Say it Better

Can You Read Your Face? Fake a Smile? Detect a Lie?

We recognize emotions in our own faces more readily than in others.  If you can’t then something may be very wrong with your brain.  So reported neuroscientists this weekend at their conference here in San Francisco.

Researchers took photos of people who were asked to feign the universally-expressed emotions of happiness, sadness, anger, disgust and fear.  Weeks later they were asked to look at the mix of photos of themselves and others. They were more accurate in detecting the true emotion in their own face than in others. 

An odd conclusion one can draw from this is that it is easier to fool others when faking an expression than to fool yourself.  That makes sense since smiling when you are down is one proven way to lift yourself out of a funk and make others feel better around you. (Few notice your underlying feeling.) Also, it’s worth learning to read other’s facial expressions for many reasons  - from knowing how to best connect in the moment to experiencing empathy. 

Those universally-expressed emotions were discovered by Paul Ekman. He became an expert on reading faces by spending more than a year exploring his own, muscle by muscle, until he learned to read the fleeting micro-expressions described in Blink.  Now he’s the consultant on a new TV series, Lie to Me.

See the guilty knowledge technique to detecting lying. Then test your deception detection abilities.

For more on understanding behavior by facial expressions, consider reading ….

1. Paul Ekman’s newsletter

2. What Parts of a Face Most Influence First Impressions? 

3. Happy Face?

4. How to Improve Your LikeAbility

5. Spitting Mad: Getting Wired for War Online and on the Battlefield?

6. Become the Unforgettable "Face" of Your Organization

7. Morphing the Female Face Over 500 Years

8. Without Words, What Are You Telling the World?

They Don’t Know You. You’ve Got 15 Minutes to Sway

Your bleary-eyed city council members have sat through an hour of angry citizens, appearing one-by-one to attack their motives or earnestly recite a stupefying set of statistics or both.  Now you’re up.  Their decision affects your neighborhood, maybe even your street, perhaps even your home safety or value.  Your lifestyle or even your life may be at stake.  You are just a name to them. You aren’t Colin Powell. How do you get those weary elected officials – plus the restless audience and reporter to see the situation your way?  When it happened to him the Accidental Communicator offered this apt advice.

 Hint: You gain an enormous advantage when you offer the most compelling criteria by which a decision should be made.  Frame or be framed.

Your Description of Your Work Doesn’t Have to be Life-Changing, Yet ….

…. To be client-attracting, it must be engaging. Make it stick in their minds using a memory hook. Yours can relate to your name, kind of work, remarkable quality or skill, appearance - or perhaps a rhyme or word play. BNI founder, Ivan Misner, author of Seven Second Marketing, offers many examples, including three that I've paraphrased here:

• "Let me take the world off your shoulders," offers Sharon Howard, massage therapist.

•  Lance Mead of Lunar Travel Agency stands out from other agents when he says "Ninety percent of all accidents happen in the home. So travel."

• Photographer, Robert Stewart writes, "My pictures say a thousand words so you don't have to."

Your Authentic Voice Draws Others Closer

''I had a doorbell moment this week.'' Patricia told Tracy.  Both have sons serving in the same Marine unit in Iraq. Patricia is describing the fear that grabs her the moment her doorbell rings unexpectedly, thinking that the officer on the other side has come to tell her that her son is dead. Tracy understands.

Hint One: Through shared experience, expressed aloud, we adopt “shorthand” expressions and feel understood, closer and often even comforted. 

When Tracy’s son, Derrick was deployed, she knew that those who would most understand her feelings were other mothers in the same situation so she started a support group.

Wrote Cynthia Gorney way back in 2005 when the war still seemed new, “Draped over a banister in Tracy's house was an unwashed T-shirt Derrick had dropped during his last visit home. I thought Tracy was apologizing for her housekeeping, which I had already seen was much better than mine, but she cleared her throat and said that what I needed to understand was that she hadn't washed the T-shirt because if the Marine Corps has to send you your deceased child's personal effects, it launders the clothing first. ‘That means there's no smell,’' Tracy said.”

