7 posts tagged “likeability”
Learn graceful verbal self-defense maneuvers for facing difficult people or situations.
Read the idea-packed, often humorous news-you-can-use book Tongue Fu!: How to Deflect, Disarm, and Defuse Any Verbal Conflict by Sam Horn.
Increase your chances of staying positive in the face of argumentative or otherwise negative behavior. If you have complainers, bullies, or manipulators in your life, read this book for insights into how to turn the situation around or graciously step out of it.
Men and women of all personality styles have found relief in Horn's practical advice because she shows how to stand up for yourself without making the other person wrong and retaliatory. The entire book is based on specific situations accompanied by easy-to-remember steps for responding from a position of comfort and strength.
Read this book to learn how you can remain true to your values without becoming a target for others. Horn's examples and quotes from popular culture and personal experience as a mother and coach make this book come alive. In person, Horn is a shining example of the kindness reflected in her wise advice.
To learn more ways to restore calm and goodwill, or move on with your life read LikeABILITY, which you can download right now.
Learn graceful verbal self-defense maneuvers for facing difficult people or situations.
Read the idea-packed, often humorous news-you-can-use book Tongue Fu!: How to Deflect, Disarm, and Defuse Any Verbal Conflict by Sam Horn.
Increase your chances of staying positive in the face of argumentative or otherwise negative behavior. If you have complainers, bullies, or manipulators in your life, read this book for insights into how to turn the situation around or graciously step out of it.
Men and women of all personality styles have found relief in Horn's practical advice because she shows how to stand up for yourself without making the other person wrong and retaliatory. The entire book is based on specific situations accompanied by easy-to-remember steps for responding from a position of comfort and strength.
Read this book to learn how you can remain true to your values without becoming a target for others. Horn's examples and quotes from popular culture and personal experience as a mother and coach make this book come alive. In person, Horn is a shining example of the kindness reflected in her wise advice.
To learn more ways to restore calm and goodwill, or move on with your life read LikeABILITY, which you can download right now.
Draw people to you. Bring out their best side so they naturally see and support yours. Become sought-after.
How? Read The Platinum Rule: Discover the Four Basic Business Personalities--and How They Can Lead You to Success by Tony Alessandra and Michael J. O'Connor. You will be highighting every page and quoting it to others.
Many times we inadvertently offend others who don't "act right" -- like us. This is a great book for learning to work well with people of differing temperaments or background.
You can gain a deeper understanding of your personality type, recognize others' styles, and then behave in ways that demonstrate respect and inspire trust. As an improvement on the Golden Rule, the authors suggest the Platinum Rule: "Do unto others as they'd like done unto them." Find out what makes people tick and serve them their way.
This is a comprehensive guide for all parts of life, with the main focus on how to be more successful in the workplace, especially in sales or management. The authors’ approach appeals to women and men. They have applied these principles to running their businesses and training others for 20 years. This the most practical book I've found on understanding personality types to establish a connection.
To build on the relationship insights you gain with this book, learn a complementary method – how to move people away from conflict and towards connection – get LikeABILITY, which you can download immediately.
Give this to coworkers, family members, teammates, and friends to spark a helpful conversation on how to get along even better.
You can make some simple changes in how you dress, move or speak and discover that you have fewer conflicts and greater opportunity to build enduring relationships from smoother daily interactions. From the research on our gut instinctual reactions, here's some easy-to-adopt suggestions.
1. Sidle. People are more likely to like each other, remember more of what they discuss, and agree when they "sidle," standing or sitting side by side, rather than facing each other.
Two women or a man and a woman are more likely to face each other. They literally "face off". Two men instinctively sidle. Siddling brings people "in sync." Walking and talking gets you further connected. The best time to resolve issues is while walking together to the meeting, not when you are in the meeting, sitting across from each other.
2. Look for the underlying issue. When you are arguing for more than ten minutes, you are probably not discussing the real conflict and are thus unlikely to get it resolved in the discussion. Look for the underlying issue. Read Robert Bromson's Dealing With Difficult People for ideas about how to recognize difficult behaviors and ways to respond to them.
3. Detect lying earlier. When lying, most people can put an innocent expression on their face when you ask them a question about the topic, yet few (except pathological liars) get the right timing or duration of that expression.
