverbal signals we’re giving off, and how to improve our nonverbal impact.” And when I started leading then my company, one of my first clients that I worked with was a Formula One racing team.

And for them, they gave me a script that I needed to deliver in meetings for their clients who would come in from all over the world. And, essentially, what happened was that I memorized this script that I needed to deliver word for word, it was a legally approved script, and I delivered that script about one thousand times to one thousand different audiences over the course of five years.

And because I couldn’t change the information, each time I delivered it, I thought, “Well, what if I changed a bit about my nonverbal communication, just see if it gives me a better reaction than it did yesterday and the day before?” And I would note down, I’d look through all the books I could find on body language, all the research I could find, and I would note down, “Okay, let me try this technique tomorrow.” And sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t, and sometimes it worked for maybe a European audience but it didn’t work for people who came in from Asia.

And so, I’d note this down, and it got to the point where I thought, “Okay, these are the things that definitely work universally.” And then I put together a research project in 2016 to get all these verified, and we had this breakthrough research paper that was published in the Journal of Psychology that was peer reviewed. And the people who were working with me on this, the experts in this field from the University College London from the psychology department, they said that they’d never seen statistics like we had achieved on this project.

So, to come back to the question around autism, I think that what this has given me, in my particular case, is a unique lens to be able to look at communication with, where neurotypical people, which is most people, sort of just look at information from other people, body language, they’re not really aware of what they’re looking at. Whereas, I’m laser-focused looking at, “Well, what’s happening right now? What does that mean? What can I do in response to that that will lead to a positive outcome?”

And I was able to put all those building blocks together for people, and then teach my clients. If you imagine like a wall, and they’re saying, “I don’t seem to be having presence at the moment. I haven’t got the gravitas I need.” I look at the wall that they’re putting together and their body language, and think, “Okay, these three bricks are missing on your wall. We need to put these three bricks into place, and now you have presence.”

And that’s what the research project showed. So, from my perspective, it’s actually been an advantage to me in many ways that I’ve been able to have this other way of looking at communication that would be different to most people, that’s allowed me to analyze it in a way that I can then be useful to my clients, and then to build up those techniques for myself to the point where I can be effective as an onstage speaker, knowing what techniques to apply to get the right reaction.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s fascinating. And so, to recap, whereas neurotypical folks just sort of intuit, like, “Oh, okay, this is what’s going on, and this is why this banter is okay,” you are kind of dissecting the components and the ingredients that build that up. And is it because you did not have that natural intuition about things and you just happen to be fascinated by the subject matter that you went ahead and determined, “Well, what are those ingredients?” Is that fair to say?

Richard Newman
Yeah, exactly, because sometimes I get people saying to me, “Oh, well, you can’t really demystify this communication stuff. You either know how to do it or you don’t.” And that, for me, is a very neurotypical response to things, where I can see why people are saying that because they can’t see beyond what’s happening.

Whereas, for me, it’s a little bit like looking at a goldfish in a bowl and being outside of the bowl, and being able to see how the interactions are happening, what’s happening there from a perspective, almost like, if you think about a nature documentary presenter who’s watching how another species interact, and is then able to observe it, build up research around it, and think about how to apply that in different situations.

So, that’s what it’s been like for me.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful stuff. All right, let’s talk about this 2016 study here. Tell us, what are these eye popping statistically mind-blowing discoveries, and can you share some of the numbers associated with them and the key takeaways that all of us should use if we want to have more presence, and be more compelling and persuasive?

Richard Newman
Yeah, sure. So, this study we put together, first of all, we looked back over sort of 30 to 40 years’ worth of research in the area of nonverbal communication and influence to see what had already been proved and what sort of protocols have been used by people that we could build upon. We then spent 18 months building up the research project that we did to really refine it down to certain pieces we wanted to measure.

And so, the essence of what we’re aiming for is to see is, “Is there certain body language choices that every person can make no matter what your gender is, no matter what country you live in, no matter what your skin color is? Is there something that every human can do that improves their impact?”
So, we put this all together, and the way that we did this, we created over a hundred videos of people speaking to a camera where they would be saying the same words in every video, they would wear the same clothes as well, but in each video, they just slightly change their communication style.

We also used, in the videos, there’s four different actors. So, two female, two male, and they had two with lighter skin, two with darker skin, and they also, all four of them, went through an aging process with prosthetics because we wanted to see if they did exactly the same thing but they looked 30 years older, “Did that change how people rated them as a leader or for confidence and so on?”

And to our complete surprise, it didn’t matter what their gender was, it didn’t matter what their skin color was, it didn’t matter how old people thought they looked, and it also didn’t matter if we did the test for people who were watching it in Mumbai versus people watching it somewhere in California. And the people who watched these videos, we had more than 2,000 people take part, people age from 18 to 65, men and women who were looking at this, that didn’t matter either.

The only thing that really changed our results is that if people went from the most common forms of body language that you see in day-to-day life, and they shifted away from those most common elements across to what we thought would be a more effective, this is where we got these eye popping results, where we found that with a couple of simple shifts anybody can make, you can then increase how confident people think you are by 25%, you could increase how many people you convince with whatever you’re saying by 42%, you can increase how many people think you’re a good leader by 44%, and you can increase how many people would vote for you in an election by 58%.

