#580： Why People Do (Or Don't) Listen to You
Episode Stats
Summary
Steve Martin, co-author of the new book, Messengers: Who We Listen To, Who We Don t, and Why, joins me to talk about the role of the messenger and why it matters so much.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
00:00:11.160
Some cultural observers have posited that we're moving from an information economy to a reputation
00:00:15.100
economy. There's so much information to sort through that figuring out which bits to pay
00:00:18.840
attention to has come to increasingly rely on what we think of the person delivering them.
00:00:22.560
We privilege the messenger over the message. But how exactly do we decide which messengers
00:00:26.800
to listen to or not? What draws us to particular messengers and causes us to tune out others?
00:00:31.100
My guest has spent his career researching, lecturing, and writing about the answers to
00:00:34.660
these questions and he shares his insights in a new book. His name is Steve Martin and he's the
00:00:38.300
author of Messengers, Who We Listen To, Who We Don't, and Why. In the first half of our conversation,
00:00:42.520
we unpack why it is that the messenger matters so much and how people can manipulate these factors
00:00:46.840
in unethical ways to peddle messages and influence that may not be credible. We then shift into how
00:00:51.340
you can also leverage these neutral tools and ethical ways to make yourself more persuasive
00:00:55.060
and ensure your ideas get heard. Steve explains that there are two types of persuasive messengers,
00:00:58.920
hard and soft, and walks us through the qualities embodied by each. We discuss the different ways
00:01:02.880
a person can become an effective hard messenger, including competence, dominance, and attractiveness,
00:01:07.160
and what makes a soft messenger persuasive, including warmth, vulnerability, and charisma,
00:01:11.160
the latter of which incorporates a trait you may not have previously associated with being
00:01:15.280
charismatic. Check that out. We end our conversation discussing when you should use a hard versus
00:01:19.560
soft approach as you seek to lead and share your message. After the show's over, check out our show notes
00:01:23.580
at aom.is slash messengers. Well, Steve Martin, welcome to the show.
00:01:38.180
Well, thank you very much indeed for inviting me on, Brett.
00:01:40.840
So you are a co-author of a book called Messengers, Who We Listen To, Who We Don't, and Why. Now,
00:01:46.900
we often think that, I think people typically think that we, a message is, if a message is truthful,
00:01:52.220
it's written persuasively, that's enough. But you and your co-author have done a lot of research and
00:01:58.340
highlight a lot of research in the book, that's not typically the case. The person delivering the
00:02:02.980
message has a big impact on whether someone believes it or not. So let's start off with this.
00:02:07.880
Let's start with some examples of true messengers that were ignored because they were given by a
00:02:14.420
not-so-great messenger for that situation. They're basically like Cassandra from Greek myths.
00:02:19.660
Indeed. Yeah. There are lots of examples of what we call the Cassandra complex. I thought two would
00:02:26.840
be really interesting to talk about. So the first is a chap called Michael Burry. He was a Stanford
00:02:33.020
trained MD and then subsequently left medicine and started his own investment fund. And what was
00:02:40.200
interesting about Michael Burry is he was one of the very first people to recognize the fragile state
00:02:46.700
of the mortgage situation in the US. He was one of the early folks who recognized that there could be
00:02:54.060
a financial disaster in the offing and started to bet against and short subprime mortgages. He even
00:03:02.160
had to invent a product to do it because there was no way that you could short a subprime mortgage at
00:03:07.020
the time. But the challenge that Burry had was that no one really listened to him. He actually was a
00:03:13.780
a pretty awkward communicator, didn't actually have the Windsor knotted ties and the suits that you'd
00:03:20.480
expect from the Wall Street financiers, and so was largely ridiculed and ignored. Yet the information
00:03:27.520
he had was highly predictive of what was actually going to happen. He made hundreds of millions of
00:03:31.900
dollars. It was just the case that he was the wrong messenger. He had the right content. He had the
00:03:37.440
right well-considered evidence, but no one really was listening to him. It was actually someone else
00:03:43.400
from Deutsche Bank who took Burry's information, presented it largely as his own, and made fortunes
00:03:49.960
himself. So there's one example of what we call this Cassandra complex. But I think there's an
00:03:56.180
example that's much, much closer to home, Brett, which is ourselves. All of us, I'm sure, have had
00:04:02.140
an experience, maybe at work, where you have an idea or an opinion you want to share with a colleague or
00:04:07.420
you know, a few people in a meeting, and they look at you in that odd way and they say, no, Brett, no,
00:04:12.520
no, that's not a good idea. I really don't think that we should be doing that. And then a couple of
00:04:17.240
days later, maybe a couple of weeks later, someone else comes along with the exact same idea that we
00:04:22.620
had. And all of a sudden, that idea that we had that was roundly rejected is suddenly being
00:04:29.040
enthusiastically embraced when someone else says it. So that's what we're talking about when we're
00:04:33.840
talking about these messenger effects. Sometimes it's not enough just to have a persuasive or a
00:04:38.820
well-evidenced or a truthful appeal or proposal to people. Sometimes it's the person that's delivering
00:04:45.140
the message that matters more. What goes on in our brain? Like, why does our brain link the message
00:04:50.340
with the messenger? Yeah, it's a really good question. And I think part of the reason is the
00:04:57.960
world that we live in today. It's really hard and tough to kind of compute ourselves whether
00:05:05.400
a message and the information that's being conveyed is worthy of our attention. You know,
00:05:10.940
there's so many things that are vying for our attention. You know, who would make a good president?
00:05:15.820
You know, should we send our kids to this school? What's a good regime and workout for me? These
00:05:20.120
different kinds of things. And so a quick way in which we can navigate our way through this
00:05:24.640
information overloaded world is to largely ignore what's being said and rather base our judgments on
00:05:31.200
who is saying it. You know, so if a friend of ours says, you know, this is a good idea because they're
00:05:36.620
a friend, we kind of assume often wrongly that they have good information and good knowledge that can
00:05:42.100
advise us. So when a messenger communicates a message, that association becomes really interesting.
00:05:48.720
It's also interesting where that phrase don't shoot the messenger comes from. So it works in both ways.
00:05:52.860
It can work for good and it not so good. You know, sometimes if we have to deliver bad news on
00:05:57.700
behalf of someone, we become associated with that bad news as well. So it's kind of one of those quirks
00:06:02.880
of our conditioning and the way in which we take on board information. We link messenger to message,
00:06:09.720
even in times where there is no logical or rational link that should be there. But it's just an easy,
00:06:16.780
quick way to determine what we should pay attention to.
00:06:19.680
Yeah. This reminded me of the communications expert, the media theorist, Marshall McLuhan,
00:06:25.200
where he said the medium is the message, right?
00:06:27.680
Yeah. The Canadian philosopher guy. Yeah. And I think what Joe Marks, my co-author and I
00:06:33.420
are probably claiming here is that there's probably a contemporary update to that idea of the medium is
00:06:40.860
the message. It still is, of course, but we're going to go one stage further and actually say,
00:06:45.500
you know what, Brett, these days, the messenger is the message. You know, every day the news seems to
00:06:53.320
serve up another headline where someone can say something and just because of who they are,
00:06:58.600
it gets believed or it gets rejected, particularly in this kind of divisive world that we live in now.
