CHAPTER 5

ANSWER ENHANCERS

Keywords and body language are the two primary answer enhancers. It's important to look at both of them from the “reading” and the “using” perspective. You spot keywords in the question as well as introduce keywords into the answer; you read the questioner's body language and use your own to reinforce your message.

IDENTIFYING KEYWORDS

In the context of search engine optimization, “keyword” has a definition that is more specific than ours. In the broadest sense of the concept, keywords serve as a key to understanding the meaning of something that has been expressed. They carry significance in a question or statement because they direct your attention to what's important. For our purposes, we will group them into four categories:

1. Subject area words: Your focus is on the people, things, places, and events in time we've been discussing since Chapter 1. In “How was your meeting?” the keyword is a thing—meeting.
2. Verbs: Pay attention to the action or state expressed. “How are you going to beat him?” could have multiple meanings; the key to understanding the question is knowing which definition of “beat” is in play. The verb will also give you the information on when the action takes place. “How did you beat him?” refers to a fait accompli as opposed to an action that will be taken at some later time.
3. Modifiers: Adjectives and adverbs can become keywords when used well. (Note: In this sentence, the adverb “well” is a keyword.) Good adjectives and adverbs can become keywords. (Note: In this sentence, the adjective “good” passes as a keyword.)
4. Directive phrases: These are phrases such as “of course” and “without a doubt.” Phrases like this are meant to present an idea or situation as being obvious; they both reflect and infuse bias into conversation and therefore should be considered keywords. A perfect example comes from a National Public Radio story on the number of vacancies in the Department of Justice a year into the Donald Trump presidency. The reporter was listing the so-called big jobs still open at the Department of Justice: “One year in, there still no one in charge of the criminal division, the national security division, the tax division, the environment division, and of course, the civil rights division.”¹ The embedded judgment in this “report” is that the Trump presidency has an agenda to assign less importance to the civil rights division than to others. This is analogous to your client for web design services saying to you, “You are scheduling me for next month, of course, because you have much bigger clients who need immediate attention, right?”

Keywords in Questions

Your client emails you this question: “Why are we meeting at eleven o'clock a.m. on Pennsylvania Avenue when the parade starts there in the early afternoon?” A text or email with that question leaves the question open for interpretation. You can't be certain what the keywords are. However, if she calls you, she would make it clear:

“Why are we meeting at eleven o'clock a.m. on Pennsylvania Avenue when the parade starts there in the early afternoon?” The emphasis makes the time key to understanding, so you could respond with, “Good point. Let's have a breakfast meeting at 8:30.”

“Why are we meeting at eleven o'clock a.m. on Pennsylvania Avenue” suggests a desire to shift the meeting location. Your response would be linked to location rather than time.

Keywords in Answers

In 2006, MIT Technology Review did an analysis called “What's the Best Q&A Site?” to determine which of the many question-and-answer websites had followers who tended to give the most accurate, complete responses. They were essentially looking for sites where the respondents use some of the same skills we cover in this book. The data collected gives great insights into how keywords affect the quality of an answer.

The author of the article, Wade Roush, posed the same two questions to a variety of sites:

• “Why did the Mormons settle in Utah?”
• “What is the best way to make a grilled cheese sandwich?”²

Roush's keywords focus on people (Mormons) and place (Utah) in the first question. His keywords in the second question are an adjective (best) and a thing (grilled cheese sandwich). The only way to give a quality response to those questions is to put the focus on Mormons in Utah and best grilled cheese sandwich, respectively. Easy, right? Not so much for some of the respondents.

Contrast a good response with a bad one for each. The good response honors the keywords and integrates more than a single subject area—people, place, thing, and time—into the answer.

“Why did the Mormons settle in Utah?”

GOOD

The church believes that God directed Brigham Young, Joseph Smith's successor as president of the church, to call for the Mormons to organize and migrate west, beyond the Western frontier of the United States to start their own community away from traditional American society.

BAD

Joseph Smith told them to stop there.

“What is the best way to make a grilled cheese sandwich?”

GOOD

There is no “best” way. It's the cheese that makes the difference. I'd use sharp Colby or similar . . . My daughter puts sliced tomatoes inside . . . As for me, I like to use two slices of bread. Spread feta cheese on each, put yellow cheese on top of one, and cover with the other. Enjoy and use your imagination.

BAD

The way Johnny Depp made them in the film Benny & Joon . . . with a hot iron on the ironing board.

As the bad responses indicated, sometimes people give a flippant response to a question to be funny, not to inform. That's fine for a party, but we have heard people do this in business meetings, thinking that their humor is charming. If you have the opportunity to use your knowledge of keywords to answer a question well, do it and be as clever as you like. But save the stupid humor for cocktail hour.