Ignore the expression itself when they respond but note whether they appear to put it on too soon or too late and if the duration of the expression seems off. Here your instincts will often guide you to knowing their truthfulness. To learn more about how to detect lying, read Paul Ekman's book, Telling Lies.
4. Come back to your scents. Since smell is the most directly emotional sense, bypassing much of the brain's thinking process, consider how to introduce positively natural and uplifting scents into your environment as your own "sane self-indulgence."
A naturally scented environment refreshs people, so they feel uplifted. That's why outlets as diverse as the Rainforest Cafe, Sahara Vegas Casino, Disney/Epcot Home of the Future and San Francisco Aquarium have created natural "signature scents" to avoid allergic reactions while refreshing those they serve.
People who are responsible for your work setting may consider environmental scenting someday. Consider lightly scenting your uniform with the smells that are most comfortingly familiar to you. Two hospitals in Tokyo scent bed sheets with vanilla. Since a Paris hotel began scenting their twoels with rose and citrus, guests have been giving more positive reports on the hotel staff's thoughtfulness and appearance. Vanilla, apple, and chocolate are Americans' most -liked scents.
5. Be vividly specific. A specific detail or example proves a general conclusion, not the reverse. A vivid, specific detail is memorable, while a general statement is less credible and easily forgotten. Ironically, most adult conversation and advertising is general. Children are more likely to be vividly specific and thus more memorable.
When you want to be heard and remembered, characterize your information or request with a vivid, specific detail, example, story or contrasting options. Involve words that relate to the senses. For example "beautiful color" is not as vivid as "blue" which is not as vivid as "cobalt blue."
6. Be "plainly clear." Avoid wearing patterned clothing or other detail on your clothing, especially on the upper half of the body, because it will shorten the attention span of the person with whom you are speaking.
Why do we instinctively like some people and find others irritating or worse?
What makes us agree, buy, help . . . or not? Do your gut instincts help or hinder your “LQ” – Likeability Quotient? From an expert on gut instincts, gain insights about how to say it better next time. Answer this quick nine question quiz and get some tips. Some of the answers may surprise you.
1. Do people get along better when talking to each other if they are facing
each other or if they are standing side by side?
2. Who tends to face the person with whom they are speaking (men or women) and who tends to stand side by side, facing more or less the same way (women or men)?
3. If you want to increase the chance of knowing if someone is lying to you, what is one helpful phenomenon to notice about that person’s face when he or she is talking to you?
4. If you want to keep someone’s attention, is it better to wear a patterned
shirt or blouse or a plain blouse or shirt?
5. What is the most directly emotional of all the senses, bypassing the
thinking facilities and causing a quicker, more intense reaction in the limbic
(emotions) system than any other sense?
6. Are you more likely to get someone to support you or buy something if you give them something up front, unasked, before you ask for the favor?
7. Who tends to maintain wider peripheral vision when entering a new place, men or women?
8. Who tends to be more specific in their descriptions, adults or children?
9. Of the previous eight questions, which is the one people are most likely to
ask for the answer to first, and if reading the questions in a group, are most
likely to comment on first?
~~~~~
Answers
1. People get along better when they “sidle”, stand or sit side by side rather than when they face each other.
2. Men are more likely to sidle than women.
3. Note the timing and duration of the first “reactive” expression on someone’s face when you think that person is not telling you the truth. When lying, most people can put an innocent expression on their faces, yet few (except pathological liars) will have the right timing or duration of that expression.
If you ignore the expression itself and, instead, consider whether the timing and duration of the expression seem natural, you’ll greatly increase your chances of knowing if that person is lying.
4. Wearing a plain, unpatterned shirt or blouse will increase the chances that the listener will hear you longer. A patterned top or ornate jewelry or loud tie will break up the listener’s attention span sooner, and that person is more likely to go on more “mental vacations” sooner.
5. Smell is the most directly emotional of the senses. The right natural scent can refresh or relax you and others in your home or work site. Vanilla, apple, and chocolate are the scents Americans most like.
6. Yes, up to 14 times more likely to get their support or a purchase. This gut instinct is often called “reciprocity reflex.” Learn more by reading influence by Robert Cialdini.
