92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationships (14 page)

“How does that affect ME?”

Big winners know we haven’t changed a bit. Adults camouflage their self-centeredness under a mask of civilization and politeness. Yet the human brain still immediately, instinctively, and unfailingly translates everything into terms of “How does that affect ME?”

For example, suppose, gentlemen, you want to ask a colleague, Jill, if she would like to join you for dinner. So you say to her,

“There’s a really good new Indian restaurant in town. Will you join me there for dinner tonight?”

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You
-Firstie” to Gain Their Respect and Affection
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Before answering, Jill is thinking to herself, “By ‘good’ does he mean the food or the atmosphere or both?” Her reverie continues, “Indian cuisine, I’m not sure. He says it’s good. However, will I like it?” While thinking, Jill hesitates. You probably take her hesitation personally, and the joy of the exchange diminishes. Suppose, instead, you had said to her, “Jill,
you
will really love this new Indian restaurant. Will you join me there this evening for dinner?” Phrasing it that way, you’ve already subliminally answered Jill’s questions and she’s more apt to give you a quick

“yes.”

The pleasure-pain principle is a guiding force in life. Psychologists tell us everyone automatically gravitates toward that which is pleasurable and pulls away from that which is painful. For many people, thinking is painful.

So big winners (when they wish to control, inspire, be loved by, sell to people, or get them to go to dinner) do the thinking for them. They translate everything into the other person’s terms by starting as many sentences as they can with that powerful little three-letter word,
you
. Thus, I call the technique “Comm-YOU-nication.”

Comm-YOU-nicate When You

Want a Favor

Putting
you
first gets a much better response, especially when you’re asking a favor, because it pushes the asker’s pride button. Suppose you want to take a long weekend. You decide to ask your boss if you can take Friday off. Which request do you think he or she is going to react to more positively? “Can
I
take Friday off, Boss?” Or this one: “Boss, can
you
do without me Friday?”

In the first case, Boss had to translate your “Can I take Friday off ?” into “Can I do without this employee Friday?” That’s an extra thought process. (And you know how some bosses hate to think!) 03 (093-142B) part three 8/14/03 9:17 AM Page 112

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However, in the second case, “Boss, can
you
do without me Friday,” you did Boss’s thinking for her. Your new wording made managing without you a matter of pride for Boss. “Of course,” she said to herself. “I can manage without your help Friday.”

Comm-YOU-nicate Your Compliments

Comm-YOU-nication also enriches your social conversation. Gentlemen, say a lady likes your suit. Which woman gives you warmer feelings? The woman who says, “I like your suit.” Or the one who says, “
You
look great in that suit.”

Big players who make business presentations use CommYOU-nication to excellent advantage. Suppose you’re giving a talk and a participant asks a question. He likes to hear you say, “That’s a good question.” However, consider how much better he feels when you tell him, “
You’ve
asked a good question.”

Salespeople, don’t just tell your prospects, “It’s important that

. . . . ” Convince them by informing them, “
You’ll
see the importance of. . . . ”

When negotiating, instead of, “The result will be . . . ” let them know, “
You’ll
see the result when you. . . .”

Starting sentences with
you
even works when talking to strangers on the street. Once, driving around San Francisco hopelessly lost, I asked people walking along the sidewalk how to get to the Golden Gate Bridge. I stopped a couple trudging up a hill.

“Excuse me,” I called out the window, “I can’t find the Golden Gate Bridge.” The pair looked at each other and shrugged with that “How stupid can these tourists get” look on their faces. “That direction,” the husband mumbled, pointing straight ahead. Still lost, I called out to the next couple I encountered.

“Excuse me, where’s the Golden Gate Bridge?” Without smiling, they pointed in the opposite direction.

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Then I decided to try Comm-YOU-nication. When I came

upon the next strolling couple, I called out the window, “Excuse me, could
you
tell me where the Golden Gate Bridge is?”

“Of course,” they said, answering my question literally. You see, by phrasing the question that way, it was a subtle challenge. I was asking, in essence, “Are you able to give me directions?” This hits them in the pride button. They walked over to my car and gave me explicit instructions.

“Hey,” I thought. “This
you
stuff really works.” To test my hypothesis, I tried it a few more times. I kept asking passersby my three forms of the question. Sure enough, whenever I asked,

“Could
you
tell me where . . .” people were more pleasant and helpful than when I started the question with
I
or
where
.
Technique #28

Comm-YOU-nic ation

Start every appropriate sentence with
you
. It immediately grabs your listener’s attention. It gets a more positive response because it pushes the pride button

and saves them having to translate it into “me” terms.

When you sprinkle
you
as liberally as salt and pepper throughout your conversation, your listeners

find it an irresistible spice.

I’m sure when they recover the flight box from the Fall of Man under a fig leaf in the Garden of Eden, it will convince the world of the power of the word
you
. Eve did not ask Adam to eat the apple. She did not command him to eat the apple. She didn’t even 03 (093-142B) part three 8/14/03 9:17 AM Page 114

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say, “Adam, I want you to eat this apple.” She phrased it (as all big winners would), “
You
will love this apple.” That’s why he bit.
Comm-YOU-nication Is a Sign of Sanity

Therapists calculate inmates of mental institutions say
I
and
me
twelve times more often than residents of the outside world. As patients’ conditions improve, the number of times they use the personal pronouns also diminishes.

Continuing up the sanity scale, the fewer times you use
I
, the more sane you seem to your listeners. If you eavesdrop on big winners talking with each other, you’ll notice a lot more
you
than
I
in their conversation.

