Practical Eloquence Blog |

Practice Your People Skills Every Day

By Jack Malcolm / 4.24.2019 / No Comment

I taught a module last week on social intelligence, and as part of it I gave my students a homework assignment to find opportunities to practice the skills I taught, especially the skills that make for favorable first impressions. They have to look for opportunities to practice their nonverbals, their social gifts, adjust their warmth and competence, etc.

There are opportunities everywhere you look; I know, because I have this strange habit of feeling compelled to practice what I preach. Since class ended on Wednesday afternoon, I have practiced these skills on TSA agents, gate agents while boarding my flight, old friends in a social situation, new friends in a social situation, supermarket checkers, a homeless man, and even my brother-in-law (that last one probably surprised him as much as it did me). I’ve also watched others practice these skills and have learned from them. Conservatively, I consciously practiced my social skills on at least a dozen occasions in the past four days.

Seriously, every time you speak with someone, no matter how briefly, there is a lot going on. You are exchanging words, participating in rituals, giving or withholding appreciation, transmitting and receiving messages about your respective moods and mental states, gauging their warmth and competence unconsciously while they do the same to you, making decisions about how much intimacy to seek or allow, etc. We are performing a rapid and unconscious algorithm to measure how much we like, respect and trust the other person, and it’s all going on below the level of conscious awareness.

Another way to practice mindfulness in social intelligence is to observe others, particularly those whose social skills you admire. What do they do differently than you do? What do they do more of, or less of? How do others respond to what they do?

Most of us go through most of our days without even thinking about what’s going on, which puts us on autopilot. The nice thing about autopilot is that it’s efficient; the sad thing about autopilot is that no learning or growth is taking place.

Practice the habit of being more deliberate and mindful in your interactions with people, and you start seeing other things that most people miss. You notice how people respond to questions about themselves; you see how a smile elicits an equal but not opposite reaction; you quickly find out that your mood is contagious; you may actually learn a thing or two. And best of all—others benefit as well!

In this podcast I go into detail about how to increase your awareness, adjust your attitude, practice the proper skills, and work towards turning your new skills into habits.

Persuasive communication

Good Today Beats Perfect Tomorrow

By Jack Malcolm / 4.10.2019 / No Comment

For reasons that will become clear in a minute, I’m posting this article as a first draft, without any modification except to fix any of the typos that emanate inevitably from my clumsy fingers.

Here’s why: I’ve been working on a new podcast series about leadership with a friend of mine. We’ve recorded a few episodes; we like the content and we think others will too. After a lot of hard work, all that remained a few weeks ago was for my podcast partner to set up the account so that we could release it to the world, a task that only takes a few hours at most. A week went by, then another, and I didn’t think much of it. But after a month of radio silence I reached out to him to see what was going on.

He called to let me know he was getting cold feet. He said he’s been listening to other podcasts and they have such great production values, with perfect editing, sound quality, and appropriate music at the right times. He was concerned that ours would suffer by comparison.

So I told him about another friend of mine, who is head chef at one of the better restaurants in town. I have chef and his family over for dinner almost every Christmas for over 20 years. People ask me if I’m intimidated by hosting a chef for dinner. I tell them that it doesn’t bother me at all, for two good reasons. First, he’s the professional, not I, so why should I be worried about what he thinks of my cooking? Second, I cook a mean tenderloin on my Big Green Egg, and I know he loves it—more importantly, his family loves it too. It’s good cooking, it’s authentic, and everyone has a good time.

My point is that, if you have great ideas and solid content, people will get value from it even if it’s not perfect. (And there’s a lot of perfectly produced crap out there as well—beautiful-sounding but not worth listening to.) And if you wait—and wait, and wait—until it’s perfect, you’re depriving potential listeners of that value.

We both have the goal of saving the world from bad leadership, one episode at a time. And, given the apparent state of leadership in the world today, there’s not a moment to waste!

Leadership Communication - Lean Communication - Podcasts

Lean Communication for Leaders: Part 2, the Empathy Erosion Trap

By Jack Malcolm / 4.2.2019 / No Comment

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

In part 1 of this series on Lean Communication for Leaders, I talked about the ethos trap, which is the tendency of people in powerful positions to rely on the big stick of their title and authority to influence others, and less on convincing others through the logic of their idea. In short, leaders get lazy.

But laziness is easy to overcome as long as you care about getting the job done right. If you truly care about putting together the best possible message for your followers to hear, you already know how to do it—you’ve done it countless times in your career, or you would not have risen to the level you have. As long as you care about what your followers think, you can avoid the ethos trap.

But, what if you stop caring about what others think? What if you start seeing others more as tools to exploit to get your way? It’s a form of “altitude sickness” called empathy erosion, and unfortunately it’s a condition that is likely to become worse the higher you go.

