But in this video Mark Bowden blows this notion out of the water with his incredible talk on body language and how to use it to manipulate how other people feel about you.
Mark is a body language and human behaviour expert and a very very good speaker.
In this fascinating and very funny talk, Mark explains how our brain works when we begin to communicate with people.
He starts by talking about how we use our brain to make snap judgements within nanoseconds based on people’s behaviours.
In our primitive brain, has four categories that it uses for everyone we interact with:
Friend
Enemy/predator
Potential mate
Indifferent
Mark goes on to explain that unless you already know someone , the default category that people we interact with is ‘indifferent’.
From a speaking and presenting point of view, if the audience decide in their brains that the speaker/presenter is ‘indifferent’ to them, then it won’t matter how powerful the message or idea is, they most likely wont pay attention.
“Behavioural psychology says that you’re just not going to pay attention to me unless I can get into the category – ‘friend’ with you.”
And this is when Mark begins to explain and describe the tiny little signals that he has been doing during his talk to get the audience to put him into their ‘friend’ category within their brains.
And his tips and techniques that he describes are not difficult for us all to learn from:
Smile
Mark explains that just creating a smile with your mouth isn’t good enough “the smile must build over 3 seconds and it must sustain for 3 seconds otherwise it’s insufficient data and your primitive brain gores ‘ah predator’”.
Eyebrow Flash
Mark then goes on to highlighting the importance of just raising your eyebrows when you first meet someone; “This is the universal signal for ‘I recognise you, i know you, you’re my friend…”
No tools, no weapons
As in the David JP Phillips video, Mark discusses the importance of open and closed body language.
He explains that when we feel threatened or unsafe, we close our body to protect ourselves. Whereas when we open up our arms, hands and our bodies, we are highlighting that we are unarmed and not dangerous.
Mark finishes his talk by explaining and demonstrating what his true ‘authentic self’ would look like if he was presenting on stage.
The contrast involves him raising his voice, pacing angrily and scowling as he is angry/defensive at the thought of being judged by the audience and uncomfortable.
And this is where the message hits home, Mark is asking the audience not to be indifferent to the people they meet.
He wants them to use the smile, eyebrow flash and open body language so that they can enter into the ‘friend’ category.
We can all learn from this talk and use these simple signals to ensure that the message and ideas that we are presenting or speaking about are not lost on the audience.
https://www.howyousayit.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Screenshot-2024-02-27-at-15.55.09.png14822874howyouhttps://www.howyousayit.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/logo-1.pnghowyou2024-02-27 15:57:482024-02-27 15:57:48The importance of being inauthentic | Mark Bowden
In this fascinating talk Nancy Durate breaks down some of the most iconic speeches in history to show a pattern, shape and structure that we can apply to our own speeches and presentations.
Nancy is hugely passionate about presentations and the value that they can have.
The world has been and still can be changed through powerful and meaningful presentations.
And just like Chris Anderson’s talk, all presentations and talks h ave to start with an idea.
“The idea has got to be spread, or it won’t be effective. So it has to come out of you and out into the open for people to see. And the way that ideas are conveyed the most effectively is through story.”
A story with the correct structure can be easily consumed and remembered by the listener.
The big question that Nancy asked was; how do you incorporate stories into presentations?
She then goes on to break down structures of stores:
A beginning, middle and end
A likeable hero
A desire
A roadblock
Overcoming to emerge transformed
What I like is that Nancy highlights that in a presentation or speech, the speaker is not the hero in the story.
If we truly want the audience to engage and have the emotional response we want them to have, the audience have to be the hero, the speaker has to be the mentor.
To present our ideas with the biggest impact, we need the audience to believe that they are the heroes in our story, we create a desire from them through our idea.
Then we bring in the roadblock through creating curiosity, making the audience want to know how they can overcome the roadblock.
And that’s when our idea gives them the transformation in how they think, behave or act.
But to have this impact, Nancy has created a shape which we can all fit our presentations and speeches into so that we can have the desired impact when we tell our stories and share our ideas.
The shape identifies that there are 2 main features
What is
What could be
To break this down further, Nancy explains; “At the beginning of any presentation, you need to establish what is… And then you need to compare that to what could be.”
She goes on to explain that there needs to be a back and forth between the ‘what is’ and the ‘what could be’ to highlight the idea even greater.
Using another tip from Chris Anderson, Nancy goes on to use a sailing metaphor to highlight how her structure works when encountering resistance to your idea.
By working with the resistance in the ‘what is’ and ‘what could be’, just like a sailing boat using the wind to generate more power, the structure helps the presenter pull people towards their idea.
And finally, after the back and forth of using stories, analogies, metaphors to highlight to the audience the ‘what is’ and then the ‘what could be’, the speech or presentation ends with the call to action which should leave the audience transformed.