7. Women. That is why storeowners who serve men will increase their sales if they have prominent, eye-level signage over large displays where men will see the signage soon after entering the store.
8. Children are more vividly specific, hitting their prime around fourth grade and then beginning to speak in generalities, more like adults. A specific detail proves a general conclusion, not the other way around. Plus, specifics are more memorable and credible.
9. Question number 3.
It seems that we have an inordinate interest in lying.
~~~~~
Three related insights on instincts that may interest you:
Finding #1: “Move to Motivate”
MOTION
Motion is emotional. It increases the intensity of feeling about whatever is
happening.
Further, people remember more the things they dislike or fear that they
experience in motion, more than things they enjoy. Motion attracts attention and causes people to remember more of what’s happening and feel more strongly about it, for better or for worse.
Insight:
This is another justification for golf! Think of the memorability inherent in a golf swing. The more dimensions of motion involved (body moving up/down, left/right, backward/forward), the more memorable the motion.
Get others involved in motions with you that create good will: walking, sharing a meal, handing or receiving a gift, shaking hands, turning to face a new scene. You are more likely to literally get “in sync” (vital signs become more similar: eye pupil dilation, skin temperature, heartbeat) and to then get along.
Finding #2: “Deep Convictions”
PASSION
The more time, actions, or other effort someone has put into something,
someone, or some course of action, the more deeply that person will believe in
it, defend it, and work on it further.
Insight:
If you want more from another person, wait to ask until after she has invested more time, energy, money, or other resources. The more someone talks about it, repeats and elaborates it, writes it down, and explains it to others, the more deeply that person will believe it – and feel inclined to tell others. Imagine your customers raving about their experience with your product.
Finding #3: “True Timing”
LIKEABILITY
If a person likes the way he acts when he is around you, he often sees the
qualities in you that he most admires. The opposite is also true. Two universal truths: people like people who are like them, and people like people who like them.
Insight:
Pick the moments when someone feels most at ease and happy to move the relationship forward. Don’t make suggestions or requests when they are acting in an unbecoming way your efforts will only backfire. Praise the behavior you want to flourish. Don’t ask for more from someone until they have invested more time, money, other resources, or emotional “chits” in the relationship.
We are all literally and unwittingly two-faced. To learn more about how you present yourself to the world, and your underlying, more “private” feelings, you just have to look yourself in the face. What to get out a mirror now, before you read further? Do you attract or alienate your insurance prospects and longtime staff?
You constantly present two aspects of yourself, on the two sides of your face. Recent research on the different functions of the left and right sides of the brain helps to explain why this is so. The two, vertical halves of the face are each affected by the nerves of the opposite side of the brain and show the world different parts of how you feel.
In fact, the two sides of your face, like the two sides of your body -- -the left and the right -- are usually asymmetrical and unequal in proportion. Look at yourself in the mirror -- full-face and full length -- to see the differences.
In short, your face is your shorthand to your body language.
Your expressions, in repose, are icons of your attitudes toward life.
The left side is your more “private” part of your personality and your right is the more “public” side of your face. The left often looks less happy than the right. Most subjects who have been analyzed projected their wish images upon their left side of their face and their right side related more to their real or basic self-image and attitude towards the world.
Your face’s right side often appears more pleasant, sensitive, vulnerable and/or open in expression. The left side is less expressive than the right and tends to reflect the hidden, severe, stern and/or depressed aspects you usually intend to keep private from the world -- and sometimes even from yourself.
The left side is more likely to register negative emotions, while the right side tends to reflect the more positive and optimistic, but not necessarily phony part of your personality.
“When I smile I must also show the grimace behind it.”
- Live Ullman, actress, author
Since the right side of the brain has more control over the left side of the body -- including the face -- then it stands to reason that the research on how the brain is organized, left and right, can give us insights into how we literally face the world and how we can better understand others. The left brain -- reflected more in the right side of the face -- relates to logic, pragmatic thinking, practicality and language.
The right part of the brain, in turn, relates more to intuition, imagination, and other more creative leanings.
The basic gut feelings, including your attitude towards yourself and your life emanate from your right brain. You express them more in the left side of your face.
We do not see things as they are; we see them as we are.
