The Persuasion Expert: How to Persuade Anyone, Negotiate & Build Confidence - Lee Warren

0:00Imagine your audience is tired, hungover and not very interested. The amount of bad professional communication in the world is really high. You don't need to be very good to really stand out. How can we establish trust with somebody else within our first conversation? Yeah, that's a great question. I really think is a brilliant way of doing it. It's a really powerful tool. Lee Warren is a world-renowned speaking and communication expert and best-selling author. He helps world leaders present, persuade, and influence with impact, blending psychology, sales strategy, and performance techniques. We're going to be talking about persuasion, networking, and public speaking.

0:38Changing someone's opinion is also equally important. We're starting from a point in which the person doesn't agree with us. What's the best way of accomplishing it? Many of us make emotional decisions very quickly. Once we've made that decision, we then use our rational thinking processes to justify that emotional decision. People who are very good at being persuasive tend to be very good at getting an emotional connection. I've been to many events in which I was required to network. How can you start a conversation naturally? A lot of people hit the bar. Absolutely. Would you recommend them to do that?

1:11No, definitely not. What do you think about dot, dot, dot is probably the basis of all interesting questions. However.

1:22Lee, for anyone that is just now meeting you, how would you describe your area of expertise and your work? my area of expertise is in three things so public speaking uh networking and being more persuasive and compelling so fundamentally what i get involved in is how anyone can get an idea out of their head and into somebody else's head in a way that's interesting memorable referable compelling engaging that's that's that's that's it in an essence love the answer um i think it's incredibly useful for anyone. I would like my audience today to take on every single advisor you're going to be sharing with us.

2:04So what have you studied and what have you been working on that equips you to be a leading voice in this field? Well, it's funny that, I mean, there's no, there's no certified route to doing what I do. In other words, there's no, you know, there's no, there's no qualification and I'm definitely not an academic, I'm a practitioner. But really what I do now is informed by two things in my background. So one is in sales. So I was in sales leadership at some global firms. And also I've run my own businesses, which are obviously very sales focused, but I've had a parallel career as a magician and a mind reader as a performer.

2:36Yeah. So like an affordable Derren Brown or something. And so when you have that background, really partly in sales, partly in performance and engaging with people, you have to learn very, very quickly how to be memorable, how to get people's trust, how to stand out. And I spent 20 years doing that full-time, that was my full-time job. And then about 15 years ago, I realized that a lot of those skills could be taught and they were very useful to other people. So I spent the last 15 years working a lot with leadership teams and as a keynote speaker, spreading the ideas of how you can, how you can do this, how you can connect and be more persuasive and engaging.

3:11All right. So we're going to be talking about persuasion, networking, and public speaking. I'd like to start with persuasion. Let's get practical. Actually, no, before we get practical, in your own words, in very simple terms, what is persuasion and why does it matter in our everyday lives? So persuasion, well, let me start by telling you what persuasion isn't, right? Because a lot of people think being persuasive is perhaps a bit manipulative or a bit Machiavellian. In other words, it's something you do to other people. And that definitely is what it's not. Persuasion is a very, or it should be a very powerful and positive force in the world.

3:50Because if you, if you have anything, if you've got an idea or a product or a service, or even your personal credibility, if it just, if it just sits in your head, right? If it just stay, if you have a great idea in the morning and you just sit there thinking, I've got a great idea, then in a way that's selfish, right? If you've got a good product and you're not good at being persuasive about it, that's quite selfish. You're not sharing it with other people. So persuasion really is, it's a great tool and a great way of sharing what you've got with other people and if your ideas or your products or your service uh services are useful for the universe then you should be persuasive around them so on a very simple level even i mean you know anyone listening to this will they'll have electricity in their rooms or they'll have a light bulb in their room and thomas edison didn't just invent the light bulb he was also persuasive he persuaded people don't use gas anymore use electricity invest in my light bulb and we've all benefited because he was persuasive should we all become better at persuasion or perhaps is it just only for some specific personalities or careers no i think as far as i can tell everyone would benefit from being i mean it's a really great life school life skill right i mean all of us we kind of want to be like swiss army knives in terms of our talents and abilities i mean persuasion is more obviously useful in some areas than others.

5:12So for example, if you're in sales or if you're an entrepreneur, if you're a business builder, it's obvious you have to be persuasive. It's non-negotiable. But even anybody has got something to sell. So you might have an idea to sell. You might have a project to sell. You might have your own personal credibility and reputation to sell. So anybody I think can benefit from becoming more persuasive, better at articulating their value, and better at connecting what they do with what other people need. If you want to be better at connecting, do we need to be more rational and logical or emotional in our delivery?

5:44It's a great question, actually. And it's a question that's been around for about two and a half thousand years at least. So people have been studying this for a long time. It goes right back to the Greeks and the poetics. One of the best books ever written on being persuasive is more than two thousand years old. So I think the vague answer is it's a bit of both. and it depends and it depends partly on the context and partly on the person or the people you're dealing with. However, as a rough rule of thumb, certainly in professional situations, which is my area of expertise, the mistake I see many people making is being too logical or too rational.

6:21So in other words, a lot of people will try and be persuasive by using lots of facts, lots of information, lots of data, spreadsheets, pie charts, et cetera, et cetera. And that stuff can be persuasive it definitely can be but it's not always very persuasive on its own and people who are great communicators people who are naturally very good at being persuasive they tend to be very good at getting an emotional connection to other people first what we know from a lot of the research and i'm not an academic but i do know other people's research quite well is broadly speaking and this seems to be true across the planet across age across culture cross gender.

6:57Many of us make emotional decisions very quickly, very quickly. And once we've made that emotional decision, you know, should I listen to you? Should I take you seriously? Once we've made that decision, we then use our rational thinking processes to justify that emotional decision that we've already made. How can we be or sound more emotional or invoke an emotional connection? It's a great question. So there's a few things that can happen. So one is, I think if you're not naturally like that, I think you just have to take a step back from your own communication style and be honest with yourself that, you know, that isn't a strength of yours.

7:31Secondly, I think we can get examples, great examples from the world, from things that we naturally gravitate to. So for example, if you sit down and you like watching Netflix, right, or you like reading novels, or you like reading comic books, or you listen to a good podcast, right, you can say to yourself, okay, why is that grabbing me? How is that getting my attention. And most of the time that will be quite an emotional thing and it'll be stuff you can copy. So quite often, for instance, when I'm helping someone make a more persuasive message, I'll say to them something like, what's your favourite film?

8:01And they'll tell me and I say, tell me about the first two minutes of it. What can we borrow from that? And they'll say something like, oh, it starts with a surprise or it opens a question I need the answer to. So borrowing models from the world can be great. And other very simple things, humour works really well to make an emotional connection. Humor builds trust. It softens people, builds a lot of rapport very quickly. So if you're naturally humorous, that can work. And lastly, also thinking and talking very visually can be very emotional as well. As humans, we've been gossiping and telling stories for probably hundreds of thousands of years, certainly tens of thousands of years.

8:36So we like stories. We like anecdotes, quick narratives, things that are very easy to understand visually tend to work well to get an emotional connection. I've worked better with examples. So would you be able to give me a good example on how we can persuade someone using emotions and a bad example? Yeah, so let's start with a bad example. So a bad example would be going over the top and talking too much about yourself. So if you were, for example, to say, you need to listen to me because otherwise I'm going to cry, that would be a bad example. Basically, all bad examples of persuasion are, I've got something I want you to believe.

9:13Now I'm going to force you to believe it. right and so either you know i'm going to cry if you don't believe me or or i'm too uh i i i'm too focused on myself and i'm talking about myself too much you know those are things that don't work things that do work uh um really well in terms of getting an emotional connection really is anything that's focused on the other person anything that's speaking directly to their world if if they've got a problem they're facing and you've got the answer to that problem for example if you're speaking to their hopes, their dreams, their ambitions, their fears, their goals.

9:45All of that stuff tends to connect very, very quickly. And of course, tends to get a very emotional connection. So for example, if you were, let's say you were, let's say you had a knock on your door and somebody was there at the door and they said to you, I'm a roofer, I specialize in fixing roofs and I've got a special offer today, right? I can fix your roof for 20 % off. You're probably going going to say no, because they're trying to solve a problem you haven't got, and they're talking about themselves, and there's nothing emotional there at all. If someone knocked on your door, and this person said, excuse me, I'm a roofer, and by the way, I'm just walking past your property, and I've noticed you've got a leak in your roof.

