We take a strong look at one area of communication: how you come across in your physical delivery. I wish I could make this information mandatory for every 17-18 year old, it would change the way they interact with others and their lives for the better.
Hey there. Bart queen here. Welcome to the remarkability Institute today. Guys, I want to take a very strong look at one area around communication in that physical delivery on how you come across, whether you’re doing something virtually or doing something face to face. In this particular area. If I could write the script, if I could have my way, if I wave my magic wand, I’d make sure every 17 and 18 years old got this kind of information.
[00:02:14] Guys, I truly believe it would change how they do their college presentations, for lack of a better term. I truly believe it would change in that first job interview when someone says to them, why should I hire you over everybody else? And I, I believe it would begin to change how they’re going to interact with their spouse or significant other whoever they’re going to spend their lives with.
[00:02:38] One of my famous sayings, or one of the one of the things I like to repeat, one of the things that are important to me is this very simple concept that people buy what they see before they buy, what they hear, that people buy what they see before they buy what they hear. Now, if we. Embrace that concept.
[00:02:59] Then what we say and how we say it has to match. So for those of you who are parents out there, I want you to imagine that you’re looking at one of your children, especially when they’re younger, and you say, did you do that? And you can envision your son or your daughter putting their head down, kind of scuffing their feet and saying, no mom, no dad, I didn’t do that.
[00:03:24] And you can look right at them. I know you are guilty. I know you did it. That is a great example of what you say and how you say it has to match. Maybe you’ve had the experience where you’ve met someone, and you went up to shake their hand, and you reached out, and you said, very nice to meet you, and they looked at the floor and said, yes, nice to meet you as well.
[00:03:52] That’s another great example of what you say and how you say it has to match. The challenge here is when they don’t match your credibility, and your trust factor goes down. The classic example I see, especially in the corporate world, if someone is in a small group meeting, they’ve done a presentation, they’ll say, now are the, are there any questions?
[00:04:19] And when they say, are there any questions? They, too, they take two steps back if you think about it; I’m sure you’ve seen that situation play over and over and over again. Or maybe by chance, the presentation is over. An executive in the room raises their hand and asks a question, and the person who is about to answer it steps back two or three steps.
[00:04:43] I can promise you, even though they don’t realize that they’re stepping back, the visual that the audience sees says this is what it says to them. They’re on the run. They don’t believe what they’ve been telling us, and they’re not confident in what they’re telling us. This very simple concept of what you say and how you say it has to match is powerful.
[00:05:08] People buy what they see before they buy what they hear. Guys, I know you’ve been in a situation where someone’s stepped up front, and you went, Hmm, boy, something about him or her. I’m not trusting. I do not like it. I’m concerned about whether we want to believe that people judge a book by its cover or whether we want to accept that concept.
[00:05:30] It’s true. As soon as you and I walk into a room to do something, people will begin to look you up and look you down, and they get an assessment about you. They’re already going to begin to say, wow, this looks like it’s going to be good. I’m a little concerned. I trust them. No, I don’t trust them.
[00:05:51] They’re going to make all those perceptions before you ever start. So if you happen to be at your desk, you happen to be at your house, you’re seated. You got a pen and paper in front of you. I want you to write that simple concept down to people by what they see before buying what they hear. I want to be able to build on that idea.
[00:06:14] Now, as we walked through this podcast today, guys, I’m going to be giving you a high-level overview of what I call the D delivery mechanics, the pieces that makeup everything that you need to think about when you’re delivering a message. Now that’s whether that’s face to face or that’s virtual. So realize if you’re doing something virtually, they do not see some of these things, but these other mechanical pieces will come through in the way you carry yourself.
[00:06:43] They’re going to hear this through your voice. If you’re face to face, I want you to embrace this idea. Every single thing counts, which you don’t think counts, counts, which you may not have worried about, may count to one of your listeners. Now. I’m not asking you to change who you are. I’m not asking you to change your choice of clothes.
[00:07:09] I am asking you to think through each one of those pieces and make sure that there isn’t anything that you’re doing that’s a distraction. If there’s something that’s a distraction, I want you to think about getting rid of it. Just this week, I led a program around virtual communication, and one of the things that I highlighted in this virtual perspective is just for us guys, what is your shirt look like so I can incur and encourage you enough in those situations.
[00:07:43] Get rid of stripes and get rid of plaids. When it comes across on the video, sometimes it can seem like those things are moving, and then it can be a distraction for you. For you ladies, many times, you may wear a lot of Jangles or bracelets on your arm, and every time you took your hand up or take your hand down, you’ll get that jingling sound.
[00:08:05] I’m not asking you guys again to change anything about what you do.