Nancy goes on to show how she uses this shape as an analysis tool for famous speeches like Steve Jobs and the iPhone launch and the iconic Dr Martin Luther King ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.
David JP Phillips is a public speaker, coach and renowned TEDx speaker.
In this talk, he explains that he dedicated time to analysing 5,000 public speakers from all over the world to understand “what makes a good speaker good, what makes a great speaker great, and what makes an outstanding speaker outstanding.”
From his studies, he created a list of 110 core skills that we can all learn to improve in public speaking.
“The more of them you fulfil, the greater you are”
One of the key takeaways in this talk is that these are skills, not talents.
There is often an argument that being able to stand in front of a group of people to speak or present is a talent.
But in this video, David is quick to highlight that skills can’t be learnt, practiced and developed.
And if you follow his 110 core skills, anyone can become a confident and established speaker.
Here are some of the tips he shares in the talk:
Stepping forward increases focus
Tilting your head to the side increases empathy
Changing the pace of what you’re saying increases focus on your words,
Lowering your body increases trust,
Lowering your voice creates anticipation and
Using pauses gets audiences attention.
He shares 5 of his most important skills that he focuses on when he is coaching:
Using open body language
Stepping forward into focus
Use functional gesturing
Slow your speaking pace down
Use pauses to add impact
I’ve followed a lot of these skills and techniques and worked hard on honing in on the ones I need to work on more.
Being aware of how you’re speaking, what you’re saying and what you do when you are speaking are essential to becoming a better speaker and/or presenter.
This video gives so many tiny lessons we can all learn from and improve our communication skills.
https://www.howyousayit.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Screenshot-2024-02-27-at-15.12.27-e1709046787318.png13342870howyouhttps://www.howyousayit.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/logo-1.pnghowyou2024-02-27 15:14:392024-02-27 15:14:39The 110 techniques of communication and public speaking | David JP Phillips
Julian is a sound and communication expert, author and international key note speaker.
“What would the world be like if we were speaking powerfully to people who were listening consciously in environments which were actually fit for purpose?”
His talk has amassed nearly 40 million views on YouTube and explains to the viewer his ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ of speaking, his four cornerstones to make our speech more powerful, the toolbox we can use to say our speech better, and his speaking warm up exercises.
Julian Treasure’s Seven Deadly Sins of Speaking
Gossip –“Speaking ill of somebody who’s not present”
Judging –“It’s very hard to listen to somebody if you know that you’re being judged”
Negativity –“It’s hard to listen to somebody when they’re that negative”
Complaining –“complaining is viral misery, It’s not spreading sunshine and lightness on the world”
Excuses –“They pass it [blame] on to everybody else and don’t take responsibility for their actions”
Embroidery, exaggeration –“exaggeration becomes lying, and we don’t want to listen to people who are lying to us”
Dogmatism –“Confusion of facts with opinion.”
Julian Treasure’s Four Cornerstones – HAIL
Julian talks about his four “really powerful cornerstones, foundations that we can stand on if we want our speech to be powerful and to make change in the world.”
Honesty – Be clear and straight
Authenticity – Be yourself
Integrity – Be your word
Love – Wish them well
Julian Treasure’s Toolbox
According to Julian, we all have a toolbox which contain really powerful tools we can use that will make our speeches much more powerful.
Putting all of these tools together can ensure that when we have something to say, we know that it will have the power and affect that we wanted it to have.
Register
“We vote for politicians with lower voices because we associate depth with power and with authority”
Timbre
“We prefer voices which are rich, smooth, warm, like hot chocolate”
Prosody
“It’s the root one for meaning in conversation.”
Pace
“I can get very excited by saying something really quickly, or I can slow right down to emphasise, and at the end of that, of course, is our old friend silence.”
Pitch
“pitch often goes along with pace to indicate arousal, but you can do it just with pitch.”
Volume
“Some people broadcast the whole time. Try not to do that. That’s called ‘’sodcasting’.”
There are some really valuable public speaking skills that I have taken from this video as well as the the other TED Talks I use to enhance my public speaking and presentation skills.
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So if there’s one person who knows the secret to a great speech it’s him.
In this video, he explains in that there is no such thing as a ‘TED Talk formula’.
But from all of the talks that Chris has listened to and watched, he does point out that there is one thing that they all have in common: A speaker transferring an idea across to an audience.
“Your number one task as a speaker is to transfer into your listeners’ minds an extraordinary gift, a strange and beautiful object that we call an idea.”
He describes an idea as being:
“A pattern of information that helps you understand and navigate the world.”
Ideas can help change how people think about the world and can impact on the actions that the audience take.
Chris then goes on to give his four guidelines on how to build an idea inside the mind of your audience:
1. “Limit your talk to one major idea”
Don’t overload the audience with loads of different ideas, focus on the single idea that you are most passionate about.
Share examples and paint the picture for the audience to give them context to your idea.
