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When you buy a book, do you judge it by its cover? Of course you do, even if you deny it. The title, the design, and most importantly, the status of the author, all influence your initial perception and may even determine whether you pick it up and examine it more deeply.
Credentials are the first of our Seven Cs of Max Cred because they are your book cover: they often precede you into your persuasive communication encounter and send signals that influence your credibility before you even open your mouth. In a sense, credentials are your “pre-paid credibility.”
Credentials may be your minimum ticket price to personal credibility, because without some credentials you probably won’t get an audience. Your credentials tell the listener why you are better qualified to speak about the topic than anyone else in the room. They are something you have already earned that contributes to credibility, but the audience still decides how to perceive them and how much weight to place on them to grant belief.
Credentials confer status and authority. Your actual and perceived credentials make it easier for listeners to accept your ideas because they give you an elevated status relative to that particular topic. People won’t easily yield in their opinions to someone they consider equal or below them, but they tend to defer to authority, so they may open their minds to someone who has a superior claim.
Credentials are relatively objective and measurable: a PhD outweighs a Master’s, a Master electrician is more credible than a journeyman, a professional athlete is more credible than a weekend warrior. Because credentials are measurable, they also make it safe for others to rely on you, because if the decision goes wrong for some reason, they can show that they exercised prudence and care. That’s why a lot of corporate buyers are heavily biased in favor of established brand names.
What constitutes a valid credential?
You can think of your credentials as your personal value proposition for why they should listen to you. What special advantage do you have that makes you the person most qualified to be speaking about that particular topic to that audience at that time? There are a number of ways to differentiate yourself:
Education/certification: These are what most people think of as formal credentials. Influence expert Robert Cialdini tells the story of when he consulted with a group of physicians’ assistants who were frustrated by their patients’ failure to follow their instructions to exercise. He noted that their examination room did not have any credentials on the wall, and suggested they post their diplomas. According to Cialdini, the PAs “reported a huge difference in patient compliance.”[1]
Titles: A title carries a lot of weight with just one word. To demonstrate the amazing power of a title, researchers once posed as doctors and called 22 separate nurses’ stations and prescribed a drug to patient over the phone. Despite the fact that the nurses did not see the doctor, the drug was not on the authorized list, and the dosage was twice the maximum daily dose, 95% of nurses tried to comply with the order until stopped by an observer!
Experience: The amount and quality of experience both matter. You may have been at it longer than others in the room, or you may have unique experience. There’s almost no limit to what experience is relevant, depending on what the situation is. I delivered a speech once about toxic sales environments, and led off by telling the audience about how I once got fired for doing the right thing for a customer.
Organization or Brand: In another experiment noted by Cialdini, researchers took 12 articles that had been accepted previously by journals, changed the only the name of the authors’ prestigious universities, and resubmitted them. Of the nine that were not detected, all but one were rejected. Think about that: the readers of these journals are educated, sophisticated individuals, and yet they changed their judgment based only on the brand.
Special expertise/information/research: You have specific information that no one else in the room has. The strongest special expertise credential is personal eyewitness testimony, but anyone who takes extra time to learn a topic more thoroughly than others can create their own credentials.
Commonality with the group: Groups tend to give more credibility to “one of us”. I tell salespeople in my classes that, as a small business owner, I know only too well what it’s like to work on full commission. You can speak for them because you’re one of them; but you are also different enough that they should listen to you.
Your look: Rationally, how you look should have no bearing on the quality and truth of your message, but it actually has a lot to do with it.
You can’t do much about your physical appearance, but you can control what you wear and how you wear it, and it can definitely affect your credibility, especially in business. Joe Navarro, a former FBI agent and jury consultant, says men in ”business uniform” are perceived by jurors as being more honest and reassuring.
It’s not about spending a lot of money on clothes or wearing an expensive watch. The most important thing is to be neat and well-groomed, and look as if you care. As Navarro says, casualness can kill credibility, according to focus group studies.
On the other hand, being too formal can have its drawbacks, if you are dressed too differently from everyone else. The rule of thumb I’ve always followed in my training is to dress one level up from the group norm. If they’re casual, I’ll wear slacks and a long sleeve shirt; if in business casual, I will wear a sports coat, and so on.