[00:08:09] I’m
[00:08:09] Bart Queen: asking, I’m asking you to build awareness around what may be a distraction. So let’s take a couple of things in mind. Realize that people buy what they see before they buy what they hear. Big principle to think about. And number two, get rid of any of those distractions that may cause your listener, whether you’re virtual or face to face, to not pay attention to what you’re saying.
[00:08:35] Now, as we get into the area of the make of the mechanics, there are a couple of things, or let me give you a list of those things that I want us to build awareness around. Number one is your posture, whether you’re standing or you’re seated. Number two is physical movement. Whether you’re standing or seated, whether you’re face to face or you’re virtual, it matters.
[00:09:00] I contact one of the probably the most important skill I want you to truly embrace and probably make a paradigm shift around from there, your physical gestures, what you’re doing with your hands, your facial expressions, what you’re doing with your face. You’re smiling and realize that people can hear a smile on your face, which leads us to the last big component around your vocal variety.
[00:09:28] Now, vocal variety has five core components to it. There’s the rate you speak fast, low; there’s volume, loud, soft, there are your God-given pitch and tone. Just how your voice sounds, there’s influxion, which is up, down in your voice, or maybe some of you might call that modulation, and then the power of the pause.
[00:09:56] This is your ability to give a sense of a sound bite. This is your ability to get rid of your ums and ahs. It may take us two different sessions to get through this, depending on how we break it apart. So if we only get through half of it, I want you to realize, look for that second podcast on your delivery mechanics and make sure you pick up the 72nd half.
[00:10:22] So guys, let me get into that very first one around posture. Posture is the number one skill that communicates confidence before you open your mouth. It is the one thing where people will look you up and look you down and get a sense of how you come across. I want you to be perceived as confident before you ever open your mouth posture.
[00:10:50] I would also believe it is one of your four power skills. This one scale will separate you from everybody else. Now, as I walk you through this, if we were doing a typical three-day program, or I was coaching you for a Ted talk or a keynote speech. I ask you to do this, you’re going to go, Bart, this is uncomfortable, so I want to bring you back to a principle that I taught you in one of our other podcasts, and that was this idea of disparity.
[00:11:22] I’m going to ask you to do things. You’re going to go, Bart, that’s way too uncomfortable. I don’t like that. That makes me feel stiff. But here’s the disparity piece. Your listeners get to go, wow. They look confident. They look open. So your rule of thumb is this, do not go with how it feels. Go with the impact it creates.
[00:11:46] Guys, if you go with how it feels, you’re never going to embrace these skillsets because they’re uncomfortable. It’s a skill set. So think about maybe learning a sport, and the coach was asking you to do it over and over again, and you went coach. That just doesn’t feel right. And the coach eventually made you do it so many times that it started to feel natural.
[00:12:10] For those of you who are musically inclined, maybe learning a musical instrument. You went through the same thing. I remember my freshman year in college, trying to learn how to play the guitar. I practiced and practiced until my fingers bled, and I finally said, I quit. I can’t do this. I never pushed past that pain enough to embrace the idea of making it feel like it’s more fluid.
[00:12:36] Now for some of us, that curve as long, and for some of us, that curve is short. Every single one of these skillsets will be different for every single person. Now, if I had you in a three-day program, I would get you up on your feet. I’d put everybody in a big circle, and then I would get you to freeze, and we would start to look at some of these postures.
[00:13:02] The first posture we’re going to kind of take a look at is typically a man’s posture. Now, guys, we tend to stand with our feet more shoulder with a military background sports background. The other structure or the other posture? IC, is that what I call the GQ pose? One hand in a pocket, you throw out kind of a leg.
[00:13:26] You look like you’re modeling for Nordstroms, JC Penny’s, or Macy’s. Those are the typical, bigger postures I see from men. Women do something a little bit different. They’ll throw out a leg, put a hand on a hip, tilt ahead. It’s what I call more of a girly pose. You’ll also see women a lot of times for the across the Lake, right over each other, put their feet side by side, and they’ll stand cross-legged.
[00:13:56] Or I see both a lot of men and women who will stand with one leg out, and they’ll put their foot upon a heel. Now I see the majority of this. A lot of time, guys, when women, when you ladies are wearing your nice heels because your foot hurts, you’ll rest your foot up on that heel to take the pressure off your feet.
[00:14:19] What ends up happening in that situation? You end up swiveling your foot and moving it, and it becomes a distraction. So if you’ll do me a favor and start paying attention the next time you’re in your corporate meeting, you’re at a conference, you’re watching someone present. Notice their posture. Now, you may have noticed it before, but you weren’t able to articulate it.
[00:14:44] Now, with each one of these postures, I give them just silly names so that you can begin to identify it, and you can begin to see it. The posture I want you to take. And this is going to feel uncomfortable. Guys, I want you to put your feet hip-width apart. Now, basically, for most men, depending on your size, is two to three inches apart.