2. “Give your listeners a reason to care”
It’s all about creating curiosity.
Identify why something doesn’t make sense by asking the audience questions to get them thinking.
Creating a knowledge gap, the audience will need that gap to be bridged through your idea.
3. “Build your idea”
Use concepts that the audience already understands.
Language is a huge tool when helping people understand your idea, but don’t use complicated and technical language, what language will your audience understand?
Using metaphors and analogies help people understand complex ideas and can be a great tool to get your idea across.
4. “Make your idea worth sharing”
When crafting your speech, ask yourself who the idea benefits.
TED don’t want this to benefit the speaker or a related business or organisation, they want it to benefit the audience.
Will your idea brighten up someone’s day, change their perspective on a subject for the better, and/or inspire someone to do something differently?
In this short video, Chris Anderson is able to convey the importance of creating an idea and how to share it with an audience in the most effective way.
I use his 4 guidelines regularly when I am working on creating a new speech.
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We are all guilty of being too keen to help someone with a problem they have. We jump in and explain what we think they should do or what we think they need to hear. And it will often come from a good place; “You should try doing this…” or “what you need is…”. But really, all we’re doing in these circumstances is passing on our thoughts based on what we think.
Walk a mile in someone else’s shoes…
How can we really tell someone what we think they need, or need to do without fully understanding their needs? Stephen Covey uses an example of using someone else’s glasses to fix their eyesight. Just because the glasses might benefit the person who is wearing them, doesn’t mean they’ll be any good to anyone else who has eyesight issues.
We can’t fully ‘fix’ someone’s issues, if we don’t fully understand what the problem is. And what works for us, won’t always work for someone else.
I see this a lot in the mental health awareness and ambassador/first aider training that I deliver. Our instinct is to tell a person suffering from poor mental health what we think they should do to get ‘better’. We forget to seek to understand and jump straight to wanting them to understand what we think the problem is and what they should do.
More often than not, the majority of us don’t actually want to hear someone giving us their solutions to our problems, we just want them to listen and understand.
And there lies the problem… Listening.
When did we learn to listen?
Covey describes the 4 basic types of communication:
Reading
Writing
Speaking
Listening
But what ones do we use the most every day?
For the vast majority of us, speaking is the main form of communication that we use. Writing and reading would come next and listening often comes last. From our earliest years, we are first taught how to speak, then read and write. But can anyone actually remember being taught to listen?
“We’re much keener to be heard than we are to listen to others” – Julian Treasure
Why do we want to be heard so much, but struggle to hear others?
Everyone likes to feel heard. We want to be validated and feel valued. We want to give our value to others and help them when they need it. But we often fall into the trap of doing it on our terms instead of the other person’s. We forget to seek the understanding. Asking questions instead of imparting our knowledge. Truly finding out exactly what the issues, problems or needs are.
We look at things through our own perspectives and hold our own judgments. But as Stephen Covey explains in his book – “The key to good judgement is understanding.”
A mistake often made in sales is trying to sell a product rather than selling the solution. Finding out exactly what the needs are of the buyer or the market is how some of the most innovative inventions and technology has been created.
Communication is a 2 way process. When we speak, we want to be heard. Julian Treasure can explain exactly how to do that in his TEDTalk. If we really want to be heard and really want our message to have an impact on the people we are talking to, then we need to know and understand them first. Then and only then can we have the impact that we want our own words to have.
How do we listen?
Stephen Covey believes that Empathetic Listening is key to creating an understanding. Trust plays a huge role in being able to get someone to open up and confide in the listener. If anyone starts to feel judged or unsafe, they we won’t be as open as they would if they were comfortable with the listener. We can’t build an understanding if the person we communicate with doesn’t feel comfortable enough to speak to us.
Listen with the intent to understand rather than listening with the intent to reply. Sometimes, silence is golden. We might think that we’ve had a similar experience, but this is their space to share not ours. Respect their space.
Empathise, don’t sympathise. Sympathy is a form of judgmental listening. Sympathy can create dependancy, and Covey explains that people can often feed off sympathy.
It’s not about agreeing or disagreeing, it’s about understanding. We all see the world differently and can have varying perspectives. Enjoy finding out how to see the world through someone else’s eyes.
Be aware!
Empathetic listening is just one way to improve communication. It’s not a technique, and it’s certainly not something that needs to be used all of the time. If someone feels like a technique is being used on them, then they won’t trust you. It takes practice but more importantly, it takes awareness.
Be aware of when to use it and when you don’t need to use it. And be especially aware of when you find yourself creeping back into bad habits of judgmental listening, telling rather than asking and/or diagnosing before prescribing.
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Professor Damien Hughes has written and spoken about high performance in business and sport. He has written books and is co-host with Jame Humphry on one of the top podcasts in the UK – The High Performance Podcast.