The next technique concerns a way big winners are silently
you
-oriented.

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How to Make Them Feel

You “Don’t Smile at

Just Anybody”

Have you ever seen those low-budget, mail-order fashion catalogues that use the same model throughout? Whether she is engulfed in a wedding gown or partially clad in a bikini, her face sports the same plastic smile. Looking at her, you get the feeling if you rapped on her forehead, a tiny voice would come back saying “Nobody’s in here.”

Whereas models in more sophisticated magazines have mastered a myriad of different expressions: a flirtatious “I’ve got a secret” smile on one page; a quizzical “I think I’d like to get to know you but I’m not sure” smile on the next; and a mysterious Mona Lisa smile on the third. You feel there’s a brain running the operation somewhere inside that beautiful head.

I once stood in the receiving line of the ship I worked on, along with the captain, his wife, and several other officers. One passenger with a radiant smile started shaking hands down our line. When he got to me, he flashed a shimmering smile, revealing teeth as even and white as keys on a new piano. I was transfixed. It was as though a brilliant light had illuminated the dim ballroom. I wished him a happy cruise and resolved to find this charming gentleman later.

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Then he was introduced to the next person. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his identical glistening grin. A third person, the same grin. My interest began to dwindle.

When he gave his fourth indistinguishable smile to the next person, he started to resemble a Cheshire cat. By the time he was introduced to the fifth person, his consistent smile felt like a strobe light disturbing the ambience of the ballroom. Strobe Man went on flashing everybody the same smile down the line. I had no further interest in talking with him. Why did this man’s stock shoot high in my ticker one minute and plummet the next? Because his smile, although charming, reflected no special reaction to me. Obviously, he gave the same smile to everybody and, by that, it lost all its specialness. If Strobe Man had given each of us a slightly different smile, he would have appeared sensitive and insightful. (Of course, if his smile had been just a tad bigger for me than for the others, I couldn’t have waited for the formalities to be over to seek him out in the crowded ballroom.)

Review Your Repertoire of Smiles

If your job required you to carry a gun, you would, of course, learn all about the moving parts before firing it. And before taking aim, you would carefully consider whether it would murder, maim, or merely wound your target. Since your smile is one of your biggest communications weapons, learn all about the moving parts and the effect on your target. Set aside five minutes. Lock your bedroom or bathroom door so your family doesn’t think you’ve gone off the deep end. Now stand in front of the mirror and flash a few smiles. Discover the subtle differences in your repertoire.

Just as you would alternate saying “Hello,” “How do you do,”

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of people, vary your smile. Don’t use the same on each. Let each of your smiles reflect the nuances of your sentiment about the recipient.

Technique #29

The E xclusiv e Smile

If you flash everybody the same smile, like a Confederate dollar, it loses value. When meeting groups of people, grace each with a distinct smile. Let your smiles grow out of the beauty big players find in each new

face.

If one person in a group is more important to you

than the others, reserve an especially big, flooding smile just for him or her.

In Defense of the Quickie

There are times, I discovered, when the quick put-on smile works. For example, when you want to engineer the acquaintance of someone to whom you have not had the opportunity to be introduced. (In the vernacular, that’s “pick them up.”) The smile’s pickup power was proven for posterity by solemn researchers at the University of Missouri. They conducted a highly controlled study titled “Giving Men the Come-On: Effect of Eye Contact and Smiling in a Bar Environment.”15 (I kid you not.) To prove their hypothesis, female researchers made eye contact with unsuspecting male subjects enjoying a little libation in a local drinking establishment. Sometimes, the female researchers followed their glance with a smile. In other cases, no smile. 03 (093-142B) part three 8/14/03 9:17 AM Page 118

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The results? I quote the study: “The highest approach behavior, 60 percent, was observed in the condition in which there was smiling.” That translates into layman’s English: “The guy came over 60 percent of the time when the lady smiled.” Without the smile, he “made the approach only 20 percent of the time.” So, yes, a smile works for those who wish to pick somebody up. However, in situations where the stakes are higher, try The Flooding Smile from the first section and now The Exclusive Smile.

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How to Avoid Sounding

Like a Jerk

Do you remember that scene from the movie classic
Annie Hall
where Diane Keaton is first meeting Woody Allen? As she’s chatting with him, we hear her private thoughts. She’s musing to herself, “Oh I hope he’s not a jerk like all the others.”

One of the quickest ways to make a big winner think you are, well, a jerk, is to use a cliché. If you’re chatting with a top communicator and even innocently remark “Yes, I was tired as a dog,”

or “She was cute as a button,” you’ve unknowingly laid a linguistic bomb. Big winners silently moan when they hear someone mouth a trite overworn phrase. Oh sure, just like the rest of us, big winners find themselves feeling fit as a fiddle, happy as a lark, or high as a kite. Like the rest of humanity, they consider some of their acquaintances crazy as a loon, nutty as a fruitcake, or blind as a bat. Because many of them work hard, many of them are as busy as a bee and get rich as Croesus.

Yet would any of them describe themselves in those words?

Not in a coon’s age! Why? Because when a big winner hears your cliché, you might as well be saying, “My powers of imagination are impoverished. I can’t think of anything original to say, so I must fall back on these trite overworn phrases.” Mouthing a com
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mon cliché around uncommonly successful people brands you as uncommonly common.

Technique #30

Don’t Touch a Cliché with a Ten-Foot Pole