[00:15:12] For you ladies, it could be anywhere from two to probably a half-inch apart, depending on your God-given structure. If your more to the taller side, more to the lean side, you may see that you can bring your feet a little bit closer together. For those of us who are what I might say thicker in our body structures like myself, you might have to pull your feet a little bit apart.
[00:15:44] The second piece to this posture is where everybody fights me the most, is I want you to relax your arms just to your sides. Now the best way to do this, if you have one of those full-length mirrors, if you’re at home somewhere, stand in front of that mirror and notice two to three inches apart with your feet and relax your arms to your side.
[00:16:07] Now, when you’re doing this, if we were doing this in the circle environment that I talked to you about, what you’re going to see is you start looking at your colleagues. You’re more focused on their face, then you’re more focused on their body, but you’ll get a lot of folks who want to bring their hands up and put them hands folded dead center, or you’ll see some people who drop their arms, and we’ll do what I call the fig leaf, where it’s directly in front of them.
[00:16:34] Dead center. If you’ll do that, what you’ll begin to notice is that’s where the focal point is. Your hands become the focal point instead of your face. If you’ll come to this posture two to three inches apart, arms relaxed to your sides; it is what we call a ready position. So for those of you who are sports-minded, if you’ll think about it, no matter what sport you’ve got, you have a ready position.
[00:17:03] You have a starting position. You don’t get stuck in that starting position. But that’s where you start. Now. I want you to gesture, do whatever you want to do with your hands. And I want you to move. If you’re up on a stage, move from point a to point B. If you’re in a conference room, go from a seated position to the whiteboard.
[00:17:26] Go up to the PowerPoint slide. I want you to move, and I want you to gesture, but I always want you to come back to what we call that ready position. That ready position is neutral. It is neutral. Now, a lot of folks, a man especially will fold their arms at you, okay? This makes you look defensive.
[00:17:51] The majority of the focus by your listener, whether you’re seated or standing, should be at your face. Now guys, just listening to this can be difficult because this is a skill set, and this is where I believe behavior change is so important. You have to be able to practice. It’s that repetitive, do it over and over again.
[00:18:18] And this is where in our three-day program, you get that behavior change, and you get that skill development. It is critical to your success that you get that hands-on coaching. I remember when I first learned this, I thought, Oh my gosh, I can’t even move. And I related it to the very first snow skiing lesson I took.
[00:18:41] I was probably 26 years old, and I remember taking a lesson. I remember the ski instructor saying, okay, Bart, bend your knees, great. Grab your poles, super Ben forward, excellent. Point your toes inward. And then he said, all right, all I want you to do is go down the bunny slope. And I remember looking at him and saying, I can’t even move from this position, let alone do what you’re asking to do.
[00:19:10] That’s how cumbersome this can feel, but I can’t encourage you enough. You have to fight past it. So as you think about the skillset, here are a couple of ways I want you to practice. When you’re standing in front of your sink in the bathroom, and you’re shaving, you’re brushing your teeth. I want you to go to this ready position.
[00:20:12] When you’re standing in line at the grocery store, I want you to go to this ready position. When you’re standing in line at the ATM, and you’re trying to get some cash out of the machine, go to this ready position. When you’re standing in the hallway talking with your friends or your colleagues or the people you work with, go to this ready position the next time you go out in a social event, as you’re standing, having a cup of coffee, a glass of wine, cold beer, whatever it may happen to be.
[00:20:38] Guys, scan at the audience, look at the people in the social environment, and just look at their posture. Notice how people are standing now, I can promise you, nobody’s going to walk up to you and go, wow, John, your posture is outstanding. They’re not going to say that. They’re going to walk up to you and say why you look confident.
[00:20:59] You look like you’re ready to go. They will notice something about you, but they will not be able to articulate what it is. That’s an awesome thing, but if you go by how it feels, you’ll never embrace that idea. It took me forever to embrace that skill set. But now, guys, I’ve been sending that way for the last 30 years, and if I do something different now, that different posture is what feels uncomfortable.
[00:21:31] Now, I mentioned this briefly that your posture is the first of your power skills. This is the one thing that will make you come across. The most powerful to begin with. Before you open your mouth,
[00:21:44]I want to make sure that this becomes one of your strengths, and it may take some practice just like riding a bicycle, but once you find that you can do that, guys, you will find that this is the most comfortable thing you can do. Now, that’s kind of an overview of this idea of the ready position of your posture.
[00:22:08] Now, I want to link that with this idea of movement.
[00:22:13]Movement also is part of your power skills. Now, eye contact drives movement, but let me give you some principles around movement that I want you to note. The number one reason you move in any situation around a small boardroom table, you’re up on a stage in front of 50 people, 500 or 45,000 people.