How to present your credentials
For one reason, the paradox of status is that while people respect it, they don’t like it rubbed in their faces. Even in the US where we have a high tolerance for braggadocio, it can get tiresome. Just this week I heard a lawyer presenting to our City Commission use at least half his allotted three minutes to telling them what a great lawyer he was. He mentioned the fact that he had tried two cases in front of the Supreme Court, then went on to recite his years of experience, some big cases he had worked on, and his various certifications. I remember thinking at the time that he had me at the word “court” and then lost me when he kept going way beyond that.
Yet, if you do have strong credentials, it’s foolish not to let your audience know about them. Max Cred is about getting every possible advantage, so let’s look at ways to make sure your credentials are known without harming your credibility.
Have someone else toot your horn. If it’s a formal presentation, it’s a good idea to have your sponsor introduce you to the group and tell them your credentials. There are two advantages to this. The first is that you don’t come across as too full of yourself. Second, it’s more believable coming from someone else, even if they know that person has a vested interest in touting you
But if you get someone to introduce you, don’t leave it to chance. Make sure you have gone over with them how they should introduce you; even better, write out the points you want them to make.
Weave them in. The most subtle way to present your credentials is to imply them by the use of stories, examples and questions that demonstrate to the audience that you have “been there and done that.” I often open my sales training classes by telling the story of the day that I accidentally learned the most important key to sales. I remember one time in North Carolina when I told that story to skeptical group, and one sales manager said, “Boom! That’s worth the entire class!”
Questions also work well, especially when you ask them about an issue they face that is not common knowledge. I’ve often found in my initial sales calls that there’s always a turning point and a palpable difference in the room when the prospect says, “That’s a good question.”
Don’t overreach. The quickest way to shatter your credibility is to overpromise and underdeliver, which you can prevent by being clear—first of all to yourself—about what you can and can’t do.
Be transparent about your weaknesses. Don’t overspend your credentials; be open about conflicts of interest if asked or even before… One of the occupational hazards of being asked to speak on account of your expertise is the audience’s suspicion of your motives. There’s nothing wrong with being paid to speak on behalf of someone, but you should always be transparent about it.
Frame your credentials. I don’t specialize in a specific industry so when people ask me how much expertise I have in their industry, I usually have to tell them it’s roughly zero. But then I tell them that allows me to bring a fresh approach and ask the stupid questions that may not sometimes turn out to be so stupid after all.
Show, don’t tell. This may sound funny in a chapter on credentials, but I truly believe that your best credential is a cogent argument, and that brings us to the next of the Seven Cs: Content.
ACTION STEPS AND POINTS TO PONDER
- Prepare the perfect introduction you would like someone to use in your next presentation.
- Write down one or two stories you can use as an opener to demonstrate your credentials without actually stating them.
- Write down several opening questions that will demonstrate your competence on the topic.
[1] Influence: Science and Practice, Robert Cialdini…
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Some of you may remember some old commercials for a brokerage house called E.F. Hutton. They would show two guys talking in a crowded place, such as a restaurant or a golf tournament. One guy would say, “My broker is E.F. Hutton, and E.F. Hutton says…” Immediately everyone around them would stop what they were doing and listen intently.
What if people did that every time you opened your mouth? That would be what I call Max Cred. If you’re a knowledge worker, your personal credibility is your most precious asset. It’s not your knowledge, which is worthless if others don’t believe what you say; it’s not your eloquence, if others don’t listen; it’s not your power, if others only agree grudgingly. Like any asset, you want to preserve it, grow it, and put it to work.
That’s because unless you’re a dictator, hermit or independently wealthy, so much of what you need or want to do in life depends on getting things done through other people, and your ability to influence others is directly correlated to how much they rely on what you tell them. Credibility opens doors, gets attention, influences decisions, and makes it safe for others to act on what you tell them. Simply put, credibility drives results.
Everybody wants to matter, which simply means being able to influence others’ thoughts, beliefs, decisions and actions. In turn, that means that every speaker wants the audience to believe them: what they say and how they feel about the topic at hand. This can be easy to achieve for low-stakes, mundane topics, but it can be very difficult to achieve when asking someone to take a risk, expend a large cost, or change deeply-held beliefs. That’s when you need every advantage you can muster to compel belief.
Credibility is critical because:
- Most proposals aren’t “provable” based only on facts, so decision makers will rely to some extent on how credible they perceive you to be in making your case.
- It allows you to punch above your weight class by giving you influence above and beyond your job title.
- It makes you worth listening to. Everybody is distracted nowadays, so you have to give them a reason to invest their attention in you.
