The two aggressive males face each other, each puffing himself up, roaring and stamping the ground. As they get ready to fight for the prize, each is probably secretly hoping to intimidate the other and avoid a costly fight.
You can see this on a nature show any time, or just check out your boardroom.
Research has shown what most of us take for granted, that confident speakers are perceived as more credible and more persuasive. Listeners are very adept at picking up subtle signals that indicate how much confidence speakers have in their message, and gravitate toward the leadership of people who sound confident.
People respond to confidence. Confidence is credible. Confidence is a survival mechanism. Lacking any objective measure to gauge someone’s competence, we read clues in their behavior. When we see them acting confident we assume they have a good reason to be, and we are less likely to challenge or test their confidence. So confidence can become a self-fulfilling factor in credibility.
How do you achieve the confidence that leads to max cred?
In one sense, this article is almost unnecessary, because the easiest way to show confidence is to feel it, and if you’ve lined up the max cred factors discussed in this series: credentials, content and clarity, there is a good chance you will feel it, and it will show through naturally.
But the mind is funny sometimes, and there is no guarantee that you’ll be able to cash the confidence check you’ve earned. You can have every reason in the world to be confident and still have your knees shake and your voice quake when presenting your idea; maybe you’re in front of a large group, or the stakes are so high that doubt seeps in anyway. If that’s the case, you can take a lesson from those people who are able to project confidence even when they have every reason to be extremely nervous.
If you have the first three elements in place, you can add even more power by consciously cultivating confident speaking habits and behaviors. You have two principal tools to express confidence for maximum credibility: your body and your words.
A Confident Body
Stand up straight and take up space. Even the animals on the nature shows know this one. Make yourself look taller and act as if you own the space around you, and you will look more confident. Interestingly, research has shown that it works in both directions, so you can actually “fake it ‘til you make it”. It’s called embodied cognition: when you act confident, your brain infers that you must have a reason for it, and adjusts its attitude accordingly.
Look people in the eye. In the movie, “Get Shorty”, mob enforcer Chili Palmer says, “Look at me” when he wants to make a point. By forcing his listener to look him directly in the eye, he establishes a dominant position. You won’t want to take it so far in most of your communications, but you should maintain frequent and direct eye contact with your listeners. Although it’s not always true, we believe in Western culture that people who don’t look at us when they speak are concealing something.[1]
Confident Words
Your speaking habits can insidiously subtract power from the persuasiveness of your message, without you being aware of them. You may unconsciously undermine your own message by expressing it tentatively, or by using hedges and hesitations.
Tentative expression. Confidence is largely about relative status between individuals, and we often betray our sense of where we stand by the words we choose. We may “mitigate” our speech by saying things indirectly to avoid upsetting the higher-status person. In a famous example, Malcolm Gladwell provided the transcript of a cockpit communication in which a co-pilot danced around the fact that he was concerned about ice buildup on the wings—leading to the fatal Air Florida crash in Washington DC in 1982. Mitigated speech isn’t always bad—if you never use it you can come across as domineering—but it can be dangerous when your message absolutely and positively has to get through.
Power leaks. Power leaks sap the strength of our words. They include hedges such as “I think that…” and “kinda”; filler words such as “um” and “like”; and the now almost-ubiquitous-among-the-young “uptalk”, in which you end your sentences with a rising intonation so that everything you say sounds like a question.
If you use any of these forms of powerless speech, they’re probably deeply ingrained into the way you normally talk, so it’s not an easy matter to change. The first step is to practice awareness, so that you notice when you catch yourself using them. The best way is to enlist your peers to help; ask them to let you know when they hear them.
When to “dial it down”
It’s possible to overdo the confidence thing. You don’t always have to be forceful and direct to be persuasive; we all know people who are very persuasive and soft-spoken at the same time. Quiet speech may actually convey confidence by showing that someone has enough faith in themselves or in their stance on an issue that they don’t feel the need to force it across. In such cases, being too forceful may make you look defensive or shrill. It may also reduce your credibility, as indicated by the results of a study of jurors who rated the credibility of experts.[2]
Related articles:
Max Cred: How to Build and Preserve Personal Credibility
Max Cred Factor #1: Credentials
Max Cred Factor #2: Lighthouse Content
[1] It’s not true in all cultures, but that’s beyond the scope of this article.
[2] “Jurors Reveal Which Experts They’re Most Apt to Believe,” Psychiatric News, June 19, 2009.
Where were the slides?
Today being Martin Luther King day, I’ve been thinking about the incredible power of visuals in speeches—but not the pre-packaged kind you get with slides. King’s Dream speech worked so well for many reasons, but one of the most important was his ability to seize the audience’s imagination through mental imagery. He didn’t need a big screen set up on the white marble steps of the Lincoln Memorial to get us to picture scenes of black and white children playing together “on the red hills of Georgia”, or to imagine freedom ringing from “every hill and molehill of Mississippi”.
All he had was words, and words were more than enough.
Technology adds so much to our capabilities that we sometimes forget what we give up in return. I wonder if PowerPoint has sapped our power to evoke mental images through words, and if so, does it matter?