And that is while you’re saying the same words, you are the same person, you’re wearing the same clothes, and you just change a couple of things nonverbally, and that’s the reaction you get, and it was working universally for people. So, we’re really excited by that.

Pete Mockaitis
So, I want to ask, of course, what are the things? But, first, just so that we can fully link and, for all of the enthusiasts out there, what is the full journal article name so that we can link to it and read it, the full text in all its glory?

Richard Newman
So, I believe if you Google nonverbal presence, and then you put in my name Richard Newman, you should be able to find it. It’s been downloaded and used and commented on many times over the years, and it’s from the research journal Psychology. So, if you put those into search engines, you should be able to find it. You can download the full reports. I think it’s like a 16-page in a PDF that people can get on this.

And so, for me to go through a couple of pieces…

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Oh, sorry. And co-authors?

Richard Newman
Oh, co-authors, yeah, Adrian Furnham. So, Adrian Furnham is known to be one of the top five psychologists in the world. I believe that he has authored or co-authored roughly a thousand research projects over the last 30 to 40 years, and he gets to go and speak and do keynotes all over the world, the head of psychology at UCL. And also, I mentioned there should be Alistair McClelland and Roxana Cardos. So, people can go and check that out.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Now, I feel like I need a drumroll or something. Richard, lay it on us, what are the body language choices any person, anywhere, can do to see a 25% to 58% lift in key things we’d like lifted?

Richard Newman
Sure. Okay. So, let me start with something really simple. So, one of the big questions I’ve been asked by people over the years is “What do I do with my hands when I’m speaking to people? If I’m in an interview, I’m doing a presentation, that sort of thing, what do I do with my hands?” And it’s quite a funny question because if you think about it, when you go out to a bar with your friends, and you’re just talking about telling people what you did on the weekend, you just move your hands and you don’t really think about it. You just gesture, and you create stories, you don’t worry.

But when people are in situations where they get self-conscious, like a job interview, sales pitch, presentation, they suddenly think, “I don’t know what to do with my hands. I don’t know what I normally do,” and they freeze. And so, something that’s very common is that people stop gesturing altogether. In fact, I’ve trained many people over the years who’ve said, “I was told by my boss early in my career, ‘Stop gesturing, sit on your hands. You look unprofessional. You’re flapping your arms around.’” And this is really detrimental.

Now, what we already know from other research by Dr. Susan Goldin-Meadow from the University of Chicago is that the more that you gesture, the more you stimulate your mind, you can speed up your thought processes. So, it makes sense to gesture while you’re speaking because it allows you to think and process information well.

There’s really interesting studies that she put together. One of which shows you that, and I believe I’m quoting this right, they took a group of mathematicians, and they took the mathematicians who were scoring the highest results, highest grades in the class, and they put them through an exam, an oral exam, where they got them to sit on their hands and answer math questions. Then they took the people from the group who were previously getting the lowest grades in their class, and they got them to frequently gesture while they had an oral exam.

I’m sort of simplifying the results, but those who used to get the lowest results, when they gestured, got much higher grades from the test, and those who used to be the highest-scoring in the class were then getting much lower grades, and it’s based on the amount and frequency they were gesturing. So, anyway, we wanted to do our own version of this test around gestures to see, “Well, how does an audience react to gestures?” So, importantly, if you do no gestures, you get terrible ratings. So, to be very clear on this, like if you’re keeping your hands held in one position, or you’re having them down by your side, very poor.

Secondly, if you do low-limp gestures, you get the worst possible ratings. And low-limp gestures is, effectively, if you imagine your arms sort of loosely by your sides, and you just sort of occasionally flapping them slightly away from your body because you think, “Maybe I probably should gesture but I don’t really feel like it. I feel a bit self-conscious,” then you look very low status by doing so. And that’s gesturing below the waist or if people are in a meeting or a virtual meeting. Gesturing out of the camera’s view or gesturing under the table, very low ratings.

However, if you gesture where people can see it, above the waist, the key area to do it is between the waist and the shoulder height. So, if you go above shoulder height, it looks too dramatic. If you go below waist height, it’s then suddenly, it looks low limp and disengaged. So, between shoulder and waist height, you need to be slightly away from the body.

So, if you go towards the body, then you look like you are being timid. If you go too wide, you look like you’re overreaching. But you want to go slightly away from the body, getting your elbow away from the body, and there’s two positions to think about which work universally. It doesn’t matter where you are around the world.

So, importantly, with gestures, if you do like a thumbs up or an okay symbol, that means different things in different parts of the world. But there are two gestures that mean the same thing everywhere, which is palms up and palms down. Now, palms up, it indicates an open message, it could be a question, it’s a warm gesture, it’s inviting for people. Palms down means the opposite. It is a closed statement. So, as if to say, “There’s no arguments, no questions, that’s just the way it is,” doing it palms down.

