Peggy Klaus (18 page)

We’ve all heard the advice “Dress for success” or “Dress the part.” That’s fine, but make sure you back up style with real substance. Style without substance often feels like a charade (and most people can spot imposters within minutes). On the other hand, substance without style will put an insomniac to sleep. You need to seek a balance. Dru thought his successful look, his material possessions, his fancy schooling and degrees would carry the day. It was the unspoken cornerstone of his bragging campaign, and it bombed royally. That’s because good bragging is invisible; it works its way seamlessly, and it’s loaded with genuine pride and enthusiasm. As Dru needed to learn, that’s the only way to brag and get away with it.

CHAPTER 9

Brag Nags

I warn you. Skip this chapter at your own risk

—PEGGY KLAUS, BRAG NAG

You’ve answered “Take 12”; your brag bag is filled. You’ve read through multiple scenarios from a wide variety of situations, highlighting bragging bests and bragging bombs. Now you’re feeling pumped and ready to get out there and, well,
brag
! For the first time in your life, tooting your own horn might even be kind of fun. But
stop
. Before you get started, there are just a few more things I need to tell you about—call them my brag nags—elements of your delivery that you absolutely must get right to be a successful bragger.

Brag Nag #1: BORE NO MORE

After hearing a boring braggart go on and on, you probably never said to yourself, “Gee, I wish he had talked longer!” Yet when we step into the spotlight, we often turn into that drone everyone dreads having to listen to. Where did we pick up such bad behavior? Most likely in what I call Presentation Training 101, the public-speaking courses and workshops that are the closest most of us get to a formal education in how to talk about ourselves. Many of us receive this instruction in college or at corporate workshops, especially if we are in sales and marketing. We assume these programs will serve us well—after all, experts teach them—but the surprising truth is, many lead to more harm than good. And if you believe that Presentation Training 101 is the be-all and end-all of self-promotion, to be applied right down to your brag bites and bragologues, you’ll get yourself into even deeper trouble. You’re not only likely to be dull and uninspiring when you toot, but the kind of bragger who makes people want to run to the nearest exit.

Given that Presentation Training 101 courses and workshops are well meaning, how do they turn otherwise personable professionals into automatons? They tend to preach burdensome and rigid formulas: Tell ’em what you’re going to tell ’em, tell ’em, and then wrap it up by telling ’em what you’ve just told ’em. Don’t ever cross your arms in front of your chest. Never put your hands in your pockets, on your hips, in front of your crotch, or behind your back. Don’t step out of an imagined golden triangle on the floor, to name just a few.

Worse yet, Presentation Training 101 is typically based on an old-school, stodgy way of speaking. Favoring formality over a conversational style, it actually discourages us from finding and talking in our own voice. Because the focus is often so much on formula and facts, we rarely learn to develop an engaging personal communication style. Knowing how to deliver brags bites and bragologues in a natural, conversational delivery separates powerful speakers from weak ones and effective braggers from intolerable ones.

The old-school approach also tends to overlook what’s at the core of effective communication across the board: being your authentic best self. People connect more positively to you when you summon the power of your unique personality. So dump that facade and forget about others’ expectations of what you should be or act like. When you genuinely engage your best self, when you combine warmth with strength and marry style with substance, others instantly perceive you from a fresh perspective and actually look forward to hearing what you have to say next.

Brag Nag #2: BRING YOUR BEST SELF FORWARD

When I first started coaching business people, after years in the entertainment industry, I was stunned to discover how many of them check their personalities at the door, failing to bring their best self to the workplace. This was especially true with new hires and young workers and with people meeting colleagues or customers for the first time. One Wall Street client remarked after six months at his new job with an investment bank, “When I walk into the building at seven a.m., I become a completely different person. It’s like I’m Mr. Hyde instead of Dr. Jekyll. I put on a mask and hide behind it. I become someone else entirely until I walk out the door at seven p.m.”

