Always turn a negative situation into a positive situation.
Many of my firm’s clients have been with us for a long time. Our history with one goes back more than 10 years, and virtually from the beginning, this particular organization talked about developing a new name, logo, and tagline. It’s a professional membership society, so its mission is to serve that profession by providing certification, education, and networking opportunities. The profession it represents had changed dramatically over time, and the organization’s existing brand no longer reflected the reality of its membership. Younger people—emerging professionals—were becoming less likely to join. When we surveyed the membership, the message came through loud and clear: it’s time for a change.
Members of professional societies, particularly those who have belonged for many years, often develop very strong attachments and loyalties. They tend to resist change, and because they don’t have much experience in the field of communication, they can get bogged down in details and minutiae. It’s not a criticism; it’s just the reality. Change is hard for just about everyone, especially when it involves something people care about very deeply.
The process of coming up with a new name, logo, and tagline for this group dragged on for months. On several occasions, we thought we had consensus, only to see it evaporate time and time again. Our client was very nervous about how the members would react to a very big change. After a lot of hard work by a lot of dedicated people, my firm presented our proposed branding concept to the group’s board of directors at its annual meeting. The directors’ response was overwhelmingly positive and very gratifying; they couldn’t help but lodge a few minor complaints, of course, but in general, they loved it.
In fact, they loved it so much that they decided to present it to the organization’s top 200 leaders at that very meeting—just three days after we presented it to the board. We hadn’t expected that, and we didn’t have much time to prepare for a gathering that could very well develop into a tough situation. Though the board’s uniformly positive reaction to the concept was encouraging, we had no way of knowing how the broader membership would react.
We applied every strategy, skill, and technique for breaking through and winning people over that we had at our disposal. Express care and empathy. Tell stories. Stay positive. Dress appropriately. Send the right nonverbal signals. Cite independent data. Bridge to messages. Avoid traps that can erode trust and credibility. Practice and rehearse. And we did all of this in the course of a few days.
I’m pleased to report that our application of these strategies, skills, and techniques paid off. Though we faced a few hostile questions during the presentation of the new brand concept, and certainly a handful of people left the room unhappy, the situation never got tough. We successfully overcame a big hurdle that allowed us to move forward with implementation of the revitalized brand.
The experience reinforced once again the importance of the fundamental principles upon which the strategies, skills, and techniques associated with breaking through and winning people over are based. In this case, our clients didn’t have much time to absorb those principles. They picked them up on the fly and with a lot of our help. Fortunately, we have more time to review those principles in this format. We’ll start with four key ideas that it takes to win people over, and then we’ll wrap up the chapter with a few words about how jargon interferes when you try to apply those principles.
To be an effective communicator in tough situations when people are angry, worried, and suspicious of everything you say, it’s essential to understand the principles upon which the relevant strategies, skills, and techniques are built. Learning those principles is a useful exercise, too, because as you read through subsequent chapters, you’ll be able to trace all of your newfound abilities right back to them.
Let’s start with some basic math. Many of the people I train, particularly those with a liberal arts background like my own, recoil at the idea that successful communication requires math. But I assure you that we’re talking about arithmetic rather than calculus—just four simple equations that will flow through all of the information presented throughout the rest the book.
Here are the four equations that provide the basic foundation for the strategies, skills, and techniques we’re going to discuss:
If you keep these in mind, everything from here on out will make sense and come together more easily. Also, remember that these apply to any communication situation, whether you’re talking to a group, transmitting e-mail, or being interviewed on television (see Figure 2.1).
FIGURE 2.1 The Same Principles Apply, Regardless of the Form of Communication
While most of the examples I cite in this book involve verbal communication and direct engagement with an audience, the strategies, skills, and techniques necessary to win people over apply equally in any form of communication. If you have to write a difficult memo to your staff or produce a fact sheet explaining a problem to concerned citizens near one of your company’s facilities, keep those same strategies, skills, and techniques in mind. They are especially important if you ever find yourself being interviewed by the media, whether print, radio, TV, or online. Those can be among the toughest situations in which you’ll ever find yourself. We’ll go into great detail about breaking through and winning people over through the media in Chapter 8.