And so, if you use them back and forth, those two gestures, congruently with your message, we talked about congruency earlier, if you use them congruently with your message, so palms up for open statements, and palms down for strong closed statements, then suddenly you’re being utterly congruent with your message, and your measure for how charismatic you are suddenly shifts completely because people see you as totally congruently connected with your message, verbally and nonverbally, so make sure palms up and palms down.

So, I talk about those, like if people think about tennis, you got a forehand and backhand. These are your forehand and backhand that you can go to over and over again. You can do it with one hand, you can do it with both hands, and you can use them no matter where you are. So, that one suddenly gave people a massive leap upwards.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, could we do a quick timeout there, Richard? That’s so powerful

So, we want to talk about the up with I’m thinking, all right, let me just see. Tell me if this feels right. So, if I say palms down, “We are 100% committed to investing in the metaverse over the next three years,” and then palms up, “But we’re going to have to learn a lot of new things in which we’re not sure of a few key points, and so we’re going to have to do a lot of listening to figure out what’s going on.”

So, palms up, we’re listening, and then palms down, “But make no mistake, we will be spending $300 million, or whatever, in order to be the leader in this space,” palms up, “And we want all of you to come with us on this exciting journey.” So, is that kind of what we’re talking about here?

Richard Newman
Yeah, exactly. And what you’ll notice as well, for people listening to that, is that your tone of voice changed each time you did palms up versus palms down. And we find that people do this without us even sort of saying to them, people who aren’t as much expert as you would be in front of a microphone. But when we change someone’s gestures, their tone of voice naturally changes. And if you change the pace at which you gesture, the pace and the fluidity of your voice changes as well.

So, sometimes if I’ve got a leader who’s being very choppy in the way they’re being, and being a little bit aggressive, I say, “Look, move your gestures like you’re stroking a large dog. Just imagine you’re doing that,” and suddenly their tone of voice changes with it as well. But the way that you did that palms up and palms down, that’s exactly the right sort of idea behind things. And it makes sure that people really believe you, because seeing is believing.

We’ve got so much data that we take in through the optic nerve, we want to make sure that what’s going through the optic nerve and cranial nerve, while we’re listening to things, they go in and they seem to all fit together perfectly, where you think, “Well, everything I’m seeing and hearing matches. Wow, that’s charisma. That’s a great leader. I believe them. I want to follow them. I want to vote for them.” So, yeah, that works really nicely. So, that’s the piece on gestures.

Pete Mockaitis
And, Richard, may I ask, we got palms up, we got palms down. What happens when I’ve got my palms, I guess, parallel to the ground? It’s like neither up nor down. I’m sorry, perpendicular, excuse me. Perpendicular to the ground.

Richard Newman
So, you can call these palms even, palms equal, or palms neutral, if you want to. And this is good for time gestures or for showing people the size of things. And this is a really important one that we teach people. So, for those listening to this, if you just imagine that I gesture, I make a large gesture, and I say, “If you give us $100,000 investment,” I’m doing a big large gesture, palms even, and then I make a small gesture, and say, “I will give you a 10% return.” So, I’m going from a big gesture, “If you give us $100,000 investment,” down to a small gesture, “I will give you a 10% return.” It seems like it’s a bad deal.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it’s terrible.

Richard Newman
I’m going from something big to something small.

Pete Mockaitis
I don’t even know the terms but I was like, “I don’t think I like that, Richard.”

Richard Newman
Exactly. So, watch, if I do the opposite, I make a small gesture with palms facing each other, and I say, “If you give me $100,000 investment, I will give you a 10% return,” with a big gesture on the end, you suddenly think, “That’s amazing. Of course, I’m going to do this. That’s really exciting.” So, it’s really good for showing people the size of numbers.

I always say to people, “Look, 27% doesn’t actually mean anything, 4.7% doesn’t mean anything. It might mean something to you but it doesn’t mean anything to me.” People only understand what a percentage means or a block of time means if you show them with the scale of your gestures. So, you need to show people “Is a month or three seconds, is that a long time?”

Three seconds in Formula One racing, or doing the 100-meter race at the Olympics, that’s massive. Three seconds is huge. Whereas, if you’re talking about something along the long arc of history between us and the time of the dinosaurs, three seconds or three months or three years is nothing. It’s tiny. So, it’s very useful for scaling, that’s if you’re doing palms facing each other.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, we got our palms. What’s next?

Richard Newman
Okay. So, another piece to talk about, and this one is utterly fascinating, too, is all about your feet position. So, imagine that you are standing talking to people, what we often see, the most common one, we tested this one out, is that if someone is standing talking either to one person or talking to a group of people, which could be a small group in a meeting room or a large group on a stage, what you often see people doing is that they lean their weight from one hip to the other hip, and then going back again, in this sort of rocking direction.

And what they’re always doing is always having their weight on one foot rather than on both. And by being in that position, what you’re doing is you’re physically placing yourself so that gravity is working against you. So, you physically look like a pushover, meaning that if someone came up and pushed you on one of your shoulders, you’d fall over because your weight is off-balanced, off-center, and you’re in a position called anti-gravitas, so you’re going to be easily pushed over.

