Transcription
Hi everybody. In this video, I'm going to tell you how to speak powerfully and assertively. I'm Bruce Lambert from HowCommunicationWorks.com. Thanks for joining us. Let's get started.
In the last video, I talked about politeness. Specifically, I talked about the relationship between power and politeness, and social distance and politeness, and ranking and politeness, but I just wanna focus on power today. So the general rule in politeness is the more powerful the speaker is in relation to the listener, the less politeness they have to use. And there's an inverse version of that rule that is, the less polite someone is with you, the more powerfully you'll perceive them. Because we can read back through these expectations about power and politeness.
So if someone uses a lot of politeness to us, they're being very deferential and we can tell that they're bowing down to us with their words. They are deferring to us. So the example I often use is that in Japanese culture, for example, people actually bow. People actually bow to one another as a show of ritual politeness, ritual deference. So in the United States, we don't bow to one another. We show deference in other ways. We show deference verbally by saying please, by hedging, by beating around the bush, by being indirect and doing all sorts of this other verbal deference. But nevertheless, we are showing deference.
This was driven home to me in a study I did of pharmacists trying to talk to physicians. I gave pharmacists a task where they had to recommend a drug to a physician who had made a medication error. And they had to recommend an alternative. And most of the pharmacists simply wouldn't do it. They were too used to deferring to physicians. So instead of saying, "I recommend drug X," they said, "Would you maybe think about trying drug X?" or they'd say, "Drug Y might not be such a good choice." So they would do all these, play all these games, deference games, to show their deference to the physician. In effect, they were bowing to the physician, but bowing verbally, not bowing physically like the Japanese might bow to show deference.
So the key to speaking powerfully, ironically, is don't be too polite. Politeness is perceived as deference. Politeness is a form of verbal, ritual deference. So assertiveness is the opposite of that. And power is the opposite of that. One of the ways we show power is by not showing verbal deference, not being too polite.
So when you have a request to make or an offer to make or anything, when you have to say something, if you wanna be perceived as assertive and powerful in a situation, don't use too much politeness. Be direct. Say it as directly as you possibly can. That means no hedging, no indirectness, no beating around the bush, no apologies. As direct as you possibly can. Think about the thing you have to say and think about saying it as directly, in the most unvarnished, unadorned way that you can. That is the most powerful way you can say it because the less politeness you use, the more powerfully you'll be perceived. Because people know the rule about power and politeness. So when you refuse to use politeness, people will assume you must be a powerful person who doesn't need to use politeness.
Now, the only caveat I'll make about this is if you're with someone who's genuinely much more powerful than you, who is institutionally much more powerful than you, like if you're in the military, I don't recommend doing this to your superiors. If you're in another situation where the other person is institutionally and officially much more powerful than you, you have to be careful about not showing them proper deference. But in situations where it's not clear who has the official power, you wanna assert your power, then do not use verbal deference. That means don't be too polite. Doesn't mean be rude, or profane, or obscene, or inappropriate. It just means no hedging, no indirectness, no beating around the bush, no apologies.
So try it. Politeness is the opposite of deference. Politeness, in some ways, is the opposite of power. So if you wanna be verbally assertive and verbally powerful, don't be too polite. Okay, you heard it here first. Like, subscribe. Come on over to HowCommunicationWorks.com and sign up for the mailing list. Leave me a comment below. Try being direct and see if people perceive you as being more powerful. Give me a comment. Tell me how it works. Talk to you soon, see you next time.