Mind Gym (20 page)

These are examples of elicitation questions—questions designed to elicit an emotion, usually a positive one. If you answered each of the questions, you probably brought back into your conscious mind a scene in which you felt pretty good. As you recalled the scene, chances are you felt more positive, right here, right now, as you’re reading this book. Questions can also be used to elicit emotions, as well as things that you view as positive: Whom do you most admire? What do you enjoy doing most on weekends? What’s your favorite food?

You can also guide other people’s feelings by referring to positive situations most of your listeners have experienced. For example, in a speech given at a charity event you might say, “Do you remember the feeling of fear and excitement you had when you started college? My mother cared deeply about my education. I remember her working very hard to get me there. Do you remember that moment when you realized you were on your own? I remember that, after my mother dropped me off and drove away, I appreciated how much I needed to learn and discover, how much I needed to repay the faith she had placed in me. But I also knew that I was surrounded by people who were friendly, smart, and supportive. That’s how I feel now, standing before you at this inaugural meeting of our charity.”

Whether elicitation questions evoke curiosity, pride, desire, hope, or determination, they are a reliable way to stimulate the emotions of others. Charismatic people ask these questions often to engage and connect with others.

When it comes to charisma, nothing can be as powerful as a story. Stories capture the hearts and minds of an audience. They personalize information, teach lessons, and provide an example that can help people connect to or understand a larger message. Charismatic people are often brilliant storytellers. Consider Walt Disney, who created an empire that allows people to enter a fictional story (even though there is always a greater meaning). Or consider Bruce Springsteen, who has told his American story through lyrics.

Water cooler chitchat at the office is rarely two colleagues offering prescriptive advice or insight. Instead, it’s stories about what someone did and what happened as a result. Politicians also tell stories about people. They gain support by sharing stories they’ve picked up from voters while on the campaign trail—the farmer who’s trying to support his family, the mother who hopes her children live a better life than her, or the senior citizen who is terrified about his future retirement.

All of us have stories. And this is why we all find stories so relatable. The problem is that we all don’t leverage the power of storytelling to win friends and influence others. So, to help you get going in the right direction, here is a summary of the four vital elements in any story:

   
•   
A protagonist
. This is the lead character, the hero. Throughout a story, a protagonist goes on a journey. It may be a literal journey—such as Dorothy’s journey from Kansas to the land of Oz in
The Wizard of Oz
. Or it may be a symbolic journey, which leads the protagonist to a new understanding or teaches something profound. The journey to Oz teaches Dorothy, who was dissatisfied with her life in Kansas, that “there’s no place like home.”

   
•   
A predicament
. To generate intrigue, a protagonist needs to be faced with a challenging situation that forces them to take action or make a choice. Something that will get our audience wondering,
What’s going to happen next?
The more unpredictable the outcome, the more engrossed the audience will be. The mother mentioned in a politician’s story might have overcome tremendous odds to get where she is today—and now that her personal predicament has been managed, her predicament shifts to changing the future for her children.

   
•   
A plot
. This is an account of what happened and how it happened. A storyteller adds details and emotions to enrich the story. The writer E. M. Forster put it like this: “‘The king died, and then the queen died’ is a story. ‘The king died, and then the queen died of grief’ is a plot.”
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•   
An outcome
. All the elements of a story come together in a way that resolves a protagonist’s predicament and ends the journey. Fairy tales often end with the message “and they all lived happily ever after.” Politicians’ stories often end with a legislative solution that could solve a problem.

If you want to be more charismatic, you’d do well to pepper your conversations with great stories—making sure that you include a protagonist, a predicament, a plot, and an outcome.

In the movie
Dead Poets Society
, Robin Williams’s character, John Keating, gets his students’ attention by making a dramatic entrance. The first time he enters the classroom, he walks straight through without saying a word and exits by the door at the back of the room. The students are confused and intrigued. Then, almost as an afterthought, Keating sticks his head back into the room and invites them to follow him. They’re hooked. The surprise was irresistible. Charismatic people often go beyond the obvious by suggesting or doing the unexpected. They excite people around them, leaving people wondering what they will do next.

Unconventional responses to familiar situations grab your attention and stay in your memory. Think of the most charismatic people you know. Most likely, you can tell a story about the time they surprised you or someone else.

Children are often enchanted when a storyteller gives a hero or heroine their name and plenty of other similar characteristics. “He had brown hair and blue eyes, much like you do” will leave a child begging to hear more of the story. Of course, the adult version of this tactic is slightly more subtle, but only slightly. Here are a few tips that will help you gain charisma by putting others at the center of the story:

   
•   When telling a story, give your protagonist some of the positive characteristics of the person with whom you want to build a relationship. It usually pays to sprinkle in a little flattery: “Just like you, Sarah was always open to new ideas.”

   
•   Draw comparisons between the details of your story and episodes in the person’s personal history: “It was just like the time you took Jan kayaking on the lake and you saw the storm coming and . . .”

   
•   Use expansive body language that includes and engages the listener. Perhaps you touch the person on the arm, make direct eye contact, or raise an eyebrow to show that this conversation is all about them.

   
•   At key junctures of a story, ask people what they think happened next. Or ask them to consider what they would do in this situation. Listen generously and point out how their suggestions fit with the next stage in the story.