Whereas, if you do the opposite to that and you do what so few people ever tend to do, so if you place your weight so that your feet are shoulder-width apart and your weight is equally balanced between left foot, right foot, toes, and heels, so you’re physically centered, again, if someone came to you and pushed you on the shoulder, you’d be much less likely to fall down. This is the position that people stand in.

If you look at sports, if you look at someone playing golf about to putt on the final tee, if you watch someone playing basketball, they’re doing a free-throw shot, if you watch someone playing tennis and they’re about to receive serve, what are they doing? They are shoulder-width apart with their feet, maybe just slightly bent potentially, weight equally balanced between left foot, right foot, toes and heels. They’re in a very strong ready position about to perform at their best.

Now, if you do that when you’re standing and speaking to one person or a large audience, then your ratings go very significantly up, but the distance between your feet is key. So, we tested this, we said, “Let’s get the person balanced but let’s try three different widths that they could have their feet.” So, we tried having their feet completely touching each other, so together, they’re still standing balanced on each foot but their feet are together, then we tried feet shoulder-width apart, then we tried going beyond shoulder-width apart, so beyond shoulder-width apart.

And we said, “Okay, let’s just try, keep everything the same and test that worldwide, and see what reactions we get.” And what we found is that when people have their feet together, feet touching, it got the lowest possible results. So, that person was not inspiring, they’re not confident, they’re not a good leader. And the reason being, even though they’re standing centered, their weight on both feet, because their feet is so close together, again, if you give them a nudge, they’d fall over. They look weak. They look like a pushover.

If you put their feet wider than shoulder-width apart, then the person looks more commanding but it also looks a bit strange. It looks like they’re trying to be some sort of superhero rockstar sort of thing. It doesn’t look natural. It’s just like, “Why are you splaying your legs so far apart?” It looks better than the subservient feet together feet position but it doesn’t do the best.

And then, finally, and this was the really strong one, if you just go from feet together to feet shoulder-width apart, and this worked for men and women, you get an increase of 32% increase just by doing that one piece, 32% increase in how convincing people think you are, saying the same words, wearing the same clothes, using the same tone of voice. You just change that one thing because, physically, you are going from being a pushover to having gravitas, gravity working with you.

When people recognize that, they see you as a pack leader or a tribe leader, somebody who has strength and gravitas behind their words. It’s that physical instant reaction that people can do. And it works for men and women, it worked no matter who we tested this on around the world for different cultures because it has that sense of the laws of physics working with what we are seeing.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so, Richard, I love the precision that we’re looking at here. And as I’m thinking about shoulder width, are we thinking that the feet are aligned to the center of the shoulders, or the outer part of the shoulders, or the inner part of the shoulders? Or, if a tailor were to measure straight across the back, shoulder to shoulder, that’s the distance of space that should be between my shoes? Or, how are we defining shoulder width?

Richard Newman
So, the way that we did it in the study, if I’m getting this right, is that we used a tape measure to measure the width from one side of the shoulder to the side of the other shoulder, and then we measured their feet, and we made sure that from one side of their foot to the other side of their foot was the same distance. And then we went from that.

But if people want to check this out, the reason that we know this works, it’s so universal, if you look at a child who’s around about one year old, then they’re usually at that point where they’re trying to stand up and trying to get their balance and maybe start to walk, and it’s the position that children, effectively, stand up in.

So, if children try to stand up, and they put their feet too close together, they fall down. If they stand up and they’ve got too much weight on one leg and not enough on the other, they fall down. If they stand up and their feet are too wide, they fall down. But, eventually, they work out, “Wait a second, if I get my feet shoulder-width apart and there’s no tension in the knees, I can stand and I don’t need to hold onto the furniture. That’s amazing.”

We’re bringing people, essentially, back to the way they are born to stand, the way that gravity naturally works on their body. And that’s why it works so universally.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, the outer point of the shoulders aligns to the outer point of the feet. Got it. All right. We got our palms, we got our feet, keep going, Richard, this is awesome.

Richard Newman
So, there’s been a multitude of these pieces that we put together for people, but the key extra element that I want people to keep in mind is the congruency aspect. So, you can have those aspects if you’re, like, working for you, but if your message is not congruent with them, then suddenly it starts not to work.

So, importantly, let’s say, if we go back to the piece around the posture, then if you say to somebody, “Look, I really want to hear what you have to say,” then suddenly you don’t get a useful reaction. If you’re doing palms down and strong and centered, you say, “Tell me what you think about this,” then suddenly your ratings go down. So, what you have to do is to lean your weight onto one side, palms up, “I’d love to hear your thoughts,” and you give the floor to the other person. By that way, you’re being congruent with the message. Does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
Got you. So, the feet shoulder-width apart is saying “I am in charge. I’m authoritative. I am ‘whoa.’ I’m laying down the law,” versus, I guess the feet together, or leaning, is sort of like, “Hey, I kind of…” maybe more deferential, like, “I’m curious as to your take here. I’m not all that. I’m just a humble…I’m your humble servant who’s here.”

