|CHAPTER 13|
Image: Communicate that You Look and Sound the Part
“Acting is not about being someone different. It’s finding the similarity in what is apparently different, then finding myself in there.”
Two items from chapter 12 go here:
Nonverbals: Projects confidence with voice and body language (Voice: volume, speed, pitch, pauses, clarity. Body language: facial expression, eye contact, posture, movement, gestures.)
Optics: Attends to physical appearance, office appearance, social media appearance, as well as language and behavior in formal and informal settings to set high standards.
Clients sometimes ask which of the 10 presence actions is most important. Depends on your audience. How do other execs in your organization act? What do they value?
But without knowing your organization, I’d pick nonverbals. Your voice and body language shape others’ perceptions, instantly (remember Harriet, from page xvii?)
Optics is closely related. What do your clothing and grooming communicate? How about your LinkedIn profile? How do you handle time—are you prompt or always late? How do you behave at work parties?
Presence Action #1: Nonverbals
Watch Your Eye Contact
Bad eye contact almost killed me. I was in a NYC subway. A big muscular guy, seated opposite me, had a baseball bat that he kept tapping into his left palm.
He looked angry, and he was staring at me as if to say, “Obviously, it’s all your fault.”
If this guy were giving a presentation, let’s say on “How to Resolve 10 Everyday Problems with a Baseball Bat,” he’d be making a classic mistake: looking at just one person in the audience (me!) at the expense of everyone else.
Of course, no one else in the subway was looking at anyone. They certainly weren’t looking at this guy.
What is good eye contact anyway? A lot of people have taken the wrong subway or read the wrong book.
Good eye contact is not continuous. I’ve interviewed job candidates who thought it was continuous—they never take their eyes off you. Please don’t do that. It’s scary.
In general, three to five seconds is about right; the person listening usually looks longer than the one speaking. But it really depends on whom you’re looking at, and where you are.
Maybe you’re in an elevator. Or maybe you’re out hiking and, suddenly, you’re facing a grizzly bear. What if you’re in an elevator with a grizzly bear? I’d say three to five seconds is a tad long, unless you and the bear ride up together every day.
And three to five seconds may be too long if you’re in a non-Western culture or talking with a really shy person.
The subway guy didn’t look shy, so after a while I looked him in the eye to let him know, in no uncertain terms, “Buddy, your three to five seconds are up.”
Then I looked away, to let him know, “I’m certainly willing to consider an extension.”
He got off at the next stop. I’m sure it was the way I handled it . . .
Avoid these mistakes:
Not long enough. (Tip: Look until you see the color of the person’s eyes.)
In a group, only looking at the people you like, or who are most influential, or who may or may not have baseball bats.
Listen to How You Sound
Can a monotone voice land you in jail?
After the jury in a big insider trading case delivered a “Guilty on all counts” verdict, one of the jurors told The Wall Street Journal her impressions of the defense attorney:
His voice was “monotone.” He seemed “tired.”1
Of course, the evidence didn’t help either. But consider:
1.If you’re an executive pitching a business plan, what determines the outcome?
2.If you’re a surgeon, what determines if you get sued?
Often, it’s your voice.
MIT professor Alex Pentland demonstrated that you can predict winning business pitches without paying any attention to the content.
Instead, he focused on critical nonverbal behaviors, like vocal variety.2
Similarly, you can predict which surgeons will get sued just by listening to their tone of voice for 40 seconds, even if you can’t understand a word they’re saying.
The worst tone for surgeons? Dominant. That’s according to psychologist Nalini Ambady.3
How’s your voice?
The lawyer in the insider trading case assumed his voice was fine. It wasn’t.
The easiest way to check how you sound is voice mail. Record a new outgoing message, then critique it. If you phone me, you’ll hear something like this, “Hi, this is Paul Hellman, the week of May 30th . . .”
I change my message weekly. It’s good practice. And it’s good to reassure everyone that you were definitely alive on the 29th.
To sound alive is no small thing.
Leaving a voicemail?
Consider your message a mini-presentation: you’ve got seconds to make a good impression.
Let’s apply seven classic presentation skills to your voice message:
1. Adapt to your audience. Even if you’re calling someone you’ve never met, you still get to hear her outgoing message before leaving yours. Listen carefully. Then adapt.
If she speaks fast, then you speak fast. If her message is concise, then you be concise.
If her message mentions something significant—“Hi it’s Jacqueline. I’m in the Arctic today being pursued by wolverines”—then respond accordingly: “Oh, that sounds just like my office.”