- It saves you time, because you don’t need to spend as much time and effort to convince others. You get fewer questions and micromanagement.
- If you’re a leader, you can’t rely on authority alone, because that doesn’t get the best work out of people.
What does max cred look and sound like?
Your credibility level can range from zero to max, and of course it depends on the situation or the topic at hand. What does max cred look like? When you open your mouth to speak in a meeting, people pay attention, like in the E.F. Hutton commercial. What does max cred sound like? When you say “Because I said so”, or some more tactful variant of that phrase, people treat it as hard data.
We all know that “because I said so” is not a valid reason for doing things, but in reality we rely on it all the time. Think about it from the point of view of a CEO listening to a technical presentation in order to make an important decision. The topic can be very complicated for a non-specialist, and it requires a lot of effort to understand all the nuances. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman tells us that when the mind is faced with a tough decision, it often falls back on answering an easier question. In this case, the easier questions often is: “Do I believe this person?” “Does she sound like she knows what she’s talking about?”
The CEO’s mind sees that as an easier questions because he is unconsciously processing a lot of cues—in her content, her confidence, the language she uses, her motivations, etc. By the way, that’s not a flaw—it’s a necessary shortcut in the mind and a design feature in the organization. The whole reason many people have jobs in organizations is because the person running the place can’t know everything. If the CEO had to fact-check every presentation and master every topic, she would never get anything done. So, credibility is not just a crucial personal asset, but an organizational one as well.
Put another way, max cred means that others strongly rely on your statements and your judgment to make decisions, and they weight them more heavily than other sources. They accept it quickly and are less likely to question it.
For example, I get a lot of emails from Amazon touting newly released books. If I’m familiar with the author’s previous work and hold a favorable opinion of it, I spend less time reading reviews or perusing the table of contents before deciding whether to buy. At the time that I write this, I have already pre-ordered books by Steven Pinker and Hans Rosling, almost without even reading the book descriptions.
In my own work, credibility is critically important. A major part of my work is teaching professional salespeople and the rest usually involves teaching engineers, who can be deeply skeptical and data-driven. Salespeople can be a demanding audience because they want to know that whoever dares to teach them something new has carried the bag, has experienced the same difficulties, solved the same problems, and had the same or greater success that they have.
When I first began my training career, I had less direct experience than a lot of my students, and I was perhaps overly conscious of my perceived lack of qualifications, so I had to figure out ways not only to quickly get up to speed but to survive until I got there.
While I made plenty of credibility mistakes in the early years, over time, both through learning from those mistakes and through my successes, plus a lot of reading what the top experts have to say about it, I’ve uncovered ways to develop and preserve max cred.
What is credibility?
The answer to this question may seem as simple as Justice Potter’s definition of pornography: “I’ll know it when I see it,” but if we stop there it won’t help us figure out how to improve it. So let’s give it a shot:
Credibility is an impression formed in the mind of your listener at the time of communication about the extent to which they can rely on what they hear from you to shape their thoughts, influence their decisions, or inspire their actions.
Credibility is not something you “have”, it’s something that others “give” you every time you communicate with them. You can have truth, but no credibility unless others accept it as true. That means that it may be different for every person, because they have different standards and perceptions; Because of this, it’s not a universal quality, it’s situation-specific. Others may deem you to be credible on a certain topic in a particular situation, but not in another.
This is an important distinction because it makes you realize that every situation is different, and that you have to work to establish belief in the minds of your audience every single time. Just when you begin to take it for granted, it can be destroyed in an instant. It actually exists outside of yourself; it’s something that others give you or don’t, because of credentials you’ve earned, what you say or do, and how you say or do it.
Credibility is not binary; it’s like the difference between an on/off switch and a dimmer switch. People don’t ask themselves if you’re credible, they ask themselves how credible you are. In other words, they are calculating a probability judgment about the likelihood that what you’re saying is true and useful.
Credibility is closely related to trust, but it’s not exactly the same thing. At least in the way I define it and approach it in this book, credibility relates to the communication aspect, how much people can rely on what you say. Trust is bigger, it also includes how much they can rely on what you do.
What makes you credible?
It’s going to take this whole series to adequately answer this question, but let’s get an overview.
As far as we know, the Greeks were the first to study credibility formally, which made sense since their form of government was the first to rely on persuasion rather than pure force. Democracy in ancient Athens was very direct; if you wanted a law passed you went to the agora and delivered a speech yourself. Aristotle called it ethos and said it was the most important of three means of persuasion, along with logos and pathos. According to him, an audience perceived a speaker’s ethos by asking three questions:
- Does the speaker have good sense?