00:07:03.820
So yeah, we've updated a more contemporary take, I think, on that 1950s, 1960s idea of the medium is
00:07:12.220
the message is this idea that the messenger is the message.
00:07:16.520
So you and your co-author, Joe Marks, you argue that there are two broad categories of messengers.
00:07:21.500
There's hard messengers and soft messengers, and we'll get into details about both, but
00:07:25.500
big picture overview of these two categories of messengers. What's a hard messenger like,
00:07:29.800
and what's a soft messenger like? Yeah, I think the way to differentiate between hard and soft is
00:07:34.900
to think about hard messengers are the types of communicators that are heard because they are
00:07:41.600
seen to have some sort of status over the audience they're communicating with. Whereas in contrast,
00:07:48.520
the soft messenger has a connectedness with the audience they're communicating with. So the hard
00:07:54.220
messenger seeks to get ahead of their audience, whereas the soft messenger, you know, strives to
00:08:00.700
get along with their audience. So that's how we'd kind of differentiate the two. One wants to get
00:08:05.120
ahead, the other wants to get along. All right. So let's talk about hard messengers. And like you
00:08:09.280
said, they're all about status, but there are different ways to show status. And the first one
00:08:13.520
you all talk about is fame and money, socioeconomic status. So can you walk us through some of the
00:08:19.080
experiments that you all found that highlight the fact that we're more likely to believe people
00:08:24.260
or trust them if they look rich and famous? Because I think a lot of people hear that like,
00:08:28.180
no, yeah, I don't, that's not important to me. I'm a democratic person. That doesn't matter.
00:08:33.120
But you've found research that says that's not so. Yeah. I mean, it's one of those things that we'd
00:08:38.740
like to think that we're not influenced by these on the surface types of signals of fame and fortune
00:08:43.940
and status and position, but we are, you know, they're fundamental to our psychology. You know,
00:08:48.740
one of my favorite examples that we unearthed is a, it's an old one. It's back to the sixties,
00:08:53.920
a couple of California based researchers did this experiment in Palo Alto in Northern California,
00:09:00.140
where they, they drove different cars up to junctions to stop signs. And they, they arranged the
00:09:06.860
timing and the arrival of the, of their car, the junction, just as the light went to red. So they
00:09:12.060
were first in the stop line. And then when the lights turned green, and at this point, a queue
00:09:17.620
had, or a line of cars had formed behind them, they deliberately didn't pull off. And they had
00:09:23.960
researchers in the backs of the car with stopwatches, Brett, and they were timing how long it took the
00:09:29.600
car behind to honk the horn and say, Hey, will you get a move on? But what they did is they drove
00:09:35.060
different cars. And so what they found was that people's likelihood to honk at the car in front was not
00:09:40.760
necessarily a signal of their impatience, but rather a sign of how prestigious the car they
00:09:46.740
were driving was. So, and what was interesting was, you know, when they asked people in advance,
00:09:50.960
they say, you know, would you be more likely to honk a horn at a low status car than say a high
00:09:55.520
status, shiny polished sedan? You know, people were like, no, in fact, actually I'm probably more
00:10:00.180
likely to honk at that high status car. But in reality, the exact opposite was true. People were
00:10:05.480
much less likely to honk quickly at a high status car. Whereas if they were being held up by a low
00:10:11.420
status car, they were straight on that horn, you know, get out of my way. Now that might be a study
00:10:15.920
from like the 1960s, but it's been replicated in fact, you know, in countries around the world. And we
00:10:21.160
find that that kind of seduction of a high status or a fame or rich cue can be incredibly attention
00:10:29.660
grabbing to us. And once we see that, it can lead us to start to make decisions about, you know,
00:10:33.820
the validity of what that person's circumstances are, what they're saying, such that we may listen
00:10:38.740
to them more likely, be more likely rather to listen to them in those instances. So there's
00:10:42.480
an example of just how a single, you know, the car someone drives communicates a lot about who they
00:10:49.220
are. And we kind of, you know, take on board that information and make all sorts of various
00:10:54.240
inferences and judgments about them as a result.
00:10:56.740
Yeah. I think you did another experiment too, where there was people who were doing a survey
00:11:00.980
and one time they like, they were just wearing like a plain polo shirt, but the next time they
00:11:05.000
wore a polo shirt with like the Lacoste brand alligator. And those guys got more responses.
00:11:10.900
Like people responded to them more just with that alligator.
00:11:14.240
Exactly. And in fact, actually there's, there's other study, you're exactly right about that.
00:11:17.760
There's other studies that actually show even people who really shouldn't have that need to
00:11:23.820
want to associate with status because of their, their income can be seduced by this as well.
00:11:30.000
There was a study where in Bolivia, you know, families living on the breadline, literally
00:11:35.020
a dollar or two a day were offered the opportunity to use some of their money to buy
00:11:39.860
an aftershave. In fact, in fact, in each case, the aftershave was always the same in the same
00:11:44.440
bottle. It's just that some bottles had the Calvin Klein brand insignia on the bottle and
00:11:50.060
others didn't. And, and even the poorest families were willing to pay a little bit more to kind
00:11:55.120
of be connected to that status in that instance.
00:11:58.180
Is it just the appearance of fame and money? I mean, can you actually be broken and not,
00:12:02.520
you know, not famous, but as long as you look great and famous people are going to be more
00:12:08.040
Well, I think it's the case, Brett, that increasingly in this, you know, fast paced,
00:12:14.040
often kind of surface level type of, you know, world that we actually live in looking and sounding
00:12:21.100
right increasingly seems to be as important as actually being right. And so sometimes this
00:12:27.220
queue of fame leads people in the wrong direction. You know, you know, we found, for example,
00:12:32.420
a couple of years ago in China, there was a situation where a famous pop star announced
00:12:38.900
on WhatsApp to their millions of followers, that those people that had the flu shot to
00:12:45.820
protect them against influenza were actually 90% more likely to actually catch the flu.
00:12:50.200
Now that's against all good medical evidence and research. Yet the fact that they were famous,
00:12:57.200
they had notoriety, they were heard and it caused huge problems with the health officials who were
00:13:03.200
kind of scrambling to contain the impact of this message. So sometimes, you know, the message
00:13:08.160
doesn't necessarily have to have any merit or even have any basis in evidence or truth.
00:13:13.040
If it comes from someone that we see has some form of status and we are alert to that status,
00:13:18.060
we can sometimes find ourselves being, you know, essentially being sucked into what they have
00:13:22.160
to say, regardless of the wisdom of what's being said.
00:13:25.140
I'm curious, like what's going on? Like, why do we give credence to people with money and fame? Is it,
00:13:31.120
is it the idea is like, well, if they're famous and rich, they must be smart or competent. So we're
00:13:36.120
going to listen to that person. Is that what's going on in our brain?