[00:22:40] I want you to get this. I don’t want you to miss this. The number one reason you move is to raise the level of engagement, to raise the level of engagement your high school teachers if they were effective. Teachers did this a lot. Remember being seated in the back row of the class. Say it was Western save and you’re bored stiff, and you’re reading the latest sports illustrated.
[00:23:06] You’re reading Cosmopolitan magazine, you’re writing a love note. Whatever may happen to be, you’re not paying any attention, and that teacher decided to go up the side aisle as he or she was speaking. If you remember this, I bet you tucked that love note into your folder or you hit the magazine. The number one reason you move in any situation is to raise that level of engagement.
[00:23:33] Now, most people don’t move properly. If you’re anything like me, you paced. You went back and forth and back and forth. I remember someone saying, Bart, you look like a caged lion. You see a lion in a zoo paced back and forth on one side of their cage. That’s not movement. That’s pacing. And I was the King of that for a long, long time.
[00:23:59] Now the idea of movement, there’s a couple of principles you have to embrace. Number one, movement is driven by eye contact. Movement is driven by eye contact. Movement is driven by eye contact. Now the second piece that makes that come to life is this idea that eyes pull you forward. Eyes pull you forward.
[00:24:25] That happens because the premise is this, you always speak when you’re looking at a set of eyes. When I dive into eye contact after movement, whether it’s in this episode or the following episode, I’ll talk about the power of that, but right now, I want you to realize that eyes drive you forward.
[00:24:44] So if I’m up on a stage and I want to move one side to the other, I need to be looking at a side of a set of eyes, and I just walk across the stage. I’m as if I’m having a conversation with that image individual. If I’m around a boardroom table and I’m on one side, and I want to move to the other, I might look at the person on the far side of the room, have eye contact, eye contact with them, share my thought and walk to the other side.
[00:25:11] Eyes always pull you forward. Now when you do that, that leads us to the third principle. That is, you’re looking for an anchor. That anchor is what pulls you forward. It also dictates the distance that you want to go to. So if I’m in a round, a boardroom table and I’m at a corner, and I want to go to the far corner on the other side, I could look at that set of eyes, begin to speak, and I can pull myself around to that individual.
[00:25:44] I can stop halfway. I could stop a quarter of the way. There are no right or wrong eyes pull you forward. You’re looking for an anchor. The number one purpose of the movement is to raise that level of engagement—those very simple concepts. Now give you command presence anywhere in the room. I want you to own the space that you’re in.
[00:26:14] If you feel like you’re losing someone at the far end of the room, go in that direction. If you feel like you’ve lost someone at a boardroom table, go in that direction. If you want to reengage an audience and use PowerPoint on a screen, get up, walk to the screen purely the combination of your posture, and your movement will drive things forward.
[00:26:39] You’ll also be able to keep that engagement higher. Now, let me remind you at a one POS podcast I shared with you, you have three major goals. Build trust, build a relationship, and build engagement. This is just one way through movement to keep your engagement higher, critical to your success. Now, most people will say, well, Bart, that’s kind of uncomfortable.
[00:27:06] I’m around a boardroom table, and I just get up uncomfortable for you, engaging for your listener. I know typically, if I’m dealing with an executive-level audience and I’m not using PowerPoint, I always pick a couple of places that I get up. I go to a whiteboard, I go to a chalkboard, and I write something down.
[00:27:27] Now, here’s what’s kind of interesting. When I get up, and everybody goes with me to the whiteboard or the chalkboard, I’ve draw, I’ve driven there, their eye contact in a different direction. I’ve made them shift in their seat. They have to turn their head. That just skyrockets engagement, and then as soon as I come back to my desk, I come back to the boardroom table.
[00:27:49] I’m having a discussion. Again, it’s a conversation, guys. This is one of the most. Powerful tools you can put in your toolbox. Number one skill that that develops. Command presence before you open your mouth, your posture. One of the key skills in driving engagement is this idea of movement. Integrate those two skills into anything that you do.
[00:28:17] Whether it’s a one on one, it’s five people, or it’s 5,000. Now, Tim, when I started this podcast, I opened up with this idea, this very simple idea that you’re trying to drive engagement and that people buy what they see before they buy what they hear. These are just two elements, two elements that will help you command the room that will keep engagement higher, and they will make you be perceived.
[00:28:49] As a subject matter expert. So I leave you with one thought on this podcast. John Maxwell said that leadership is nothing more, nothing less than pure influence. Your ability to influence people, your ability to drive them forward, to get them to take action, to influence them from point a to point B is your ability to communicate.