The more controlled or conscious responses -- the social mask you put on for the world -- may be processed more by the pragmatic left brain and appear more readily on the right side of the face.
Now you may be getting lost in “lefts” and “rights” of all this, but let’s continue with some experiments you can conduct to learn more about yourself and others for whom you have strong feelings (like or dislike) in your life.
How Do You See the World?
Ironically, the right brain is more actively involved in observing the world -- which it does predominantly through your left eye. And, when you face someone, your left eye is across from the other person’s right side. Therefore, you are more aware of their right side.
But you are thus most noticing the side of the other person’s face which is more connected with the left or “logical” and less revealing side. You miss facing the part of their face that is most likely to show underlying “true” feelings.
“Public / Private Face” Exercise
Here is a rather intimate exercise to do with someone -- and it doesn’t involve disrobing or even touching. Sit facing each other.
Now look at the left and the right sides of the other person’s face. Does the right side show a more open, less tense presence? Does the left look more reserved, serious?
The left side, that is their left side, is the more private face, remember, and the right side is their more public face. In fact, the left side is likely to show their more basic disposition. As you face each other, discuss your observations, one side at a time.
“The face is the most memorable part of the body and the eyes are the most memorable part of the face.”
- Werner Wolff, psychiatrist and hypnotist
“Driver’s License Photo Show” Exercise
Now try this experiment. Get out your driver’s license. Look at both sides of your face, covering one side at a time with a piece of paper. Look “inward” at yourself and see if you observe different aspects of yourself.
You may also want to look back at your family album and look at the progression of your face and your personality development overtime -- and that of others in your family. Look at the childhood albums of close friends and in-laws for other perspectives on them.
“Photo Finish” Exercise
To gain a still more revealing view of yourself, find two photographic negatives of “head and shoulders”, close-up pictures of yourself. If you don’t have any handy, ask someone to take two pictures of you; offer to do the same for them and compare notes on this exercise.
Cut both negatives of yourself vertically in half, down the center of your face. Flop over one side of each negative. Take a glossy-coated side and a dull-coated side of the left side of your face from the two negatives, and ask your camera shop to print it to create a “left-left” photo.
Take a glossy and a dull-sided half of your face and also get a “right-right” print made. Thus, instead of the normal right-left photo of your actual face, the joined half negatives become right-right and left-left faces.
You will then see exaggerated versions of both aspects of yourself -- and will probably be able to see each more clearly.
“Language is magic: it makes things appear and disappear.”
- Nicole Brossard
Tell the Story That Tells the Story
Dusk settled coolly over the misty emerald vineyards in Napa Valley one fall evening.
Through the window, I gazed wistfully at a thin stream of bittersweet chocolate sauce a waiter was ladling high over a raspberry-colored cake a the table of a hand-holding couple, seated inside the big stone restaurant operated by the Culinary Institute of America.
I knew it was bittersweet chocolate because the rich smell was drifting through the French doors out onto the patio, where we were drinking a fine Cakebread cabernet next to two giggling toddlers, just as happily chewing red licorice twists from the local 7-11 store.
“To generalize is to be an idiot.”
- William Blake
Here's the pity. As adults, we tend to lose our "picture-making" way of speaking – especially as we become older, more educated and experienced. Our expertise does us in.
Our conversations begin with sweeping generalizations.
To further numb listeners, we are more likely today to talk "at" others, using longer sentences, full of jargon, background and qualifiers before we cue the listeners in with the context that matters to them.
Our words become underbrush to obscure our message. Instead make the point in everyday language, wrapped around an example that matters to your listener.
Here’s Some Tips to Say it Even Better …. Next Time
Whoever most vividly characterizes a situation or person usually determines how others see it in their mind’’s eye, discuss it, and act on it.
Here’s ten quick tips for becoming the most frequently-quoted expert in your profession, organization, market or cause.
1. Be Mercifully Brief
In the movie, "The Player” during a scene at a Hollywood studio executive meeting Mr. Levy shows Reeve, the central character, how to pitch a potential movie story. Levy holds out a newspaper, saying, “ Here, read a headline, any headline.”
Reeve responds: “Um . . .’Immigrants Protest Budget Cuts in Literacy Program.’"