Richard Newman
Exactly. Yes, we’re always keen to say to people you have to be able to adapt to what you’re doing here to different situations. So, if you want to be seen as a tribe leader in some way, then it’s critical to understand what a tribe leader looks like, which we talked about with those gesture and posture positions.

So, the extra piece that I added there is you then stop to think, “Well, how do I want the other person  to feel? What is the end feeling I need them to have by the end of this sentence? Let me get everything towards that piece.” So, sometimes you need to look like a commander, sometimes you need to address them like more a facilitator, like we were talking about there with that sense of, “Let me ease off. Let me show you that you now have space to come into the conversation.”

Sometimes I want you to engage with me in a way where you’ll maybe laugh, we can have more of a friendly conversation. So, then you need to go into more of an entertainer position. And what we found on this, again, we looked at this universally with clients we’ve coached over the last 20 years, when you go into an entertainer space, the place you need to go is that your gestures need to be much more floppy.

When I was in the States recently, they described this as loosey-goosey, if you’re familiar with that phrase. That was a new one for me, so loosey-goosey, that the tone of your voice needs to go up and down much more. And the pace of your voice, if you’re going to be the entertainer, would be faster than if you’re going to be more of a commander. So, you need to get them congruently going towards that direction if you’re going to work on that.
So, yeah, I think the key question really, I will say to any leader, is think “How do I want people to feel by the end of this meeting, or by the end of this interview, or by the end of this presentation? What is that feeling? And now I need to get everything I’m doing in my body language and in my tone of voice headed towards that outcome.”

And so, you’ve got to think, “Well, if it’s light-hearted, what is my tone of voice?” So, again, if you think about people who are reading the news, they’re expert at doing this. They can go from a major international crisis to some uplifting good-hearted news.

Pete Mockaitis
“Here’s a puppy.”

Richard Newman
And they do this really well with their tone of voice, and they do it as a transition. So, they’ll say, “And that is the latest update we have on the war in Ukraine. Now, we’re heading over to San Diego Zoo where we’re going to talk about a new baby panda.” And they do that transition in their tone of voice, which very often people don’t do, and people are not doing that these days, particularly on virtual meetings. They just talk to a camera lens and a screen, and they’re saying, “Here’s the good news. Here’s the bad news. Here’s the neutral information,” and it all sounds the same.

And, suddenly, we’re getting this very flat response. And the reason being, we’re not telling people through our tone of voice how they’re supposed to react to this information. So, it’s critical that people focus on that target of, “How do I want people to feel? What can I do, congruently with my body language and tone of voice, that heads us in that direction?”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, so, Richard, I could talk to you for about six hours about this. So, maybe let’s do a demo. Let’s say I am doing a training, or a bit of persuasion, so it could be sales or training. I think I want a similar emotional response. And what I would love for my audience to feel is a sense of inspiration, excitement, possibility, like, “Whoa, that’s really cool. That thing you’re teaching me is really cool, and I’m excited to go try it,” or, “That thing, that product you’re introducing me to is really cool, and I’m excited to go give that a demo.”

So, that’s what I’m after. I want them to feel excited, inspired, curious, to go forth and take action. Can you give us the alchemy here, Richard, in terms of what do I want with my gestures and my tone, etc. to bring that magic together?

Richard Newman
Yeah, absolutely. So, actually, what you just demonstrated that people would’ve heard in your demo of being that excited audience member, that’s exactly what you need to embody as a speaker. So, if you think about, “What is the end result? How are they going to leave this room?” And the way that you energized that with your voice and with your body was, “Hey, wow, this is amazing. I really want to put this into action,” that’s fantastic.

And so, we say to a leader, “Okay, if that’s how you want them to be, then guess what, nobody is ever going to be more excited about your ideas than you look and you sound. And so, whatever it is you want them to look like and sound like at the end, you have to go to that level and/or more than them in order to achieve this.

And so, we would call this going into the motivator style. And so, if you’re going to go into motivator style, again, I’ve checked this with people, audiences we worked all the way around the world, where we worked in across the Middle East, we’ve been into South Korea, we’ve been to South Africa, all across the Americas, and so we say to people, “Okay, if you think about a motivator style, what does that look like and sound like?”

Well, people repeatedly say, “It’s fast choppy gestures,” so it’s not that sort of stroking the dog piece that I talked about earlier on, it’s not loosey-goosey. It’s high intensity in your arms, and you can be going palms up or palms down but they need to be congruent. Then you need to match that with a faster than usual pace of voice.

So, if you think about this, the average pace of voice, it’s about 140 words per minute. If you slow that down to around about 100 words per minute, then that’s where when somebody is doing their inauguration speech as President of the United States, that’s roughly where they might be.

If you speed it up and you go somewhere around 180 words per minute or higher, then suddenly you’re in that motivator zone. And, in fact, if you go even higher than that, Tony Robbins has the average of around 240 words per minute when he’s being motivational in his talks, and I think that’s the average pace of his TED Talk that he gave. So, you need to be in that higher zone in terms of your pace of words.

Other things that you need to think about doing is to use words that are one syllable. So, you can say things that sound really punchy rather than them having to people having to break it down all the different syllables to figure out, “What on earth did that mean?” So, you want to make it super punchy in your words.