[00:29:16] So as we wrap this podcast, as you’re going into your week, you go into your day, you go into tomorrow, I want you to begin to think about what one place could I integrate my posture and this idea of movement to my next talk, my next presentation or my next meeting that I handle onsite? Guys, I want you to be confident.
[00:29:39] I want you to be strong, and I want you to increase your ability to influence folks. Guys. It’s been a pleasure being with you a short amount of time today. It’s always great to see you. This is Bart queen at the remarkability expert act Institute, and I’ll see you next time.
Bart queen here, and welcome to the remarkability Institute. Now, if you’ve been following me over the last couple of weeks or so, we’ve been focused on this idea of how do you physically come across or what I call your delivery mechanics.
[00:01:42] Your delivery mechanics are just as important as your content, and many times folks will spend hours and hours and hours on crafting content. You’ve probably done that. Maybe you even spent all day on a Sunday. You didn’t spend time with your family. You locked yourself in your home office, maybe even drove to the office, and said, I’ve got to get this presentation together.
[00:02:05] And you go to the nth degree on what that PowerPoint slide is going to look like, and if you’re crunched on time, like the majority of folks, you’re doing that kind of twisting and tweaking right up to the very last minute. What just absolutely amazes me. Out of all the years that I’ve been coaching and helping people is this, they spend hours and hours on making a perfect PowerPoint slide, but they won’t spend any time around what does this physical thing, you’re you, yourself look like when you’re sharing information.
[00:02:46] Remember that I’ve shared with you many times that what you say and how you say it, guys, has to match. Those two things have to be the same, and when they’re not the same, people don’t buy into what you’re saying. People buy what they see before they buy what they hear. It’s got to be congruent. You’ve seen this many, many times.
[00:03:07] We can see this from our politicians, our world leaders, many times, maybe a government office where they’re sharing information, and you go, I just don’t believe what they’re telling me. Often, that’s because what they say and how they say it just doesn’t match. You’ve also heard me say that if I could give this to every 17 and 18 years old, that I would know guys.
[00:03:31] Anytime I have an opportunity to travel internationally, I go overseas. I do my best to find a youth group or a nonprofit that I can give this information to. That’s how important I feel like it is. Getting it out to our high school students, I think, is critical. I can sit next to somebody on an airplane, and they’ll say, well, Bart, what do you do?
[00:03:54] And I’ll come back sometimes, and I’ll say, I’m in the confidence business. And they’ll say, well, what does that mean? And I’ll share with them how this skillset, just this vehicle in helping our young people, gives them the confidence to stand up on their feet, articulate their message, what they’re passionate about to get out there and make a difference in whatever they want to do in their world.
[00:04:20] In my years of working with MBA students, one of the schools that I worked with came back, and they had done some type of a small survey, and they found that the students who went through this program went through this confidence-building program, learn to articulate themselves. If they practiced and showed those things during their internship, they received a 10 to 15% higher.
[00:04:45] First-time pay offer than someone who was not giving you. Giving anyone the ability to articulate what they’re passionate about, what’s important to them to communicate their message is the key competitive advantage that you’re looking for. It will set you apart from everybody else. You and I have both heard our ability to communicate verbally, and our ability to communicate from a written perspective are the two things that will set you apart above everybody else.
[00:05:20] But it’s the two things we spend the least amount of time with. So as we walked through our program today, guys, as we share our time, I want you to become aware of the number one skill. The number one skill that will separate you from everybody else. What I want you to do is not only learn about it, but I want you as soon as this podcast is over, begin to implement it with your family, with your friends, with your colleagues, with your presentations, with your demonstrations, with your WebExes, with whatever you’re doing virtually.
[00:05:55] Now, here’s what I’m going to promise that you’re going to find. Number one, you are going to be perceived as far more confident. Number two, you’re going to find that you’re far more articulate in your information because you’re focused because of this one skillset. And number three, and in my mind, the most important, and you’ve heard me say it many times, that you can exponentially grow your ability to influence people.
[00:06:22] Now, if you’ve been listening to some of my podcasts, I’ve given you an overview of your posture, the number one skill that communicates confidence before you open your mouth. I gave you some ideas and tips and tricks around movement. Now remember this, the number one reason you move is to raise that level of engagement.
[00:06:40] The question that we’re going to look at today is what drives movement, and that’s that idea of your eye contact in my mind. In my mind, of all the delivery skills you’re going to look at the delivery mechanics, your eye contact is the number one skill you should practice. Guys, forget about posture.
[00:07:01] Forget about movement, forget about gestures. Forget about all those things. Focus just on this one. The simple idea of your eye contact. Now, here’s, here’s your rule of thumb. It’s that simple. It’s this easy if you want to come across as knowledgeable if you want to be perceived as a subject matter expert if you want to be able to drive people to take action, if you want to be influential in what you do if you want to connect with people, if any of those things mean anything to you, this one skillset.