2. Structure your message. Jot down some keywords, or prepare a loose script. Just don’t sound scripted.
Any important message—even a 30-second voice mail—should have an opening, middle, and close. Opening: who are you and why are you calling; middle: critical details, if any; close: next steps.
There’s a message on my phone from someone named Fred. Fred wants to talk, but doesn’t say why. This week Fred called again. “I’m calling to follow up on my message from last week.”
I haven’t called Fred back yet. I feel guilty about Fred.
3. Give the right amount of detail. Usually that means less.
4. Watch your nonverbals. Even if no one can see you, body language still matters. Stand up (you’ll project better), move around (you’ll sound more dynamic), and smile (you’ll sound more friendly).
Suppose you’re working at home—can the person on the other end of the phone tell if you’re still in pajamas? Some experts say yes! I don’t think so, but I avoid calling anyone in my pajamas. I don’t even own pajamas.
Then there’s your outgoing message. That’s a mini-presentation too.
5. Be upbeat. After all, it’s an “outgoing” message. True, you don’t want to sound too cheerful, but many people sound downright glum.
One executive I called last week had an outgoing message that ended with “make it a GREAT day.” Normally I don’t go in for that sort of thing, but he sounded really genuine and I appreciated his spirit.
On the other hand, I wasn’t exactly sure how to make it a GREAT day; that made me feel worse.
6. Keep it fresh. For example, as discussed earlier, mention the date: “Hi this is Tyler on Thursday, May 7.” This works especially well if it really is May 7—and you really are Tyler.
7. Set realistic expectations. Some people promise to call you back within 30 minutes. Impressive! But if you make a promise like that, you’ve got to follow through.
Even if it means calling Fred.
Make Your Words and Non-words Match—Unless They Shouldn’t
In poker, they call it a “tell.”
One night after dinner, my daughter, then five, wanted ice cream.
“Had any sweets today, honey?” I asked.
“No.” Then she smiled involuntarily, as if to say, “I’ve been eating vast quantities of sugar all day and night, you idiot.”
She quickly realized her mistake. “Wait Daddy,” she said. “Ask me again.”
Nonverbal signals. We watch them because they often “tell” the truth, unless you’re dealing with a sharp poker player, a trained actor, or a very experienced sociopath.
When the words and the body language don’t match, that’s a mixed message, and we trust the body language. Some mixed messages are ok, others not. Here are three examples:
1.Bad mixed message: A CEO I know never smiles. That makes his feedback confusing.
Suppose he says you’re doing a “good job.” The words sound fine, but his flat voice and non-smile signal trouble. “Good job” sounds like “not good enough.”
“Something bad is about to happen to you,” the CEO’s body language suggests, “but given your performance, it’s probably not bad enough.”
2.Neutral mixed message: You’re walking around the office, and you spot a colleague. “How are you?” you ask.
Then, before he can say, “I’ve got a bad case of swine flu,” you sprint past him in a mad dash down the hall, as if to say, “I need to get away from you, right now!”
Well, that’s definitely a mixed message. But everyone does it.
3.Good mixed message: Suppose you need to say “no.”
“Bob, I’d love to help you,” you might say in a pleasant voice, “organize the team-building retreat for our European office. And you’re right, running with the bulls is something we’ve never done before, and it’s good to know there’s only a slight risk of getting gored or trampled to death. But I’m really tied up right now.”
Your message is clear: You won’t be able to get to Bob’s project today, tomorrow, or, really, ever. But you can send that message in a friendly way.
Generally, for a good-news message (You’re hired!), or a bad-news message (You’re fired!), it’s best if your words and nonverbals match.
But occasionally, it pays to send a mixed message. When your words need to be strong and assertive, but you also need to maintain the relationship, soften your body language.
What to Say When You’re Not Talking
If you were an actor playing a love scene, it might be helpful, as you look at your romantic partner, to think, You have lovely eyes. You wouldn’t say it, you’d just think it.
Less helpful: Did you eat a pastrami sandwich for breakfast?
Your thoughts can increase (or decrease) your ability to look and sound the part. Why not create a few extra-strength ones?
A mantra is a word or phrase you tell yourself, silently, to evoke a desired quality such as confidence, or energy, or calm. Although mantras sound exotic, they’re not. You and I think certain thoughts, again and again, every day. These repetitive thoughts are mantras, but some are better than others.
A few bad mantras:
• “My boss is an idiot.”
Do you often think this? Bingo—you’ve got a mantra!
Unfortunately, the “idiot” mantra will eventually leak into your nonverbal behavior and become obvious to others, including your boss, so you may want to change it.