10:21If you don't get that fixed soon, you're going to have a big problem, and that's going to, you know, your insurance is going to have to pay a lot of money, or you're going to have a leaky roof during the winter. That's a really different approach. That person hasn't tried to force you to believe anything yet. They've simply helped articulate a problem it's been very visual you can see it you can understand it very quickly by the time they finish saying that you're probably thinking how do i solve this problem and guess what the person who's articulated the problem to you is the one who's going to solve it interesting in my opinion in that particular example the emotion that the roofer is invoking is fear do different emotions persuade better than others or perhaps fear and love over anything else yeah so broadly speaking there are two kinds of emotion i mean when we think about the word emotion it's great it's got the word motion in it it means movement um and if we we take go right back in evolutionarily evolutionary terms um broadly speaking emotions are designed to do us two things they're designed to move us towards stuff so that's so we find things attractive right in various ways we want to move towards it.

11:26So usually that's food or sex or something that we find interesting. We want to move towards those things. Or emotion is designed to move us away. It's designed to close us, make us physically tense and move away. And so that's all the stuff that's fear, worry, stress, and so on. Now in that particular example with the roofer, there are at least two emotions going on. So one is fear, exactly as you say. So there's a worry there. But the other emotion, and I'm really not sure what the word is for it, to be honest, but the other emotion that's there is definitely an impulse towards something. There's a problem.

11:57That's a problem. But I need to, I've got to move towards a solution. So there's not just one emotion going on there. There's the fear thing. And then there's a pull towards an action. In many occasions, when someone persuaded me to do something, I felt myself feeling liking the person, like I like this person. And in many other cases, even though maybe the delivery or the content of whatever they were saying was correct, if I didn't like the person, I wasn't persuaded as much. How can we be liked in a conversation? Well, I think you're completely right. And I think that goes right back to the thing I said about, you know, we make emotional decisions very quickly.

12:33And we all know, we've all been in situations where, you know, we see someone we like and we know them and they're speaking in a meeting or something and they make a mistake. And your brain kind of goes, oh, they've just made a mistake this once, right? You forgive them, you like them. And the opposite, if there's someone you don't like or you don't trust and they make a mistake, You hone in on it. You sort of say that's part of their personality. That's part of who they are. They've said something wrong. So I think it is a really important thing to understand. There are, I think, again, thinking about being likable, it's really important not to think of it as in any way being tricky or manipulative.

13:04It's not like a set of things you can do and humans, another human is a robot. It's not like a button you can press and you can definitely guarantee a result. so I think you really you really want to be authentic you really want to be natural you don't want to feel like a fake person trying any of this stuff but you do have to say to yourself I want to be more likable I want to connect with these other people more and really it's about 180 degrees turning your attention to so what what people are not persuasive do is they say what do I want to say and what's the best way to say it and people who are really persuasive and great communicators they say who is this person I'm communicating with and what do they need to hear from me?

13:39What's going on in their world? How can I connect what I've got to what they need over and over again? And it's one of the best ways of being likable. So sometimes that means articulating the problems people have got, telling them on a really simple basis. You know, if you were meeting someone and you had half an hour in the diary, if you said to them, look, I know we've got half an hour in the diary. I know you're really busy. I actually only need 10 minutes of this half an hour. That's an instant way to be more likable because you're saying to them, I get it. I get your world. I understand you.

14:07I've done all the preparation for you. And I'm going to give you back 20 minutes of your day free of charge. And they don't have to like you very much, but you're more likable then. I tend to like people that are relatable. What do you think of that? Should we be more relatable to be liked? Yeah, definitely. And this is true for almost everyone, right? Nobody wakes up in the morning and thinks, I want to meet loads of people today who I don't like. I can't relate to at all. You know, I want to have difficult, awkward conversations. None of us are like that. We all want to meet people who are relatable.

14:37But I think being relatable, it doesn't mean you have to be the same as somebody else, but it does mean that you have to be paying attention to them. You have to be listening to them. You have to draw out from them what's interesting to them. I once went to a networking event and I made a promise to myself that I would listen more than I talk. I love talking. This is my job these days. I get paid to do it. I got told off for it at school and now I get paid. But at this particular event, I promised myself I'm going to listen more than I talk. And I met somebody and we started talking and she and I were talking a little bit.

15:09And then I just kind of listened. And I think she spoke for 90 % of this conversation. And it was deliberate. I was deliberately doing it. And at the end of the conversation, she said, it's been great to meet you tonight. I've really enjoyed our conversation. You're one of the most interesting people I've met for ages. Oh, wow. Isn't that interesting? Almost word for word. That's almost exactly what she said. And I thought it was really fascinating. I really wasn't interesting. All I did was ask her some questions and I listened to the answers. But her interpretation was, I was really interesting.

15:39Well, it's because we want to be listened to. Yeah, I think we live in a world where we're craving people listening to us. We're craving meeting real human beings. You know, we meet inauthentic people all the time. We meet people all the time who are trying to get something from us. We meet people all the time who are saying, you've got three minutes of my time, but I've got to get over there in a minute. So I think it's refreshing when we meet someone who's different to that. That's fascinating. fascinating i also feel like in my life my professional life when someone persuades me to do something and i agree with you the word persuasion can sound a bit machiavellic a bit negative but when someone persuades me to do something it's because this person has established a relationship that is based on trust how can we establish trust with somebody else within our first conversation yeah so there's there's two ways of looking at trust so one is long-term and i think that's the real answer i think anyone thinking about trust think about building long-term trust and sometimes that's face to face with people sometimes that's digital sometimes that's about how your reputation spreads you know so if someone if if barack obama walked into this room now you'd kind of there's a lot of trust already you've never met him before but you he's got some trust already right because and that's a long-term thing and i think we can all do versions of that and i think that's really important and then short-term trust you know if You've never met anybody before.

16:57You've never got any connection. Sorry to repeat myself, but I really think humor is a brilliant way of doing it. It's one of the things I learned when I was a professional performer as a magician. If you can get people smiling within the first 15 seconds, that's it, you're their friend suddenly. It's a really powerful tool. Asking interesting questions is a brilliant way of building trust. So a rule I teach people all the time is if you ask boring questions, you get boring answers. If you ask interesting questions, you get more interesting answers. So asking people more interesting questions about themselves, about what's going on in their world.

17:32And then I think a third thing is I think many of us would benefit from just deciding in advance, do you know what, there's a result I want. So I want to persuade someone of something. I want somebody to say yes to me. Rather than spending 100 % of my time trying to convince someone of my idea, why don't I spend 10 % of that time building rapport with them becoming relatable and then maybe 90 % at most with the actual idea and most of us would benefit more thinking that way rather than just slamming straight in with the idea that we've got I can definitely relate to the sense of humor because recently I went on a trip with my parents-in-law the parents of my fiance and for some reason I came across as funny and not to say that I'm not funny, but yeah, they thought I was funny.

18:21And after a few days, when we left the trip, they kept on repeating to my fiance, oh, wow, he's so funny. It was so nice to be with him because he's so funny. Like they didn't say, oh, wow, he's so smart or intelligent or eloquent or articulate. No, the thing that was very relatable to them was being funny, which I found very interesting. And it's almost like it allowed them to like pull down their guards. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. And that's literally what it does. It physiologically lets, it lowers our guard. We physically relax. You can see it's been studied over and over again. When we laugh, when we smile, we physically relax.

18:58You can watch it on people's faces. And also humor is a very communal thing. You know, as humans, we like being in groups. We like doing what the rest of the group does. And if you go out, so for example, if you were to watch somebody watching a comedy on their own, alone at home, they don't laugh, right? They smile, but they don't laugh out loud because laughter is a signaling thing to other humans. I'm in on the joke. I'm part of the group. If you watch the same comedy show with 20 people watching it, they'll all laugh. They'll laugh out loud. It's why TV programs, it's why they put laughter in the soundtrack.

19:30It's to signal. Other people find this funny as well. So when we're in a situation and someone's making us smile, they're making us laugh, we feel bonded. We literally feel, okay, we're both smiling and laughing at the same time. We're part of the same group. This is good. Should we also do this in a professional context when we don't know the counterpart, but we want to be liked by the counterpart. Yeah, definitely. And so in a professional context, there's good news and bad news. So the bad news is the amount of bad professional communication in the world is really high. People are running terrible meetings, terrible presentations.

20:04They're clumsy with their ideas. They're really bad at putting pitch decks together, et cetera, et cetera. That's the bad news. The good news is what that means is you don't need to be very good to really stand out, right? You just need to be a little bit better than you are today. And absolutely, humor is a killer weapon in those situations because so few people do it at all. And the ones who try to do it are not very good at it because they haven't thought about it very much. So anything you can do that will build a slightly better connection to other people in the room. I remember a friend of mine once, he's in a very senior leadership position and he once worked with one agency.