Levy: "Human spirit overcoming economic adversity. Sounds like Horatio Alger in the barrio. You put in Jimmy Smits, you got a sexy ‘Stand and Deliver.’ Next?”
Robert Kosberg, a Hollywood producer convinced a studio to make the 1993 pets -gone-wrong movie "Man's Best Friend." His pitch was “Jaws on Paws”.
2. Create a Captivating Turn of Phrase
Here’s three ways.
A. Use a familiar word in a new way and become associated with a new trend:
Example: Futurist, Faith Popcorn, predicted five years ago that people would want to be “cocooning” in their home.
B. Be catchy, using one or more of these memorabiity-building devices:
• Alliteration: “Peak performance” and “high tech/high touch.”
• Rhyme: “Jaws on Paws” (from earlier story)
• Repetition: “First things first”, Steve Covey’s advice.
• Puns: Tongue Fu!, title of book by Sam Horn.
C. Employ an unexpected turns of phrase: For example, I suggest that to forge a connection, “go slow to go fast.”
3. Get Specific Sooner
The specific detail proves the general conclusion, not the other way around.
“The Mini Cooper of office furniture,” is the apt tag line of the tiny firm, Turnstone. Their elaboration: “Leveraging parent Steelcase's technology and distribution channels, we offer small businesses great style for less, with big-business speed.”
Unlike most children under the age of 12 or so, we adults offer qualifiers and background, creating verbal underbrush before we finally get to the delicious details that are most involving, credible, and evocative.
Think of the speeches, advertisements, and conversations you most remember. Didn't the words evoke one or more of the senses, create an indelible picture?
“Air bag for your computer” is the description of back up software for a computer’s hard drive.
For several years, many advertising campaigns featured a group photo of "diverse" people, with some variation of this headline: "We Are the People Who Care." Banks, insurance companies, hospitals, and other large institutions thus offered a generality that perpetuated their impersonal image instead of promising some specific service, extra convenience, guarantee, or customer story that proved how they were better than the competition.
For example, a bank could offer a specific new service, followed by the general reason that matters to customers: “We’re now open Saturdays to make your life easier.”
4. Make Favorable Comparisons With Familiar, Admired Objects
Say it so they can see it in their mind's eye. When people in your work world are immersed in jargon, your remarks can stand out from others, when you make a comparison with a well-liked product, person or situation from outside your profession or industry.
Example: At the high stakes J.P. Morgan Healthcare investors’ conference, venture capitalists hear 20-minutes talks by CEOs of start-ups and public companies who seek funding or favorable stock analysts’ reporters. The tension is high and the schedule is packed. Most presenters speak fast, using a mix of highly technical scientific and finance language.
The CEO from bio-tech company, Amgen, walked past the podium to the center of the stage, pulled up one suit and shirt sleeve to bare his raised forearm. He opened his talk, saying, " You will feel the effects of this medical patch faster than it takes a Porsche to go from zero to 90. “
5. Hijack a Familiar Slogan to Use in a New Way
After a company has spent millions to make a slick slogan well-known, twist it in a new direction for your intended meaning. Redwood Hospital in Northern California used this billboard variation of the popular milk slogan to ask for blood donations: “Got blood?”
6. Anchor Your Suggestion With a Pertinent Story
To pull people into hearing and remembering your view, set it up with a brief anecdote. For example, as a way of gently suggesting that his team may be looking at a problem from the wrong perspective, my client first offered this story:
There is an old story in Soviet Russia about a guard at the factory gate who at the end of every day saw a worker walking out with a wheelbarrow full of straw. Everyday he thoroughly searched the contents of the wheelbarrow, but never found anything but straw. One day he asked the worker: "What do you gain by taking home all that straw?" "The wheelbarrows."
7. Veil the Truth in Humor
So much of life is fast-paced, serious and tense. Consider opening a meeting with mock-serious inspiration or admonition, then grinning. You’ll find true life, Dilbert-like examples everywhere that you can keep for your dry humored use. Here’s some:
“What I need is a list of specific unknown problems we will encounter.”
(Lykes Lines Shipping)
“This project is so important, we can't let things that are more
important interfere with it.”
(Marketing manager, United Parcel Service)
‘We know that communication is a problem, but the company is not going to discuss it with the employees.”