00:13:38.900
Yeah, I think it is. I mean, essentially, I mean, we all have, I think this ideal where we live in a
00:13:45.020
just world where those people that rise through the ranks that, you know, become the CEO, become the
00:13:50.840
captain of the sports team, become, you know, rich, famous, well-recognized in society. They must have
00:13:57.200
some skills, some attributes about them that have allowed them to get to that lofty position.
00:14:01.440
And so it does have an influence over us. I mean, one of the classic example, I think,
00:14:06.060
is when we meet someone for the first time, we're, you know, almost invariably, we're likely to inquire
00:14:10.940
what they do, you know? So, hey, nice to meet you, Brett. What is it you do? What we're actually
00:14:15.380
looking for there is some sort of evidence of where do you sit on that social hierarchy compared to me?
00:14:22.120
So it is, you know, we live in this, you know, what we claim to be a more egalitarian society now,
00:14:28.680
but these kind of like status cues, they still seem to kind of like capture our attention and
00:14:33.100
be important to us. Are there instances where fame and money can actually make you less believable
00:14:37.700
where people say, well, yeah, I'm not going to believe you because you've got lots of,
00:14:41.080
you've got lots of money and you're, you're famous. Yeah. It's an interesting one. I think,
00:14:46.900
yeah, there is some evidence now that suggests that, um, when brands and products use,
00:14:52.940
you know, famous people, celebrities to endorse their products, that's becoming less effective
00:15:00.780
than perhaps 10, 20, 30 years ago. But that's not to say that we're still not kind of influenced
00:15:08.000
and seduced by the celebrity endorsement. It's just that we're less likely to be persuaded when
00:15:12.560
a celebrity is, you know, overtly eulogizing about a product, but we're still, you know, very much
00:15:21.080
influenced when we see a celebrity using a product. So, you know, no surprise that a lot of
00:15:25.960
ads, a lot of the influencer kind of strategies these days aren't celebrities that are saying,
00:15:31.920
use this product because of X, Y, and Z. Instead, what they're doing is they're being photographed,
00:15:36.680
you know, enjoying the product or being associated with it. So they're, they're rather than endorsing
00:15:41.820
the product, they're, they're kind of using the product. So that's where I see that instance where
00:15:46.200
perhaps being rich and famous and celebrity might have less of an effect.
00:15:50.220
So let's talk about another way we gain status, which is competence. So the way you determine
00:15:54.500
competence or the way we think we determine competence is like, well, you look at someone,
00:15:57.760
you look at their actions, are they effective? Do they get things done? But you all highlight
00:16:02.280
research that that's not the only way we determine competence. We can actually, we, we try to determine
00:16:06.820
competence just by looking at somebody's face and the way they carry themselves.
00:16:10.280
Yes. Competence has a face. It's typically squarer rather than rounder, more mature looking,
00:16:16.100
eyes closer together. You know, even organizations actually use these signals to position their
00:16:22.260
competence. If you've ever wondered, if you've ever gone into like a reception area of a major firm and
00:16:26.800
you see all those clocks, you know, up on the wall in the reception area, telling the time in different
00:16:31.740
cities around the world. I guess if you walk into an office in New York, you probably don't need to
00:16:36.640
know what the time is in Shanghai or Sydney or London. You're probably not thinking that. So
00:16:40.620
why do they put the clocks there? And it's a sign of competence. It's actually saying, look,
00:16:44.420
we've got global presence. You know, we work around the world. We have, you know, this worldwide skill.
00:16:50.340
So in the same way as, you know, a doctor might wear a white coat, a nurse might put a stethoscope
00:16:55.880
around his or her shoulders to convey their expertise, organizations do it as well. And, you know,
00:17:02.080
in this instance, we're looking for some instrumental value. Is there some transferable
00:17:07.640
knowledge that that person or organization has that will be helpful to me? And if we see those
00:17:12.860
cues, the research shows that in a lot of circumstances and contexts, we'll be more likely
00:17:17.720
to listen to them. Yeah. That idea of the white doctor coat, like advertisers understand that.
00:17:22.200
So whenever they do, there's an advertising for medicine or some kind of health product,
00:17:26.260
they'll put an actor who's not a doctor in a white coat and you went, oh yeah, I believe this guy
00:17:31.140
because it looks like a doctor. Yeah. In fact, I've even seen ads where the actor actually says,
00:17:36.780
I'm not a doctor, but I still think you should use this product. And the fact that they're wearing
00:17:42.960
the white coat, they have the stethoscope, the pens in their breast pocket. Yeah. All those traps,
00:17:48.120
those trappings of competence is what we call those. And another thing that people,
00:17:53.460
we look to determine competence is just confidence. So I think you highlighted research where people in
00:17:58.760
groups, whenever they see someone who's like very confident and outspoken about something,
00:18:03.520
they'll deem that guy, like that guy knows what he's talking about, even though he might not really
00:18:08.420
know what he's talking about. Yeah. That's the classic confidence trick, isn't it? And it kind of
00:18:14.160
makes sense in one direction if you think about it, Brett, because if someone has true competence and
00:18:20.360
expertise, they've studied for many years, they've got years of experience of a particular
00:18:26.480
knowledge of a product or an industry or some sort of science, it's kind of unsurprising that they
00:18:34.160
would communicate confidently about that because they've earned the right to. But it goes in the
00:18:41.100
other direction as well. So we can very easily infer someone's competence by how confidently they talk
00:18:48.860
about something, even if actually they know squat about the subject. So that's the classic confidence
00:18:54.580
trickster. What's being seductive in that instance is their ability to convey some confidence, some
00:19:03.500
assuredness of what they're actually saying, even though what they might be talking about is just
00:19:07.540
complete rot. Well, one thing I've noticed in my own life is that the people who are actually
00:19:13.420
really competent actually aren't very outspoken. And they actually couch their statements with,
00:19:19.800
and they kind of hedge it a bit. They're like, well, I suppose this, but like the person who doesn't
00:19:24.300
know, like they're suffering from that Dunning-Kruger effect where they just, they don't realize they
00:19:29.060
don't know anything, but they're very confident that they know something.
00:19:33.600
Yeah. I think that's a really interesting insight because I guess in a way, if you are a true expert,
00:19:40.120
you probably are, you know, pretty aware of the, perhaps that might only be small areas of your
00:19:46.480
knowledge that are missing, or you are uncertain about, you know, particular things.
00:19:51.060
But there's, there's research actually that shows that if someone is seen as an expert and they
00:19:56.380
communicate, you know, a little bit of uncertainty, you know, in response to maybe a question they've
00:20:01.520
asked, or maybe there isn't research to support an answer, they become even more expert in the eyes
00:20:08.480
of the audience. Whereas if you've got an unexpert, you know, or, or, or an inexperienced communicator in
00:20:15.360
that instance, that's just basically confident, they're probably less likely to convey their,
00:20:19.660
you know, I'm not really sure about this because, you know, they, they, they're primarily trading on
00:20:24.600
that confidence, that ability to, yes, I know what I'm talking about. So it's got the uncertain
00:20:31.000
expert in a lot of contexts seems to be the most compelling and persuasive communicator.