Let’s first remind ourselves how important empathy is in communication. It’s so important that it’s the first rule of lean communication: I call it outside-in thinking. That’s because the number one imperative of communication is to add value, and only the recipient defines value. That means that you must be able to take the other person’s perspective on every issue, and communicate in a way that they are most likely to understand, believe and accept. Two sides can communicate much more effectively—and pleasantly—when each side strives to meet the other more than halfway by seeing things from their point of view.

In leadership terms, outside-in thinking is about getting followers to do what you want for their own reasons. As Dwight Eisenhower said, “Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.”

How Leadership Can Erode Empathy

Leaders should be able to effortlessly think outside-in—it should actually be easier for you as a leader, because after all you’ve been in their shoes but they haven’t been in yours.

But what happens in reality to perspective taking as you gain power? Unfortunately, a lot of evidence suggests that you’re less likely to take others’ perspectives into account as you become (or at least think you become) more important. In his book, The Power Paradox, Dacher Keltner says, “When we experience absolute power, our attention shifts to our own interests and desires, thus diminishing our capacity for empathy—understanding what others feel and think.” (p. 101)

Keltner refers to absolute power, but Columbia Business School professor Adam Galinsky has demonstrated that people who are primed to feel powerful even for just a short time, show diminished empathy in three ways.

When asked to write the letter “E” on their foreheads, they are almost three times as likely to write it so that it appears backwards to an observer. In their own minds, they see it correctly from their own perspective, and they fail to take into account how it looks to others.
They’re more likely to suffer from the Curse of Knowledge, which means that when you know something, you assume that others do as well, so you leave out important details and context to help them understand—and probably get impatient when others don’t get it.
When shown photos of people expressing various emotions, they become less accurate at reading them.

Galinsky summarizes by saying: “…power was associated with a reduced tendency to comprehend how other people see, think, and feel.”

And what could be less conducive to outside-in thinking than feelings of entitlement? Here’s more evidence: In another study, researchers observed a four way stop sign, and counted the number of times a driver cut someone else off by going before their turn. They found that drivers of expensive cars cut off people 30% of the time, four times as often as drivers of less expensive cars.

In another experiment, college students of different socio-economic backgrounds were brought in for a study, and afterwards they saw a jar filled with candies. They were told the candies were for young children involved in another study down the hall, but they could have some if they wanted. The richer students took twice as much candy as the poorer ones.

Finally, there’s the additional problem that Heidi Grant Halvorson, in her book No One Understands You, tells us that people in power tend to view others more instrumentally: how can they make use of them? You see them less as a person and more as a tool. You can even measure the erosion of empathy. There is a phenomenon called motor resonance, which simply means that when we observe someone else doing an activity, the same areas that are firing in their brains during the activity are firing in ours. We feel them, and it’s what helps us imagine things from their perspective. But those with more power showed diminished motor resonance in in MRI scans of their brains. They do think differently! As Halvorson says: “It’s not so much that they think they are better than you as it is that they simply do not think about you at all.”

Why does it matter?

If you step back and look at the problem practically and non-judgmentally, is it really such a bad thing if leaders are less empathetic? There are times when the job demands less empathy; sometimes you have to make hard decisions for the greater good and if you tore yourself up about each person it’s going to affect, it would probably paralyze you. Eisenhower knew that thousands of those troops he led would not survive executing his orders—but he had to issue his orders anyway.

And you have so many important tasks on your plate that it’s tempting to put efficiency and speed over relationships. You just don’t have the time, and if you don’t get it done, they’ll find someone who can.

But there’s the paradox: the fact that you don’t have enough time to devote to thinking about the people side is exactly why you need to take the time to think about the people side: no one can do everything by themselves. They have to trust others to do things, and they need for them to give their best efforts. Who will give their best efforts for someone they don’t think cares about them? When someone does something because they have to, they will generally do exactly what they’re told—and not a bit more. When they do it because they want to, they do it for pride, for meaning, for each other—maybe even for you as a leader whom they respect and admire. (If they respect and admire you, that is…)

So, think of empathy as an investment in long-term leadership effectiveness.

The good news about empathy erosion

But wait, there’s good news in all of this. There’s evidence that the condition is not incurable.

Other research shows that when leaders are reminded that the goal requires them to see others’ individual differences, they can actually do it more effectively than the less powerful—so maybe their empathy isn’t eroding—it’s simply being put aside for most of their tasks.

So, the simple cure is to accept that empathy is a critical tool in your leadership toolbox, and to remind yourself that it’s not something you “have” or “don’t have”; it’s a skill that you can and must cultivate. As a leader, you have countless opportunities to strengthen and demonstrate your empathy—as long as you make it a priority.

Lean Communication - Podcasts

Lean Communication for Leaders: Beware the Ethos Trap

By Jack Malcolm / 3.26.2019 / No Comment

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

As part of my research into my book on Lean Communication, I have been interviewing CEOs to get their perspectives on the general quality of communication they receive from their subordinates, and I’ve received excellent ideas and suggestions to pass on to my principal intended readers. But almost invariably the leaders I’ve spoken to have reflected on what they need to do to improve their own communication, and that has caused me to think about adding a special chapter on lean communication just for leaders.