LEVERAGING KNOWLEDGE OF BODY LANGUAGE

Nonverbal communication encompasses body movements from head to toe as well as vocal characteristics—not speech, but the way sounds are made—the way you handle personal space, and how you use things around you. It even includes the way you present yourself through dress and makeup, and where you choose to sit at a conference table.

A job interviewer can ask you an easy question such as “What is your greatest weakness?” but the raised pitch in the voice, tilt of the head, narrowed eyes, and smirk would tip you off to the fact that this is probably a trap question. If you don't deliver a great response, you might as well walk out the door and never look back. Suddenly, the person's body language has alerted you to the reality that this is an easy question that involves a tough response. Your awareness of that gives you a huge advantage in providing the best response and directing the conversation.

Reading Body Language

Your first task in reading someone else is to discover how a person speaks and acts when little or no stress is present. That is the person's baseline. Your first task in understanding your own body language is to have a good sense of your own baseline.

In Chapter 2, we gave you examples of good and bad questions and listed non-pertinent questions in the good group. When observing someone to get a sense of his or her baseline, use non-pertinent questions to put that person at ease. Regardless of the professional or personal situation, if you get someone talking about a topic that requires little or no thinking and puts the person into a comfort zone of conversation, you will see stress dissipate.

Listen for the tone of voice, pacing, other vocal qualities that come naturally. Observe energy level and style of movement. Turn the tables and have someone you trust give you insights about your baseline body language as well. Even when you're relaxed, do you use fillers like “um” or “ah”? Are you normally reserved or high energy?

Our colleague Gregory Hartley (The Art of Body Talk), a decorated former army interrogator who moved quickly into senior executive roles because of his unique interpersonal skills, has a simple way to help people remember the basic types of body movements. He calls them the “big four”:

• Illustrators punctuate your communication.
• Regulators help control the flow of conversation.
• Barriers help define your personal space.
• Adaptors are self-soothing gestures.

ILLUSTRATORS

People commonly use arms and other body parts automatically to accent what they are saying. We all have a baseline style of using illustrators. When we deviate from that, we signal that there's a shift in how we feel. Whether the movement is more pronounced or less pronounced, it signals a shift in the person's emotional state.

Assume the photo on the left captures the woman's baseline approach to illustrators. She holds her arms close to her body even when her face clearly shows delight and surprise. In contrast, the photo on the right shows a deviation from her baseline: She is extremely excited. She just got the job of her dreams and throws her arms in the air in celebration.

Now flip the assumption: Typically, this woman is highly expressive, but when she feels stress, she closes up. You have to know her baseline in order to be certain which shift in energy and style expression is alerting you to a state change.

Sometimes people get in the habit of using certain illustrators, no matter how odd or offensive they might be, and so they become part of the person's baseline. It might be a move you would never or rarely make, but the important thing in reading body language is to remain objective and note what constitutes “normal” for other people.

The Washington Post focused on then-candidate Bernie Sanders's frequent use of finger-wagging in the run-up to the presidential election of 2016. It was an illustrator that became part of his routine moves:

It's a gesture familiar to anyone who's ever been warned, cautioned, scolded, told they are not very nice or otherwise belittled. A hand, often the dominant one, is raised. An index finger is extended skyward. The finger moves from left to right in a workmanlike arc.³

The article concluded by noting the many politicians in history who have had signature moves that other people would consider quirky, but they were part of the person's repertoire of normal—or in our terms, baseline—moves.

REGULATORS

Regulators are movements and sounds you would use to encourage someone to keep talking or stop talking. The postures and movements associated with active listening encourage the other person to continue. On the flip side, when you clamp your lips while someone is talking, you are sending the signal that you don't want to hear any more or you don't want to hear more of the same. When you turn away slightly, it's the same kind of signal.

When you're busy, there is a huge temptation to send signals that encourage people to curtail their explanations, avoid repetition, and leave your office or your meeting when they are done saying what they have to say. No matter what your rank within the company, you would be better off if you avoid any overuse of regulators that shut down communication.

Listening is one of the most powerful tools you have to affect human behavior.

If there is one key message we've learned about intelligence gathering from top people in the intel community, it's the fact that people tend to love the sound of their own voice—and if they think you love it too, they will pour their hearts and brains out to you. As a corollary, if they really think you care because you've paid attention to them and made them a priority for even a sliver of time, they will tell you all kinds of things.

In looking at the two photos on the previous page, ask yourself which woman wants to hear what you have to say. That's the expression of active listening versus the expression of shutting down a conversation.

BARRIERS

The photo on the next page illustrates different kinds of barriers. It's 1975 and the scene is the office of the CEO of Bergdorf Goodman—the upscale retail specialty store on Fifth Avenue in New York City. Three key players are seated with CEO Andrew Goodman and one of them will become the new CEO.