00:20:37.020
And I think what happens is it takes a while for that to shake out. So I think with those studies
00:20:40.640
that we talked about, the person who's really confident in the beginning usually is determined
00:20:44.040
to be the expert and the leader. But then like after a while, people are asked again,
00:20:49.420
what do you think about this guy? And like, that guy's an idiot. Like people finally figure out he
00:20:53.260
does actually doesn't know anything and they'll assign X. So, yeah. So that's the trick. So if
00:20:58.140
someone's acting really overly confident when you first meet them, watch out paid, doesn't mean you
00:21:03.920
have to disregard them, maybe pay attention to see if their, their actions back up their words.
00:21:08.280
Yeah, I think so. And be alert to other people in the room that have that kind of,
00:21:13.740
you know, they, they might seem quiet. They might seem timid, but actually what they might be doing
00:21:19.040
is just sitting back and watching what's going on and thinking, actually this, this person really
00:21:22.900
doesn't know what they're talking about, but I'm just going to let them do their thing. And I'm just
00:21:26.260
going to sit here and see how it unfolds. So sometimes, you know, be alert also to the quiet person
00:21:31.160
in the room who might actually turn out to be the most accomplished and the most established in terms of,
00:21:36.720
you know, what they're talking about. Well, it's quite this practical implication you talked about
00:21:40.720
at the beginning of the, our conversation where, you know, about the idea you have an idea for
00:21:45.360
something at your work, you say it, it gets disregarded. Someone else say it says it, people
00:21:50.720
listen to it. I mean, you can be competent at something, but if other people don't know you're
00:21:55.720
competent, then like all your competencies, like it doesn't mean anything. So the trick is that you have
00:22:01.460
to be able to promote yourself, let people know that you're competent, but you don't want to do it in a
00:22:05.820
way where it's off-putting, right? Or people are just like, that guy's a blowhard. So here's like,
00:22:10.680
how do you, like, what does the research say on how you can promote yourself? And this is becoming
00:22:15.920
more important in our economy where people have to promote themselves. They have to, you're sort of
00:22:21.080
becoming your own, your own agent. How do you promote yourself without turning people off?
00:22:26.140
Exactly. And, and actually we've done a study that looks at this and it turns out that if you can
00:22:32.320
arrange for someone else to introduce or talk about your expertise before you make a recommendation
00:22:38.780
or give someone some advice, that same recommendation or advice becomes elevated in terms of its
00:22:45.440
persuasiveness, its appeal. And we actually did this experiment, Brett, with, with realtors who would
00:22:52.000
have, you know, customers or potential clients call their office, you know, they're interested in selling
00:22:57.360
their house or maybe renting a property. And, you know, a receptionist would answer the phone
00:23:01.540
and they route the call through to the realtor and say, right, well, let me put you through to
00:23:06.160
Brett who can help with your inquiry. And we said, well, look, what would happen if instead of just
00:23:10.200
saying, I'll put you through to the realtor before you connected the call, you gave that potential
00:23:16.540
client a piece of information, genuine information that conveyed their expertise. So something like,
00:23:22.820
well, look, instead of saying, I'll put you through to Brett, who's our head of sales,
00:23:25.480
you instead said, well, let me put you through to Brett, who's not just our head of sales. He's been
00:23:29.420
doing this job for 15 years. And, you know, he's a member of the realtor guild of Oklahoma. He's,
00:23:35.380
you know, recently sold out on that big property down on the waterfront. He is probably the best
00:23:40.380
person in our office today to give you some useful information. And they do that just before they put
00:23:47.460
the call through. Suddenly you don't have to do that anymore. You know, when you're talking to a
00:23:53.680
potential client, you know, the last thing you want to be doing is to say, well, before I make
00:23:57.780
a recommendation to you, let me tell you about how wonderful and brilliant and experienced I am,
00:24:01.600
because immediately, as you rightly suggested a few moments ago, that wall goes up between you.
00:24:06.520
But if someone else does it, I think that's a really important thing. We actually increase the
00:24:12.280
number of valuation appointments by 20%, the number of contracts signed by 15%, just by doing that,
00:24:17.980
it didn't cost any money. And I think there's a lesson here, not just for ourselves, but in terms
00:24:22.980
of, you know, increasing our own perceived expertise and competence. But if we're managing
00:24:28.140
people, you know, I think it's a good idea for leaders, supervisors to, you know, when their teams
00:24:33.860
are communicating to others, potential clients, you know, and colleagues to kind of boost their
00:24:39.700
competence by talking about how great they are, the kind of experience they have, the great projects
00:24:45.300
they've actually delivered on. And it does seem to me that there's two advantages. Not only do you
00:24:49.060
kind of raise that perceived competence genuinely, but you're giving people kind of aspirations and
00:24:54.960
labels to live up to. So I think there's, there's, there's a lot of merit, I think, in working out
00:25:01.040
these small, simple, costless ways to introduce either our own expertise or introduce, you know,
00:25:06.920
our colleagues' expertise. Everybody wins in that instance.
00:25:10.280
So yeah, I think that's great. I love that. So there's two things there. Find someone who can be an
00:25:13.380
advocate for you, but then also just advocate for, advocate for other people. If you know someone
00:25:17.300
who's really competent, let other people know, and that'll boost your status. Cause people are like,
00:25:22.060
Hey, you're sharing so useful information with me. And the other person will probably appreciate that
00:25:26.220
you, you know, you promoted them. Yeah. And what we're finding great is that's particularly useful
00:25:32.380
in, you know, those situations sometimes where you work and you're in a meeting, there's like a dozen
00:25:35.900
people in the room and someone starts the meeting by saying, well, let's go around the room and
00:25:39.460
introduce ourselves, shall we? I mean, it's never a good start for a meeting because
00:25:43.360
no one that's, you know, a reasonably normal human being is going to want to stand up and
00:25:48.580
talk about how brilliant they are in front of a room full of strangers. So invariably,
00:25:52.100
they're just going to like give their, their name and their job title. So it doesn't really
00:25:56.600
promote useful exchanges of information. So it's, it's a poor start to a meeting in that regard,
00:26:01.460
but it's, it's actually a ridiculous start to a meeting anyway, because no one's listening to
00:26:05.000
what people are saying, because the moment, you know, it's your turn to speak, you're thinking,
00:26:08.260
oh geez, what am I about to say about myself? So no one's listening to what's being said
00:26:11.960
anyway. So what we found is, is that the optimal way to start a meeting is the most senior person
00:26:17.520
or whoever called the meeting should be responsible for introducing everyone and the reason why they're
00:26:22.520
in the room. And it neatly dodges that kind of uncertain, uncomfortable situation of let's go
00:26:28.900
around the room and introduce ourselves. That's what we're finding is the, probably the optimal way
00:26:34.740
So let's talk about another way we gain status and that's dominance. So what are the common ways that
00:26:42.220
Yeah. So this idea of dominance is, you know, very heavily rooted in the kind of evolutionary type of,
00:26:49.360
of, of conduct. You know, there, there are certain people and we all know who they are,
00:26:53.340
who just, you know, they, they seem to kind of treat life as a competition and their goal is to win
00:27:00.200
at all costs to the victor goes the spoils. And so they, they are often, you know, the way they come
00:27:06.560
into the room, they'll, they'll kind of expand themselves into the space. They'll, you know,
00:27:11.300
they'll, they'll, they'll talk loudly. Often they have deeper voices. They project themselves.