©iStockphoto.com/IvanMikhaylov
The first equation is the most fundamental:
P = R
This stands for “Perception equals reality.” When communicating with people in tough situations, you are always operating on the P side of this equation. What counts is your audience’s perception of what is happening (the reason audience members are angry, worried, and suspicious) and of whether or not you are a trustworthy and credible source of information. You may understand the reality of the situation: that you don’t really represent any risk to them, that you’re really working in their best interests, that you’re telling them the truth, and that they can trust and believe what you are saying. Unfortunately, what you think doesn’t matter. Your audience’s perception is what matters.
In 2012, my firm worked with a professional society that unfortunately discovered that its long-time executive director had engaged in a series of financial improprieties. Once an internal investigation revealed the extent of the executive director’s behavior, the society’s board terminated him. The facts were fairly straightforward, and even the executive director did not dispute the investigation’s initial findings (though he claimed that what he had done did not rise to the level of a fireable offense). The board chairman drafted and sent a brief e-mail to the group’s members, explaining what had happened and why the executive director had been terminated and his membership in the group revoked.
That’s when all hell broke loose.
A large number of members recoiled at the news. They knew the executive director, an industry icon with more than 30 years of experience, as an honest and extremely influential leader. Many considered him a friend, and almost everyone thought of him as one of the group’s founding fathers. They simply refused to believe he could be guilty of unethical behavior. Their perception of him clashed with the reality of the situation, and the perception prevailed. Suddenly, the group’s board and staff found themselves facing a mini-revolt. That’s when they called my firm.
We decided that the board chair had to send a second e-mail. It needed to apologize for the tone of the first communication and acknowledge that, while the termination would stand, the board would reevaluate its decision to revoke the executive director’s membership once it had completed a full investigation. The message also pledged to keep the members informed of new developments and provided the acting executive director’s e-mail address so people could ask questions of him directly.
In other words, we encouraged our client to see the event through the eyes—and perceptions—of its members and act accordingly. Most members perceived the executive director to be an honest, ethical person. The board was telling them their perception was wrong. Because of the way the board had communicated with them, members rejected the facts. Simply stating the facts and failing to address the members’ perceptions made the situation worse. The board didn’t win anyone over.
I’m pleased to report that the second e-mail was much better received. Many of the members who had been offended by the first communication praised the board and staff for responding to their concerns and so quickly addressing them. The controversy over the executive director’s termination essentially disappeared, and the society was able to pivot toward the future and begin the process of finding a new leader.
As you read this book, you may find yourself asking, “Why can’t I just tell people the facts? Isn’t that enough? Why do I need all these fancy techniques this guy is peddling?” When this happens, remember the P = R equation. It helps to explain why a bunch of facts, as true or real as they may be, won’t help you win people over. That principle is built into our next equation as well:
E > F
Or, in tough situations, emotions are greater than—and trump—facts.
When people are angry, worried, and suspicious, they absorb and sift through information with the emotional areas of their brains. The process is chemical, but it helps to think of it as a physical barrier. When the brain’s emotional centers are lighting up with thoughts and fears triggered by outside stimuli, facts will not penetrate into the rational part of most people’s brains. It’s one way to think about “breaking through.” If we don’t address and calm emotions first, the facts, data, and information we try to communicate will (figuratively) bounce off people’s emotions.
Mark Pettinelli, author of The Psychology of Emotions, Feelings and Thoughts, summarized this concept nicely:
Some things in life cause people to feel, these are called emotional reactions. Some things in life cause people to think, these are sometimes called logical or intellectual reactions. Thus life is divided between things that make you feel and things that make you think. The question is, if someone is feeling, does that mean that they are thinking less? It probably does. If part of your brain is being occupied by feeling, then it makes sense that you have less capacity for thought. That is obvious if you take emotional extremes, such as crying, where people can barely think at all.