Andrew Goodman's barriers are abundant, but probably not because he needs to increase his comfort level, which is why barriers are often used. He has barriers as a display of importance and distance: a big gilded desk, a pile of papers, some kind of award, a pen set, and a cigarette. He also has a shoulder facing the men in his office.

The man to his immediate left is using his arms as barriers, as well as tightly locked legs, and his head. He's blocked everyone and everything in the room out of his sight. It probably wouldn't surprise you if we told you he'd recently been indicted on price-fixing charges.

The man to his left seems to have a need to close himself off as well. He's not looking at the boss and his fingers are locked.

And then we have a man with no barriers. A straightforward look at the boss, open body language, and relaxed legs crossed in the manner of a cosmopolitan gentleman. He is confident. He is Ira Neimark, who succeeded Goodman as CEO of the company.

Barriers are very useful. They can help you establish personal space, give you the distance you require to feel comfortable, and set you up as the person in charge.

On the flip side, they can undermine your communication, intimidate people, and come across as downright rude. They can also make you look weak and afraid—like you have to hide behind something in order to have a conversation.

ADAPTORS

These are nervous movements that are self-soothing in nature. They might be grooming gestures, like brushing a piece of lint off your jacket even though there may be no lint there, or straightening a tie, or playing with your earrings or hair. They could be rubbing two fingers together.

What are your adaptors? Maryann posed this question to a mixed group of business professionals recently and one of the women proudly ticked off her list of adaptors. But while she was doing it, she was also doing a grooming gesture—playing with her necklace. Maryann asked her, “Is there anything else you think you do, other than what you've mentioned?”

“No,” she said with assurance. She was sure she she'd nailed it.

Every person around her who'd watched her got a good laugh out of that and she had no idea what they thought was so funny.

CULTURE AND CONTEXT

Review the following collection of hand gestures, all of which are offensive somewhere. When Maryann was presenting to a large multicultural audience at a university, she asked anyone in the audience if they had a strong negative reaction to any of the gestures and asked them to explain why. One audience member jumped up and shouted, “Never do that!” He wasn't pointing to the raised middle finger. He was pointing to what most of us know as the “okay” sign. In Greece, Spain, Brazil, and Turkey it is not considered an appropriate gesture. It's either offensive, or it's sexual in nature. Another person, from an Arab nation, noted that the thumbs up was incredibly rude where he came from. Then there's the moutza—hand outstretched with the palm facing the other person—which is an offensive gesture to Greeks.

Training in intercultural relations has become common due to our global economy, so your awareness of these gestures may be high. Our focus is on a narrower definition of culture and how the culture—or cultures—to which we belong affects the ways we use body language. This includes the way we move, speak, and dress.

For example, if your background is in the theater, there are normal behaviors within the culture of the theater. Over-the-top illustrators may be common. One person would prefer to be the center of attention over another person and uses illustrators and regulators to make that a reality. Actually, we shouldn't limit this to theater because people in companies who want to be the center of attention will do the same kind of thing.

There are cultures associated with gangs, political parties, skydivers, alcoholics, and kids in a strict boarding school. The point is that baselining is a critical skill for you, and when baselining, it's essential that you not use your own culture as the basis for evaluating what is or is not normal for another person. When baselining, you're focused on what's normal for that person, not what is normal for you.

Another factor affecting your filters when baselining is context. We have a tendency to project meaning based on our own experiences. That's perfectly normal, but projection gets in the way of baselining.

What is the baby orangutan doing? Well, we just don't know if he's eating, picking his teeth, sucking his finger because it hurts, or anything else. We have no context. To complicate matters, our projection is strictly human. To make a judgment about the meaning of this image with no other information about that orangutan reflects a disregard for data. When you are reading body language, you may involve your valuable intuition, but data should play a role in your conclusions.

VOCALICS

Vocalics is an area of nonverbal communication studies because it's about how something is said rather than what is being said. Vocal quality, emphasis, and use of fillers can indicate the presence of stress. Being aware that stress or some level of emotion has crept into the questioning process is important for you if you are the one expected to respond; similarly, if you hear yourself sounding different in answering a question, you are giving away a “secret” about how you feel.

Vocal qualities like pitch, tone, pace, volume, and stridency can change from moment to moment, reflecting a deviation from the speaker's baseline. Pitch often changes when a person is uncertain about information. In answering a question, a rise in pitch is a subliminal way of communicating that. You might as well ask, “You believe me, don't you?” Many people also have a tendency to change the volume of their speaking when they are uncertain of an answer. Some get louder—as though the extra volume conveys authority—and some get softer, hoping that you don't hear what they are saying.

A quality such as stridency suggests stress only when it isn't normal for the person. When the vocal chords tighten up and/or the throat becomes dry, the voice takes on a different sound. It can get raspy, the way comedian Joan Rivers used to sound all the time; it was part of her baseline. Look for other signs of stress, like an increase in the blink rate. If the throat is drying out due to stress, then the eyes are drying out too.