20:40Some agencies were bidding for work from him. And he worked with one agency rather than the others. And one of the things that made his decision was everyone came in and they talked about the photo on my desk. And one agency came in and they didn't. They immediately talked about me and the problems the business was facing. So the other agencies came in and they clumsily tried to build rapport, but they just did it in a very predictable, boring way. And another agency came in and they were just kind of more natural, more authentic. And they really got into what mattered to him more quickly. And he said, that was that great.

21:11It wasn't just that one thing that made him say yes to them, but that definitely created a better connection initially. Interesting. I have two examples of this particular thing, which is being humorous in a given professional context. Many years ago when I was working in the consulting space before I became an entrepreneur, as consultants, you bid for a lot of projects, right? So you attend tenders and you're competing against other consulting firms. And I remember that one of the founders of our consulting firm, a senior partner, a very brilliant professional, every time we would go into these tenders, in the very first five to 10 minutes, he would throw a few jokes so people would relax and they would in a way relate with him.

21:51Because at the end of the day, I think as humans, like maybe if you're doing an international tender and someone is from South Africa and you're from a different country, the one thing that you can all relate to is perhaps humor. So that really grabbed my attention and it was quite effective. And then in these days, on the other end of the table being the client, we've just recently launched a tender and we were inviting different contractors, different construction firms to build three restaurants that we're opening next year in London. And out of the three different companies, they were all from a logical and rational and technical perspective, delivering very similar things, very similar price points, delivery times, quality, service level agreements, you name it.

22:34But what really made us in a way or a contributing factor that allowed us to decide was how much we liked them. And that came down to how normal, natural, and humor-oriented they were in the meetings, which I found very interesting to see this from both ends of the table. It's a really great point, because when we go back to logic and emotion, very, very often, particularly in professional situations, very often the rational idea, the project, the service, very often it's a commodity, right? Very often it's completely, you get 10 people pitching to you on a rational basis, it's going to be very similar.

23:14Exactly as you say, the prices are going to be very similar. The offering is going to be very similar. And so you have to look at, you know, how do I stand out in that situation? I worked with someone once who was on a professional level. He was trying to become a partner in a professional services firm. And he asked me to help him work with the interview process. And we went through it a bit and I talked through what he was going to do. And I said, okay, so how much of the process is written in advance and how much of it is the face-to-face talking? And he said, it's about 80 % written and about 20 % talking.

23:49I said, okay, so they have to talk to you to make this decision, right? Yes. Okay. And I said, so what you've just done in the talking bit with me is you've basically repeated everything that's in the 80%. You've just given me a recap of all the stuff they've already got. So instead of that, why don't you think about instead of repeating the 80 % they've already got, why don't you treat this 20 % as I'm going to, I'm going to give them in this 20 % what they can't get from the documents, what they can't get from my work history. And that's me. That's who I am. That's what I am as an authentic person, bit of humor, a bit of natural me.

24:20That's what they need. That's what they need to get. And he did the interview and he became a, became a partner. And he, that wasn't clear to him before we worked together. How can people do this without feeling like they're not themselves? Well, I think it's the opposite. I think what a lot of people do, particularly in professional situations, is they kind of quite easily adopt a mask. They sort of think, I've got to behave professionally. And that means using the kind of language I wouldn't normally use when I'm talking to friends at a bar. That means being a bit more stiff, a bit more awkward.

24:48I think it's almost the opposite problem. I think people are burying being themselves very often. I was working recently with a client on a pitch. They're a live client basically it was in um financial services and they as part of their pitch they had to include ai as everybody has to include ai now and um they he when we were working on it he said to me look we've got to say we're going to use ai because if we don't we won't win this we cannot win this but we to be honest we have no idea how we're going to use ai we just have to tell the client we're going to use it and my strong recommendation was tell them tell them that and he said no we can't tell them that way i said i two things a i guarantee no one else will be that honest with the client.

25:28And B, no one will criticize you for honesty. You know, you don't want to sound incompetent, but just be honest with them. You know, we're going to, this is a five-year deal. We have no idea in years three, four, five, what AI is going to look like or how we're going to use it. What we can tell you is by then we'll be on top of it and we will be using it, but we don't know what that looks like today. And they did it and went on really well in the pitch. Wow. Yeah. But that's authentic and honest, right? It's good for everyone.

25:56now let's discuss a different example i think changing someone's opinion is also equally important right so we're starting from a point in which the person doesn't agree with us what's the best way of accomplishing it all right so let me answer that by telling you the worst way of accomplishing it so so the worst way of accomplishing it is just to keep banging away at your own argument right to tell if you if you if you appear to be telling anybody else no you're wrong and I'm going to tell you why you're wrong that what happens emotionally is the doors close people get very fixed in their own opinions and everybody listening to this now you can all relate to the fact we've all been in that situation where we're having an argument and we know we're wrong we suddenly realize oh actually I'm wrong and we don't want to admit it because emotionally we've just decided if I admit I'm wrong then I lose somehow so what you have to do is you really have to create a situation where if someone changes their mind it feels like you both win It doesn't feel like you win and they lose because that's never going to work.

26:52Telling them why they're wrong very rarely works. Very, very rarely works unless it's a very unemotional argument. You know, if someone says something like last year we were 12 % up, you could say to someone, actually, let me check. Oh, sorry, it says here we were 10 % up. Then you can change their minds around that kind of stuff that's a bit cold and it doesn't matter very much. But anything that's to do with people's sense of identity or a belief that they've held for years or months, You can't just go in and say, you're wrong. Here's why you're wrong. What works very well, in contrast, is being curious rather than being dogmatic really works.

27:26So what's called Socratic questioning. So, oh, that's interesting. Why do you believe that? Where did you get that information from? Have you looked at other ways of looking at this? What would you say to someone who said the opposite? So getting curious about why they believe what they believe can work really well. it might not change someone's mind immediately but it can definitely soften sometimes setting the conversation up in quite a structured way can work so i've definitely had conversations where i've said versions of okay you believe x um just for a moment let's put that belief in a box right put it over there it's safe you can you can still have it i just want to explore whether there might be other things that are also true yep so literally structuring the conversation as i'm not going to ask you to change your mind but i do want to look at other options and sometimes coming back to the thing you said about fear earlier, that can work as well.

28:17So quite a strong emotion can work. So particularly in some professional situations, if someone, let's say someone really believes in a particular project and you're convinced this project is going to end up in disaster, sometimes painting a picture of the ultimate disaster can work quite well. So look, I know this, you know, I know you've been working on this for six months. I know this is really important to you. I've really looked at the implications in terms of what this might do to our client retention. and it really looks like if we go ahead with this in 12 months we're going to lose three of our biggest clients because of reputation loss you know sometimes language like that going to the outcome might shake someone's belief and at least let you go back to the the the table and start working through the belief again can you give me an example a real example of that happening from my own life yeah so um the the trouble with examples is a lot of the strongest ones are to do with religion and politics which is something you know you always get scared of talking about politically?

29:10My two strongest examples are one with my fiancé, when we have opposing views,

29:19and the second one is with my co-founder, who's also my twin brother. Right, okay. So there it's slightly different, because when you know someone really well, and particularly when there's a lot of love, often disagreements can be much stronger. They can be much stronger, you can be much more forceful with disagreements, because you know in the long run, it's very, very unlikely that this disagreement is going to actually break the relationship. It would be very unlikely. So quite often you can both go to, you know, it's why people who are married can have screaming arguments with each other because they kind of at the back of their minds, they know we can do this, we can get this out, but we're still going to be married next week.

29:55So there, I think it's slightly different. For many people listening where, you know, it might be in a professional situation or it might be sometimes with people you don't know that well, I think there's some different stuff going on. Definitely the, so if I think of my own example, so in, you know, 10 years ago when my country had this raging argument about whether we should leave the EU or not, I was very involved in that argument and I was very clear on day one, this is quite serious and actually this is too serious to be dogmatic about it. This is, what's not going to work is going out in the world and saying half of the country are idiots if you vote one way and you're brilliant if you vote the other way you have to get in and understand people and so I did that and I was very purposeful about it I had lots of I won't tell you what my view was but I kept track of it I had lots of conversations conversations online and in person and the approach I took in every case was either to test someone's ideas by being Socratic about it so you know why do you believe that where do you get that fact from what would if if we if we went in that direction what would happen in a year's time what would happen in 10 years time I deliberately tried not to just stick to logic so you know because at the time there were lots of economists throwing numbers around none of those numbers changed anybody's mind or very few of those numbers changed people's minds and I kept track and particularly on things like Facebook and Twitter of the people I who sent me messages and either said versions of that's given me a lot to think about, or I was going to vote one way, I'm considering voting the other way, or quite a few people who said, I was going to vote one way, I think I'm not going to vote, I just don't know enough anymore.

