Transcription
I went through some of your best performing videos of all time on your channel and it was interesting that I could see kind of themes in them, right? I could see the several of the best performing videos had similar themes and one of the really prominent themes was five habits that make people instantly dislike you.
So that's a video about Brie Larson and around the time of the Avengers Captain Marvel thing, she had a string of interviews that were pretty alienating to people. some of the things that she did. Goodness, it was having to win every joke exchange. They're talking about, for instance, who's the most powerful Avenger, right? And they're sort of being playful with each other, like, well, Thor is the most powerful. And she adopts this attitude of, well, actually, my character would kill yours. And there's a well, actually quality, like, well, actually, I would win. Actually, I would win. Actually, uh, your character is just a mere mortal and I would win. And it is like cute once, but it becomes frustrating to have someone have to win every banter exchange between friends. And so I think people saw that and they saw some of the reactions of the cast. And so that's one is like to have to win every banter exchange and have a burn that you come out on top of. Not a good one.
Another one that she did is to interpret ambiguous communications negatively. So for instance, in this particular video that I did, she's on that wired autocomplete interview and there's one question that is does Brie Larson work out and in a way that doesn't to at least to Americans like clearly communicate sarcasm. Maybe it's different to Brits. I don't know. You guys have a different cultural code.
She says something to the effect of like, "Is that a personal attack?" Really?
Yeah. And then she doesn't laugh. And she also So there's two options there. You could say, "Is that a personal attack?" And you could laugh, right? Or you could say, "Is that a personal attack? Everyone on the internet thinks that I'm so fat. Just trying to jump on me. I'm trying to lose weight." Like you can you can double and triple down until it's clear that you're being absurd.
But she said it once and it came through as hyperdefensive. And the thing that I talk about is you want to interpret ambiguous communications charitably. This is a big one. This is one of like if you've watched the show Ted Lasso, this is full of this. People will come up to him and I just did a video that had this clip where he's on the airplane. If you know Ted Lasso, he's an American guy going to England and somebody says, you know, you're you're going to uh coach the football team, the soccer team for us in England. Man, they're so bad. This is going to go horribly. You're a legend. And then he responds, well, you know, I haven't lost yet. And he's just got this general positive demeanor. He takes that ambiguous communication and responds with grace and charm and doesn't make it a fight.
That works so well. That purposeful misinterpretation of ambiguations early on that are maybe not the friendliest, this often will take people that are trying to take digs at you and make them flip. And in the case that somebody was just a bit socially miscalibrated, it gives them the opportunity to, you know, not be cast as the bad guy in the interaction. So that was something else that she did wrong.
Interesting. Also, if if others are watching the interaction and if you have a bias towards interpreting the communication well, the person that's was maybe taking a dig at you is going to look pretty ridiculous and you're going to probably come off looking pretty good.
Exactly. Exactly. And we when we see people defend themselves against words with with some exception when somebody's like saying that they're going to hurt you it communicates an insecurity and a defensiveness which is like why do you need to defend yourself against the opinions of another right like the Trump thing where he said about only Rosio Donald.
Yes. Yeah. It's like I don't need to defend myself against this. And it subcommunicates that this is not a big deal more than saying that's not a big deal. You are subcommunicating that's not a big deal by not defending it. And that's what we do when we actually feel comfortable. Let's say if somebody were to tease something that you're not at all insecure about. I don't know what it would be. Maybe your business success or something. They come in like, "Yeah, well you know Stephen real struggling these days." You're going to laugh. You're going to add on to it. And sometimes a way through this is to tag the joke that's made at your expense, which is to to add a yes and on top of it. So if somebody ambiguous interpretation is saying, "Yeah, you know, Stephen, this business is just aren't working really well." You' be like, "Oh my god, dude. You have no idea. I've been pulling my hair out over the last few weeks just like things are falling apart around me." You can do that because you I'm assuming feel very comfortable with your level of business success. And when you can, again, there is a difference when you start to sense a pattern in somebody, that is a different route that you want to take. But if it's just one banter thing that is at your expense, to double down and make it a joke that you're in on is often very, very powerful.
Fascinating. I'm going to ask you one last question on this. Um, one of your best performing videos is titled, "Speak like a leader, make people respect you." In fact, there was two of your top performing videos that were about speaking like a leader, speaking well, which is fascinating to me that people really want to learn how to speak well. What advice would you give to someone who doesn't feel like they're a good oral communicator on how to speak like a leader?
The ability to answer nonliterally and bring in fun and jokes into the interaction. the ability to get to values in a conversation, which is a lot of the stuff that we talked about to take people to the thing that they actually want to connect over versus the weather and all that sort of stuff is part of it.
You don't you you seem to take a pause as well when you're thinking.
Some people fill in the gaps a little bit.
Yeah. generally and I and I'm sure I've made this mistake, but if you can replace any filler word um uh any crutch word that you have with silence, silence is a vacuum. And the cool thing about vacuums is that they pull attention to you. And I think people dramatically dramatically underestimate the amount of silence they're afforded. If I look back actually at my early videos, I dramatically underestimated the value of silence. I thought that I had to get it all out there and be super interesting really fast in order to keep that AVD really, really high. And I've since seen and learned that when you have a story and you learn the beats where you've set up the mystery and so there's these these lines that you'll say in a story like you know the craziest thing happened the other day. So, I'm right like you you are there's there's these hooks and you get an intuitive feel for where you've got the audience on the edge of their seat and especially then to just take a breath or have a pause. You don't need to think all of this out, but that becomes second nature. That's very valuable and it comes from the way that I've seen people do is when you record yourself, tell a story and just watch back how many ums and h you have in it. When I watch my own podcasts, I'm sure you've felt this.
Yeah. Oh my gosh, it's horrifying.
Yeah. you begin to see your own little habits come through.
Does body language matter when I'm speaking in your head?
I think so. Yeah. Yeah. There's a couple things that I tend to teach people, which is a lot of people form a tiny little box for themselves where maybe they'll move their hands like this and it's they got this thing going on.
People that can't see, you're just kind of waving it like
I'm kind of waving my hands in a little circular thing and my elbows most importantly are pinned to my sides. If I lift my elbows off my sides and I start talking a little bit like this and if I was to say, you know, over here and my brother's in the green room over there and I just sticulate. There's two ways to just sticulate. I can take my finger and I can point six inches from my face the direction that my brother is or I can lift my entire arm and port over there, point over there. The space that you fill is one captivating. This is something that we talk about in a lot of our videos, which is you don't need to invade other people's space. You need to fill your own completely. When you fill your space completely, it is much more captivating. So, when you're on stage to just sticulate with the the full width of your wingspan, like look, I know you guys on this side of the room are feeling this, but over here, right, versus I know you guys on this side of the room think that we have to do this, but over here, it just there's a level of discomfort that is comes through in it versus get those elbows off the sides. It makes a huge huge difference. Also helps you speak louder, makes you more dynamic. So, if you're interested in the fastest way that I know of to make this stuff effortless, you might be interested in my course, Charisma University. You get full details at the link here. But basically, if you like the YouTube channel and Charisma confidence building respect is a priority for you, I highly encourage you to click the link, check it out, learn more, and maybe join. Either way, I hope that you have enjoyed this video and I look forward to seeing you in the next.