Evoke Positive Emotions
,One reason that being likeable and arousing a positive mood is so important is that people tend to be skeptical of a message when they first hear it. Dr. William McGuire of Yale University has extensively researched what makes people believe or disbelieve a message. He found that the most important consideration is the source of the message: you. If someone knows, likes, and trusts you, she will be less skeptical of your message. Another important variable is the mood that the person receiving your message is in. You can impact that too because emotions are contagious.
Emotion is contagious
In Primal Leadership, emotional intelligence researchers Daniel Goleman, Richard E. Boyatzis, and Annie McKee explain how the mood of leaders is contagious. We have mirror neurons in our brains that cause us to take on the emotions of others, especially leaders. This concept of emotional contagion is one reason why emotional intelligence is so important—you can directly influence how people feel with your mood. And when people feel good, they are more prone to like you and want to do business with you. You can learn more about emotional intelligence and read an interview with Dr. Annie McKee in my book The Confident Leader.
Be sure that you’re in a positive mood as you make your business connections. If you aren’t having a great day, take a few minutes to do something to boost your mood before an important networking event or meeting. Your mood booster may be listening to a favorite song, sitting outside in the sun and enjoying a cup of coffee, or going on a quick walk. You’ll feel better and so will the person with whom you meet.
Emotion is immediate
The vibe or emotional response we get from someone is immediate. We can usually tell in a matter of seconds if we feel we have “chemistry” with someone. This may be why speed dating programs such as 8minuteDating are so popular. I think it could actually be even speedier—eight seconds. We tend to know that quickly if there is a connection. It is similar in business. While you aren’t looking for a dating relationship, you are typically looking for someone you like. For the most part, we tend to do business with those we like, which is a combination of how we feel about them as a person and the benefit that they can bring to our business.
In the first few seconds of meeting someone, your goal is twofold:
1. Be warm, engaging, and likeable so people see your personality and get a good vibe.
2. Engage curiosity so people want to learn more.
The tools I shared in Chapter 2 on capturing attention serve to stimulate one of the most important emotions in building connections: curiosity.
Emotion results from specific behaviors
There are three ways to impact emotion in yourself and others: thoughts, biology, and behaviors. Typically, the easiest thing to influence is your behaviors. Let’s review what not to do. Here is a list of the top 10 most common mistakes I’ve seen my clients make. Note that the way I determined these is from watching people live at events or listening to them over the phone on conference calls. They are not things that people tell me that they do—most of us are unaware of these types of things.
1. Not Being Friendly What does it really mean to be friendly? It isn’t so much about how you act as how you make the other person feel. Being friendly involves communicating your openness and interest in another person. It entails expressing warmth, interest, and comfort. When I observed clients make this mistake, it was not typically because they were unfriendly people, although a few needed to work on expressing their friendliness more outwardly. More commonly, a lack of friendliness seemed to be because they were too focused on delivering a pitch or elevator speech and were therefore less focused on connecting with the other person.
2. Being Overly Professional This mistake is related to friendliness. Because you are a smart, educated professional, you may feel that it is most important to lead with that to establish your expertise. As we will discuss in the next chapter, showing expertise is critical but not at the expense of showing friendliness, openness, and warmth.
3. Not Expressing Interest and Curiosity This manifests behaviorally through asking questions. When you ask thoughtful, specific questions in a way that expresses genuine interest and curiosity, you will be perceived as more likeable. In addition, you will learn more about the person, which will help with everything else we’re discussing. While it is crucial that you’re prepared to meet with people, sometimes you can be too prepared. You assume that you know what they want and launch into a sales pitch when really your initial goal at this stage in a relationship is to be curious and find out exactly what they see their needs as being.
4. Being Calculating or Overtly Self-Serving You know that feeling when you talk with someone and you can almost see the wheels turning in his mind as he tries to figure out how you can help him? That is not good. Of course our goal is to create relationships that get results, but you don’t need to think so specifically about how someone could help you at this stage in the game. If you find yourself doing this, become more present in the moment by observing, listening, and asking questions.
5. Not Being Genuine As excited as you may be to meet someone and about the prospect of doing business with them, be careful to stay true to your most important values. It can be tempting to start agreeing with everything or to say that you do things that are not your true area of expertise. This can create a very slippery slope and can come across as lacking sincerity and simply telling people what they want to hear.
6. Trying Too Hard The way to recognize if you’re trying too hard is to ask yourself two important questions:
• What am I afraid will happen?
• What am I doing to prevent that from happening?
When a relationship or opportunity is important to us, we often experience anxiety about messing it up. In turn, we tend to overcompen-sate and try too hard. This behavior can mask your true personality, undermine the perception of your value, and prohibit a connection between you and the other person.
7. Being Too Generic Don’t be afraid to put your stake in the sand and show exactly what you stand for and what you do and don’t do. It always amazes me how often people state what they do in a generic way that we’ve heard a hundred times before. For example, I role-played with a client about how she presented herself in networking situations. When I asked her what she does she said, “I’m a life coach. I help people unlock their true potential.” Her response was too general and didn’t show her unique value and personality.
8. Not Focusing and Listening Nothing feels worse than talking with someone as they look over your shoulder, scanning the room for their next encounter. If someone makes us feel uninteresting or unimportant, we immediately do not like them. If you are going to take the time to speak with someone, make it quality time. In just a couple of minutes, you can forge an important connection that you can follow up on later if you need to speak with more people at that time. If you can’t commit to focusing on a conversation, do not allow yourself to have it.
9. Being Guarded People sometimes seem to want to appear mysterious in order to arouse curiosity. While curiosity is important, being guarded, evasive, or mysterious is annoying. Don’t make people do a lot of work to get to know you. They either won’t do it or they’ll leave frustrated and energy depleted.
10. Pretending to Understand Let’s say that you’re speaking with someone who has a lot of technical expertise that you do not understand. Decide whether it is something that you want and need to understand or not. If so, ask the questions to learn more. If not, say so in a way that compliments the other person’s knowledge and is upfront about the limits of your understanding. Do not, however, say yes and pretend that you understand because you don’t want to appear dumb. Doing so digs a huge hole for yourself and limits your realness.
Your awareness of these specific behaviors that foster or hinder like-ability and emotional connection will help you and the other person feel confident and at ease.