And then, last piece to look out with this, which you can add into the pieces I was talking about before, is to think very simply about a shift in your sternum, and this is where we get a little bit more precise about things. So, the sternum is the center of the chest plate, and this tells us a huge amount about how someone feels about their message and how people are going to react.

So, the sternum is a place where you can, literally, the Latin behind it which is inspirare and expirare. So, inspirare has given a word inspire, or to breathe in, or to feel inspired; expirare, to breath out, or to feel expired. And so, if you just notice this, the next time you see someone, and you think, “Wow, that person looks like they’re really inspired.” What they do is, just before you think that they’re inspired, they breathe in, they lift the sternum, they go, “Hah,” and you think, “This person is inspired. They’ve had some inspiration. I need to listen to what they have to say. That sounds really engaging.”

Equally, if you see your boss in a meeting, and you think, “Why does this person looks like they just mentally left the building?” Well, the reason being, they may have just breathed out and dropped their sternum, and so you see them go, “Ahh,” and suddenly this sternum drops in, they look concave, they look de-energized.

And so, when you’re speaking to people in an interview, in a meeting, in a presentation, it’s important not only to get your feet planted right, to get your gestures working for you, but lift that sternum slight. And you don’t want to go too far, you don’t want to look like you’re sort of trying to be the Hulk or something like that, but just slightly lift it to a point where you think, “Okay, now I’m in a position of inspiration.”

And then you want to be the motivator, you want to get them energized, you have the gestures up, and it’s going to be somewhere near to shoulder height, so slightly lower down is more commanding, slightly higher is more motivational. Fast and choppy and energized voice, changing your pitch up and down as you go through at a pace towards energizing people towards taking some action.

So, as an example of this, just to sum all that up for you. I get people to do this sometimes as an exercise where I say to them something along the lines of, “This will change the results by 3%.” Now, let’s just imagine, what does that mean? It doesn’t mean anything. It could mean something serious. It could be something exciting. It could be we need to act on this, we need to think about it, we need to debate it. What does it actually mean, “This will change the results by 3%”?

If you want to say it in a commanding way, like, this is life and death information, you go back to what I was saying before. You have a strong start, you do palms down, you slow your pace right the way down, and you say, “This will change the results by 3%.” And so, people think, “Oh, that’s just lifechanging information. I need to sit and think about that for a minute.”

If you want to motivate them to actually take some action, like you’re trying to energize some salespeople behind this to get out there and go and get their commission, then you come back and, say, lifting the sternum, fast choppy gestures, around about shoulder height, and make sure that you’re going fast in your pace as well, and you say, “This will change the results by 3%.” And people think, “Wow, that’s amazing. We need to get out there and get our commission.”

And so, suddenly, by energizing the message, what you’re doing is also you’re engaging more with the emotional brain rather than the logical brain, and people are more likely to feel that sense of energy and excitement from you, and, therefore, will go out there and just straight away get into action.

Pete Mockaitis
This is beautiful powerful stuff, Richard. And I think you’re demystifying something that I have wondered since I was a high school student and wanted to become a professional speaker as my career, which I did. And I’ve done many keynotes and it’s been a lot of fun. And I tend to really be fascinated with the words people are saying, such that I put a lot of thought and attention on them, and I’m really wrestling with them, like, “Is that true under all circumstances or just a few circumstances? Under what circumstances is that true? And how would I apply that? How is that useful?”

Now, in so doing, I think I have a little bit less of wowed, razzmatazz, hypnotic entrancement with some speakers because some people say like, “Oh, my gosh, that speaker was amazing,” and I’m like, “Really? I mean, he didn’t really say anything novel or applicable or relevant. His stories were kind of entertaining, I guess.”

And I think what’s happening is they’re doing all of the things you’re describing just right such that folks whose brains are not doing what mine are doing, are just like along for the ride, like, “Wow, that’s amazing.” And I think that’s my leading hypothesis now, decades later, is that, “Oh, that’s what’s going on here.” What do you think?

Richard Newman
Yeah, and actually to pick up on that, I think that you’re right in terms of the way the audiences react to certain elements. But the piece I’m always keen to stress for our clients is to say, “You’ve got to make sure you have substance and style because, eventually, style by itself runs out.” The challenge though is that if you’re to take either/or and say, “Well, which one do you need to make sure that you’ve got?”

And I’ve tried this, I’ve tested people from many different countries, and I ask this question, I said, “Would you rather have a random person dragged in off the street who’s going to read to you from the works of Shakespeare, or would you rather have your favorite actor in the world to read to you from the ingredients from the back of a cereal packet?” And every single time, people choose their favorite actor reading from the back of a cereal packet.

And the reason being, we love that sense of just being emotionally engaged in their delivery. You think, “Whatever they do is going to be interesting.” But what I always say to people is  you’ve got to make sure that you’ve actually got both because, eventually, the logical brain is going to kick in and go, “But how is that valuable to me? I don’t really understand. This is fun but fun runs out. When is this actually going to be worthwhile?”