00:27:17.080
Essentially what they're trying to do and attempt to do there is to say, look, I am the,
00:27:21.520
I'm the dominant one here. You know, I'm the, I'm the alpha in this instance. And you'd think that
00:27:28.140
you kind of, we're over that now. You know, it's, it's not like we have fights now to determine,
00:27:32.780
you know, who's the president or who's the CEO. It's not like we, days when we used to live in
00:27:37.320
the caves and things, but those kind of cues of dominance are still there. They're, they're,
00:27:42.880
they're still attractive to us, Brett. And so often when we see in certain circumstances,
00:27:47.220
if we see that someone has, you know, a dispositionally dominant personality,
00:27:51.900
we can under certain circumstances and contexts be more orientated to what they have to say and,
00:27:58.080
and, and listen to them. And so, you know, you'd think in this kind of modern day society,
00:28:03.560
we wouldn't be relying so much on those things, but you know, some of the studies actually find
00:28:08.060
that, you know, children as young as 10 months old. So, you know, barely able to speak are able
00:28:13.600
to recognize cues of dominant characters and, and, and using eye gaze technology. So basically how long
00:28:18.920
they look at a screen, they're able to determine if you show them a little cartoon where one character
00:28:25.060
is more dominant than the other, they, they express surprise if the, if the underdog wins in,
00:28:30.200
in, in, in certain conflicts. So it's, it's deeply rooted in all of us.
00:28:34.640
We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.
00:28:37.500
And now back to the show. And what are the situations where we have a tendency to look
00:28:42.440
towards dominance to, you know, establish trust in somebody?
00:28:47.040
Yeah, I think. So one big context is when we're feeling anxious or uncertain,
00:28:53.180
or there's some fear that we have in, in those circumstances, we are especially inclined to
00:29:01.520
turn towards a dominant type of communicator rather than a softer, more connected one,
00:29:07.740
because essentially what we're looking for, there is some sort of assurance and a way out.
00:29:12.320
And actually it's, it's, it's been shown actually in research. When you look at, for example,
00:29:17.140
the recruitment boards of large organizations, you know, if a company is actually in trouble,
00:29:24.520
if the share price, the stock price isn't performing particularly well, if there are
00:29:28.180
low levels of psychological safety in the organization, if there's kind of a, you know,
00:29:33.500
not a good clear strategy and goal or direction the organization is working toward, then they're much,
00:29:41.540
much more likely to appoint a dominant character to the board. Whereas in contrast, if, if that same
00:29:48.400
company is doing well, you know, profits are doing well, there's good psychological safety across the
00:29:53.280
organization, there's a clear strategy, you know, they're much less likely in those instances to
00:29:58.940
appoint a dominant executive or board member, much, much more likely to, you know, appoint an emotionally
00:30:05.920
intelligent, connected, warmer CEO or C-level exec in those instances. And so, and I think there's a
00:30:13.600
lot of dominant, dispositionally dominant communicators out in the world that recognize this. So no surprise
00:30:19.220
that, you know, there are certain public figures who will hawk and provoke and spark fear and anxiety
00:30:29.280
in a community, knowing that their dispositionally dominant profile is perfect in that context. So
00:30:37.140
they're almost creating the fear, knowing that they are then the perfect messenger to kind of come in
00:30:41.200
and say, I'm ready to lead. I'm ready to save the day. So that's the typical context where we would
00:30:45.980
be especially inclined to look towards one of these dominant types of characters.
00:30:50.340
And are there downsides to dominance? I mean, I guess in some situations, okay, if you are in a
00:30:54.320
situation where you're like your company's against the, you know, it's going down the tubes,
00:30:57.580
countries at war, a dominant leader might come in handy, but are there downsides if they're like
00:31:02.820
too much dominance? Well, there can be. I mean, because of course, dominance comes at a cost and
00:31:08.500
what it comes and the cost of course, is that connectedness, that relationship. And so,
00:31:13.480
you know, in calm, assurer times, you know, when we look to perhaps a more favorable, connected,
00:31:19.720
benevolent type of messenger, suddenly that dominant character becomes, you know, irrelevant to us.
00:31:26.100
And so that, that disconnect from their worth, that's, that's the downside. They become pigeonholed
00:31:31.640
as the, you know, the kind of like the bullying bulldozer. And in that instance, you know, as a
00:31:36.720
result, you know, there's lots of different inferences we make about that. So we're less
00:31:40.580
likely to listen to them in calm, assurer times. So that's the, that's the primary, I think,
00:31:45.860
downside. They, they kind of pigeonhole themselves into, you know, a particular characteristic or
00:31:51.800
situation where they are wanted. But of course, as a result, they, they make themselves much more
00:31:57.740
irrelevant in a majority of other contexts. Someone who came to mind who was able to balance
00:32:03.580
dominance with connection was Winston Churchill. He was able to show that assertive bulldog side,
00:32:09.380
but also project warmth to citizens. Though even he, he was voted out of office after the war,
00:32:14.080
because even though he had both traits, he was most suited to being a wartime leader and people
00:32:19.180
wanted to move on from that time. I think there's a real skill and an elegance for, you know, the,
00:32:25.740
the really effective messenger communicator to be able to recognize when their, their dominant
00:32:33.020
characteristic is, is, is going to be desirable, but they also know when to turn it down and, and,
00:32:39.420
you know, you know, become more benevolent, come more connected, more warm in that instance.
00:32:45.440
And I think you're right. Churchill did that pretty well. I think Lyndon B. Johnson was a,
00:32:49.120
you know, an American president that, that also had a similar kind of profile. You know, he was,
00:32:53.520
he was, you know, I, I think notorious for giving certain members of, of, of the Congress and the
00:32:59.280
House of Representatives what was called the treatment, you know, where he'd literally go
00:33:02.280
right up and put his face directly in front of theirs, you know, such that you could hear,
00:33:07.140
you could hear him breathing, you could feel his breath. But in other instances, he was,
00:33:11.100
you know, an incredibly generous person who would reach out to certain people, want to kind of give
00:33:16.060
first to create those kind of reciprocal exchanges as well. So those communicators that are able to
00:33:21.080
kind of understand the balance of where, you know, it's good to be a hard dominant messenger and,
00:33:26.680
and also where it's actually probably going to be a negative impact or, or even actually
00:33:32.240
disruptive to them and to be able to balance the two. That's a great place to be if you can do that.
00:33:37.260
Well, so let's talk about the final way we gain status and, or can be a hard messenger.