31:31And it was over 50 people, right? It was over 50. So it's a tiny, you know, my bit was tiny. But it's quite something to change 50 people's minds just by using a slightly more considered form of persuasion. Just one question about Brexit, if people didn't vote because of the data you as a public speaking and persuasion expert why did they vote to leave oh i think um i mean if anybody had the actual answer to that question they'd probably be a billionaire retired i think it's we're all guessing my take on it is i think it goes back to some very deep emotional things and some of those things are how you feel how you view the world?

32:12So broadly speaking, do you view the world in a, I'm trying to come up with an answer that doesn't sound judgmental in any way, because I think there are good reasons for both, why both groups voted. And I think some people have very worthy reasons why they voted. But I guess for some people, there is a sense of change happening that they didn't like. So that's always a way to make people think in a certain way. If you have rapid change, fast change, demographic change, economic change, that's going to create fear and resistance, definitely. So I think there was some people, and I understand why, who said, we don't like this, we don't like the change that's happened, and we certainly don't want more of that to happen.

32:54So I think that's probably why. I think on the other hand, there's definitely some identity stuff wrapped up. So people say, I am a European more than I'm English, for example. You're saying something very deep about yourself and your view of the world. And so to have that challenged or potentially to have that taken away from you is very emotional, very deep. And I think people made those kinds of very deep decisions about their identity, their sense of place and country very quickly, very early. And then all the data stuff was just built on top of that. What do you think the politicians did from a tools point of view to invoke these emotions?

33:30Because it seems to me from your explanation that this was an emotion based decision for the majority of the British people. Yeah, and I think, to be fair, I think most votes are emotion-based. I mean, you know, when we go into a general election, same in your country, same in my country, you know, when most people vote in elections, very, very few of us, I mean, if you ask how many people read the manifestos of the parties, for example, I don't know if that's 5 % at most, I'm guessing. Most people, I think it's a feeling. And I can't remember the number, but there's some research around it. I'm making this up.

34:00I might be wrong. But it's something like a third of people who vote, maybe a quarter, they don't know who they're going to vote for until they walk into that room. So they just decide at the last minute. And I sort of understand it because if you're in a world where, particularly in a social media world where there's so much information, we don't lack information anymore. We can all get all the information we want. So when you've got all the information, how do you make sense of that information? Well, you kind of just trust your instinct a lot of the time, don't you? And so sometimes you might go in and just look at whose name is nicer.

34:29So to come back to your point, how politicians were using emotion, they were using emotion in a few things. So the obvious one was fear. So fear was a very powerful emotion in the Brexit vote, I think, fear of being taken over, fear of invasion, fear of being ruled by people in other countries. There was definitely that fear. I think on the opposite side, the other side used fear as well. So it was fear of nationalism, fear of people of extreme ideologies having political power. There was definitely that kind of fear of not being able to travel freely, fear of what might happen to children if they can't be educated in Europe.

35:02So there's a lot of fear going on, definitely. Interestingly, there was very little hope. I found it quite fascinating. And in many of my own arguments, I really tried to create an argument for hope, what a positive future would look like if people voted a certain way. There was much more fear in that vote. then it seems to me that this is the affirmation that emotions are the ultimate tool for persuasion yeah i mean i the the trouble with um the trouble with talking about psychology and the way people behave is you can never predict anything a hundred percent right so there's no there are rules of thumb there are guides but there aren't any laws in in in this stuff i think um i'm aware some academics might their heads might explode when i say that but but um uh so i think you can think in terms of rough structures rough rules of thumb and i think you can broadly say that at its minimum emotion is incredibly important i'm not sure it's always ultimately because people can have their minds changed by rational argument they definitely can and sometimes rational arguments work better than emotional ones but generally i think emotion we need to take it into account if you were to rank three different emotions according to how potent they are at persuading us and changing our minds emotion one would be fear then emotion two would be love and then the third one would be hope how would you rank them yeah that's a great question um so i think and again this is this is an anecdotal answer this is my experience um i don't have any research for this i i pretty much think fear is is probably the number one fear is an incredibly physiological thing um you know you walk in a forest and you see a thing on the ground you think it's a snake your body freezes suddenly you realize it's a stick your body unfreezes but that that impulse do not and our bodies are definitely wired to prevent us from harm because if we get harmed by something really dangerous that's it it's game over whereas if we move towards something attractive something we love something we want to to you know to mate with or whatever if we miss that opportunity we're probably going to have another one so it's it's possible that isn't quite as motivating as fear i suspect um so i put them in that order the exact order you gave them um fear love and love brackets all sorts of things i'd love to do stuff with right it's not necessarily romantic love it's it can be very um you only have to watch people really drunk in a bar to see how how um they can move towards things not because necessarily they're in love um and then hope uh i think hope is the last of the three um but it's not that doesn't necessarily mean it's the least important and the reason i say that is because it's probably the least used so when it is used i think it can be very potent so when compared to the other two it might be weaker but the effect when you use it because we don't get it so much can be very powerful um again i don't want to step onto politics too much but for example you could make a strong argument that the success of trump in the states whether you agree with him or disagree with him he's he's been quite good at selling hope to his base you know the whole make america greater king gang that's a that's a hopeful message yeah yeah there's some fear in it but it's it's quite hopeful so and not enough people do it i think before we discuss networking is there anything in relation to persuasion that we haven't talked about and we should talk about just to repeat a couple of important points i think you have to be authentic about it i think it's really important not to think you know i'm going to wake up in the morning i'm going to go out and trick some people into agreeing with me today it's really, really important not to think like that because you come across in a way that's really clumsy.

38:37There's a very old phrase in sales, Jeffrey Gittimer came up with it, which is what really wonderful, and I think it applies to whether we're selling ourselves a product or service, and that is people love to buy, but they hate to be sold to, right? So I think you have to create the, if you're going to be persuasive, you have to create this context, this environment where people feel like they want to buy from you, not where they feel like they're going to be sold to so if you're on a very simple level if you're going on holiday um to let's say you're going to the costa brava or something and you walk along the seafront and you see all those restaurants people with the menus out the front you know they're saying come in come and eat here come and eat here and you just keep going because they're they're trying to persuade you that they're forcing themselves at you whereas conversely you know to come back to your world you see a really nice restaurant in the corner and there's no one outside trying to bring you in in fact it's the opposite there's a little queue outside and you kind of feel it don't you think i I want to, I want, that must be good.

39:29People are queuing, right? I want to go in. And then when you get in, they say, have you got a reservation? This terrifying phrase. And you say, no, we haven't. But now I really, really, I really, you know, and they say, we might be able to seat you in half an hour. Would you like a drink at the bar while you wait? And you say, yeah, absolutely. I'm happy to spend money to wait here. So I think if you're going to remember sort of, I think that sort of covers almost everything in persuasion. People love to buy, but they hate to be sold to. this just reminds me to one thing that a very very caring and loving family member used to say he said that humans want what we can't have so if i ask you right now please don't think about strawberries you're immediately going to think about strawberries what do you think of this yeah i think that's true that's partly true and people want what they can't have but i but i think even more true possibly is people want what other people have oh right i mean that's why i don't want to mention any by name but that that's how luxury brands work don't they right it's not it's not because that handbag is really worth three thousand dollars right no there's no handbag is worth three thousand dollars but the fact that only 10 other people in the world have it and when you see one you know oh my god i'm one of those 10 that's what makes it worth three or thirty thousand dollars or whatever so i think that's very deep in us as well we want what other people have yeah explains why we buy houses we don't need and cars we don't actually use you know all that stuff

40:56right let's talk about networking why is networking important for a modern career despite a person being very talented and hard-working it's a great question actually it slightly comes back to what we were discussing earlier so your your knowledge and your experience is really important in in a career right you have to be good at what you do. You have to have done the qualifications and be technically competent at whatever your area of expertise is. But that remains a commodity because there are guaranteed there are going to be 50, 500, 1 ,000 other people who are probably as good as you at what you do.

41:36So if you just kind of said to yourself, do you know what? I'm good at what I do. People should understand that. I should get promoted. I should get a new job because I'm really good at what I do. There's some truth in that, but it's definitely not enough. It's definitely not enough. So if you were, you know, if you were to imagine, just to exaggerate it, imagine somebody and she's really good at what she does. But let's say she's connected to zero people in the world, right? So every time she sends an email, nobody recognises her name. When she puts her hand up in a meeting, nobody knows whether they should listen or not.