And I’ve seen too many people who have brilliant and such valid points that they’re making but nobody is actually listening to them. They can’t keep people engaged long enough to get them to understand the value of what they’re saying. So, I’m always telling people, we put both those together and use the power of storytelling and the science that goes behind storytelling, and match that up then with your style. So, then you have both coming together, and people leave, and they think, “I know why that’s important. I know how I’m going to use it. I know how I need to put this into action,” and years later, they can repeat to you what you talked about and why it was important to them.

So, there are certain aspects that I’ve talked with clients. There’s one other client we’re still working with today, that we’ve worked with about 13 years ago, I think, was the first session that we did with them, but they’re still using the techniques that we taught to them back then those early sessions because we’ve designed it in a way that they can put it into action and be using it immediately. So, it’s key for people to make sure that they have made sure they’ve got both of those pieces that are working with them.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely, Richard. And I think Aristotle said something along those lines back in the day with logos, pathos, ethos. Like, straight up, when you’ve got them all, it’s a power pack. Well, Richard, tell me, anything else you really want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and quickly hear about a couple of your favorite things?

Richard Newman
Sure. So, I think, actually, I’m going to share with you, because you mentioned how fascinated you are sometimes by watching speakers and how you can do this. I’m going to share one little tip I love to share that people can read more about if they want to go and check out my book and so on, but I love teaching speakers how to do this. If you want to be really utterly compelling on stage, you need to understand timeline. And when you understand this, it changes everything.

So, if you imagine, for anybody listening to this, imagine you’re looking at a graph, and zero is on one side, and a hundred is on the other side, which side of the graph is the zero? Or, if you imagine a graph that’s showing January on one side and December on one side, which side is January? Which side is December?

So, anybody listening to this no matter where they are would say, “Okay, well, the zero is on the left and the hundred is on the right. January is on the left and December is on the right.” And the same goes when somebody watches you on stage. And what do I mean by that? When somebody watched you on stage, they see the past on the left hand side of the stage. As they’re looking at the stage, they see it on their left hand side, that is the past.

Pete Mockaitis
Their left, the speaker’s right?

Richard Newman
Their left, the speaker’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
Audiences’ left.

Richard Newman
The center of the stage is now, and the audience’s right hand side of the stage is the future. And so, if you want to utterly compel people to listen to your stories, then when you’re talking about the past, you move to the audience’s left, when you’re talking about right now, you move to the center of the stage, and when you’re talking about the audience’s future, you move to the right, the audience’s right. And by so doing, you’re helping them to process your information based on a timeline.

So, some people just like wander backwards and forwards, and it just has no correlation to what they’re saying. But if you can use that, you can use it by walking to parts of the stage, or if you’re just in a small meeting where you want to convince and compel clients or your team, you want to gesture to their left to talk about the past, gesture to their right to talk about the future. And, suddenly, they can take on board what you’re saying in a much more persuasive and compelling manner.

So, I wanted to share that with you just to get people’s brains worrying around, thinking, “Okay, I’m going to put that into action.” For me, it was one of the hardest things for me to learn. It took me about 10 days of practice to get really used to doing that so I could do it second nature. But now that I’ve been doing it, it’s so much easier to talk to people about the past, talk to them about the future, and not have to think about it. So, that’s one piece.

But I think the last piece that I would just offer up as a key principle that’s gone into my new book, the title is Lift Your Impact, ways that going all the way back to what we talked about, about me coming back from being shy, introverted, autistic. How did I figure out communication? It simply all came down to one thing, which is the word lift, where I noticed that great communication is about taking people from a negative or a neutral state, and by the time you leave the room, they move to a positive or a more positive state because of their interaction with you. That’s what great communication is all about.

And it’s about generating that feeling of lift. So, great leaders lift the room. When you leave the room, everybody feels lifted. If you do a really good job in a job interview, when you leave the room, the people interviewing you, they feel lifted by your presence. And if you can apply that to all of your communication, thinking, “How can I lift these people by the end of this conflict resolution, this challenging conversation, this sales pitch? How do I make sure they feel lifted?” then you know that you’ve had a great impact as a communicator. Everything needs to head towards that.

And that, for me, it’s come back to what we talked about earlier about banter, that’s where I thought that’s the ingredient I’m missing. Everybody is going into banter, thinking, “How do I lift the other person?” And what you say is not that important but the lift is the key to it. So, for people to have great communication this week in any situation, just remember to focus on lift.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that is great in terms of demystifying banter there, because, you’re right, when folks are bantering, and they might be saying words that are quite sharp, like, they’re looking at them, they’re smiling, they got a tone and a chuckle, and it’s like their body language, all the nonverbal stuff is saying, “Hey, you’re here, and we’re going to honor this moment that you have appeared.”

I’m thinking about the guys at the wagon, “We’re going to honor this moment in which you ventured our space by giving you the attention and pointing general good vibes that we have, that we’re pleased that you are here.”

Richard Newman
Yeah, perfect.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. All right. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Richard Newman
Throughout my life, I’ve always had like vision boards and plans and maps of where I’m going to go with my career and with my life and so on. And I’ve also worked with people on mindset and goal-setting so that they can achieve their goals, too. And something that people have said to me that I’ve thought about is, “Is it okay that you’re sort of struggling towards something where you’ve eventually going to end up being happy?”