Earlier in the chapter, we referenced the importance of emphasis in determining keywords. “Why are we meeting at eleven o'clock a.m. on Pennsylvania Avenue when the parade starts there in the early afternoon?” suggests something different when the emphasis is on the location, not the time.

Use of fillers is part of the baseline for some people. A lot of people use the word “like” constantly. It's annoying, ubiquitous, and meaningless. Many of us who are trained to avoid fillers may succeed in not doing ums and ahs, but we still find ourselves using a silent filler, otherwise known as a pause. The main thing to note is that, if it's not part of the person's baseline, then it may be time to probe into why there is a gap in the conversation.

PROXIMITY AND SPACE

How close or far away you are to someone can influence communication. Also, where you choose to be in a room can make a difference in your interaction.

Let's say you're interacting with a customer that you've done business with and feel comfortable with. The person is asking you about an upgrade to a product and you find yourself wanting to keep your distance. Maybe you even leave the room briefly and when you return, you sit in a chair that's a little further from the one you were in before. That's a distinct message that you don't want to let the person in. Maybe you feel threatened by the question because you know you don't have a good answer. Your behavior is signaling a problem; even without body language training, the customer senses something is off.

The concept of territoriality is also encompassed by this field of study. So even though you may be across the room from your customer, when you sit in his favorite chair, you may get the same kind of response as if you leaned forward and invaded his personal space.

Where you choose to sit can also make a difference in your communication. Maryann once saw a candidate for a midlevel management position stride into the conference room where the interview was being held and sit at the head of the table. The president of the company thought that should be his seat; the interview went downhill from there.

Using Body Language

The fundamental advice we can give you is to stay consistent with your natural style. If you want to see some hilarious examples of how not to use body language—what impression it makes when people go against their natural styles—do an online search for “funny body language videos.” One that comes up is Sheldon Cooper of the Big Bang Theory learning how to counter his robotic presentation style.⁴

OPEN VERSUS CLOSED

The basic differences in body language styles are open and closed. Open body language is invitational; it suggests you want to share ideas, share your space, and display trust in the other person. Closed body language conveys the opposite impression. The difference is obvious in these photos. Even though the man on the right has a smile on his face, he is guarded, putting his portfolio between him and the other person as well as crossing his legs to suggest another physical barrier.

Some people learn to use open illustrators when they are coached in public speaking. For example, they might be told that extending a hand with the palm upward is invitational, so they insert the action into the presentation. That can work well, but make sure the way you use the illustrator is consistent with your natural style.

ENERGY LEVELS

You can choose to modify your energy level as a way to build rapport, take charge, shorten a meeting, and so on. When you do that, you impact the way other people perceive you. They might perceive you as more or less threatening, more or less competent, more or less committed to whatever you're doing. Ask yourself what outcome you want with the other person or persons. If you want the individual to talk openly to you, to come clean about something, then your energy needs to be in sync with the other person's. You may be very passionate about whatever subject is on the table, for example, but if your energy is way above the other person's, then your passion is potentially getting in the way of two-way communication.

MINIMIZING PROJECTION

Just as we might want to jump to a conclusion about what the baby orangutan in the photo was doing, people around us are projecting what our actions mean and what mood we're in. In any projection, filters play a disproportionately large role in analysis, which turns analysis into interpretation.

The reason why you want to dress and act appropriately for whatever setting you are in and whatever people you are with is to keep the focus on what you have to say. The more you seem out of place, the more the other person is likely to try to interpret what you are saying and doing rather than objectively listening and observing.

BUYING TIME

Certain actions can buy you time as you think about answering a question. The tilt of a head, a slight finger wag, a knit brow—all of these might get you a few extra seconds to craft a response that's clearer and more comprehensive than a spontaneous one.

EXERCISES

Keyword

Use keywords to help you remember jokes. It's a useful, life-of-the-party exercise to focus on the elements of a sentence or question that matter most.

Read the following joke once, and then see if your attention to keywords helps you retell it a few minutes later.

A man is walking in a graveyard when he hears the Third Symphony played backward. When it's over, the Second Symphony starts playing, also backward, and then the First. “What's going on?” he asks a cemetery worker.

“It's Beethoven,” says the worker. “He's decomposing.”

(You don't have to think it's funny; you just have to remember it.)

Body Language

Disney and Pixar made the wonderful movie called Inside Out, with images such as the following freely available. This brilliant piece of animation is about an eleven-year-old girl's emotions. In color, you can see that anger is red, sadness is blue, and so on, but even without the color, the body language of each emotion character makes it clear what he or she represents. Your exercise is to watch a portion of any animated movie with the sound off and identify the emotions being expressed.