Pettinelli argues, and many other researchers agree, that most people have a very difficult time thinking and feeling at the same time. One usually dominates the other. When people are feeling—or, for our purposes, using the emotional portions of their brains—they’re looking for an emotional response.
Many of my clients are scientists and engineers, and this equation is one of the hardest for them to digest and accept. They work with facts all day. Facts and data are the currency of their professions, dollars and coins that they trade back and forth. They use facts to convince and persuade, and among colleagues, the best facts (usually) win the day. Yet when they find themselves facing an angry, worried, and suspicious audience and the facts they’ve relied on throughout their careers have no impact on how that audience thinks or feels—and, in fact, make things worse—they get flustered. That’s why some of the smartest people I’ve met over the course of my career are often the least effective in tough situations.
When people are thinking emotionally, they expect an emotional response. In 1988, Vice President George H. W. Bush and Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis ran against each other for the presidency. At the time the death penalty was a controversial issue, and the candidates talked about it frequently on the campaign trail. It came up most prominently during their second debate, when CNN anchor Bernard Shaw asked Dukakis, “Governor, if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?”
Dukakis replied, “No, I don’t, and I think you know that I’ve opposed the death penalty during all of my life.”
One of my firm’s former employees happened to be in the press room at that debate. As he tells it, the room erupted in a big moan because most of the people there immediately recognized that he had stumbled. At that point in the campaign, Dukakis was already behind in the polls. That one answer, utterly devoid of emotion when emotion was exactly what almost everyone watching wanted and expected to hear from him, put the election out of reach for good. Most of the reporters in the press room concluded that the election was essentially over at that point.
This disconnect between fact and emotion plays out in personal relationships, too (and forms the basis for a lot of stand-up comedy). If you’re a man like me, your first instinct when a woman in your life is angry or upset is to try to fix the problem. I don’t take you out to dinner often enough? Let’s go tonight. You didn’t like that necklace I bought for you? I’ll return it tomorrow and buy you something nicer. I don’t help enough around the house? I’ll do the dishes from now on.
The problem is, she’s not looking for solutions. She’s looking for reassurance and empathy. She wants to know that you understand how she feels. Sure, she’d love more dinners at nice restaurants. Mostly, she’s sharing emotions with you because she wants you to validate them. By throwing a bunch of “facts” at her that you believe will solve the problem, you make things worse. When you acknowledge the effect your behavior has on her and on your relationship, and pledge to be more considerate and understanding, you make things better. (You’d think I’d do this more often, but the axiom that those who can’t do teach applies a little more than it should in this instance.)
It plays out differently in personal relationships in which both parties are emotionally attached, but the principle is the same. Facts regurgitated in response to emotional concerns almost always backfire.
The importance of emotions brings us to equation number three:
S = B+
This is mathematical shorthand for “To achieve success, you have to be positive.” You might be surprised at how seldom this principle is followed. My firm often works with clients facing serious crises. They’re often on the defensive, fielding hostile questions from all kinds of angry, worried, and suspicious people: customers, regulators, reporters, etc. In these situations, it’s very easy to slip into negative-speak:
“No, we didn’t do that!”
“That’s not what happened.”
“We don’t see it that way.”
“My company would never do anything like that.”
We encourage our clients to be positive, in words and in actions. No matter how tough a situation may be, they have a story to tell—a good story. Too often, they adopt a defensive crouch, both figuratively and literally. They know they’re going to be attacked, and they want to protect themselves, like an armadillo rolling itself up into a ball when a predator appears.
Too often, defensiveness becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Act defensive, and that’s how you’ll come across. People who are angry, worried, and suspicious of everything you say will key off that posture and only become angrier and more worried and suspicious. It’s very difficult to be positive from a defensive mind-set, making it all the more difficult to win people over.