- Does the speaker have good character?
- Does the speaker have goodwill?
More recently, psychologists have studied credibility more scientifically and systematically. Using a statistical technique called factor analysis, researchers have teased out the various factors that affect perceived credibility. There are According to professors Robert Gass and John Seiter, there are three primary dimensions which apply generally, and three secondary dimensions which are situation-specific. The primary dimensions are expertise (aka competence or qualification), trustworthiness (character or integrity) and goodwill (cares about me). The secondary dimensions are extroversion, composure, and sociability.[1]
As you’ll see, I’m going to explain credibility in large part using a combination of Aristotle, modern psychology, and personal experience gained from three decades studying and teaching persuasive communication in practical business applications. That allows us to break down the mystery of credibility into specific elements which can be improved or strengthened with preparation, practice, and growing skill.
Taken altogether, we have the “Seven Cs” of Max Cred:
- Credentials
- Content
- Clarity
- Confidence
- Connection
- Caring
- Cultivating
ACTION STEPS AND POINTS TO PONDER
- Think of someone whom you find to be especially credible. What are the strengths they show relative to the Seven Cs?
- Think of someone whose credibility you question. What are the weaknesses they show relative to the Seven Cs?
- For the next few days, pay attention to others as they communicate in meetings or directly with you, mentally apply the Seven Cs checklist to them.
- Think about your own interactions with others, and apply the Seven Cs to yourself.
- List your areas for improvement and keep those in mind as you listen to this series.
[1] Persuasion, Social Influence and Compliance Gaining, Robert H. Gass, John S. Seiter, p. 79.
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My fondest wish is that this podcast will change someone’s life—maybe even yours.
If you’ve held yourself back from accepting speaking engagements because of nerves, it can make an immediate and obvious change to your career. That’s not a bad benefit, but the ideas I’ll talk about here will apply to just about any challenge you face in your life and even impact your physical health. Let’s start with the first and build up to the second.
Probably the single most important topic that I cover in my presentations classes is how to deal with stage fright, or pre-speech jitters. I’m sure you’ve heard the statistics that fear of public speaking is the number one fear in America. I don’t have exact figures, but I thought Jerry Seinfeld said it best when he said that, with public speaking being the number one fear and death second, you’re better off at a funeral lying in the casket than delivering the eulogy!
Unfortunately it’s not that funny to the many people who hold themselves back from expressing their full potential because they shy away from speaking in front of groups. I once coached a woman who had managed to rise to very high levels without ever having to give a speech until her latest promotion to EVP level required her to speak to an all-hands meeting of 500+ people. Although she had done very well in her career to that point without putting herself out there, one wonders how much faster that promotion would have come if she had.
I feel especially qualified to comment on how to deal with nerves because I have been there—probably about as bad as anyone else, and yet I’ve learned not only how to overcome but to use the stress that inevitably arises before a speech or big presentation. Some of it I’ve managed just by sucking it up and doing it anyway, some I’ve learned by experience through the years, and some I’ve picked up through deep research on the subject.
There are a lot of useful techniques such as deep breathing, power posing, or bonding with the audience, but I’m not going to talk about those today. They’re all great, but today I’m going to go to the root cause of the problem: how stress affects your mind and your body, and what you can do about it.
Stress response
Most people will tell you that pre-speech jitters are a form of the fight or flight response, and that’s partially true. It’s psychologically intimidating to have multiple sets of eyeballs staring at you—throughout human history that has not usually been a good sign. When danger looms, the sympathetic nervous system gears up the body to fight or flee a physical threat, releasing hormones such as adrenaline, cortisol, endorphins into the bloodstream. The heart rate rises, pumping blood to the major muscle groups and away from the extremities and digestive system, which is why we get cold feet, dry mouth, and butterflies.
But fight or flight is incomplete and self-limiting. It’s more appropriately called the stress response, and that’s an important distinction because your mind and your body react to stress in more than just those fighting or running away. In her book, The Upside of Stress, Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonigal tells us that besides the well-known fight or flight threat response, we can also have a challenge response or a tend-and-befriend response. Although both those other possible responses are equally important to well-being, my focus in this episode is on the challenge response.
What is stress? According to McGonigal, “Stress is what arises when something you care about is at stake.” That’s a broad definition that comprises thoughts, emotions and physical reactions.