00:33:40.420
That's through attractiveness. So what are the studies that show that someone's attractiveness
00:33:46.140
makes them more believable? Yeah. So I think, so a good one would be, there was a study that was done
00:33:51.920
a few years ago now in Italy where researchers applied on behalf of genuine job applicants
00:33:57.920
for somewhere in the order of about just 11,000 genuine job opportunities. They, they, they sent out
00:34:04.840
resumes to these companies and what they did is they attached to these resumes in certain circumstances,
00:34:13.560
a passport size photograph of the applicant. And, you know, as you can imagine, if you send out that
00:34:20.980
number of, of, of CVs, you know, about half of the applicants are going to be kind of above average
00:34:27.100
and attractiveness. And, you know, the other half are going to be, you know, below average. And they
00:34:31.840
measured the response rates from those organizations, who were they wanting to call in for, for an
00:34:38.260
interview. And there was a clear advantage for those that sent in their resumes with an attractive
00:34:45.080
photograph. Now holding constant the, the capability and the experience of the applicants as well. So it
00:34:50.100
wasn't that they were, you know, necessarily more experienced or they had better qualifications or
00:34:54.400
more skills that was largely, you know, constant across the, the applicants. It was just a measure of
00:35:00.340
their attractiveness. The unfortunate thing of course, is for those that were slightly below
00:35:04.680
average in attractiveness, they were much less likely to get called for an interview. And actually
00:35:08.720
in those circumstances, it was actually more beneficial for them to not put a photograph to
00:35:14.600
the applicant application rather in the first place. So there's an example, I think a really stark
00:35:18.860
example of how, you know, when we're assessing someone, we're thinking, okay, are they competent? Are they
00:35:23.760
good for this job? We're actually outsourcing that decision to something as simple as, do they look
00:35:28.600
attractive? So that was a really, you know, kind of eyebrow raising study that we saw a really large
00:35:34.740
scale example of how, you know, the luck that some people have in terms of their, you know, they've
00:35:40.500
been just genetically blessed at birth, the, the, the huge advantage that it can carry in life.
00:35:46.160
So what do you do? So what are the practical implications? What if you are a person who got the
00:35:50.080
short end of the handsome stick, are you like doomed to like never be a messenger who people listen to,
00:35:57.320
or are there things you can do to actually increase your attractiveness?
00:36:01.100
Well, I think there's, there are things you can do. I mean, you know, beyond, you know, what has
00:36:05.780
been, you know, gifted to us at birth, you know, we can, you know, can dress differently, can use
00:36:11.000
kind of cosmetics, makeup, these, these kinds of things. In fact, studies have actually shown that,
00:36:15.300
you know, food servers that wear red lipstick, for example, get more tips in that instance. So,
00:36:20.660
so there are some, you know, kind of surface things we can actually do. I guess the,
00:36:24.860
the important thing though here is, is that there are eight of these kind of messenger traits. So
00:36:29.400
just because you feel like you're lacking in one, that doesn't mean that the other seven
00:36:34.400
aren't available for you. You know, it might be that your competence or your, uh, your warmth or
00:36:40.880
your, your trustworthiness. I know we're going to talk about this, these other traits in a few
00:36:44.080
moments that might be more important for you to signal in that instance.
00:36:48.200
Well, let's move to some of these, the, to the warmth, the soft messenger traits,
00:36:51.180
and this is all about connection. So it's not about status, not people looking up to
00:36:56.020
you. It's about you connecting with people. And one trait that people look to for a soft
00:37:00.660
messenger is warmth. So what, what do you all mean? How do you define warmth?
00:37:05.620
Well, we define warmth in two ways. So one is that you're right. It's about connectedness.
00:37:10.560
The warm messenger essentially communicates their benevolence with an audience, whether that's
00:37:17.660
an individual that they're talking to or a group or a, you know, a whole room of people
00:37:21.940
that they're essentially saying, I have your interests at heart. I'm not trying to get
00:37:25.980
ahead of you. I'm trying to get along with you. And they do this by demonstrating positivity.
00:37:32.600
They, they do it by seeking out similarities that they may share with their audience. You know,
00:37:40.040
we're, we're, we're the same because we come from the, you know, a similar place or we have
00:37:44.420
similar experiences or we have same set of values. They, they're essentially, Brett,
00:37:49.620
communicating their benevolence and their connectedness with their audience before they
00:37:54.740
deliver a message. And, and that's what we define as the, as the warm messenger of that instance.
00:38:00.200
And they can be incredibly, incredibly persuasive. And the studies, for example, that actually show
00:38:06.660
that, you know, doctors, for example, that are treating patients that, that use a warm, connected,
00:38:12.740
caring tone of voice, are much less likely to get sued if they make a medical error than a doctor
00:38:22.220
that gives the exact same advice and counsel in a, in a harder, you know, more kind of technical
00:38:29.320
dominant kind of way. So that just that bedside manner in that instance can mean the difference
00:38:35.260
between getting sued or not. So that's, that's how crucial warmth is in this context of connecting
00:38:43.260
The idea of connecting through warmth. I mean, politicians take advantage of this. At least
00:38:47.060
you see this here in the States. I don't know what it's like in the United Kingdom, but like a
00:38:50.460
politician will come to Oklahoma and they'll try to find some connection they have to Oklahoma. It's
00:38:55.560
like, oh, well, my grandfather lived in Oklahoma. And you're like, oh yeah, I love this guy. Even
00:39:00.780
though he's never lived in Oklahoma, he had a grandpa that lived in Oklahoma. I feel connected.
00:39:04.980
Yeah, exactly right. I'm reminded of one of my, actually a professor of mine, a US guy, Robert
00:39:12.040
Cialdini, a retired, globally esteemed social psychologist at Arizona State University. When
00:39:18.380
he first joined the university as an assistant professor, he did this fascinating little study
00:39:22.380
where he gave his grad students a kind of synopsis of notorious characters from history, you know,
00:39:29.280
Mussolini, Stalin, and in particular, Grigori Rasputin, the mad monk of Russia. And, you know,
00:39:36.980
he gave me these profiles and said, well, get into groups and tell us how, you know, likable
00:39:40.420
this guy is, you know, give us an opinion, an evaluation of, you know, what sort of person
00:39:45.500
he was. And of course, you know, you read this story about Rasputin and you go, this guy
00:39:50.060
was awful. What a desperately horrible character. But there was always a group of students that
00:39:56.460
for some reason seem to be a little bit more connected to this guy than everyone else.
00:40:02.340
And what, you know, Cialdini and his colleagues had actually done is they kind of manipulated
00:40:06.660
the information in such a way that certain students found out that they shared the same
00:40:11.360
birthday as a notorious character from the past. And in the same way as you've just described,
00:40:16.100
you know, when the politician comes into Oklahoma and says, oh, you know, my grandmother was
00:40:19.100
from Oklahoma. Oh, I've got that connection. These students are going, well, he can't be that
00:40:23.140
bad because he shares the same birthday as me. You know, all the information was the same,
00:40:27.180
but that seemingly irrelevant connection, you know, just softens someone else's notoriety a
00:40:35.060
little such that we think, well, okay, we, maybe we can have an exchange here. It's so important.
00:40:40.560
So another way that people can be a soft messenger is through vulnerability. How do you all define that?