While workers tend to loosen up over time, many still cling to a kind of mythic professional persona under the banner of the “corporate citizen.” This translates into an aloof, unanimated, and unemotional style, or what I often refer to as the Joe Friday School of Communication. Named for the television detective from
Dragnet
who cautioned his witnesses to give him “just the facts, ma’am,” this school breeds professionals who are so worried about the facts, they don’t remember “I’m human. I’m funny. I’m a good listener. I’m friendly.” They think only about what they’re saying and forget to pay attention to how they are saying it.

Taking a Second Look at Professionalism

A few years ago, I worked with one young insurance executive who confided that his family and all his friends outside of work considered him to be an extremely funny, extroverted, and talkative guy. Mr. Congeniality! Unfortunately, his office mates didn’t think so. In fact, on more than one occasion his boss had told him to lighten up. My client, however, thought he wouldn’t be considered professional unless he behaved in a “serious” manner and always stuck to discussing the business at hand. I explained to him that simply being “serious” doesn’t connote knowledge or command respect, or necessarily move projects along any faster. In fact, acting somber all the time is a significant turnoff for people who want to enjoy themselves while they work hard. Once my client became convinced that bringing his other self to the office was worth a try, he quickly developed a more informal style that was full of his quick wit and subtle humor. He was surprised at the avalanche of positive feedback he received from both colleagues and clients.

Many people fail to reinforce the qualities that work so well for them in their personal lives—friendliness, warmth, humor, energy, justified pride, sincerity, interest, and enthusiasm—which are what create rapport with others and draw people to them. These characteristics, when combined with substance, are essential to making a memorable impression and laying the groundwork for effective bragging. Lacking these traits, Joe Friday communicators come off as stiff, boring, unapproachable, and at times, even suspect.

Massaging Personality Traits

When I say authentic best self, I mean the parts of your personality that come out when you are surrounded by friends and loved ones who appreciate you and make you feel comfortable. One client, who headed a department of more than twenty people, was so shy around the office that he sat at his desk with his telephone headset on, even when he wasn’t on the phone. When I questioned him about his behavior, he first claimed that not wanting to put the headset on and take it off all day was “an efficiency thing.” After more probing, he admitted there was some truth to the observation of others that keeping the headset on was a way to ensure that people wouldn’t approach him. After reflecting on the negative impact his headset habit was having on his co-workers and his superiors— who increasingly viewed him as arrogant and aloof because he avoided cubicle chitchat—he began to step out of his shell and reveal small details about himself to others. As he interacted more with his colleagues, soon even this extreme introvert was able to talk fearlessly and at length about something important to him: sailing. When he started sharing his weekend racing stories, others in the office began to see him less as a recluse and more as who he really was: a caring, hardworking man with a passion for sailing in his schooner with his family.

Bringing your authentic best self to every interaction both personally and professionally is at the core of competent bragging. For those who are reluctant to toot their own horn, this requires cultivating natural skills and qualities that have been buried or inhibited in the name of “acting” professional. As people bring more of themselves to an interaction, they are perceived as comfortable and relaxed, with an ease about them. When they acknowledge human feelings in their interactions with clients, customers, underlings, and superiors, they are seen as warm, caring, and empathic. Revealing carefully selected personal details about themselves makes others feel more comfortable in their presence. They speak at a moderate volume and maintain eye contact. They become part entertainer, part salesperson, and part educator. In a nutshell, by marrying their best personal style with their best material, they create lasting and memorable connections and impressions.

Brag Nag #3: RECOGNIZE THE IMPORTANCE OF FIRST IMPRESSIONS

There is one thing our parents were right about when it comes to first impressions:
Every
second counts. Communication research has shown that within the first one-thousandth of a second of meeting you, those on the receiving end have already started clicking off judgments about you. Within seven seconds, they’re trying to determine whether they like and trust you, and whether you appear confident and qualified. If they can’t decide within that time frame, they spend the next thirty to sixty seconds going through a critical checklist in their heads about you. Are you a potentially good hire? Do you have a command of your subject? Are you ready for that promotion? Do we really want you running our business or company? Are you worth talking to for the next ten minutes? Are you just full of hot air and overly impressed with yourself?