Is stress bad for you? Most popular literature tells us that it is, but reality is actually more complicated. Stress can help you grow stronger; can make you happier; can stimulate your protective and altruistic instincts. In fact, it’s hard to conceive of personal growth without at least some stress. In short, stress can also be good for you.
But here’s the key point of this entire podcast: science shows that you can choose your response to stress, and that response has a direct impact on your performance in the moment and your physical and mental health in the long term.
Whether you think stress is bad for you, or good for you, you’re right. Your attitude toward stress can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The best way to fulfill a positive prophecy is to accept it, reinterpret it, and embrace it.
Accept it
Feeling nervous before a speech is completely natural. In fact, it would be extraordinary not to feel that way at least some times in your life. And I guess that’s the first point: you need to realize that you are not alone.
It has certainly been natural for me personally. In college, I would get nervous on the first day of a class when we had to introduce ourselves. When my friend tried to get me to come to his Toastmasters Club meeting, I kept giving him excuses until he challenged my manhood. Jumping that first hurdle was a great start, but even after making my living by standing in front of audiences for the last 35 years, I still occasionally get nervous and have to apply the same ideas I’ll cover here.
If there were people for whom stage fright were not natural, it would certainly be actors and singers who perform on stage in front of huge audiences. Yet even the best of them suffer from jitters, even long after they are established in their careers.
Adele has admitted to being terrified in front of huge audiences, and has even vomited on stage. Carly Simon actually passed out. Barbra Streisand once forgot the lyrics to a song while on stage in 1967, and stayed away from live audiences for 30 years!
Since you know it’s inevitable, it doesn’t make sense to try to fight it. Instead, you need to look at it differently.
Reinterpret from a threat to a challenge
The difference between the threat response and the challenge response lies in our estimation of our ability to meet the situation that faces us. When we’re fearing for our life, our body does the sensible thing: it goes into defensive mode and sends out hormones that cause a lot of changes; one of the most important is that it constricts blood vessels around our heart, because it might reduce blood loss in the event of severe injury. When we’re not in fear, different hormones cause the blood vessels to relax, which allows for greater blood flow and more energy to rise to the challenge and drives better performance, not to mention being better for us in the long run.
Evoking the challenge response does not reduce stress, but it does make the stress work in our favor. In studies, it has been shown that simply informing people that stress can help them perform better, can lead to improved performance on standardized tests, for example. One reason may be that the threat response narrows our attention and places greater focus on signs that things are going badly, but the challenge response opens our attention to more positive possibilities and opportunities. In numerous studies, those primed to generating a challenge response through prior education led to better performance. Even better, the benefits tend to last far beyond the initial priming.
So, evoking the challenge response will help you perform better, because you turn fear into excitement. But there’s a catch: physically, they both feel the same. Scared or excited, you’re still going to get the dry mouth and queasy stomach, so you need to consciously remind yourself that you’re excited. One study showed that people who told themselves they were excited felt better able to handle the pressure of a speech, but crucially, the audience perceived them as being more confident and competent. The reminder becomes the reality.
Embrace the nerves
The most important thing to keep in mind is that the stress response is designed to help you. We’ve all heard stories of people who’ve lifted cars off loved ones when under stress. But it helps beyond those life threatening situations. McGonigal cites numerous studies that show how stress can actually improve performance in such areas as taking tests and of course delivering speeches.
In fact, if you try too hard to relax, it can actually harm your performance, because stress can improve your focus and your excitement level. Many times when I’ve been totally at ease, I’ve delivered a flat performance.
Once I saw stress as positive, I came to welcome and embrace it. I used to think: “Wow, I’m really nervous; does that mean I might bomb?” Now, whenever the nerves act up, I always tell myself: “Alright, here it comes, right on schedule. Alright, I’m amped up so I know this is going to be a great performance.”
What’s the best way to defeat an enemy? Turn him into a friend. Next time you’re nervous before a speech, be thankful that you’re not alone. Your friend is here to help.
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I know you’re not going to listen as well as you should to this podcast.
That’s because none of us listens as well as we could and should. I put listening in the category of exercise and healthy diet. Everyone knows how important it is, everyone knows generally how to do it properly, everyone knows they can do better, but how many work at it systematically? Do you?
I always start my classes with a listening test, which I also do in this episode. It’s very simple, but only 10-20% of people get it right the first time.
