Building Response Potential
Getting attention from other people is a blessing and a curse. We all want attention but at the same time we are terrified of it. When we want to talk, when we are ready to talk, when we have something we want to say but nobody listens, it can feel terrible.
On the other hand, the most terrifying words many of us might ever hear are, “The meeting is in five minutes, why don’t you give a twenty minute presentation on your team’s progress? The owners of the company just showed up unexpectedly.”
When we talk and nobody listens, it sucks. But when everybody is looking at us and we’ve got nothing to say, it sucks even worse. Public speaking is feared worst that death. In this post, we won’t be going over any tips to get over your fears of public speaking, but we will teach you some guaranteed techniques to get people to listen to you when you do have something to say.
Unfinished Business
The human brain hates unfinished business. That’s why we binge watch way past our bed time. Plenty of studies have been done to demonstrate the power of open loops on our brains inability to forget about something.
For example, a waitress will have six open tables. Each table represents and open loop. Unfinished business. Something that is still going on. She’ll remember all their orders, where they are in their dining experience and every other piece of data about them. But as soon as they pay their bill and are out the door? Poof!
Nobody Likes Being Ghosted
If you wanted to break up with somebody, the easiest way is to simply ghost them. Stop thinking about them, stop calling them, and move on. Unfortunately not only is this not very nice, but it also can be the least effective.
Consider what it’s like to be ghosted. You thought everything was going fine and then radio silence. What gives? Nobody can just accept something is over, even if there is zero evidence. So the ones who are ghosted are almost guaranteed to pester the ghoster until they get resolution. Closure.
This is another example of how much we hate unfinished business. When something feels incomplete, our brains won’t let us forget. Even if we were dumped in a face-to-face sit down, unless we know exactly why, we will still be suckers for every get your ex back product on the market.
Leverage What Works
So when you want to create some unquenchable desire for your listeners to be unable to stop listening to you, use this. Create as many open loops as you can. This is a structure based idea, so it has absolutely nothing to do with the content of your stories.
Not Intuitive
Most of us assume that in order to keep people hanging on the edge of their seats we need to have some compelling content. That one time we went parachuting and our chute didn’t open so we had to strip naked and tie together our clothing in order to land safely. But in reality, any normal (and otherwise boring) content and be put into a structure that will make it very compelling.
Strategically Placed Pauses
When most people talk, they put a pause where a period would go in a normal sentence. This is normal to see this in action, watch how people talk. Try to guess where periods would go if you had to write down what they were saying. You’ll see that most people pause very near to the period. This is because we tend to think in these type of thought structures.
But consider putting a pause where no period would go. To create the maximum amount of response potential, consider putting the pause in between a verb and a noun, especially transitive verb noun combinations. A transitive verb requires a noun, so as soon as your listeners hear a verb that they expect to be completed by a noun, but a pause comes instead, their brains will shut down until this small open loop is closed.
If you can’t find any verb noun, put in pauses where an idea is only half expressed. It sounds confusing when it’s written out like this but with a little practice it’s very easy.
Examples
Consider this normal sentence spoken where pauses would normally go:
Yesterday I woke up and I was hungry. (Pause) So I put on my shoes and walked to the store. (Pause) When I got to the store I decided to buy a sandwich. (Pause) So I went inside and bought a sandwich and a diet Pepsi. (Pause) I drank my diet Pepsi outside on the sidewalk. (Pause) While I was finishing my diet Pepsi I saw this guy with a peg penguin. (Pause) His pet penguin came over and asked me about my car insurance. (Pause) I wasn’t sure how to answer him.
Most people would have a hard time paying attention, as it does sound pretty boring. Until you got to the penguin part. But by the time you got to the penguin part, most people would have wandered off.
Now consider this with some pauses put where people wouldn’t expect them.
Yesterday I woke up and I was (Pause) hungry. So I put on my (Pause) shoes and walked to the (Pause) store. When I got to the store I decided to buy (Pause) a sandwich. So I went inside and (Pause) bought a sandwich and a (Pause) diet Pepsi. I drank my diet Pepsi outside on the (Pause) sidewalk. While I was finishing my diet Pepsi I saw (Pause) this guy with a pet (Pause) penguin. His pet penguin came over and asked me (Pause) about my car insurance. I wasn’t sure how to (Pause) answer him.
Add In Strategic Eye Contact
When you say the words just before the pause, another trick is to slowly open your eyes a bit more, as if you are building up to something really important. Do it slightly so people don’t think you’re a lunatic, but enough so their attention will increase. Then when you get to the pause, make eye contact with a few different people before finishing.
This may seem and feel goofy, and people might even start to giggle (and not know why) but they will definitely want to listen to see how your story ends up.