00:40:45.960
Yeah. So when we talk about vulnerability, we're talking about, and I think often when we talk
00:40:50.640
about vulnerability, we're talking about, you know, people that perhaps don't have status,
00:40:55.820
they don't, they're not rich, they're not famous, they don't necessarily have competence. All they
00:40:59.620
have essentially is their ability to reach out to others and say, I need help. You know, I need some
00:41:07.080
sort of assistance here. And we find that in certain contexts, if we learn that someone has a need,
00:41:14.680
our humanity kicks in. We seem connected to them and we want to help them more. So often if we have
00:41:20.620
a downside or some weakness or vulnerability, the natural inclination, I think, Brett, is for us to
00:41:27.020
kind of hide that away because we think we don't want to kind of be seen as needy. But in certain
00:41:32.220
circumstances, it can be pretty productive. And in certain circumstances, we've got nothing else to
00:41:37.180
trade on. So we, so we have to do that. And there are actually studies that show that, you know, when
00:41:41.740
people do express a vulnerability, although we'd like to, you know, a lot of people think, you know,
00:41:46.820
I think people aren't going to help me. People are much, much more likely to say yes to a request
00:41:51.800
that we make of them because we, we underestimate the likelihood that they're willing to help. You
00:41:58.040
know, we, when we ask someone for help, we start to think about, well, think about all the costs
00:42:03.140
they're going to incur financially or economically if they, if they try and help us. But as the recipient
00:42:09.920
of a request for help, we're much more likely to be thinking of the social costs if we say no to
00:42:14.360
them. So oftentimes what happens is, you know, we underestimate others' likelihood to help us.
00:42:20.940
And so, you know, the key takeaway here is actually ask for help more. It's likely to become much,
00:42:26.280
much more forthcoming than we perhaps estimate ourselves.
00:42:29.860
So you mentioned there's certain situations where it works well and in certain situations
00:42:33.260
it doesn't. So what are the certain situations where vulnerability is actually a very powerful
00:42:40.820
Yeah. So I think, so there's a study actually that was a couple of years ago by a guy from
00:42:44.120
Harvard who put some of his researchers into a situation of vulnerability. And the situation
00:42:51.180
of vulnerability he put them into was in a long line at places where people are queuing
00:42:56.680
up and people are angry and just like, you know, frustrated and impatient. So think airport
00:43:01.280
lines, security queues, railway stations, these kinds of things. And what he did was he, he essentially
00:43:07.920
said, okay, I want you to go up to people and ask them whether they'd be willing to let you
00:43:12.060
in front of the line. Would you be able to cut in front of the line? Okay. And I want you to offer
00:43:16.760
them money. Okay. And we want to kind of work out what the optimum amount of money is that we
00:43:22.120
should offer someone in order for them to let you cut in front of the line. And, you know, no surprise
00:43:27.080
to anyone that's studied economics in, you know, even at a basic level, the more money that people
00:43:33.680
offered, the more likely that person that was offered the money to say, yeah, sure. You can go,
00:43:38.400
you can go ahead of me. Okay. So here's the surprise. No one ever took the money.
00:43:46.000
And it seems that the money, you know, I'll give you $10, I'll give you $20, I'll give you $50
00:43:52.720
was a signal of vulnerability. So I think where this idea of vulnerability is most likely to be helpful
00:44:01.360
is in specific situations of need that are identifiable to an individual. It's one of the
00:44:08.920
reasons why when you see things like, you know, charity fundraising campaigns, there might be many
00:44:15.120
hundreds of thousands, even millions of people that are in extreme conditions of need, but a charity
00:44:23.640
would never say, look at all the millions of starving children, or look at all the hundreds of
00:44:28.240
thousands of people that have been, you know, have lost their homes because of this, this hurricane or
00:44:32.860
this, you know, typhoon or whatever it may be. They tend to focus on an individual, the identifiable
00:44:39.200
individual context is, is, is where the expression of vulnerability is going to be most helpful. So
00:44:45.120
those would be the contexts I think where vulnerability is especially potent is if you can
00:44:51.180
individualize and personalize the need of an individual. I think it was Stalin that said,
00:44:56.120
you know, the, the death of one soldier is a tragedy. The death of a million is a statistic.
00:45:01.840
And it sounds like too, uh, vulnerability can be a useful, I want to say tool as like a technique or
00:45:08.120
tactic to use if you are a dominant or you have status in some way. So we talked about competence.
00:45:13.420
One way you can actually increase your competence even more is show highlighting the fact, well,
00:45:17.560
you don't know everything and you should take a little bit of humility towards, uh, yourself
00:45:21.780
in the situation. I think you're right about that. In fact, actually there's, I think an immediate
00:45:27.100
practical application here that's, you know, so sometimes we're required to present, you know,
00:45:34.000
maybe we're pitching for a new account or we're setting an idea and, you know, often our idea or
00:45:40.600
what we're pitching might have some drawbacks. And I think, you know, a common mistake that we often make
00:45:45.480
is to kind of squirrel those drawbacks, those weaknesses in a product or an idea we have kind
00:45:51.240
of, you know, at the back of the PowerPoint deck, or sometimes we don't even talk about them at all.
00:45:55.700
We think, well, if we don't mention them, then no one will know about it. We actually find that's a
00:45:59.780
mistake. In fact, if, if we do have, you know, a drawback or a weakness about a proposition we have
00:46:07.260
or a presentation we're about to make. And as long as it's not an insurmountable one, the evidence
00:46:11.900
actually shows that you'd be much, much more effective if you position that vulnerability
00:46:16.920
or that weakness as the very first thing you say, you know, look, you know, this proposition is,
00:46:22.160
it's probably a little bit more expensive than you were expecting, but, and then you follow that with,
00:46:29.060
here are all the advantages, here are all the upsides. So I think you're right, Brett, you know,
00:46:33.080
there, there is an opportunity and it can be used ethically and effectively to use some of those
00:46:40.560
vulnerabilities to essentially to turn some of the weaknesses that we have into strengths.
00:46:45.580
So another soft trait is charisma. And a lot of people, I think our idea of charisma, it's,
00:46:49.900
it's mystical. It's like either got it or you don't, but what does your research say about that?
00:46:54.260
It can, can, can charisma be developed by somebody?
00:46:57.200
It can. In fact, actually it's, it's not just our research. In fact, it was, it was, I think about 2016.
00:47:02.260
So only four years ago that the, the kind of social scientific community coalesced and came
00:47:09.320
to a consensus about what charisma was, because, you know, we were all talking about charisma and
00:47:13.720
when people were saying, well, what is it? You say, well, you just know, you know, when you see
00:47:17.220
someone, when you hear them, you know, that they have that charismatic quality. But essentially what
00:47:22.400
we find is that there are three things that the charismatic messenger has. So the first is they have
00:47:27.980
this ability to orientate their audience towards a common vision or goal. They're not speaking to,
00:47:36.540
you know, 10,000 individuals in an audience. They're speaking to one mind made up of 10,000
00:47:43.060
people. They're saying, this is the direction we're going. Here's the unifying goal or vision
00:47:48.660
that we actually have. And they're able to convey that unifying vision first. So they have that.
00:47:54.620
The second thing they have is what we psychologists call surgency. So surgency is this kind of
00:48:00.680
enthusiasm, this positivity, and actually it comes across in non-verbal behavior as well.