Hint Two: Smell is the most directly emotional sense.  Nothing else comes close. Use smell as memory anchors of your shared experience 

“Tracy's closest friends in the world right now are other parents whose sons and daughters have served in Iraq or are serving there now.

Hint Three: Your strongest emotions right now can lead to your closest sources of support.

 “Tracy knows that the grandfather clock in Patricia's house chimes nine times when the other clocks say it's noon because the grandfather clock is set to Baghdad time.

 Tracy knows that Patricia has figured out how to tell if someone is in her driveway by squinting at the reflection off a certain glass-covered picture in the dining room, so that if it should ever be two men in uniform, Patricia will know they have arrived before they start ringing the bell and before she is obliged to look directly at them and hear what they have come to say.”

 Hint Four: The specific detail paints the picture that people will see in their mind’s eye and shapes how they will feel and remember what you say.

Sayings to Provoke Your Own Way With Words

”Art is never necessary. It is merely indispensable.”

    ~ New York Times art critic, Michael Kimmelman

"Regarding SPAM, I'm comfortable with the size of my penis, I don't care that young girls want me, I've got more than enough insurance, and I can't help you escape from jail in Ghana, so please, go jam somebody else's in-box." 

   ~ Mark T. Gould, New Haven, Connecticut

"Some times you just have to live long enough for your message to catch up." 

   ~ Rev. Al Sharpton

 "Sex is about appetite. Love is about endurance." 

   ~ Jack Valenti

"Creativity isn't the conclusions you have drawn, but how you pry them back open." 

   ~ David Crismon, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Even if They Didn’t Intend to, Get 'Em to Recall What You Say

Here’s four ways:

One. Imagine that the brain is like a wall with clothes hooks on it. 

For the brain to catch and retain a detail, that detail must hang on one of the memory-inducing hooks that are already in the brain. The biggest hooks are the three universal and core life experiences: 

1. Family. 

2. Hometown or town where you have lived or are living. 

3. Past or current kind of work. 

For family, relate what you're saying to a family situation: yours, theirs, someone else's, or even a metaphorical family of services. Or relate your topic to the listener's work situation or work with which she is familiar. People also remember landmark places where they live, have lived, or have visited or well-known places. For example, our business is in Sausalito, which evokes pleasant by-the-bay memories for most who've visited here.

Two. Motion makes memories. 

Whenever people are moving or see movement, they remember more and are more emotional about what they remember. Get customers in motion with you in a positive experience and they will be more fervent, vivid, and believing fans, more likely to evoke their bragging rights and likely to share their experience with others. That's why we literally move to offer samples, getting people to reach out, so they feel the experience more deeply.

An experience is most memorable when you and the other person are both in motion, such as when you shake hands, walk together, or reach to exchange something. Pick those ripe moments to say the most vivid, specific detail you want the listener to remember and repeat to others. Times are next most memorable for the listener who is in motion even if you are not. Ask the person to reach or turn for something while you're saying your tasty tidbit to remember. The next most memorable movement is when you are in motion, even if your listener is not. A final valuable way to evoke a memory is for you both to watch motion from something or someone else.

Warning: Movement is a two-edged sword -- it is never neutral. 

The listener who experiences something negative where motion is involved will also remember the experience longer, and more intensely. As to a vibrating pole, we hold on sooner, longer, and more strongly to the negative incidents of life than to the positive, because the primitive triune part of our brain - wired to help us survive - causes us to respond to appearances of danger more strongly than to those of delight.

Three. Speak first of the other person's most current, pressing interest. 

Just as those in the market for new cars are most likely to hear car ads on the radio, all people listen sooner when you first speak about what is most on their mind at that moment. Sadly, in fewer than five percent of interactions when we want something from someone else do we first speak about what matters most to them. We are more likely to speak about our own interests first.