[00:07:40] Will be the foundation. It will be the cornerstone. It will be the catalyst that will create that for you. So here’s your very simple rule of thumb. Do not speak, do not speak period, unless you’re looking at a soft set of eyes. Do not speak unless you’re looking at a set of eyes. This will change everything.
[00:08:06] Little children do the best at this. Parents, I want you to think back when your children were, say two to about five or six. Yeah. How many times when you were at your laptop, or you’re doing something, you’re watching a game. One of your children came up to your side, grabbed your shirt, sleeve, your pant leg, and said, mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy.
[00:08:31] I have a question for you as you think about that, as you remember that. When did they stop? They did not stop until you looked at them. Little children are brilliant cause dad, mom; if you’re not looking at me, you’re not listening. How many times when you were younger did a parent walk up to you and say, young man, young lady, you look at me, what I’m speaking to you.
[00:09:01] They wanted that eye contact when you were a child, or maybe how many times have you said that to your child? Young man, young lady. You look at me when I’m talking to you now, in that situation, most likely you were kind of in trouble. So make an application of a teacher that you admired, whether that was high school or college.
[00:09:24] Think about who did the majority of your teachers talk to. If I thought about that, most of my teachers talk to the chalkboard or the whiteboard as they taught, and I can tell you from my experience that’s what I may be picked up my phone. I had a chit chat with a buddy. I looked at something important to me.
[00:09:45] I thought about what I was going to do after I got out of class. It gave me an opportunity to check, just check out. But guys, if you’ll think about the teacher that engaged you, that you loved learning from that you said to yourself right now, if I had an opportunity to take a class from him or her, I would, I’d put a $20 bill on the table and bet the fact was that they looked at you when they were speaking with you when they were teaching you, and you were engaged in this process.
[00:10:20] The number one thing you want to do is only speak when you’re looking at a set of eyes. So let’s go to the other side of the coin. How many times have you been in a business situation or a business setting, and the person spent the whole time talking to their PowerPoint slide? We’ve all experienced that, and you’re like, Ugh, this is just painful to experience.
[00:10:42] You’re looking at your watch going. Okay. How much longer, I have to get out of here cause there’s no engagement to it. How many times, both for you guys and you ladies, has your spouse or significant other walked into the kitchen, the living room, wherever you happen to be. You’re watching the game, you’re on your laptop, you’re doing email, you’re cooking, whatever it may happen to be, and the spouse walks in, and you continue to do what you do, and you go, Hey, on, how was your day?
[00:11:16] We’ve all done that, or how many times have you been doing something like that, and your child walked in maybe as a teenager and they’re trying to have a conversation with you, and you’re not even paying attention or vice versa. How many times have you walked into your children’s room, and they’re doing whatever they’re doing, and you’re trying to have a conversation, and they’re not looking at you?
[00:11:36] Gets to be pretty frustrating. Today with our technology, most of us have our head down, and our eyes are on our phone. I always get such a kick as they filmed somebody walking across some type of an open area and they’re on their phone, they’re not paying attention, and they trip and fall in a fountain, or they run into somebody else, or they run into a post.
[00:11:57] We’ve all done that the next time. Gentlemen, here’s a challenge just for us guys. The next time your spouse walks into the room that you’re at and you’re on your laptop, or you’re watching the game, do me a big favor just as an experiment. Turn off the game, close the laptop, look up and say, Hey, how was your day?
[00:12:20] And just pay attention to their expression. Watch what happens. I can promise you one of them will say, okay, what have you been up to? Where have you been? Or how much money have you spent? Gentlemen, you’ll remember that when you first started falling in love, you were Google’s eyes across the table.
[00:12:43] You couldn’t get enough of looking at her face. And now there are five years of marriage. There are two children. There’s work. Life is busy, life is hectic, and we don’t even take the time to connect. If you’ll think about it, our communication is about two things. It’s really about a connection and a conversation, and sometimes the people that we love and care for the most are the ones that suffer the most because we take it for granted.
[00:13:18] The number one skill that you can practice is this idea of your eye contact. So let’s dive a little deeper into that and get into some principles that may help you implement this into your everyday life. Western business-standard States that I can look at you for three to five seconds, which is an acceptable amount of time and the way we do business in the Western part of the world that is acceptable for both men and women.
[00:14:32] Now, I’m not saying if you’re in a group environment, you look at someone, and you go. A thousand, 1000, 2000, 3000, 4,005, I’m done with you. I’m not saying that that roughly is the amount of time that’s comfortable for you to look at someone. What it boils down to is one thought per person.