Now think about this: you knew you were going to be tested, you understood everything I said, you listened carefully, and still you probably got it wrong. And you’re probably a better than average listener, simply because you take the time to listen to podcasts all the way through!
You’ve probably heard most of this before, so why should you be listening to this podcast? Listening is one of the most important things you do in your work, and if it’s that hard even when you’re trying, imagine how much communication effectiveness you leave on the table.
So what? What does it cost your company, or society in general? What does it cost you?
Poor listening causes errors, frustration, miscommunication and many other forms of communication waste. On the plus side, there are benefits to improving your listening skills:
- The most obvious is that you will learn more. Besides taking in a higher percentage of what people tell you, you will also get them to open up more.
- You will become more popular and better liked, because people love to be heard.
- Want to be charismatic? Listen more. The whole idea of presence is that you are fully present.
So, what can we do to make ourselves better listeners? The first thing we need is a better understanding of why we’re so bad at it, first in general and then in particular circumstances.
What are the causes of poor listening?
Let’s look at some of the reasons that keep you from being a better listener.
You’ve lost the habit of full attention. As far as general listening skills, it’s not all your fault. There is so much that is clamoring for your attention that it’s hard to devote our full attention on something for very long—we might miss something important! Linda Stone calls it continuous partial attention. Our minds are a bit like that guy you talk to at a party who is constantly looking around to see if there’s someone more important or interesting that he can talk to, especially on your phone.
You think too fast—but not as fast as you think. The second problem is that you can process thoughts and ideas in your mind much faster than a person can talk. The average American English speaker produces 125 words a minute while the listener processes words at about 500 wpm, or four times as fast. That’s why you’re confident that you can multitask by half-listening to what the other person is saying and still carry on another conversation in your own head, such as what you’re going to do for lunch. The problem is that while you’re listening to yourself you can easily miss an unexpected turn in the conversation.
You think too much of yourself. You already know more about the topic than the other person, so what could you possibly learn from them? You may not particularly feel much like listening to the other person. You already know more than they do, you can’t learn from them, or maybe you don’t like them much.
You’re trying too hard. That’s right, sometimes it’s an excess rather than a lack of effort. You may not care about what’s important to them, but you know you need to listen to get what you’re after, so you listen selectively or simply to rebut what they’re saying rather than to understand. You’re listening so hard for what you think you need, that you may miss other nuggets, as our first exercise proved.
How to Improve Your Listening Effectiveness
Listening Attitude
One of the surest ways to improve your listening is to adjust your attitude. That’s because you already know how to employ the skills of listening, and you can usually listen very effectively when we have the right motivation.
Humility. Humility includes knowing that you can always learn something from every single person you talk to. It also means admitting when you don’t know something and being willing to ask “stupid” questions.
Acceptance. You don’t have to agree with what the other person is saying, but you have to accept their right to their point of view. When someone disagrees with us, our knee-jerk response is to reject it. What if we responded with curiosity instead, and tried to figure out why they think differently from us? We might learn something, and we would certainly foster a much more cooperative atmosphere.
Responsibility. Take responsibility for both sides of the conversation—at least 51%. What this means, is that you shouldn’t assume that you received the message or the meaning that they intended. You can ask them to clarify, or confirm what you think they meant.
Pump Some AIR into your listening
AIR stand for attention, interpretation, and response:
Attention is both physical and mental. Physically paying attention is one of the easiest things you can do to make an immediate improvement. You already know how to do it; simply face the other person squarely, look at them, and nod occasionally (at the right times, of course!). Also, get rid of distractions; if you have a screen anywhere within your field of view, you’re in trouble. Act interested and you are more likely to be interested.
The mental part of paying attention is the real challenge, especially when you don’t see value in what the other is saying. The best hack I’ve found to do this is to assume you are going to have to report the conversation to someone else; it almost magically tunes your internal dialogue to what the other person is saying, so your thinking is helping rather than distracting.
Interpretation is where the 51+% rule comes in. You need to take responsibility for understanding the other person’s intended meaning. Try to figure out the main point or intent of their conversation, and listen for the structure of their logic.
Response is critical because you can be the best listener in the world and it won’t make a bit of difference to the other person if you don’t show them you’re listening. The lowest level of responsiveness is what’s called following skills, such as nodding your head and saying uh huh once in a while. The next level above that is reflecting skills, where you give back what you’re hearing, whether repeating or paraphrasing. But the highest level is giving them the respect of showing how what they said has affected your thinking.