I do believe it matters, because mental images can be more persuasive than actual visuals. Actual visuals are good because they are processed instantaneously, and because everyone sees the same image[1], but these advantages may actually be disadvantages in terms of the persuasiveness of the image. Mental images can be more persuasive because they enhance memory, intention and emotion.
Memory: When someone is getting ready to decide or to act on your presentation, you want them to remember how they felt when they heard the presentation and the arguments for taking the recommended course of action. Because creating the image actually takes work, the effort of creating the image will get the listener more involved and engaged, and they are more likely to remember the image or have it pop up in their minds when they are getting ready to act on the information. That’s why all memory systems are based on mental images.
Intention: People are more likely to perform the actual behavior if they envision themselves doing it. One study that tested actual consumers’ sign-up rates for cable service found that those who were asked to imagine having cable service were more than twice as likely to sign up than those who just got a description of product features.[2] The impact of imagination on actual performance is well-known by athletes who use routinely use mental imagery to gain an edge.
Emotion: When you use words to evoke an image in the listener’s mind, each listener sees their own personal version. Because it’s theirs, it can be more real and more meaningful—hence more persuasive. Even better, when you can get them to picture themselves in the image, it tends to increase the likelihood of the behavioral change.[3]
How to create mental pictures
Make it a priority. You’re already spending a lot of time trying to find the right visual for your slide presentation. Why not spend some of that time figuring out how to generate the virtual image in their minds? You don’t have to give up slides, but try a little harder to use them less.
Use concrete words, vivid details, and analogies. Familiar objects are easier to picture and remember, especially when they’re vivid and dramatic vivid they are.
Make them the hero of their stories. Stories are powerful image creators, and they are even more powerful when you make the listener the hero.
Give them time. If you take the time and trouble to get your listeners to create a mental picture, don’t erase it immediately by immediately launching into facts and figures. Pause long enough to let it sink in and work its magic.
Imagine
Imagine this scene: Dr. King sets up on the National Mall—and delivers a PowerPoint presentation! Would we remember his words today?
[1] Which is why mental images are NOT recommended when clarity or precise understanding is called for.
Have you ever heard someone proudly proclaim some version of Popeye’s phrase? It’s most often said to justify themselves right after they’ve said something tactless, or even offensive. Or they might say something like “what you see is what you get”, or “I tell it like it is.”
People who think this way pride themselves on being brutally honest, as if brutality is a badge of honor.
If I wanted to be brutally honest with them, I would ask them if they were born a–holes, of if they just work hard at it. But of course I don’t, because that kind of brutal honesty, while it might make me feel good, would not help the situation.
The only time to be brutally honest is when you want to hurt someone, when you want to demean that person, or bludgeon them into submission, or prove how much smarter and better you are. I suppose there could be times that would be appropriate, but it’s hard to imagine situations in professional life where that’s going to result in the ideal outcome.
People who talk this way think it displays an admirable independence of spirit, some personal toughness that allows them to be authentic despite social pressures to conform.
What it really displays is a lack of concern for others, selfishness and crass personal manners.
It may also display laziness and/or helplessness. For example, the person who says she’s just not a people person, that she doesn’t play the political game, may just be masking an unwillingness or genuine inability to master the skills needed to work smoothly with others.
Or, they could be laboring under the misimpression that they are stuck with the personality traits they were born with. They think that if they are introverted or analytics, or drivers, or INTJs, or any other label they’ve learned to accept, that their behavior is channeled into a narrow path defined by who they are. Any behavior that crosses those boundaries is “inauthentic”, thus automatically wrong.
Is it “inauthentic” to be tactful? Is it inauthentic to express your ideas so that the other person can best understand your meaning? Is it inauthentic to try to see the world through their eyes? When you look at it this way, inauthenticity is actually a sign of maturity. What makes us effective and influential as adults in a professional environment is precisely our ability to be inauthentic, to dress up our inner selves to go out in public.
Can you go against your normal tendencies if it will leave everyone better off? Clearly, the answer is yes. Just as you choose what to wear depending on where you’re going or what you’re doing, you can choose what to say, how to say it, and what to do. Think about it from the perspective of the other person: they only know who you are by what you say and do. Fortunately, those are the only things you can control; whether you choose to do so is up to you.
It’s a simple choice: be “authentic” or be effective.
When it’s all about you and not what you can do for the customer, talk is NOT cheap.
When it crowds out listening, talk is NOT cheap.
When you bore your audience, talk is NOT cheap.
When it’s rambling and unprepared, talk is NOT cheap.
When it wastes the listener’s time, talk is NOT cheap.
When you talk past the close, talk is NOT cheap.
When thinking out loud causes sloppy expression, talk is NOT cheap.
When you’re unprepared for questions and objections, talk is NOT cheap.
When words are spoken in anger, talk is NOT cheap.
When silence is the best option, talk is NOT cheap.
When loose lips can sink ships, talk is NOT cheap.
When you make commitments you can’t keep, talk is NOT cheap.
When more words mean less understanding, talk is NOT cheap.
When words take the place of fighting, talk is NOT cheap.
When thoughtless words wound, talk is NOT cheap.
When words console, talk is NOT cheap.
When words illuminate, talk is NOT cheap.
When questions spark ideas, talk is NOT cheap.
When words inspire, talk is NOT cheap.