   
•   Animate the scene you are describing by making it concrete. Act it out with whatever items you have to hand: “The coffee pot represents the farmer and the cards in your wallet are all his dogs, then take this sugar bowl—that represents . . .”

•   Use your listener’s name. It sounds so obvious, but it makes us feel good to be acknowledged by name: “The challenge, Justine, is how to get all the delegates there on time . . .” Don’t overdo it, though. Keep it real. All these techniques can have the opposite effect when they’re overdone.

Charisma is a great tool of influence. In fact, it’s one of the primary tools. Some of us are born with charisma or are socialized to be more naturally charismatic than others. Nevertheless, the most charismatic people have been taught or have trained themselves in the seemingly fine art of being charming. You might find that some of the tactics in this chapter come more easily to you than others. But more than anything else, if you want to learn to influence others, it’s important that you practice and become aware of all these tactics. Becoming a master at one tactic is great—unless of course that tactic happens to be a turnoff to the person you are trying to influence. Practice, practice, practice. Charisma is learned.

Oh, and here’s one last piece of advice to keep in mind: listen to your gut instinct.

On the evening of August 27, 1963, staff writers for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. scrambled to draft a speech. Dr. King, upon arriving in Washington, D.C., to address a crowd of more than two hundred and fifty thousand people at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, had already planned a speech for the following day. It was a message he had delivered two months before. But his staff thought they could create something better.

When Dr. King stood on the stage the next day, his speech was to be the one written by his advisers and titled “Normalcy, Never Again.” He began with this prepared speech, but after a while he felt that something wasn’t quite working. He observed the mood of the crowd. He listened to a colleague, Mahalia Jackson, urging him to improvise. King listened to his instincts. And then, the words he really wanted to say poured out: “. . . I have a dream.”

GIVE YOUR MIND A WORKOUT

A moment many people dread is when they’re asked to introduce themselves, particularly in front of others. But it is a great opportunity to demonstrate your charisma.

1. Assess how you currently introduce yourself to new people. What is your approach? Are you as impactful as you’d like to be? How do people react to your introduction? Do they ask questions to learn more about you or nod and change the subject?

2. Write a couple practice introductions on a piece of paper, and in each include one or more of the tactics in this chapter.

3. Plan the way you will introduce yourself. How will you find congruence with another person? How will you sound? What will your body language look like?

4. Try it out. Test your new introductions the next time you are at a networking function or a party. Which introduction worked best, and how will you remember to keep using it?

Come up with a few different stories to keep in the back of your mind and pull out whenever you need to have greater impact.

1. The best stories come from personal experience, so think back through your life and jot down some of the defining moments of your childhood, young adulthood, adulthood, career, and parenthood, if that’s applicable. Make a list of these moments.

2. Pick three to four of the moments you just jotted down and write what you learned from them or how they changed you. Perhaps you overcame adversity and grew as a result. Or perhaps something surprising happened that changed how you thought about yourself or the world. Use “Lesson Eight: Story Time,” in particular.

3. Practice delivering your stories out loud. Time yourself and aim for a maximum of two minutes. Use impact words and passion. Practice telling your stories to someone you are close to who will give you candid feedback.

4. When you’re ready, test your stories at work or in a social setting and see how people react. Be sure to have powerful body language when you do this so you make a connection with your listener(s).

Y
ou know who they are. They’re the people who are always late for everything. They’re the people who smack their gum at the office. And they’re the people who test all their different cell phone ringtones on a packed flight. They’re the people who annoy you.

Changing the way other people behave may be immensely desirable, but it is also notoriously difficult. We want to give them our honest opinion about how we feel about their behavior, but for all sorts of reasons we don’t. Why not? Because quite often telling people what they could do differently to improve their lives backfires: “Are you saying I smell? Who do you think you are? And while we’re on the subject, I have a thing or two to say about your personal habits as well.” Rather than improving their lives, they make yours more difficult.

The decision not to tell people when they annoy us or when their behavior affects us in a negative way has wide-reaching consequences. When relationships break down, a person gets passed over for a promotion, friends drift apart, or teams turn in on themselves, the root cause is often something relatively insignificant that could have been dealt with ages ago with an honest exchange. Instead, it was left to fester.

Fortunately, there are two techniques for expressing our opinions to someone that have very impressive success rates when it comes to changing the way that person behaves. These are techniques that have been around since the beginning of time, that we all use occasionally (although not always effectively) and that everyone can master. An abundance of scientific research supports their potency.
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The techniques are praise and wise counsel.

Praise is the act of showing recognition and appreciation for someone and/or their actions. It could be something simple like thanking your spouse for taking out the trash or buying your top salesperson a gold watch or giving someone an award for outstanding achievement.

Should you be praised for the amount of praise you give out? Look at the following questions and consider your answers to them:

   
•   When was the last time you congratulated someone for something they did well? In the last hour? Today? Yesterday? In the last week? More than a week ago?

   
•   In a normal day, how often do you praise someone (not necessarily the same person) for something they did? Once at best? Two to three times? Five to ten times? Ten to twenty times? More than twenty times a day?

   
•   When you last praised someone, did you say “Well done” and leave it at that? Or did you tell them what they did that was good and outline the impact of what they did?

•   Think about someone close to you (colleague, partner, etc.). For every ten times you’ve given that person praise, how often have you criticized? Never? Once? Five times? Ten times? Twenty times? Fifty times? One hundred or more times?