Instead, you need to be as positive as possible. You have a story to tell, and you can choose how to tell it. That means sending all the right nonverbal messages (as we’ll discuss in Chapter 6). It also means avoiding negative statements and words whenever possible. Research shows that angry, worried, and suspicious people hear and react more intensely to negative words and phrases. This helps to explain why big corporations spend so much time and money protecting and bolstering their brands. If something goes wrong, they know that all the negative publicity they receive will quickly overwhelm anything positive that has come before. So when they are not in the middle of a crisis, they relentlessly convey positive messages about themselves to consumers, regulators, and others. The goal is to drive positive feelings so high that even a torrent of more powerful negative messages won’t sway people against them permanently. This also can help them recover more quickly.
In tough situations, the context of negative words and phrases doesn’t really matter. At the height of the Watergate scandal, Richard Nixon uttered the now-infamous assertion “People have got to know whether or not their president’s a crook. Well, I’m not a crook.” The sentiment only served to drive his approval ratings lower. His use of a negative phrase, “not a crook,” to defend himself made things worse. Rather than hearing the whole sentence, most people simply heard “crook” and thought even less of the president because he was being negative. Not that it necessarily would have helped him much, but Nixon would have been much better off saying something like this: “People have got to know whether or not their president obeys the law. Well, I do obey the law.”
Use positive words as often as possible in tough situations. In Chapter 10, we’re going to discuss the difference between “credibility questions” and “fact questions.” It’s especially important to avoid negative words when answering credibility questions, because they strike at the heart of your trustworthiness and credibility. When responding to more straightforward fact questions, negative words are more acceptable. But in either case, positive words are always better.
Avoiding negative words can be difficult. When people accuse you of lying to them or harming their families or ruining their lives in a tough situation, chances are, you’re going to want to reply, “No, I’m not doing that.” But it’s much more effective to say, “I’m here to tell you the truth,” or “Your family is perfectly safe,” or “I’m trying to make things better.”
I’m writing this book in the midst of the 2012 presidential campaign. Millions of Americans are being bombarded by negative ads from the candidates and their political parties. Now you know part of the reason why. Negatives are powerful, and to the extent that the electorate is angry, worried, and suspicious (and they are), negative messages overwhelm positive messages—at least in the minds of voters who haven’t already decided for whom to vote.
Another good reason to squeeze negative words from your vocabulary is that using them almost always leads you to repeat whatever allegation someone is levying against you:
Audience member: Why are you lying to me?
You: I’m not lying to you.
Or:
Audience member: The pollution from your factory is making me sick.
You: The pollution from my factory is not making you sick.
Or:
Reporter: How many of your products are tainted with salmonella?
You: None of my products are tainted with salmonella.
Our fourth and final equation is this:
3P = HC
In this book, we’re going to talk about credibility over and over again. Along with trust, credibility is absolutely essential for breaking through and winning people over. One way to boost your credibility is to borrow a little of it from someone who has more than you do. In my business, we call these people third parties, so this equation stands for “Third parties translate into higher credibility.”
This was certainly true when my firm worked with the utility I mentioned in Chapter 1. As you can imagine, the decision to build a new high-voltage transmission line created a lot of controversy in the communities where the line was supposed to run. People worried about noise, electric and magnetic fields (EMF), aesthetics, property values, and many other issues. As a big, faceless corporation perceived to be concerned with nothing more than the bottom line, the utility didn’t have much trustworthiness or credibility in the eyes of local residents.
Among many other recommendations, we encouraged the utility to cite independent studies when talking about the line. These included studies by the following sources:
Government agencies, which could show that the power line was necessary to ensure a steady flow of reliable electricity for the region
Academics knowledgeable about the nature of EMF, who could describe their very limited impact, if any, on health
Real estate experts, who could show that power lines do not reduce property values where they’re built
We didn’t want the utility telling people these things. We wanted government officials, academics, and other experts to tell them, because those groups have much more credibility with people than corporate representatives.