42:05She's tried to go and meet new clients. She has no, you know, history, credibility. It's obviously going to be tough. But if you imagine somebody else imagine someone who's pretty good at what she does right she's competent she can do she can do her work and imagine just to exaggerate it imagine she was connected to 10 000 people who really like her everything's going to be easier isn't it every time she sends an email people are going to think oh i must read that email puts her hand up in a meeting people think oh i need to listen to this this is going to be good when she says do you want to come to my presentation tomorrow people are going to say yeah i'll definitely do it she she's she can say things to people like look i'm sorry to ask you this but could you do me this favor and people were more likely to say yes everything is going to be easier so i think there are apart from time maybe there are very few downsides to having a good network and and nearly all upsides i've been to many events in which i was required to network for professional reasons and i find that the hardest thing to do is to start a conversation how can you start a conversation naturally well we don't get taught how to do it do we in fact we sort of get the opposite you know when we're at school we get told again and again don't talk to strangers don't talk to whatever you do don't talk to strangers and then suddenly you get a job and people say go and talk to strangers right become good at it instantly um so it's not our fault no it's not it's definitely not our fault um and so there's a couple of of sort of secret they're not secrets but they're they're nice things to think about a secret so one of them is it's really easy when we go out particularly in things that are called networking of you know when we know they are networking events it's really easy to walk into those rooms and kind of go back to being at the school disco and you and when you're at school disco you know you walk in and you think everyone here knows how to do this and i don't right everyone's having the time of their lives they all know how to dance they all and and i'm i don't know how to do this and i think we go back into that mode when we go into professional networking events we walk into rooms thinking everyone knows how to do this and i don't and the absolute opposite is true everyone is in that room thinking i don't really know how to do this almost nobody wakes up in the morning and thinks what i'd like to do today is spend two hours in a room with people I don't know having five minute conversations meeting right some people look forward to it but they're definitely in a minority so I think the first thing you have to say to yourself is nobody knows how to do this I'm not alone and when you walk into a room with that in mind it really gives you a sort of different perspective on the thing and the second thing is what the the golden rule I have for myself and for everyone I work with is don't give yourself any time to think so when you go it's really easy to talk yourself out of being there so you walk into a space, you know, and there's a hundred other people and they've got a glass of wine and some canapes or something.

44:38And so many people walk into that space and they kind of look around and they start judging and they all, okay, they're all a bit busy. I'll go and go grab a drink and I'll go and find somewhere to put my coat. And, you know, and you can spend 20 minutes, not of that one hour networking thing, just not using the time. So if you, if you just walk into a room and just say to yourself, the first person I see on their own, I'll just walk over and say, hi, you don't need any clever chat up lines. You don't need anything particularly interesting to say. um if they're standing on their own they will they will be so grateful you've done it because they're standing there thinking what do i do now i don't know who to talk to i don't know what's going on um so if you break the ice with them they'll be really grateful and that might be the best conversation you have it might be the worst it doesn't matter because you've warmed yourself up right you've got yourself going um and once you've met the first person the second person is much easier usually a lot of people the first thing that they do is not that unfortunately the first thing they do is hit the bar absolutely would you recommend them to do that no definitely not i mean unless let's say the only the only way is when that would be the best thing to do i think is if you were in a room and everybody was in really tight groups of people all having the time of their lives and you see one person on their own at the bar then you might decide go to the bar because i can talk to that one person um but definitely don't because you're again it's a way of talking yourself out of being there and it's really hard to overemphasize this but when you when you've crossed that space all on your own and you've gone to the bar on your own and you've got a drink on your own you you're kind of you keep convincing yourself it's fine to be on my own i'm delaying that moment to do what i'm actually here for yeah whereas if you think the opposite if you sort of give yourself i'm really fond of giving goals you know so if you give yourself the goal i'm going to meet three new people in the next hour you walk into that space and just say okay who's on their own i'm going to go and talk to them um if nobody's on their own i'll find a group that looks like they're a bit bored with each other already and go and join them um don't don't give yourself time to think just do it and within the first like few sentences some people choose to small talk some others they just want to cut through the chase and you know discuss about i don't know something more meaningful yeah what do you recommend so there's a sort of verbal dance that happens right at the beginning and that verbal dance is uh you know who are you what do you do where are you from those kinds of things so what most people talk about is work and geography right nearly always is work and geography so some version of what do you do and some version of where are you from where did you study where are you based right you always get the where questions the geography questions people generally who are and and some of this of course will be very culturally inflected so for example if you were going to a north american networking event with mainly north americans there you would expect stuff to get into work very quickly if you went to if you went to something in spain you'd probably it would be delayed talking about work right people will be much more comfortable talking about family friends cultural stuff right so so it'll always be a bit different culturally.

47:29But people who are bad or less good at connecting will tend only to hover around the small talk stuff, you know, the where are you from, what do you do? And you can sort of feel this pull of when are we going to start talking about something interesting or something that actually matters or whatever. And so people who tend to be good networkers, well, let's call them good communicators, tend to be very, very good at moving conversations into more interesting places very quickly. And the way they do that over and over again is to come back to what I said earlier, which is if you ask boring questions, you get boring answers.

48:03So, you know, if you have those conversations that are just, what do you do? Sorry, what's your name? You know, my name's John. What do you do? I'm a brand manager. Are you really? Yes, I am. Have you done that long? 12 years. What are you a brand manager of? Vegetables. Oh, right. Yes, I, you know, where are you based? London. Are you really? Yes, I am. That conversation's going nowhere and you can both feel it. and the reason it's going nowhere is that the questions are boring right they're forcing one word uninteresting answers most of the time now of course you might have something in common you know it might be that you also happen to be a brand manager of vegetables right then you've got something in common but people who are good good communicators they'll ask more interesting questions earlier so for example you know if i say to somebody where where are you based and they say southampton well so what we haven't moved the conversation on really if i say to somebody what do you think about Southampton?

48:53He can't say no. He has to give me a sentence or a paragraph back, has to. And in that sentence or paragraph, that's where you get your conversational ammunition. And that's where the conversation just naturally becomes. I love what do you think about? I think what do you think about dot, dot, dot is probably the basis of all interesting questions. You know, when you ask anybody, you know, how did you get started in? How do you feel about? What advice would you give me about? They're all versions of what do you think about? And if you're in a conversation, you only have to ask one or two, what do you think about style questions?

49:24And you've got a great 10 minute conversation nearly always. That's great. Food for thought. Sometimes, and I think I did this also a few times myself, I sort of develop a strategy before going to the networking event. Do you think we should do that? Or we should just like flow and communicate without thinking too much? There's very few downsides to having some kind of strategy. I think it's for anybody who wants to increase their network and increase can mean two things. So increase means increase the numbers. So if you know 20 people today, it means 40 people in six months. And it can also mean increase in terms of increasing the depth of the network.

50:03So it might mean you know 20 people and you'd like to know there's 20 people better. It can mean, so it's wide and deep. And so if you want to do that, and I think most of us probably should want to do that, then I think it's really wise to have a strategy. However, you can't devote all of your time to networking. I think it's really important not to think of networking. A lot of people think of networking as this sort of luxury skill that I'll get to one day when I've got some spare time. A lot of people unconsciously tend to think about it. And the bad news is you're never gonna have that spare time, right?

50:35You're never gonna have more time than you've got today. Putting it bluntly, tomorrow you're one day closer to death than you are today, right? You start now, don't wait till there's that time. But I think we can only give it a certain amount of time and energy. So I think you want your strategies or your goals to be really simple, really clear, very easy to do. So one thing I'm very, very fond of is people deciding, how many people do you think you can meet in the next year? Is it about one a week? Most people say, yeah, it's about one a week. I can meet one new person a week, right? On average.

51:06Okay, that's 52 people a year. Let's say 50, because you might have a couple of holidays or something. So write it down. Write down that list of 50 people you want to meet in the next year. Just write it down and then give yourself the goal of doing that. And it's a great little strategy to do for several reasons. One is it's really easy. It's really clear. You can see instantly I've met 10%, 20%. Thirdly, you get that thing going on in your brain. You know when you do something like you decide you're going to buy a new car or maybe you're looking for a new site for a restaurant, and the minute you've decided that, suddenly you start seeing those opportunities everywhere.

51:38You decide you're going to buy a new car. Suddenly you start seeing that car all over the place. And it's a bit like that with networking. When you've decided, I want to meet 50 new people, suddenly you see the opportunities to meet them all over the place. You see the meetings they're going to. You turn up online to stuff you might not have chosen to. You go to a breakfast meeting, a lunch and learn. You see the opportunities everywhere. So, sorry, it's a long answer, but yes, you should have a strategy, but make it simple and easy. And then if we go back to that networking event, is it a better strategy to meet many people at the surface level?