Four. Speak in vivid, specific details that have a high emotional value for the listener.

The good news? If you practice speaking first about the other person's interests, then about what you share in common, and only then about how that commonality relates to your interests, four amazingly powerful changes occur in how that other person relates to you. The person listens sooner, listens longer, remembers more, and assumes you have a higher IQ than if you first speak about your own interests. 

How to Improve Your LikeAbility

Your attentive glance, warm nod and quick smile.  How much do such behaviors affect others? Enough to surprise researchers. When students in a study watch even brief (two, five or ten second) glimpses of strangers expressing these positive actions on soundless video clips, they are deeply influenced.

"While students see just a flash of a teacher their first feeling highly correlates to their end-of-semester rating of that teacher" says Harvard Nalini Ambady. Along with study co-author Robert Rosenthal, they started by showing students 10-second clips. Then "thin-sliced it down" to five- and then two-second clips, having participants rate them on the 15 characteristics including how empathic, accepting, professional,optimistic, or supportive the teacher seemed.

No matter how thinly Ambady sliced the behavior, the more positive and likable the teaching assistants, the higher their evaluations.

Concluded Ambady, "One would think that teacher smarts, preparation and organization should count - and I'm sure it does to some extent but behavior, charisma, and the factors that go into holding an audience count more.”

And how do surgeons’ behavior towards patients affect the number of malpractice suits they get? Ambady found similar results. Key was voice tone. When she tracked just that trait, "We were really amazed. With just 20 seconds of each doctor's voice, you could predict malpractice claims. For instance, surgeons who sounded more unfeeling or dominant were more likely to have been sued in the past.”

It's never too early to start practicing as the warm teacher to my left demonstrates. With those two studies in mind I’m going to practice being more warm and interested – especially when around someone who rubs me the wrong way.  (That will take practice!) 

Nine Joyful Steps for Making a Big Change Permanent

There is a Tibetan saying "If you want to know your future, look at what you are doing in this moment." This may seem childlike but I find it easiest to make a big change in my life by picturing a very specific and compelling reward for it  - and other rewards for each small step towards that change. What wonderful, new experience will I enjoy? How will I have moved closer to being my true self?

Conversely, what boring, unpleasant or fear-provoking task or person will I now see in a more comfortable light or no longer have to experience at all?

"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself," wrote Leo Tolstoy. What habit do you want to drop or pick up? From body fat to a bright new job we obsess about but often block our own change. Here are some steps that have proved fruitful for me.

1. Find Your True North to Become More Joyful


There is a Thai word, "sanuk", which means whatever you do, enjoy it with others. First be clear about choosing a habit-changing goal that is powerfully valuable to you. Why put effort in an "ought to do" goal, based on others' wishes for you, when you can serve your true self by going for the one that you'll truly find most satisfying? As Keniche Ohmae wrote in The Borderless World, "Rowing harder does not help if the boat is headed in the wrong direction. Applying more muscle is no solution if the course is off."

Perhaps you are choosing a new habit that is someone else's goal for you, not your own. If you really don't enjoy moving towards that change, you may be acting against your deepest preferences. "Problems that remain persistently insolvable should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way," wrote philosopher, Alan Watts in The Book: The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are.

2. Picture Being Your Hero


Keep picturing the experience of your success when you are tempted to fall back. As Soren Kierkegaard, the 19th Century Danish theologian said, "People celebrate achievements and spotlight heroes but the truly heroic act is not the outcome but in starting out and not knowing if you will succeed. "A vivid imagination," wrote Aristotle, "compels the whole body to obey it." Émille Coué wrote, "It is the imagination and not the will that is the dominating faculty of man. It is a serious mistake to advise people to train their wills; they should learn to control and direct their imaginations."