Most of us experience brag-fright, the anxiety that grips reluctant self-promoters, when faced with unfamiliar social situations where we are making a first impression. We fear being judged. We fear looking unprofessional. We fear sounding stupid. And most of all, we fear being thought of as braggarts! As a result, we get nervous and tend to shrink into ourselves, making ourselves as small and as invisible as possible. We bow our head. Our eyes dip down and we begin to look like we’re talking to our feet. Our voice loses all life, shifting to a flat monotone or, as tension rises, to a squeaky pitch. We swallow our words as we race through what we have to say, just to get it over with. In doing so, we are transmitting a whole slew of nonverbal communication cues that can sink us in seconds.

In coaching thousands of people over the years, I have repeatedly observed that first impressions are based on the visual and vocal cues we transmit: clothing, personal grooming, a handshake, eye contact, posture, vocal intonation. One classic UCLA study showed that 55 percent of the message received by others is completely nonverbal and is conveyed through body language and facial animation. And yet, in my experience, 99.9 percent of the people I have trained fail to recognize the importance of their nonverbal communication when introducing themselves.

General Patton Goes Phil Donahue

Recently I coached a software consultant who thought that his communication style was informal and “very approachable.” I asked him to make a one-minute introduction of himself and what he did for a living to a group of eight colleagues. What we saw was someone who was anything but informal. His body language was perfect for a West Point cadet; shoulders thrust back, legs astride, hands clasped behind his back. His voice was loud and clipped, and he looked directly at everyone in the group— only over their heads. When he saw the video feedback he was shocked. I worked with him on relaxing his posture, varying the tone and speed of his voice to sound more conversational, and looking at the people he was talking to. In an hour he went from being General Patton to Dr. Phil.

If you start out on the wrong foot, you spend valuable time trying to dig your way out of a bad impression. It’s so much easier to begin by making others see you the way you want them to, spending the rest of your interaction focusing on them rather than worrying about what they are thinking of you. The sooner you learn to take control of those precious seven seconds, the better your interactions will be.

One More Time

Keep the following nonverbal cues in mind for use in whatever communication situation you find yourself in, and for effective bragging in particular. “You’ve probably heard most of this advice before from your mother, but in case you were too busy rebelling, it bears repeating:

Smile
. The quickest way to set a positive tone for any encounter is to smile. I don’t mean a goofy Jerry Lewis or Jim Carrey grin, or one artificially plastered on your face like lipstick. I mean a warm and sincere smile that spreads out from your lips, lights up your face, and shines right through your eyes. Many of my clients are completely unaware of their facial expressions, walking around with a frown or scowl on their face. When I later ask them about it, they reply “Oh, no. Nothing’s wrong.” Remember, a smile is your most important facial expression. It draws people to you. It inspires confidence and understanding. In a flash, it can change someone’s impression of you. It makes other people feel good. It makes you feel good! Let your smile work for you.

The Eyes Have It
. When someone who is being introduced to me doesn’t look at me, looks over my shoulder, or drops his gaze to the floor, all sorts of alarm bells sound. I think he is either terribly shy, lacks confidence, or just isn’t interested in meeting me. One thing is for sure: He is oblivious to the impact his lack of eye contact is having on me. So this is my rule of thumb: When facing others, maintain eye contact approximately three to eight seconds per person. The smaller the group, the longer the gaze, but make sure it’s not to the point of staring. Your eyes should naturally move away, but make sure they come back. If you want to excuse yourself, do so graciously. You should say “It was nice meeting you” or “I enjoyed the conversation,” looking them in the eyes and, if you haven’t done so already, extending a hearty handshake.