52:12or it's a better strategy to meet very few people and go deeper? It's a great question. I think partly the answer depends on your personality type. So my preference is definitely for the latter. I would definitely prefer if I'm going to a two-hour long networking event in the evening, if I walked away with three really meaningful conversations where genuinely all four of us had said, let's actually, let's stay in touch. Let's talk about this more. That would be a terrific night for me. I'd much rather do that than having walked away with 50 business cards and nobody remembers my name and I don't remember who they are.

52:45But I think it's a little bit to do with personality. So some people might prefer the former approach. And it depends perhaps a little bit on what your reasons are. So if you're in a very transactional business or you're a very transactional person, maybe, or you're much more of a commodity business. So I don't know, let's say you were in some kind kind of, let's say you were in plumbing or something, right? You repair bathrooms. Then maybe, actually it's worth your while going to an event and you just give a hundred business cards out and you have two second conversations. Say, I'm a plumber.

53:15If you have a problem with your bathroom, email me. That might be the right approach. Some people in networking events, they name drop. Do you think this is good or bad? So sorry to be vague again. I think it depends on the context and I think it depends a bit on your personality. However, I think as a rough rule of thumb, if that's a symptom of you talking about yourself and how amazing you are, then it's a problem. So I think many of us should think we should think about networking a bit more like dating. And if you turn up on a date and you said to someone, thanks for coming to this date. Look, for 10 minutes, I'm just going to tell you how amazing I am and how good I am at dating.

53:53That date's going nowhere. That's a disastrous date. But networking, some of us tend to think we have to do that. So people turn up in conversations and they kind of think, oh, I've got to impress this person and I've only got 10 minutes to do it. So I'm going to talk a lot about myself. Almost always the opposite. So that example I mentioned earlier about saying I'm going to listen 80 % of the time and only talk for 20. Nearly always that approach is better. So that means you dial down on showing off and boasting. Generally, that's going to work better. And if the name dropping is going to work, it's because it's related to what the other person is saying.

54:27What's the most common mistake that you've seen people doing? There's a few common mistakes. So one of the most common is, sort of comes from fear. So turning up with somebody they already know and then sticking with that person for far too long. So going to a networking event and they're supposed to meet new people, but actually I've turned up with my colleague or my best friend and actually we're just going to stay talking. Second is very similar to that, which is sticking with one person all night. So, you know, you meet someone, you're having a great conversation and you talk to them for an hour and that's kind of not fair to you, but it's also not fair to them.

54:56Nearly always better to say, this has been great. Let's connect on LinkedIn. in and let's talk tomorrow, something. So those mistakes happen. And then the third biggest mistake is not following up and not knowing how you're going to follow up. Really, all the value of networking is in how you stay connected. It's not really in those initial conversations. They're just nice conversations. So far too many people don't know how they kind of turn up to networking things. And networking in its broadest sense. So that can be the chat before a meeting. It can be sitting next to somebody on a plane. You know, it's not just the formal networking events.

55:28and but if you know in your mind okay everyone i meet i know how i'm going to stay in touch with them i'm going to stay in touch with them i'm going to make an effort about it um you don't want to be pushy but just you know a simple message really nice to meet you here's that website i recommended right um not enough people do that is that is that the most natural way of finishing a conversation a really lovely way of finishing a conversation uh if you is your question about how do i move on exactly yeah so because sometimes it can feel a bit awkward how How do you do it? You don't want to make the other person feel uncomfortable.

55:57And really, it's really counterintuitive, you know, because very often, and certainly in professional context, very often the best conversations are naturally very short, right? So I'm a keynote speaker. So if I was at an event and I met someone and I said, you know, what do you do? And he or she said, well, my job is to employ keynote speakers. I would obviously say, oh my God, that's amazing. I'm a keynote speaker. The kind of that conversation's done now, right? So we're going to say, that's amazing. Let's swap details. I'll send you some of my stuff tomorrow. Have a great rest of the – that's sort of it, really.

56:30We might choose to talk a bit more, but functionally we know – actually we've achieved the purpose of that conversation. They've met a keynote speaker. That's why they came. I met someone who employs keynote speakers. counterintuitively often the conversations that tend to go on and on are because they go on and on because both people know actually this this conversation's run out of stuff this isn't going anywhere but i'm a nice person i don't want to be rude to you and finish the conversation and guess what you're thinking exactly the same right you'll think i don't want to be rude and finish this conversation so because we're both nice people this this this conversation just keeps going so i think two things one is you have to have in your mind actually it's kind to the other person to finish this conversation.

57:08It's not impolite. It's better for them if this conversation finishes. And a lovely way to do it, and I don't know why this works, but it does, is to ask a question about the future. So ask anything like, who else are you hoping to meet tonight? What are you looking forward to in the conference this afternoon? Are you staying for lunch? Right? Anything about the future. And kind of the other person will sort of feel it. They feel, oh, you're pushing this conversation to its conclusion. And often they'll say things like, oh actually I'm hoping to meet John. He's over there. I must go and say goodbye before he leaves.

57:40And it kind of wraps the conversation up. It's a really elegant way of doing it. And once you finish that conversation, then the day after you want to follow up with this person, what's the best way to follow up? If you can, a really great way to follow up is to provide value before asking for value. So asking for value is something like, nice to meet you last night. Could we have a coffee? Because I'm asking you for one or two hours of your time, which is the most precious thing you've got a great way to follow up is something like i mentioned just now uh really great to meet you last night here's that website i recommended or really great to meet you last night um uh actually i know i know the owner of that restaurant um you know say my name when you go in he'll give you a discount yeah so if you can give any value and how quickly should we do that 24 hours later for yeah i think i mean almost by definition anyone we want to meet anyone who's who's to put it bluntly a useful contact is probably going to be busy they're probably going to meet more people They probably spoke to five, 10 other people at that event.

58:33So I think we should follow up as quickly as possible. While it's still fresh in people's minds. Not pushy, you don't want to be demanding, but soon. Is there anything else about networking that you'd like to discuss? Oh, there's loads. I think, I suppose that maybe the one big thing is if you're in any doubt about networking, just sit down and either in conversation with a friend or get your phone out and put the voice notes out or start writing. Just write down what the benefits would be. If you could imagine yourself in three years time with a perfect network, right? If you were connected to everybody you needed to connect to, if you could get any investment you wanted, any advice, any resources, write down all the benefits.

59:07And if you're in any doubt, should I go to this event? Should I walk up to that person and say hello? Come back to the benefits. Really, one of the great things about networking is it brings you opportunities. Because opportunities, all opportunities are connected to other human beings. There isn't any opportunity that isn't connected to people. So the more people you know and the better the quality of those connections are, the more opportunities you're going to see in the world. And also networks create opportunities that didn't exist before the network existed. So the more people you're connected to, the more opportunities start appearing in the world.

59:37So I guess that's the big thing I think is worth mentioning. I think this is so useful and so important. And nobody teaches us the importance of this because, in my opinion, the biggest resource that we have is not our money. Perhaps it's first our time and then followed by our network. Yeah, 100%. And also networks, you know, networks make you feel great, right? So in your network, you've got support, you've got resources, you've got advice. It's not, again, it's not about being manipulative or Machiavellian, because you're also going to give resources and advice and hope and mentorship. And so back to your network.

1:00:11A great network really sustains you. It really helps you feel buoyant. And it always needs to be a win-win situation. You always need to add value and receive value. In the long run. Yeah, not always in the short term, because sometimes in the short term, someone will say to you, can you do something for me? So you say yes. Right, that's just a short-term transaction. but in the long term that builds trust and rapport and so on. So in the long term everything should come out win-win.

1:00:38Let's talk about public speaking. When you start working with a complete beginner what are the first things that you cover? If you were a complete beginner to public speaking probably the first mistake you would make is two things. One is talking too much, putting too much stuff in and then the second is being too focused on yourself and your own message and not focused enough on your audience so the two things i would do with someone is i would help them edit their material so that it's basically bad speakers say a little about lots and lots of things and great speakers say a lot about very few things so if you watch a great speaker talk for an hour they'll probably have three points and they'll spend about 15 minutes on each one of those points with an introduction and a conclusion so that's one of the things i would do and then the second is I would really try and help them become focused on the audience more than on themselves.

1:01:28If we have a very important presentation coming up, what's the best method to prepare for it? Well, so the best method is preparation. And probably the biggest mistake people make is they do a few things. So one is they wait till far too late to start preparing. And then secondly, and I wish I had a pound for every time someone said some version of, I don't want to over prepare. I'm better in the moment. And I can absolutely, there's very few things I'm 100 % certain of in life, but I'm 100 % certain no one is better in the moment. Absolutely no one. Oh, really? No one. Absolutely no one. And I mean, do you think, sorry for interrupting, but do you think over preparing can make you sound a bit robotic and less natural?