Keep picturing yourself as the hero who has succeeded to make a self-fulfilling prophecy. Rather than talking about what you are giving up or how you might fail, always think and talk about your goal as the inevitable future - what is going to be.

3. Use Your Internal Homing Device


Look inside for your "Homing Device" - your most powerful motivation or passionate interest that can be related to your goal. As Dr. Beverly Potter wrote in Finding a Path With a Heart: How to Go From Burnout to Bliss, "When we pay attention to our Homing Devices and follow their guidance, we invariably feel right about ourselves and in perfect harmony with people and activities in which we are involved in the moment. . . . Not all targets (goals) are the same. Some are easier to hit. Some are more fun. Compelling targets have a magnetic force that pulls you towards them"

4. Surround Yourself With Mutual Support Systems


To keep your resolve, surround yourself with those who want you to succeed – and who are also on a path of practice.  Agree on shared and individual behaviors that reinforce your mutual support. The authors of Influencers found that is the only way to permanently change.

In The Healing Brain, psychologist Robert Ornstein and physician David Sobel, suggested we learn that the need for community is a key part of our evolutionary heritage and a way we can learn to change. The brain's primary purpose is not to think, but to guard the body from illness and despair. "The brain acts as an internal health maintenance organization, governing everything from the release of stress hormones to the functioning of the immune system.

It now appears that the brain cannot do its job of protecting the body without contact with other people. We have evolved to be dependent on others. Evolution has less regard for the individual than for the survival of the species. For your evolution towards your goal, plant yourself firmly among those who'll reinforce your desired behavior.

5. Involve Your Senses
 to Stay on Your Path

Make your message more real by "coming back to your senses". That is write it down, say it out loud, associate it with something you see, hear, smell, taste and touch every day. Plant Post-It messages on your bathroom mirror and car dashboard. Connect it to the radio morning news voice or music you hear. Tell friends and colleagues. Smell your shampoo or cologne and now associate it with your goal. Brush your teeth and connect the motion towards your goal. See the result in the shape of your doorknob. As Beverly Sills once told a reporter, "You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try."

6. Notice Where You Get Detoured

"The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn." wrote David Russell. Notice your pattern for avoiding your course towards your goal. What activities do you use to get sidetracked? What time of day or day of the week is it most likely to happen? What else is happening that can numb you into avoidance? What colleagues and friends help or hinder you on your path?

Discover these patterns now and you will be more powerfully productive towards this and all the next goals you set for yourself. But don't be too hard on yourself when you're not perfect. As Charles Garfield wrote in Peak Performance, "On course doesn't mean perfect. On course means that even when things don't go perfectly, you are in the right direction."

7. Confirm That You're on the Right Path


Look at what happens to you as you are changing. in your life. How are others close to you reacting? What new experiences happen? As Jean Shinoda Bolen wrote in The Tao of Psychology, "Synchronistic events can assure us when we are on the right life path; and advise us when we are not; at the most profund level, they assure us that we are not mere observers but always participants in an interconnected cosmic web." On a more basically worded level, see how the changes you make affect your self-image and your relationships with others. Simply speaking, do you enjoy your life more?

8. Savor the Practice and the Goal


Those who seem to relish their life in this increasingly competitive world have chosen the steady path of mastery of one skill and avidly dabbling in several others.

Like goal setting, the more specific the skill, the more likely the success and sense of satisfaction to be attained. We may not all be as lucky as Billie Jean King (I certainly wasn't) who wrote in her autobiography, Billie Jean, "When I was five or six…(I) told my mother I'd be the best at something; by the time I was twelve, I knew what I'd be best in. But it is never too late in life to choose your best.”

9. Plan a Grand Reward


Before you begin cultivating a new habit toward greater mastery, plan exactly how you will celebrate when you meet your goal – and how you will savor each time you practice. The bigger the change, the larger the reward you deserve. Enable others who supported you, to savor it with you. You might be modeling the motivation they need to begin their path towards mastery.