00:48:07.780
There have been studies looking at TED talks, for example, and what they find is that you can have
00:48:13.680
a series of presenters at TED and they're talking about largely the same situation or subject. So,
00:48:21.980
you know, you may have two presenters that are talking about leadership. They've, you know,
00:48:24.620
they've got good content, they've got good messages to deliver, largely the same. But we find that
00:48:30.580
those presenters that are likely to register more views of their talk use about twice as many hand
00:48:39.420
gestures as their comparable peers who perhaps are less animated. And so injecting that kind of sense of
00:48:48.140
body and, you know, movement matching voice and words seems to be important. So, but, you know,
00:48:56.980
not to the point where you kind of get crazy and you're waving your hands like a madman,
00:49:00.620
but those kind of well-considered hand movements and gestures seem to be important in that instance.
00:49:06.960
And the third thing that charismatic messengers have is an ability to think quickly and talk in
00:49:11.000
metaphors. We used to think that that was closely associated and aligned to intelligence. We're not so sure
00:49:16.840
now. We actually just think that, you know, certain charismatic messengers have that ability to turn
00:49:21.880
a phrase, to use a metaphor, to have like a quick thinking retort. And so those three things,
00:49:27.020
that unifying vision, surgency, and quick thinkingness is what we've kind of essentially
00:49:32.140
coalesced behind in terms of our definition of what a charismatic communicator is.
00:49:36.360
Well, the idea of metaphor was interesting because I've never heard that before and I've come across
00:49:40.260
that in the research about charisma. And you talk about World War II leaders. Franklin Roosevelt
00:49:44.600
used lots of metaphors during his fireside chats during World War II.
00:49:49.060
Yeah. In fact, actually there's, I know of a couple of researchers that have looked back on
00:49:53.040
speeches given at presidential inaugurations. And they find that presidents that use
00:50:00.920
significantly more metaphors in their first inaugural speech are the ones most likely to serve a second
00:50:09.520
So what's the practical thing? Like, how do you figure out, like, okay, people have been listening
00:50:15.380
to this and say, okay, there's some situations where being a hard messenger would be useful.
00:50:20.100
Some situations, a soft messenger. Like, how do you figure that out? Which approach to take?
00:50:24.320
Yeah. So I think there's a couple of things that we can think about. So the first is,
00:50:29.320
what is the context of the situation? So, you know, if the situation is that there is uncertainty,
00:50:35.280
you know, you have a team that you're working with or community or an organization that's anxious,
00:50:40.660
you know, there's, there's a lack of clarity about the direction. In those situations, we do find that
00:50:46.300
the harder messenger, the messenger that's able to kind of step forward and lead, be the, not necessarily
00:50:54.140
always dominant, but, but has some kind of attractiveness quality or some sort of competence
00:50:59.360
that leads us to kind of almost metaphorically sigh with relief and say, right, okay, I can follow
00:51:04.600
this person. So in those instances, you know, adopting or choosing, I think might also be important
00:51:12.740
here, Brett, because, you know, you don't, we're not saying that you should try to be dominant,
00:51:16.980
you know, if dominance isn't part of your makeup and your personality. So, so sometimes, you know,
00:51:22.640
if we come up with an idea or we want to lead a group in a certain direction, you know, one of the
00:51:26.040
things we might need to do is actually say, I may know all the information here. I might be
00:51:30.240
the person with the best content, but am I the best messenger to deliver it? So sometimes we might
00:51:35.360
need to kind of assign that duty to another messenger. So if it's uncertainty, if we want to,
00:51:40.000
you know, get some sort of action, move people in a certain direction, the harder
00:51:43.540
type of characteristic typically fares slightly better than the softer one in such, in situations
00:51:51.160
where, you know, we're kind of essentially trying to connect, build longer term goals and relationships,
00:51:56.660
get alignment. And especially when, you know, things are pretty good, you know, you know,
00:52:01.000
the economy is doing well, the, you know, we're, we're happy that there is no fear and anxiety.
00:52:06.080
Then those, those softer traits typically are likely to be more useful to you in those instances.
00:52:11.700
But invariably, you know, as you were talking earlier about, you know, we talked about Churchill,
00:52:15.700
we talked about Lyndon B. Johnson, that, that ability to pivot between hard and soft and,
00:52:21.600
and, and build on where you can, some of the skills, you know, we can train people to be more
00:52:26.240
charismatic. You know, we can be better at conveying our competence. We can certainly build trust with
00:52:32.020
others more. We can learn to be warmer and to kind of, you know, connect through similarities and,
00:52:38.200
and demonstrate our benevolence. Those are things that we can all improve upon. And so, you know,
00:52:43.300
having an array is going to be useful. So Steve, this has been a great conversation.
00:52:47.320
Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?
00:52:49.620
Well, the book is called Messengers, Who We Listen To, Who We Don't, and Why. It's available on,
00:52:54.060
you know, all the bookstores in various formats, you know, book, paperback, ebook, Kindle,
00:52:59.420
these kinds of things. For listeners that are actually interested and intrigued to understand
00:53:02.840
what type of messenger they are, you know, which of these traits is my preferred trait?
00:53:07.840
We've actually developed, me and Joe and a research team of ours, a short test that you can take. It
00:53:13.020
takes five minutes. It's entirely free. You can go to messengersthebook.com, follow the link to the
00:53:20.660
take the test. And in five minutes, you answer six or seven questions, and it will give you an
00:53:25.660
appraisal of what your primary messenger trait is and your secondary one. And it will give you an
00:53:30.620
indication of, you know, if you want to improve on your ability to communicate, be a better,
00:53:34.900
more effective messenger, it gives you some insights about how to do that. That'd be a good
00:53:37.820
place to go, I think. Fantastic. We'll include that in our show notes as well. Well, Steve Martin,
00:53:41.380
thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure. Oh, great to talk to you, Brett. Thanks for the
00:53:44.620
invitation. My guest name is Steve Martin. He's the author of the book Messengers, Who We Listen To,
00:53:48.840
Who We Don't, and Why. It's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find out
00:53:52.900
more information about his work at his website, messengersthebook.com, where you can take that
00:53:56.620
quiz that he talked about. Also, check out our show notes at aom.is slash messengers,
00:54:00.720
where you can find links to resources, where you can delve deeper into this topic.
00:54:10.300
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Check out our website at
00:54:13.760
artofmanliness.com, where you can find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles
00:54:17.340
written over the years about how to be persuasive, how to communicate. We've got articles about that.
00:54:21.120
And if you'd like to enjoy ad-free episodes of the AOM podcast, you could do so only on Stitcher
00:54:24.700
Premium. Head over to stitcherpremium.com, sign up, use code MANLANDS for a three-month trial.
00:54:29.100
Once you're signed up, download the Stitcher app on Android or iOS. Start enjoying ad-free
00:54:32.840
episodes of the AOM podcast. And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate if you take one
00:54:36.560
minute to give us a review on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. Helps that a lot. If you've done that
00:54:40.420
already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you think
00:54:44.400
would get something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time,
00:54:47.640
this is Brett McKay. Reminding you not only listen to AOM podcast, put what you've heard into action.