In his recent TEDx Talk in Manchester – How Peak Performers Find the Path to Courage – he talks about the challenges we face when it comes to making change. This can be as individuals but also applied to organisations and teams.
There are loads of examples of people who have gone against the grain and challenged the perception of how something can be done differently. And all of them will have gone through Arthur Schopenhauer’s ‘Three Stages of a Known Truth’:
Ridicule
Violently opposed
Accepted as self-evident
In his talk, Hughes uses a real life ‘hare and the tortoise story’ from the first ever ultra marathon in Australia. When the 61 year old Cliff Young turned up to enter the 875km race in his farming overalls and boots no one believed he would genuinely attempt to start the race. When the race started and the athletes all ran past him, it was clear that Cliff had his own unique shuffle style of running.
Needless to say, from his appearance, age and running style; Cliff Young was ridiculed by everyone involved in the event. But when Cliff decided not to take a break and carry on shuffling through the night while the other athletes were resting, he gradually built up a lead on them and went on to win the first ever Australian Ultra Marathon.
This was when Cliff Young’s approach was violently opposed and questioned. ‘He must have cheated’ they all thought. It was standard practice for ultra marathon athletes to stop for a 6 hour rest. But Cliff hadn’t bothered. As it turns out, there was nothing in the rules about rest times for the runners. It had just become a standard practice that everyone conformed to.
So it was no surprise 12 months later at the same race, when the majority of the race entrants had adopted the same Cliff Young shuffle running style. It had finally become accepted as self-evident.
The moral of this story isn’t the same as the ‘Hare and the Tortoise’ tale. It isn’t about chipping away at something slowly and steadily like the tortoise did. It isn’t about being humble which was the lesson for the hare. It’s about courage and having the bravery to stand out from the crowd to challenge the perceptions of others and keep going with it, even when you’re being ridiculed and opposed.
“Dead fish go with the flow”
We all like to think we can stand out from the crowd and walk our own paths. But how easy is it to do that? How strong do you have to be when faced with the challenges of doing something a different way?
For all the people who had the courage to do something differently and challenge the perceptions of the others around them, how many people didn’t? And how many ideas have been lost to the buckling of peer pressure or the fear of what others might think?
“It’s presence doesn’t always guarantee success, but it’s absence almost makes success impossible” – Courage
Allodoxaphobia – the fear of other people’s opinions – is the second highest phobia in the UK. It’s safe to say we all suffer from this at different points in our lives. Social anxiety and a fear of being judged can seriously damage our confidence and prevent us from standing out from the crowd.
We need that feeling of belonging and we don’t want to be rejected. This is why social conformity is often the easiest option. But do we want to just be ‘dead fish’ going with the flow? Or do we want to stand out and follow the path that we believe in, even if it goes against the grain?
To help with overcoming these fears and anxieties, Damien Hughes discusses processes that are used with professional athletes and high performers to keep them on the right track.
Visualise
Visualisation helps us all literally paint a picture in our minds. There is more and more scientific evidence that suggests visualising specific activities or scenarios can activate the same neural pathways in the brain as actually performing those activities or experiencing those scenarios.
Catastrophise
We often stay away from the ‘what if’ questions. No one likes being brought down to reality when someone starts trying to pick holes in our plans. But we need to be prepared for all eventualities. What if the plan doesn’t work out like we thought? How will we react if something does go wrong?
Creating these pre-mortems and asking ourselves what could or can go wrong, will ultimately help prepare us for hurdles we might have to face. By adding catastrophising with the visualisation, our courage can increase by up to 32%. It builds resilience for if/when something does go wrong.
Damien Hughes talks about writing a ‘Zander Letter’ which is a letter to yourself written as if it is 12 months in the future. In this letter you write about how you have achieved what you set out to achieve and how you overcame the obstacles that were in your way. This encourages you to really think in detail what could get in the way and how you will deal with it for when that happens.
Energise
Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter came up with what is now known as ‘Kanter’s Law’ when it comes to change: In the middle, everything looks like a failure.
How do we keep ourselves energised to keep going when we’re stuck in the middle and it’s too far to go back and the finish line looks a million miles away?
Having the courage to keep going is the hardest part. Reminding ourselves why we are doing what we are doing. We are full of energy at the start of a project and we love the feeling when we’ve finished. But when we find ourselves in the messy middle and things start to feel overwhelming, we need to find a way to keep the energy to keep going in the times that she lost her confidence.
Hughes ends his talk with examples of reminders that athletes use to re-centre their minds in moments of doubt. He also quotes the ‘Paradoxical Commandments’ by Kent Keith which Mother Teresa often used to keep her own levels of courage high so she could keep doing what she was doing.
Courage doesn’t always come naturally. It takes work and practice like everything else. Visualising, catastrophising and keeping ourselves energised can help us all have the courage to make the changes we need to make and get to the finish line.
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