And to keep the promise that I made in Chapter 1, here’s what happened: The new line is on hold, but not because of community opposition. With our help, the utility was very successful in winning people over. But in the meantime, the Great Recession reduced projected demand for electricity to the point that regulators decided the line wasn’t needed, at least for the foreseeable future.
On most studies related to trust and credibility, corporate representatives wind up near the bottom of the scale. Who are the most credible sources? Independent scientists and engineers tend to have a lot of credibility with people generally, as do academics, teachers, and doctors. Government officials can be good sources from which to borrow credibility, but it really depends on the specific person, office, and agency. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has tremendous credibility with the general public, for example, but the U.S. Department of Energy has very little.
When you are seeking to take advantage of third-party credibility, keep the following points in mind.
Credibility works both ways. If you cite a source with less credibility than you, your credibility will go down. Lawyers generally are held in very low esteem, for example, as are public relations professionals (but don’t hold that against me). People who work for government agencies as career employees tend to have higher credibility than people who are appointed or elected, though many politicians are very credible. Studies consistently show that Americans like and trust their own member of Congress, for example, but not the other 434 members of the House of Representatives.
Just because a third party is credible today doesn’t mean he or she will be tomorrow, and vice versa. Credibility rises and falls (see Figure 2.2). Since I picked on him earlier, I’ll use Richard Nixon as an example again. He resigned in disgrace, but by the time he died 20 years later, most people saw him as a very credible expert on foreign policy. Tiger Woods once had a lot of credibility, but not so much anymore. If he wins a few more major golf tournaments and stays out of the gossip columns, that will change with time. NASA, typically one of the most credible government agencies, suffered a big drop in credibility after the space shuttle Challenger exploded during launch in 1986 and again when the Columbia broke apart coming home in 2003. As I’m writing this, the agency’s Curiosity rover just landed safely on Mars, so NASA’s credibility is on the upswing.
FIGURE 2.2 Relative Credibility Is Ever Changing
Since credibility transference works both ways, you have to be careful to cite sources that will add to your credibility rather than detract from it. Relative levels of credibility change all the time. When I first started helping people communicate in tough situations, my list of credible sources always included clergy along with scientists and doctors. Not anymore. Given the scandals involving child molestation and the Roman Catholic Church, I now urge people not to borrow credibility from religious leaders, all of whom unfortunately get painted with the same brush, at least as far as credibility goes. This will change again in time. As the church acknowledges its past and institutes reforms, eventually the scandal will fade, and priests (and other clergy) will regain some of the credibility they’ve lost.
©iStockphoto.com/small_frog
In deciding whom to cite as a credible source in order to bolster your own credibility, pay attention to the news surrounding different sources. Say you’ve cited an engineer from the local university in the past. Suddenly, the university’s president is fired for embezzling funds. Now that engineer is off limits for a while. Even if she had absolutely nothing to do with the scandal, her credibility is tainted by the diminished credibility of the organization for which she worked. Wait until you’re sure that citing that engineer won’t evoke negative thoughts and images in the minds of your audience members. In the wake of a scandal like this one, I’d wait at least six months and ideally one year.
Even as you pay attention to what’s in the news, keep in mind that most of us don’t trust the media. The Gallup organization has been monitoring the public’s confidence in the media for decades. In a September 2012 press release, Gallup announced that America’s trust in media fell to an all-time low. Only 40 percent of Americans indicated that they had a “great deal” or a “fair amount” of confidence in the media. The drop-off in media credibility has been even more dramatic over earlier years, as it has been for many other institutions. In the 1970s, confidence in the media ran as high as 72 percent. Today, citing the media can be a dicey proposition, even as the media can have a big impact on the credibility of the people in their stories.