(Switching supervisor, Verizon)
8. Encapsulate a Situation
Do people stop listening before you stop talking?
Offer a vignette that captures attention before they can go on a mental vacation.
Example: Jenny Lee’s literary agent characterized Jenny’s book, I Do. I Did, Now What?: One Woman’s Musings on Married Life, as "a rant that (almost despite itself) ends up as a celebration of marriage."
Example: Financial analyst, Alan Parisse shared this perhaps apocryphal newspaper advertisement with me: “For sale. Infant shoes. Never used.”
9. Imprint by Evoking Universally-Felt Emotions
“The advantage of emotions is that they lead us astray.”
- Oscar Wilde
Consider these potent ways that people are more likely to remember what you say, even when they are not trying to:
1. Imagine that the brain is like a wall with clothes hooks on it. For the brain to catch and retain a detail, that detail must hang on one of the memory-inducing hooks that is already in the brain.
The biggest hooks in the brain are the three universally felt, core life experiences, familiar to us all:
1) Family
2) Hometown or town where you have lived or are living, and
3) Past or current kind of work. For family, relate what you're saying to a family situation: yours, theirs, someone else's, or even a metaphorical family of services. Or relate your topic to the listener's work situation or work with which she is familiar.
People also remember landmark places where they live, have lived, or have visited or well-known places. For example, our business is in Sausalito, which evokes pleasant by-the-bay memories for most who've visited here.
2. Motion makes memories.
Whenever people are moving or see movement, they remember more and are more emotional about what they remember. When others are in motion with you in a positive experience they are more likely to share their experience with others. That's why we literally move to offer samples, getting people to reach out, so they feel the experience more deeply.
An experience is most memorable when you and the other person are both in motion, such as when you shake hands, walk together, or reach to exchange something. Pick those ripe moments to say the most vivid, specific detail you want the listener to remember and repeat to others. Times are next most memorable for the listener who is in motion even if you are not.
The next most memorable movement is when you are in motion, even if your listener is not. A final valuable way to evoke a memory is for you both to watch motion from something or someone else.
Warning: Let Go of the Vibrating Pole
“There are two levers for moving men - interest and fear.”
- Napoleon
Movement is a two-edged sword. It is never neutral. The listener who experiences something negative where motion is involved will also remember the experience longer, and more intensely. Just like grabbing vibrating pole, we grab onto negative feelings sooner, longer, and more intensely than positive.
That is because the primitive triune part of our brain-- wired to help us survive -- causes us to respond to appearances of danger more strongly than to those of delight.
3. Speak first of the other person's most current, pressing interest. Just
as those in the market for new cars are most likely to hear car ads on the
radio, all people listen sooner when you first speak about what is most on
their mind at that moment.
Sadly, in fewer than 5% of interactions - even when we want something from someone else - do we first speak about what matters most to them. We are more likely to speak about our own interests first.
4. Speak in the vivid, specific details that have a high emotional value for
the listener.
The good news?
If you practice speaking first about the other person's interests, then about what you share in common, and only then about how that commonality relates to your interests, four amazingly powerful changes occur in how that other person relates to you. The person listens sooner, listens longer, remembers more, and assumes you have a higher IQ than if you first speak about your own interests.
10. Look to Their Positive Intent, Especially When It Appears They Have None
Do not let somebody else determine your words or behavior.
Unfortunately, we are more likely to be vivid in describing what we don’t like than what we do. Yet, as Adlai Stevenson once said, “When you throw mud, you get dirty."
Report in neutral language the negative news and hand any resultant problems back on the person who “caused” them without labeling that person’s behavior: “As we are starting our meeting at ten after, how shall we best use the time?”
Conversely, use emotion-laden language to state the positive and both you and the person you praise will shine: “Your manager was thoughtful enough to send us the plans ahead of this meeting so we are much better prepared to make decision. Please thank him for putting in the extra time to give us a head start on this project.”
Praise what you want to flourish. As you bring out another’s best side (temperament and talents) that person is more likely to see and support yours.
After all, if this is the Age of Engagement, fueled by The Power of Us, then what could be more crucial for you to learn than to create the captivating picture that inspires us to be greater together than apart?