1:02:11I think what happens when people are like that is that they've prepared a bit, but they haven't prepared enough so they're in this weird space where they sort of know what they're going to say but they haven't learned it like a script and i don't think anyone should learn a script by the way um and but they haven't actually rehearsed they've done a bit of practice so there's a real difference between practice and rehearsal so practice is you sort of say okay i know roughly what i'm going to say i'm going to do point one then point two i might use this slide at this moment um and that sort of practice rehearsal is quite literally saying i've got you know 20 minutes i'm going to put a clock i start at 20 minutes i i'm i start talking and i'm going to keep going no matter what happens i'm not going to stop if i say the wrong thing i'm not going to stop if my slide isn't right i'm not going to stop that's real rehearsal um and the point of doing that and i think you need to do that several times so we need to rehearse not practice not just practice so you have to practice you have to go through that stage but a lot of people stop there and they think that's their preparation but rehearsal is actually doing it as close to real world situation as possible and in real time.

1:03:14And you see all the time, you go and watch any professional presentation and you'll see people who haven't rehearsed. And you know they haven't rehearsed because their opening is fumbled. Halfway through, they start saying things like, oh, actually, we haven't got time for that slide, right? And they should have found that out two days ago. How many times should we rehearse? Minimum of three, I would say, for an important presentation, minimum of three. And is there a maximum? No, no. So I mean, you know, my main keynotes, I've done my keynote speeches. I do three main keynote speeches and I've done all of those.

1:03:44I must have done them thousands of times and they're still getting better. Right. They're still getting better. Every time I do one, there's a detail I can tweak. There's, you know, I'm always thinking, should that wording have been slightly different? Does that joke work well there? All the time. The best presentations that I've attended as part of the audience are the ones that in the very beginning, they hooked my attention. so how can we hook the audience attention in the very beginning yeah it's a great question um and in um in my book uh i have a structure for creating a presentation and the first part of the structure is a hook you have to have a hook um so i think a great way to create a hook is to understand what a hook's doing so when we when we start speaking it's very easy to think i've got loads of information in my head and i'm speaking to an audience and those audience that audience has an empty head right their heads are completely empty and they're just waiting for all my information to fall in and what you have to understand is nothing could be further from the truth the audiences are sitting there and their heads are full of stuff already they're thinking about the previous speaker or they're checking their emails or they're thinking about picking their kids up from school right they're not thinking they're not interested in you at all um in fact a rule of thumb i have in my book is when you do your preparation always imagine your audience is tired hungover and not very interested because often that's true but also it really helps to make your message sharper so you've got to have some kind of hook there and a hook doesn't have to be very long but mentally you have to be saying to yourself what do I need to do and say in order to get people to put their phones down or to stop thinking about the previous speaker and start coming into my message so hooks that work really well are if you're using powerpoint and stuff like that sometimes a really interesting intriguing slide can work really well.

1:05:26Rhetorical questions can work really well. So for example, when I talk about being persuasive and compelling, one of the first things I ask the audience is, if you could magically become 100 % persuasive, what difference would that make to your life? And I do that. That's a hook. So the audience is instantly thinking about themselves and their own world. Rhetorical questions work very well. Humor, again, can be a great hook. Anybody who can stand up in front of a room and get people smiling and laughing. That's a brilliant hook. Sometimes things like quotations can work well. So, you know, Martin Luther King once said dot, dot, dot, you know, sometimes that can work well.

1:06:01Sometimes addressing the elephant in the room can work well. So anybody who starts with saying something like, we've had an interesting morning so far. The one thing we've all been frightened to talk about is, that kind of thing is a great hook because the audience, oh, this is slightly dangerous. What's going to happen now? That tends to get people's attention. What's an example of an interesting slide? An interesting slide is something that's not obvious. So for example, it might be a picture that is not obvious why you've put it up there. And again, you can ask the audience a rhetorical question.

1:06:30One of the, I worked on a presentation, helped someone do a presentation and what we did, and it worked brilliantly. I mean, this wouldn't work for everybody, but it worked really well in this case was as people came into a room that on the slide, it said, there's an envelope on your chair. Do not open the envelope yet. And everybody had an envelope on the chair and had a question mark printed on the envelope and that that was a probably the best hook i've ever seen because the audience were completely transfixed and fascinated um we're quite childish really as humans what was inside the envelope um so i was going to pretend i remember but i don't remember um but it was something it was some activity they had to do on their table between between i don't remember what was inside wasn't important it was the envelope it was the it was the it was the as you come into this room something different to what you're expecting is happening.

1:07:15That was the hook. A lot of people get nervous before going on stage or speaking in public. Is there a method or a technique that can help us tackle that? Yeah, I would say almost everyone gets nervous to some extent. The way that nerves manifest are different for different people. So for example, so for me as a professional speaker, I get nervous, but my nerves don't disable me. They're not, my nerves manifest as excitement and so on. Some people get nerves so badly, they can be very disabling. They can be really troubling. So there's a few things that you can do. One is, I think, just on a very simple level, understand the more I do this, the easier it's going to be.

1:07:58And I know that's a long-term answer, but it is a really good answer. So if public speaking and presenting is important to you, if you've got to be good at it or you want to be good at it, grab every possible opportunity to do it and try and grab opportunities in quite low stress situations don't wait till that really important board meeting right don't let that be the first time in three months you've spoken in front of a room right grab other opportunities volunteer to speak at things go to charity organizations do lunch and learns do breakfast updates and stuff right get every opportunity secondly what you can do in real time is you can give yourself what i call a um i call it a one minute warm-up so give yourself some kind of ritual something that you do that gets you ready to start speaking.

1:08:36And broadly speaking, that will involve two things. One is getting yourself physically ready. And then secondly, psychologically ready. When we separate ourselves from a group and say, you know, look at me and listen to me, it's very unnatural to come back to evolution. You know, we're designed to stay in a group, right? If you stay in a group, you're safe. If a tiger comes to attack the group, you're much safer in the group. So when you separate yourself out, there's a lot in your body that's very old. It's millions of years old. That's saying, don't do this. You're in danger. If a tiger comes in this room, it's going to get you, right?

1:09:10It's not going to get the group. So one of the things I often get people I work with to say out loud is there probably isn't a tiger in the room, right? And you can't say that without smiling and laughing, right? It reduces the nerves a bit. So do some kind of physical warmup. You know, for some people, that's jogging on the spot. For some people, that's lifting their arms up and down, shaking stress out of their limbs. Some people like to go for a run around the block. If you watch any professional performer, speaker, comedian, you'll see they've all got some kind of ritual that they do. And it'll be different for every person, but they do something to warm themselves up.

1:09:45If you watched a professional pianist, they'd never sit down and play the piano in front of an audience without warming up. Backstage, they'll be playing the piano, getting ready. So you need to do that. And some of that needs to be vocal as well. So say some stuff out loud say poetry or song lyrics um some language that's a bit more interesting than can i have a coffee please because when you're speaking in public it's got to be more interesting than can i have a coffee please so say some stuff i like to say things that are very resonant that deepen the resonance of the voice so things with m's and n's words like mademoiselle and marmalade and stuff like that just to get the voice warmed up and then the third thing i like to do and i recommend this to everybody is is always say out loud the first thing you know you're going to say and it might be something very simple so it might be good morning everybody thanks for coming to the meeting.

1:10:28Say that out loud two or three times just before you go into that room or just before you turn on the team's meeting. Gets you ready to go. And how important is the speed of the way we talk? It's really important. So one of my biggest faults as a speaker is I speak very fast. And one of my journeys over the last 15 years of doing this professionally has been to learn to slow down for different audiences. And the first time I really realized this was I did an event in Europe where there were seven interpreters at the back of the room, live interpreters. And interpreters will just put their hand up if you're going too fast.

1:11:00And so I had lots of hands up and had to really, really slow down. So I think speed can matter, but more important than speed is variety. So if you're like me, if you're naturally fast, you have to find moments to slow down. If you're naturally slow, you have to find moments where you're going to speed up and create a bit of energy and excitement. So audiences tend not to like anything that stays the same, particularly if you're speaking for half an hour, 45 minutes, you can't stay the same the whole time. You have to have sort of peaks and troughs in attention. Sometimes we need to present, deliver a presentation that we just can't prepare because it was unexpected.

1:11:35You get into the office and your boss tells you, you are presenting to this client in 15 minutes. What should we do in these 15 minutes? I think it's a great question. So if you only had 15 minutes, I do a few things. One is I'm very keen on starting with what I call the 30 second message. So if you say to yourself, all right, if I only had 30 seconds with these people, what would my main point be? What would the message be? If you give yourself that discipline, you get a few real benefits. First of all, often that is the message. That's the headline. And when we're, it's really weird, when we're under the pressure of time, we tend to think instantly, how do I fill that 15 minutes?