Studies routinely find that people place the highest level of trust and credibility in people “like them” or people they know—neighbors, friends, and peers. In April 2012, the Nielsen Company released its annual Global Trust in Advertising survey. When 28,000 Internet respondents in 56 countries were asked, “To what extent do you trust the following sources of advertising?” the overwhelming number one answer was, “Recommendations from people I know.” More than nine in ten respondents said they completely or somewhat trust what amounts to word-of-mouth advertising. The number two answer, cited by seven out of ten respondents, was, “Consumer opinions posted online.” No other form of advertising broke 50 percent.
The bias favoring people like us or people we know translates to geography as well. A professor at a local university typically will be more credible than one who works far away, even at a top school like Harvard or Princeton. A local public official—say, the town mayor—will be more credible than a representative from the state government or Washington, D.C., all other things being equal. You can even play this game internationally. Studies by British academics carry more weight with most Americans than studies by almost any other foreign nationality, largely because of the “special relationship” between the two countries. After the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, France came under a lot of criticism for refusing to join the coalition forces. This was the era of “freedom fries.” For several years afterward, we warned clients not to cite French sources in an attempt to gain credibility. However, that’s no longer true today.
Every industry and profession comes loaded with jargon. We throw it around without giving it a second thought. My own business, public relations, is no different. Hits, metrics, earned media, PRSA, infographics—when I use these terms in talking to my colleagues and clients, they understand. When I use them with friends and family, they usually have no idea what I’m talking about. Not that it bothers them. If they’re really interested, they’ll ask. Otherwise, they just let the jargon go by and don’t hold it against me.
In tough situations, however, the normal rules of communication do not apply. Everything you do and say, including jargon, is perceived through the most negative filter possible. Jargon confuses and muddles your message. Even worse, when people are angry, worried, and suspicious, they perceive jargon to be condescending. They think you’re trying to show them how much smarter you are than they are, as if you’re saying, “If only you knew as much about this topic as I do, you would understand.” Finally, jargon tends to involve a lot of facts and data, which violates equation number two.
When communicating in tough situations, you have to strike a careful balance between talking over people’s heads and talking down to them. The standard you should shoot for is USA Today. While you’ll get slightly different answers from different experts, the general consensus is that USA Today is written for people with an eighth-or ninth-grade education. Stories are made up of short sentences and use simple words rarely longer than three syllables. When you find yourself in a tough situation and need to win people over, think about how you would talk to the average 14-or 15-year-old. Would you include a lot of complicated jargon in a conversation with an eighth-grader? Probably not. (By way of comparison, experts generally consider the New York Times to be aimed at people with a tenth-or eleventh-grade education.)
This isn’t necessarily a criticism of the American educational system. People who are angry, worried, and suspicious process information through a different filter. They’re thinking with the emotional rather than the rational portions of their brains. Even the smartest people may have more trouble than usual hearing and understanding when their emotions are in control.
If you absolutely must use jargon, make sure to explain it. In my business, for example, a “hit” means a media placement—a story we helped get published in a newspaper or aired on television. This rule applies when someone else uses jargon, too. If you’re speaking to a group of people and someone asks you a question that includes jargon, explain it before you respond. My firm has run across trained activists at public meetings who deliberately ask questions containing a lot of jargon. They hope that, by getting you to repeat it, they’ll drive down your trust and credibility.
Scrubbing jargon from your vocabulary can be harder than it sounds, because much of it goes beyond the more obvious technical words and phrases. Even general business terms that you may throw around at work every day—say, fiscal year, third-quarter earnings, and COB (close of business)—can be jargon to others. People who don’t work in an office environment won’t understand even this seemingly simple and innocent jargon.
By now I’m sure you have a sense that this book is really about trust and credibility. We’ll return to that topic in Chapter 5. First, in Chapter 3, we’re going to look at the vital role that storytelling plays in winning people over and then, in Chapter 4, at what drives people to become angry, worried, and suspicious of everything you say in the first place, making trust and credibility qualities all-important. We’ll see that learning how people perceive and assess risk and come to accept it (or not) is essential to understanding why we find ourselves in tough situations that make it so much more difficult to break through and win people over.