If you’ve risen to a high level of leadership within your organization, you’re probably already a good communicator, even if you haven’t been formally exposed to Lean Communication. That’s the good news.

But the bad news is that as you rise you need to raise your communication to an even higher level, while at the same time you’ve got two factors working against you to erode whatever skill you have developed.

You need to raise your communication for the simple reason that your position gives you greater reach and influence, which means that every word you utter or write carries more value or creates more waste. You speak to more people about more consequential topics than ever before, and they listen more carefully and rely more heavily on what you say. That places a heavier onus on you to get it right without getting in their way or wasting their time. The higher you go, the more critical it becomes to be a lean communicator.

Unfortunately, just as it becomes more important to raise your game, you run into two natural human tendencies that can weaken your skill. To put it bluntly, you get lazy and you care less about what others think. Those are pretty tough words, so I’ll explain the first in this article and the second in the next.

What do I mean by “getting lazy”? Think about things that once came easy to you that you that you’d be hard-pressed to do well now: maybe remembering phone numbers; doing mental math; driving a stick shift; reading a map; baking a cake from scratch. As we find newer and easier ways of achieving our goals, of course it makes sense to stop using the old skills, and it doesn’t cause any harm—until we need them.

What does this have to do with leadership communication? Quite simply, the higher you go, communication seems to get easier, because people are more likely to listen carefully while you speak, laugh at your jokes, ask your advice, and do what you suggest.

Stanford Business School professor Jeffrey Pfeffer recently wrote:

“A colleague of mine who teaches at Duke University recently told me about a speech he attended on campus by the CEO of a company that is best left unnamed here. It turned out to be a terrible speech — riddled with platitudes, internal inconsistencies, and false facts. On his way out the door, my friend overheard two students discussing what they’d just heard.

“He’s incredibly rich,” one of them said. “He must be smart.”

That CEO gave a terrible speech, but paid no price for it. Do you think he’s going to work hard for his next one? Rich people, famous people, people with impressive titles: they all get a pass.

I personally see the trend with authors I admire. Their early work is excellent—it’s what gets them noticed and helps them become best-sellers. I buy the next book they write and maybe the next after that. Almost invariably, though, they seem to reach a stage when they mail it in, as if their name alone is enough to sell books. (When the author’s name on the book jacket is larger than the title, that’s a pretty good sign that they’ve reached that stage.)

Beware the Ethos Trap

I call it the ethos trap. As Aristotle taught us, there are three means of persuading others: logos (logic), pathos (emotion) and ethos, (personal credibility). Aristotle told us that ethos is the most important, which makes sense because as listeners we can’t help but be swayed by our perception—mostly rapid and unconscious—of the speaker’s trustworthiness. We decide to trust or not trust rapidly and unconsciously and only afterwards justify our reasons for doing so.

One of the most important signals we pay attention to is the speaker’s title or position, because we are also hard-wired to pay attention to relative status and defer to those of higher status. When the speaker does not have the automatic credibility that comes from their title, they know they have to work hard to gain credibility and trust, so they take pains to gather data to back up their claims, think carefully about the logic, and present it in terms of what the listener will most care about. In short, they prepare. But preparation takes time and effort, and if you’re a leader with a lot more important issues on your plate, it makes sense, doesn’t it, to save either one if you can?

Be honest: if people took everything you said at face value, would you take the time and effort to gather evidence to support what you know to be true? If people are prepared to do what you say without question, how much time would you devote to explaining your reasons, or crafting your message for maximum impact?

When a tool works for you every time, you use it more and stop using others. When “because I said so” gets the compliance you want, why rely on logos? Why make the effort to carefully prepare your case, to anticipate objections, to polish your prose, to weigh your words before you speak?

How to avoid the ethos trap

It takes a lot of self-awareness, discipline and humility to avoid falling into the ethos trap, but a little reminder can go a long way. You can’t hire a slave to whisper in your ear, “Remember you are mortal”, as Roman generals did when they were honored by a triumph after a major victory, so you need to remind yourself.

Fortunately, there’s a reasonably simple fix, as long as you remember to think about it. Researchers have shown how easy it is to induce feelings of greater or lesser power in their test subjects, and what works for them can work for you too. Any time you’re preparing for an important meeting with subordinates, you can prime your mind with a little humility in some easy ways. You can think of a time when you felt powerless; think of someone more powerful than yourself, and you can imagine that you have to convince them; prepare as if you’re presenting to your boss, and everybody has a boss, even if it’s the Board or Wall Street analysts.

In my next article of this series, I will explain why, even as your skills tend to get rusty, you fall into the second trap of leadership communication and you care less about what others think.