1:12:08And we fill it with loads of stuff that isn't important. And then we finish with the thing that is important. And you see this over and over again, say to somebody, you've only got 15 minutes to prepare, and you've got a 15 minute presentation to deliver. You'll see it. 14 minutes of that will be context setting, background, stuff that doesn't matter. And then in the last minute, they might say the thing that really matters. So start with your 30 second message. Once you've done that, it helps you make much better decisions about everything else. Do I need any slides to make this message strong?

1:12:36Do I need data? Do I need stories? Do I need anecdotes? Do I need to bring in a colleague to back up this point? You make much better decisions if you know what your 30 second messages. The second thing I would do, and this is where, so that takes a minute to come up with your 30 second message maybe. So we've got 14 minutes of preparation time left. I would spend probably up to 10 minutes of that preparation time understanding the audience. So if it was a client, if it was a client I knew well, I start writing some things down. What's on their mind right now? What do they need to get out of this 15 minutes?

1:13:06What are they focused on? What are they worried about? Why have they asked for this presentation? What needs do they have that need to be addressed? and I would spend the bulk of my preparation time on them, not on me. Right? Because if I can find one thing that I know is going to hit with them and really work with them, it kind of doesn't matter if the rest isn't that well prepared. Because basically they walk into the room thinking, what's in this for me? What am I getting out of this? And if you can answer that question, even not very well, that's a successful message. If you spend the 15 minutes with just loads of slides you've really thrown together really quickly and you haven't answered that what's in this for me question, that's a poor message.

1:13:43And then that gives us, so if we did 10 minutes on that, that would give us four minutes left of our preparation time. And in that four minutes, I would structure what I want to say. And the way I structure all my messages is start with the hook. How am I going to grab their attention? Then what are my three main points? And I literally draw them out, box one, box two, box three. What are the three main points? Write the three main points down. Under that, I would just write Q &A for myself. Are they going to ask me any questions? What might those questions be? And then finally, what's my punchline?

1:14:16So what final thing do I want to say at the end of that presentation? What's the final thought I want them to take away with? And a punchline can often be things like, look, if you only remember one thing from my message today, that thing is dot, dot, dot. Or the thing we need to get done in the next month is dot, dot, dot. Interesting. I never thought about the punchline before, especially we now do a lot of presentations to fundraise. And at the very end, we are quite soft. Is that the wrong way to go about it? I think so, yeah. So almost everybody finishes, they finish messages with, you know, there'll be a slide that says, thank you, right?

1:14:51And people say, so that's it, everyone. Thanks for coming, right? It's a real shame. It's a real shame. Or even worse, you get a difficult question, right? Someone says, yeah, okay, but if we, all right, so have we invested X amount, right? How do I really know? Because last year you got it wrong, right? So how do I know you're not going to get it wrong again? And you kind of say, well, we'll try not to get it wrong. Do our best. Thanks for coming. It's a real shame to finish on a difficult question. You're in a really different psychological place if you know in your mind, do you know what, this is a difficult moment, or we were going to end in a soft way, but actually I know what my punchline is.

1:15:27I know what the final thought is. Also, it gives you a lot more confidence in your message. Because as you're going through your message, If you get difficult questions, if you forget something, if you get an interruption or a distraction in your mind, if you're always saying, at least I know how this is going to finish 100 percent, then it helps you. And finally, when you give the audience your punchline. So if you say something like, thanks for coming today, look, there's just one final thought I want to leave you with. It really signals to your audience, you know what? I'm good at this. I've prepared this.

1:15:54I've put some thought into this. So emotionally, they feel very secure with you as a presenter. And how should we deal with difficult questions? Because sometimes those questions can be so difficult that perhaps your answer can sound argumentative and you don't want to sound argumentative. Another very good question. So difficult questions come from difficult places. And I think one of the things that's really wise for anyone to do is try and tune in. Where's this question coming from? So some difficult questions, they're nothing to do with you. They're to do with the internal politics of the audience.

1:16:24So many people will have had this situation where, you know, you're presenting to a very senior team and one person's quite new to that team. So they just need to show their colleague, not you, their colleagues, I know what I'm talking about. I'm important. I'm powerful. And unfortunately, the way I'm going to do that is I'm going to ask you a really difficult question. That can be something. Sometimes it comes from a very positive place, as in people are sort of thinking, do you know what, I like you, I do want to work with you, but this is still a lot of money I'm going to invest, or this is a lot of reputation I'm putting on the line, so I really need to test you.

1:16:55You know, how do you deal with stress? So sometimes difficult questions come from that. They want you to win, they want you to succeed, but they are going to test you. Sometimes it comes just from lack of self-awareness in the audience. They don't know this is difficult. They just don't know that. And so I think you have to kind of tune into where it's coming from. And then your response, depending on where it's coming from, can be one of a few things. Sometimes you have to say to yourself, is this a question or is it not a question? Is it just a comment? Is it just a monologue that sounds like a question?

1:17:24And in those situations, I deal with those very often. I say things like, that's really interesting. Thank you. Are there any questions or are there any other questions? Right. So I say thank you to the person. Then I look away, look around to the rest of the audience. And everyone else in the room knows what's just happened. Basically, I'm not going to fight with them. Don't argue with them because they like the attention. but then are there any other questions sometimes if it's really difficult and it feels like either it's going to get into a fight or you might start you feel slightly panicked and you think do you know what i might say the wrong thing here or i might give the wrong information or i might make a mistake you have to give yourself a pause you have to give yourself a second to think and good ways of doing that are saying things like that's a great question let me just think about the answer i don't want to get this wrong so you give yourself a pause or another way of giving yourself a pause is to ask them to explain it more.

1:18:10So, sorry, can you tell me a bit more? So why are you asking that question now? Where's that question coming from? Can you explain? So it sounds like there's some fear underlying that question. So what have I not addressed in this presentation? Ask them sometimes to talk a bit more. That can give you a pause. And then thirdly, you can delay answering. So you can say, you know, you can give a sort of answer and then you can say, but look, I don't want to get into the data now because I haven't got the data in my head. I'm going to have to look that up and email you that this afternoon. Is that all right?

1:18:39So you give the best answer you can, but you deliberately tell someone, I don't want to bluff this. I don't want to wing it. I'm going to have to send you the answer later. And sometimes that can work well with those kinds of questions. Is that last one the best way to answer to a question in which you don't know the answer? Yeah. So if you don't know the answer, so if you don't know the answer and you're not expected to know the answer, then just say, I don't know the answer. But if you should know the answer and you just can't remember it, right, or you haven't quite done enough preparation, then I think absolutely delaying answering it.

1:19:10So, you know, and it might be something like, all right, I'm making it, this is a very clumsy example. I'm making this up. But, you know, someone might say, well, so exactly how much do you expect to grow next year then? And let's say you're still in discussions. You don't want to put a number on this. You know, so you might say, well, and you might be really honest about it and say, well, at the moment we're in discussions. Look, I mean, we've got some hopes and that hopes might be kind of up to 5%, but I don't want to put a number on it today. Within about a fortnight, we should be able to come up with the number we're expecting.

1:19:40Can I email it to you then? So you sort of have the best of both worlds. You give a vague answer in real time and then you promise the proper answer later. Lee, I have a last question, a final question for you. If you had to compress all your knowledge into one essential piece of advice that we must implement in our daily lives, what would it be? If I had to compress everything into one phrase, I think it would be, and sorry if this sounds too simple, but it's something that you can understand in 10 seconds and then spend the rest of your life getting good at, which I think you have to try and see everything you're doing from the other person or people's point of view.

1:20:15So almost everything I've said today is constantly being versions of step into other people's worlds, really understand what's going on for them, stop talking about yourself so much, stop, you know, putting your own ideas out so much and really understand how that's affecting other people. Thank you so much for coming today. I personally believe that unfortunately, when we attend school, they teach us very important things, but perhaps not the most important things in life. So they teach us how to speak, but they don't teach us how to communicate effectively. And I think that this is a skill that can benefit anyone, regardless to their profession or whatever it is that they want from life.

1:20:52So thank you for coming. Thank you for sharing with my audience today, all the different advices when it comes to persuasion, networking, and public speaking. I'm definitely going to implement several of them in both my personal and professional life. And I look forward to doing this perhaps in a year or so where we can maybe add some new content into the conversation. Great. My pleasure. I've been real thrilled chatting to you. Thank you, Lee.

1:21:19you