• “I’m tired.”
When the alarm goes off in the morning, we often think, tired. Then we attempt to calculate X, where X = how much sleep we got. The one thing we know about X: it wasn’t enough.
Ever notice that telling yourself how tired you feel doesn’t really help?
“I’m completely exhausted,” you think. “But wait, now that I’ve said that, suddenly my energy has skyrocketed!” Not likely.
Since you’re already using mantras, why not try one or two positive ones? Suppose, for example, you’re preparing for a job interview, a performance appraisal, or a bad dental experience. Desired quality: confidence. To trigger the quality, try a phrase like strong and confident for a minute or so.
You can reinforce this with a picture, for example, strong and confident like a bull (picture a bull), or with a memory (recall an experience when you felt strong and confident).
Another variation: sync the words with your breath, as meditation teacher Thich Nhat Hanh advises; for example, breathing in, strong; breathing out, confident.
Keep it short and simple, but experiment with different words. Which ones evoke a positive feeling?
Sometimes, before you can influence others, you need to inspire yourself.
Presence Action #2: Optics
Watch Your Clothing—On or Off
Do you pay too little, or too much, attention to optics?
Example #1: Too little attention.
An accountant, at a large public accounting firm, met with a key client for three hours and wore his overcoat the whole time.
The client was offended and later complained. He felt the accountant couldn’t wait to bolt out the door.
Why didn’t the accountant take off his coat? One can speculate:
He was cold.
He was worried that someone would steal the coat.
He had stolen the coat.
It wasn’t really a coat. It just looked like a coat.
Example # 2: Too much attention.
A related situation with coats involved Ronald Reagan when he first met Gorbachev. Reagan wanted to wear a coat because it was a cold November day in Geneva, and he was going outside to greet Gorbachev’s motorcade.
But an advisor persuaded Reagan, after a long argument, to remove it because, if Gorbachev showed up coatless and Reagan was bundled up, Reagan would look old and frail by comparison.
Gorbachev arrived wearing a coat, scarf, and hat. He probably thought Reagan looked strange.4
p.s. Back to the accountant: He’d spilled coffee on his shirt before the meeting and wore the coat to hide the stain.
p.p.s. I just made that up. But clearly the client wondered about the accountant, and his coat, for a while.
Social Media? Avoid These LinkedIn Mistakes
Let’s talk about LinkedIn, the most career-relevant media. An important moment is when you invite others to link. Four common mistakes:
1.Never inviting anyone.
Hmm, this one’s tempting. No one likes rejection, it forces you to relive high school.
I remember having a high school crush on Linda S. One night, I finally called for a date.
“Who exactly are you?” Linda S. asked.
“I sit on the opposite side of the room in English,” I said. That didn’t really explain who I was. It didn’t even explain, really, where I was.
More about Linda S. in a moment.
Meanwhile, some good news: high school’s over. When you invite people to LinkedIn, some will accept, others won’t. Nothing terrible will befall you.
When I called Linda S. for a date, my timing was flawed, but only in the sense that it was already Saturday night.
“Yes,” Linda S. said, “I’d love to go out, and I think my date’s at the door right now.”
Timing matters. Are your LinkedIn invitations too late or too early?
“Don’t invite within two hours of meeting,” says Rod Hughes, Vice President, Kimball Communications. “I typically wait till the next day,” he says. “Anything sooner seems stalker-esque.”
3.Inviting everyone.
Suppose you wake up one morning determined to network with a European chancellor.
“How do you know Angela Merkel?” LinkedIn will ask, as if already suspicious.
“Colleague,” you say. But if she gets your invitation (which of course she won’t) and tells LinkedIn she’s never heard of you, LinkedIn won’t like that. You’ll be penalized.
“You need a policy,” says Thom Singer, author of several networking books. “My policy,” he says, “is the Coffee, Meal, or Beer Rule, which means not accepting links unless I’ve had a real conversation.”
4.Bad invitation.
I remember one that made me nervous: “Add me,” the invitation began. “I’m adding you to my LinkedIn network. Please accept.” Sounded less like an invitation, more like an order.
At LinkedIn, the default invite is, “I’d like to add you to my professional network.” But sending the default is robotic.
Make your invitations personal. Here are two examples, sent to CEOs by Eric Fischgrund, Founder of FischTank Marketing and PR:
“Met your staff at the trade show—looking forward to learning more.”
“Congrats on the earnings announcement! Please keep us in mind for marketing/PR initiatives moving forward.”
“My cardinal rule,” says Fischgrund: “never use the default.”
Good rule (variety).