And what I’ve always been aiming to quantify for them is to say, “It’s not about you’ll be happy in the end when you’ve achieved something, but to happily achieve it along the way.” So, to come from place of being grateful, come from a place of being centered in where you are, and enjoy the journey. And I saw somebody put this together recently, I can’t remember the person’s name, but it was he talked about “The Pursuit of Happiness,” the movie, and he said, “Actually, what we’re aiming for is not the pursuit of happiness. It’s the happiness of the pursuit.”

And that landed with me so well, where I thought, “That’s exactly what I’d like to work on with people.” Whenever I’m working on mindset and goal-setting is have happiness in the pursuit.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Richard Newman
The one that instantly comes to mind for me is one that I was fascinated about to begin with, which would be around, it was two people, really, come to mind. So, firstly, Desmond Morris, whose book Peoplewatching… If people are really deeply interested in body language and nonverbal stuff, which I picked up with you during the course of our conversation, this was one of the original books that I looked at.

It’s about 600 pages long, and it was written a few decades ago so it’s not like an easy read but within there, there were some great research, about certain projects that were done. One of them, I believe, was a group of 25 students from Oxford and Cambridge University were taken around 40 cities within Europe to look at what are the commonalities and what are the differences in how people communicate going from one place to the next.

And what I found fascinating in there, one of the pieces was if you look at people in Germany, they gesture significantly less, as do people in Sweden gesture significantly less, than people in the UK. Whereas, people from Latin cultures, say, Spain and Italy, would gesture significantly more. And so, while we have the palms up and the palms down we talked about earlier is universal, the frequency at which we gesture is going to be different based on our culture. And that was one of my first ways in towards that.

Other studies that I’ve been fascinated by is a Paul Ekman’s piece where this is years ago. If they’ve seen the TV show “Lie to Me,” they may be familiar with his work, which was put into a fictional story there. But he was the first person to prove universality of human expression, where he went off to, if I’m getting this right, Papua New Guinea where he found that there were tribes there that their understanding of human facial expressions from people from different parts of the world were exactly the same as they would be in the US and Europe and elsewhere.

And so, he was the first person to find that facial expressions are understood the same way by everybody. And there was a certain number, I forget what it was, I think it was six, it’s around the region of six different emotions that everybody can identify the same way from different faces from around the world.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Richard Newman
I’ve been enjoying David Goggins’ work. So, if people are okay with lots of expletives, then they should go and check out his work. I really enjoyed his recent one. So, his first book was Can’t Hurt Me, and his recent book was Never Finished. And, essentially, if you’re just feeling like you want a little bit of a jolt of energy, a bit of motivation to get stuck into whatever your mission is in life, then I really encourage people to take a look at his work.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Richard Newman
I think, actually, what comes to mind, the last couple of years, previously, in 2019 and previous to that, everything that I did was in person, and I was used to group activities, group interaction, doing lively talks with people. And then when I went online, I thought, “Well, how do I do that in a way that keeps everybody engaged?” And we came across Mentimeter.com, and it’s a brilliant tool for group interactions online, where I hosted up to 3,000 people at a time on interactive live virtual sessions that I’m hosting.

And by using Mentimeter, what it allows me to do is I can get the voice of every single person in the audience, taking part in, like, virtual quiz, sending me what they feel about what I’m saying at all times. And running that session, you don’t have to download anything for an audience to use it. It’s anonymous for them to take part as well and so it’s allowed people to share with me what they’re genuinely honestly feeling in a way that I couldn’t do if I was live with a thousand people in a room. So, I’ve loved using that tool the last couple of years.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that really connects and resonates with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Richard Newman
I think the most important piece that has resonated with people over the last two decades is simply focusing on how you want people to feel. So, it’s all very well thinking about what you want to know and what you want to do, but everything that I have taught around storytelling, around body language, tone of voice, slide design, handling objections, conflict resolution, always comes back to “How do I want this person to feel at the end of my interaction? And how do I target everything around helping them to feel that way?”

Pete Mockaitis
And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Richard Newman
So, my new book Lift Your Impact is out in all good bookshops, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, everywhere else that you’d like to go to. And you can find more information at LiftYourImpact.com. And also my main website, if people are interested in some of the body language stuff we talked about here, UKBodyTalk.com. There’s loads of free videos, free articles, and a bunch of stuff on the website there.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Richard Newman
My suggestion is really very simply write down your dream of who you would love to be, who you would love to become in the next few years, and then work on yourself until you become that version of you.

And remember that the sky is the limit. Back in the day, for anyone to have predicted that somebody who, as a teenager, was very uncomfortable, shy, introverted, and autistic to become a highly paid keynote speaker, who teaches communication, well, the prospects of that are very, very small. But, for me, it was about working on who I wanted to become, and, in the journey of doing that, getting to go on amazing adventures as a result.

Pete Mockaitis
Richard, this has been a huge treat. I wish you much lift and fun in all your adventures.

Richard Newman
Great. Thank you, Pete.