[00:14:57] Just one simple thought per person in a group environment. It becomes a series of one on one conversations. Let me say that again. It is a series of one on one conversations. You can only talk to one person at a time, but what we end up doing is what most people do, which is what I call I spray. You throw your head from one side of the room to the other.
[00:15:29] Now you’re going to go, Bart, I’m looking at people. Yes, you probably are, but you’re not connecting with people. That becomes the key differentiator. Your eye contact gives you the ability to connect, and it allows you to focus as I’m coaching folks and looking at people many, many times. To me, they look like Rainbird sprinklers.
[00:15:54] You’ve seen that that kind of, as you watch a sprinkler across a lawn, they’re not connected, but they’re going, ah, boom, boom, boom, boom. Some people look like a lighthouse, and their head goes from one side to the other, and from that side to the other. I see this a lot in our executives, and I see this many in world leaders when they use a teleprompter.
[00:16:20] The next time you’re watching an executive or a world leader and they’re using a teleprompter, notice what they’ll do. They’ll look at the teleprompter; they’ll get whatever they’re supposed to say. They’ll talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. They’ll throw their head goes to the other side. They get what they need off the teleprompter, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, and they’ll go back to the other side of the teleprompter, and they’re just throwing their head back and forth and back and forth.
[00:16:46] Now if they’re up on a stage and they’re moving, if you pay close attention, you see them get stuck in between the two teleprompters, you will never see them pass that teleprompter. But if you look at the people who know how to connect with people, they know how to use their posture, their movement, and their eye contact, they’re engaging.
[00:17:07] They’re not stuck in these boundaries. They’re looking at a set of eyes, and they’re moving toward that person, and they’re engaging them. No, I gave you the idea that it’s three to five seconds. So let me come back to that point just for a second. Let’s say you and I have an opportunity to go-to classic, more classic Asian cultures, so I’m going to ask a question.
[00:17:32] Is that eye contact three to five acceptable in that part of the world or unacceptable? If you said unacceptable, you’re correct. From a classic perspective, there, eye contact is more one to three in a classic Asian culture. It’s softer. It’s not right or wrong. That’s just that cultural element. I distinctly remember early in my career, the first opportunity I had to go to Japan and teach.
[00:18:05] I spent one full week with a man from Japan teaching me the ins and outs of the Japanese culture and what was acceptable and what wasn’t acceptable. I remember thinking, I will never remember all these things. I remember thinking, I just don’t want to put my foot in my mouth. I remember thinking that once I got there, I had to soften that eye contact because I didn’t want to make anyone feel uncomfortable.
[00:18:34] All these ideas are all completely driven by one of the very first concepts I gave you of being listener focused. Now, let me just mention that again. If you happen to be in a group of 15 people around a boardroom table, every single person at that table will let you know what’s comfortable for them in your eye contact.
[00:18:53] So let’s say I’m looking at John and we get to three seconds and he looks away. Well, John has just given me a big clue that he’s not comfortable with anymore with that, but I can look over at bill or Mary or Susie. Or Margaret and I can look three to five, and they’re comfortable. Everybody will give you the signal of what works for them.
[00:19:17] Your job is not to make any feel. Anyone feel uncomfortable. Your job is to connect with them, not to make them uncomfortable. Now, let’s take that eye contact one step further, and I will keep this focused at just the men. We mentioned that in the Western part of the world, three to five seconds is acceptable.
[00:19:38] We talked about the classic Asian part of the world that it’s more one to three. So let’s go more to middle Eastern type cultures and just keep it focused around the men. Ladies, this is a different topic, a different subject. It’s a different thing and eye contact with you. So from that perspective, the three to five is, is it in that culture longer?
[00:20:03] Or is it shorter? Classically, it’s acceptable to look longer. It’s all also acceptable from a proximity perspective. They stand closer, or you and I might feel uncomfortable in that proximity. We all have a circle, guys. These are not right or wrong things. All I want you to do is think about, is it effective, or is it ineffective?
[00:20:31] You have to be able to control your mechanics. You have to be able to control your eye contact. But the principle I want you to remember is you don’t speak unless you’re looking at a set of eyes. Now, if you’ll take that to heart, a couple of things are going to happen. If you’re doing demos and you’re doing that virtually, this becomes difficult.
[00:20:52] You’re going to have to focus here, but you’re always going to want to talk to that laptop. If you’re doing that demo face to face, you can’t talk to your laptop anymore. If you’re doing PowerPoint, you can no longer talk to your PowerPoint slide. You only speak when you’re looking at a set of eyes. This will change everything.
[00:21:12] The majority of people out of my experience, 80% of the time when they’re doing PowerPoint, 80% of the time they’re talking to the slide, 20% of the time talking the customer or the client. Even if you just take that paradigm shift. 80% of the time with the customer, the client, 20% of the time you’re talking to the slide, you’ll find that it is not only revolutionary, but it’s evolutionary and how you begin to be perceived by your listeners.
