Go Fishing, Not Hunting

Fishing is a very interesting sport. It’s all about presentation. A fisherman puts something out there that is packaged in a way to make it as attractive as possible to the fish. The goal is to draw them in, to offer them something interesting to them. And, when they aren’t hungry, there’s no presentation in the world that’s going to get them to bite.

Contrast this with hunting.  There is usually no presentation. Their is usually some kind of pursuit. I think of Elmer Fudd, stalking “that scwewy wabbit.” Pursuit and more pursuit until BAM! The hunter lets them have it with both barrels.

When we meet someone for the first time, we have a choice between hunting and fishing. Hunting amounts to something like preparing a 3-5-minute elevator speech and delivering it all at once – both barrels.

It’s pursuit and delivery whether they’re hungry or not. I much prefer to go the fishing route.

Fishing doesn’t just apply to meeting the client for the first time or sitting for that first interview. I believe that it also applies to our approach with the person next to us on the plane, at the lunch table, or working out at the gym. People desperately want us to be interesting.

Often the last thing they want is for us to become a wall of words.

Fishing, then, can be applied to all of our first-impression opportunities.

Brian Walter is a motivational coach and trainer. His approach to applying the fishing technique is to “play catch.” He compares delivering the full load, the complete elevator speech, to keeping the ball. Don’t keep the ball! Instead, play catch! Have the entire elevator speech ready to deliver, but give it to them a little at a time. Give them the chance to respond. If they are hungry to know more, they will.

If not, we’ve saved both of us a lot of time.

Let’s try an example.

“So, Brian, what do you do for a living?”

“I’m a coach.”

“Really? What sport do you coach?”

“Not sports. I coach a team of software developers. A lot of the principles are the same, but no sports.”

At this point, if the listener is interested, they will ask more. The game of catch will continue, with each toss of the ball delving further and further into the details.

If they’re not interested, the listener will not throw the ball back.

The conversation will stop – or perhaps take a turn to something else.

If this is the case, we’ve avoided a potentially embarassing situation where we’ve delivered far more information than the listener ever wanted to hear from us. Everybody wins.

I strongly recommend that we have at the ready a quiver full of answers to questions like, “What do you do for a living?” If we develop a set of opening “fishing lines” that offer our listeners a nugget of interesting information and leave them wanting more, we can improve our chances of making a good first impression.

Smile

We’re continuing to consider ways to improve our chances of making a good first impression. In my last post, we considered walking that fine line between fear and focus. In this post we will consider one of the simplest techniques for improving first impressions: Smile.

The smile consistently ranks at the top of the list of reasons we like other people. Chris Widener, a leadership expert and coach, says that this is because people are drawn to optimists – the “glass half full” types. Successful leaders are optimists. They must be in order to overcome the inevitable problems and obstacles that come between them and their dreams. The result is that people who smile more tend to be perceived as leaders.

A note of caution here: Like Spiderman, we should always strive to use our powers (of communication) for good! It is possible to fake a smile or to “glad-hand” our way through a first meeting with someone. The problem with this, besides being ethically questionable, is that many people have finely-tuned BS detectors. They can detect a fake from a mile away. Being fake is often a shortcut to a horrible first impression. (Do you really want to chance wearing that dirty halo?) Our goal is to both be genuine and be perceived as genuine.

Widener asks us to consider how we respond to the simple question, “How are you doing?” Many times a day we field this question. We pass someone in the hall or they stop by our desk and we go through what might be an automatic ritual. Pay close attention to how we answer. If our answer is consistently negative, such as, “Pretty good – under the circumstances,” we might have some work to do. Other people don’t want to join us under the circumstances! No, they want to follow someone that’s on top of the circumstances.

Optimism comes naturally to some. For the rest of us, it might take a bit of work. Optimism may be something for us to develop over time – a kind of habit of living in the “half-full glasses” of our lives.

Spidey repeat: Only use our powers (of communication) for good. Don’t lie. Don’t fake an answer. If things are horrible, don’t put on a big grin and say, “Wonderful!”

Two final points:

• A smile will lift your mood! Psychology types talk about “the facial feedback hypothesis.” In plain language, several research studies have shown that what we do with our face influences how we feel. I won’t go into all the reasons and theories, but the reality is that putting a smile on your face can lift your mood and make you a more interesting and appealing person. Feeling follows action.
• A smile will change the sound of your voice – for the better! The range and subtlety of tone increases when you mix smiles and other facial expressions as you talk. This applies especially to talking while on the phone. Be animated. People can actually hear the smile in your voice.

The bottom line is that making a smile a natural part of our communication style will serve us well with first impressions and in everyday interactions.

Halo Effect

As I continue to think about the impact of first impressions, I feel led to describe something researchers call, “The Halo Effect.” No, it doesn’t refer to a Microsoft video game. The Halo Effect is a term used to describe the fact that people tend to judge us based on their past impressions of us. For example, if we make a really good first impression, subsequent behavior will tend to be interpreted favorably. If, on the other hand, we make a bad first impression, people will tend to judge our subsequent behaviors in a negative light.

Let me give an example. My wife uses our DVR to record the daytime series, “General Hospital,” so that she can watch it in the evening. I have joined her to watch a few episodes myself. (Pure intellectual investigation, I might add!  ) In one episode, a female character named Maxie said and did some kind and caring things. I said, “Hey! I like this Maxie character!” My wife was horrified. “Maxie is evil. She’s just in it for herself,” she corrected me. My wife was applying the halo effect. Maxie’s in-the-moment actions were genuinely good, but my wife’s previous observations of her behavior colored everything dark. Maxie was wearing a dark halo.

This example isn’t real, but it is true to life in that people make those same kinds of judgements all the time. This is one of the reasons that making a good first impression is so important. A bad first impression isn’t a death sentence, but it can be quite a laborious task to overcome.

First Impressions

First impressions are an important part of being an effective speaker and communicator. The problem is that we don’t have much time to make those first impressions! Have you even been listening to a talk and, after just a few minutes, realized that you had made a big mistake? If so, you have experience evaluating speakers using very little information and in a very brief period of time.

In an article published in the May 29, 2000 edition of The New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell told the story of Harvard researcher Nalini Ambady. Using videotapes of teaching fellows that had been taken during a training program at Harvard, Ambady set out to examine the non-verbal aspects of teaching. Her plan was to have outside observers look at the tapes with the sound off and rate the effectiveness of the teachers using expressions and visual cues. When she looked at the tapes, she discovered that there was only about 10 seconds of footage where the teachers were shown without students in the picture. Ambady was afraid that the presence of students might bias the opinions of the observers. She almost abandoned the project, assuming that no observer could effectively evaluate using only 10 seconds of footage. Encouraged by her advisor, though, Ambady went ahead with the experiment.

Surprise! When presented with 10-second video clips, observers had no trouble rating the teachers on a 15-item checklist of personality traits. Next, Ambady cut the clips back to 5 seconds. The results were the same. They were even the same when she showed observers just 2 seconds of video. 2 seconds!

Here’s another surprise: When Ambady compared the results of these brief, video-only evaluations with those delivered by students that had spent an entire semester with those same teachers, the correlation between the results was extremely high. Not only do we make up our minds in a hurry, but we’re actually pretty good at it!

The bottom line for you and me: The research on how long it takes to form a first impression varies somewhat, but it’s clear that some in cases our listeners will be making up their minds about us before we even speak!