Long Vowels
Once you have some practiced with the strategically placed pauses, you can start to elongate your vowels. This is something that requires a lot of confidence. But luckily this is one of those form following function and function following form things.
If you are in a good mood, you’ll smile and make easy eye contact with people. Your inner emotions will drive your outer behavior. But the opposite is also true. If you are in a cruddy mood, you can force your outer behavior to be that of a happy person. You’ll find that your outer behavior will drive your inner emotions to a large extent.
So when you start to elongate your vowels as well as put in pauses, it may feel goofy at first. But both strategically placed pauses and elongated vowels have a strange effect on people’s brains. Most of the time, people listening will wait for their turn to speak. So they’ll be both listening to you talk, but they’ll so be getting ready for their turn. But when you combine strategic pauses and long vowels, it tends to shut down their brains while they focus on you.
Quick Confidence Boost
It will feel weird at first, but it’s something you can ease into. You’ll see the brain freezing effect this has on others. This will make you feel confident since they are paying attention to you. This confidence can eaisly be fed back into your speaking behavior, allowing you to amplify it.
Enjoy The Stage
With just a little bit of practice you’ll soon enjoy doing these tricks. You’ll enjoy being the center of attention, especially if you want to clown it up a bit. Use a little bit melodramatic eye contact, use some facial expressions to go along with your elongated vowels. This will give you tons of attention, even if the actual stuff you are talking about is the same stuff you’re always talking about.
Kick It Up A Notch
Once you build in the sentence level techniques, it’s time to expand your open loops. And that is by breaking stories in half. If you watch any well written TV show or movie, they have tons of stories all going at once. They’ll show a bit of one, and switch to another, etc. This is a fantastic technique that keeps the viewers attention completed fixed on the show. The technique is easy, and you can use it as little or as much as you like.
Start With Two Stories
Pick two stories that are completely different. We’ll assume each story has five parts, or beats as they are usually referred to in acting circles. We’ll to the beats in story one as 1A through 1E. Story one could be this:
1A: You heard a strange sound outside
1B: You looked out the window
1C: You say a guy in his pajamas with a shotgun
1D: It was your crazy neighbor chasing ghosts
1E: The shotgun was empty and you helped him back home.
Now, in the above story, 1C would be a good place to shift to another story. This is the part where people would be most thinking, “What happened next?” So story two, (2A – 2E) could be something like this:
2A: You went down to the mall
2C: You saw your ex girlfriend
2D: You started talking to her and felt a hand on your shoulder
2E: You turned around it was her sister
2D: You all had a good laugh and ate lunch together
The part about getting the strange hand on the shoulder could imply a mini cliffhanger, but since this the middle story, and will be told all the way through, it’s not that important. Told together, the individual beats would go like this:
1A: You heard a strange sound outside
1B: You looked out the window
1C: You say a guy in his pajamas with a shotgun
2A: You went down to the mall
2C: You saw your ex girlfriend
2D: You started talking to her and felt a hand on your shoulder
2E: You turned around it was her sister
2D: You all had a good laugh and ate lunch together
1D: It was your crazy neighbor chasing ghosts
1E: The shotgun was empty and you helped him back home
When you transition from the pajama shotgun guy to the episode at the mall, it will take people a while to figure out what is going on. And if you are using any kind of pausing or elongated vowel techniques, they’ll won’t be able to do anything except pay close attention.
Finish Up – Blank Their Mind
When you then go back and talk about your neighbor with a shotgun, they won’t remember the middle story very much. This will take a lot of practice, but it’s a powerful technique to capture their attention and not let it go.
To read about this pattern in more detail, see our post on nested loops here.
World Class Comedian Technique
Watch any stand up comedy routine and the very best ones employ this simple technique. This is essentially the heart of their skills. Most of the stories they talk about are simple things that happen to everybody. But they mix in techniques like the ones described above, and they get paid tons of money and are world famous.
Practice A Little Each Day
The pause technique is pretty easy. Once you get some experience with that, switch to the elongated vowels. Once that becomes second nature, start to add in some extra facial expressions and gestures. Once that feels familiar, start with the broken stories.
Two Turns Into Many
Two stories are pretty easy. Once you get the hang of two, you can add in as many as you want. Just talking about anything can work. Something that happened to you at the post office, a TV show you watched, something you heard from a friend of a friend, any story will work.
World Class Skills
The first two techniques you can conceivably start using today. But once you add in the broken story technique, there are a lot of ways you can use them. Considering how clumsily most of us talk, by spitting out half baked ideas wrapped in ill-conceived sentences, being a consciously charismatic communicator will take you far.
Learn More
Mind Persuasion has plenty of books and courses all designed to significantly improve your communication skills.
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