[00:21:40] The only time you speak is when you’re looking at a set of eyes. Now, I’ll always get somebody in class who say, okay, Bart, there’s gotta be an exception to the rule. Absolutely. Of course. So a couple of things to think about. You’re in the car, you’re driving, and you have someone in the passenger seat. Every time you speak, you’re not going to look at them.
[00:22:00] You’re, you’re going to crash if you do that, but you’re going to glance over, you know that you do that, that’s fine. The idea is to drive and push yourself only to speak when looking at a set of eyes. Are you going to be able to do that a hundred percent, no. The next time you speak at your speak with your spouse, can you make it an effort to connect with them?
[00:22:25] Of course. Can you make an effort to connect with your children? Yes. So the next time you’re downstairs, and they’re upstairs, instead of screaming at them, come to dinner, do your homework, whatever it may happen to be. Walk upstairs, look them in the eye, and have a conversation with them. Now, at first, they’re probably going to freak out on you a little bit, just cause they’re not used to it.
[00:22:49] They’ll get comfortable with it. In today’s world, the one thing that will set you out separate us out from everybody else. It’s just that eye contact when we shake hands, just looking at someone’s square in the eye. Having that nice firm handshake traditionally has always been a sign of confidence.
[00:23:11] Whether I’m 16 years old, whether I’m 12 years old, whether I’m 55 years old, you want the ability to connect. This is the one skillset that will separate you from everybody else. Now, here’s what I have learned as I am sharing this with you. When we were little, as I mentioned with the children, they don’t hesitate to look at people when they speak, but as we grow older, we learn the extremes.
[00:23:41] You’ll recognize this. The first extreme is the idea of intimidation. We learned to get into people’s faces. Most of the time, we’re upset. Maybe we’re angry. We step into them, and we’re eye to eye. You see this in the military, maybe a drill Sergeant. Look at it, someone getting after them. They’ve got that incense of intimidation.
[00:24:05] I’m not talking about intimidating people. The other side of the coin, as we get older and we learn intimacy, learns how to be intimate with someone. We learn to gaze into their eyes and chat with them. I am not talking about the extremes. What I’m talking about is that the middle section is just called engagement.
[00:24:27] Your job is not to intimidate. Your job is not to be intimate. Your job is just to connect, and the best way you can connect with anyone is to look at them when you speak to the best of your ability—this one scale. If you forget about everything else I teach you around delivery mechanics or what you might call body language, if you’ll just embrace this one thing, just this one thing you’ll find, it will change everything in your life.
[00:24:58] I distinctly remember listening to a woman talks about eye contact guys, and I remember realizing that I truly had never looked my mom square in the eye and told her how much I loved her. I had never done that. My father had passed, and my mom, after my father passed, she and I grieved. We grieved differently, and for five years, we didn’t talk to each other.
[00:25:25] I heard this woman talk about eye contact. I walked out of that little class. I went back to my apartment, I packed my bag, and I drove the four and a half hours to where my mom was at. I looked at my mom’s square in the eye and told her how much I loved her and how sorry I was. My relationship with her was never the same.
[00:25:51] Shortly after that, Alzheimer’s began to take my mom. What I realized was if I hadn’t taken that moment to connect with her, if I hadn’t taken that moment to look her in the eye and tell her how much I loved her, she would never have known that. If you look at what I’m sharing with you is only this idea of presentation skills, you’re completely missing out.
[00:26:19] Oh, what I’m talking about, these are life skills. These are our communication skills. These are the things we do with our children. These are the things we do with our parents. These are the things we do with our colleagues and our customers. You and I, as humans, are begging to be engaged, and we’re begging to be connected.
[00:26:41] And the best way that you can change everything in your life is one simple thing. Just start looking at people only speak when you’re looking at a set of eyes. I share all this with you because it’s made such a difference in my life. This skillset not only changed me personally, but it changed me professionally.
[00:27:04] They’ll skillset not only became my job, but it became my passion and my purpose. My reason for wanting to share this and these podcasts is because I want you to experience what I’ve experienced. I want you to know that change and the difference it can make in you and the difference it will make in others.
[00:27:28] Your ability to connect and your ability to the conversation have a conversation are two of the greatest things that you can give to another human being as you roll out into your week. As you think about what I’ve shared, I just want you to start looking at your spouse, your significant other, and your children.
[00:27:48] Just start there for me. Guys only speak when you’re looking in their eyes and watch what happens over some time.
[00:27:59] It will change everything, and it will change you guys. This is Bart queen. This has been the remarkability Institute. I can’t wait to see you next time.
