John Neffinger

powerful female voices. We still can't ask. As Senator Klobascher pointed out in a presidential debate quote, who is your favorite woman? President? End quote. During the height of Hillary Clinton's sixteen campaign, she was so besieged with charges of shrillness that the Atlantic magazine interviewed experts to figure out what made her voice so allegedly irritating. They found that her so called shrill voice was actually quote average in pitch and loudness for her age and gender end quote.

The issue wasn't how she sounded, It was how she sounded to us, a listening public without the oral reference library to assess female authority, trustworthiness, and power. Our voice is a reflection of our life experience, where we've been and who we've listened to, but we can also own it and even change it if we want. This is the podcast that's all about the voice, but it's also all about power, Who has it, how we get it, and how we sound when we have it. I'm Samarve.

I'm a dialect coach for actors in Hollywood on projects like the upcoming Wonder Woman's sequel, and I'm also a speech coach for entrepreneurs, politicians, creatives and women everywhere who need to use their voice to get what they want. Welcome to permission to speak. Let's do this. Today's guest

is John Neffinger. He's a man. He talks about trigger warning, um, the the guy who's our president, and nonetheless I wanted to have him on because he's a world class communication coach whose book Compelling People is taught at top business schools around the country because it synthesizes a massive amount of the most recent studies on how we're perceived and

makes it super clear. We can argue the fairness and whether we have to follow the rules just because they're the rules, and I do, but we can't argue with the data. It's depressing and it's enlightening. He was also the calms director for the Democratic National Committee and coach Hillary Clinton leading up to the election, which we talk about here, as well as his thoughts on Elizabeth Warren

suspending her campaign. We had a lovely chat geeking out about coaching people, since we both do so, and it's full of practical advice that I hope is useful. This is John, So your book Compelling People or Compelling People. Yeah, I know there's a double um focuses largely on two different metrics, strength and form. Yes, it is metrics. It

is one framework. It is there. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it's a really nifty framework and it's one that comes in handy in a lot of the kinds of conversations that you have where you're thinking, you're you're trying to make sense of all of this soft and smushy whether it's vocal tone or posture, body language, or the stuff that makes us react to each other the way that we do. But it's very hard to see which parts are doing what thinks right. And so this is a

framework that helps organized redibly simplifying. It's really simplifying. We're talking about strength, we're talking about as you say in the book, the root of respect, and we're talking about warmth, we're talking about the root of affection. Correct, how much someone likes And you can map these on top of everything from you know, the sort of energy somebody walks into a room with, and their look and their gender

and their race and their age and their height. But you can also even map it on like sounds that we make that's on soft versus hard, And you can map it on how we apologize. If you say you realize you hurt someone, that's warmth. If you say you commit to not doing it again, that strength, and it's not a good apology if it doesn't have both. Actually, you know, right, you can and then obviously also on leadership, and that's where correct correct, Yes, So where do you

want to start? Well, my first question is, just to back up for a second, is how do you describe what you do because obviously can be so wildly learned. I don't know, you got have to. I just do lots of different stuff I do. I know, right, I am very very fortunate because I do a lot of things for a lot of folks. Over the course of the year, interesting things come up, and mostly it adds up to enough money to pay my rent at the at the or my mortgage at this point at the

end of the year. So so I you said how you said that with a lot of strength, and then you warmed it up at the end. There it's the thing. It's the thing. You gotta do the thing right. You got to watch the talk. So so look on paper, you are a speaking coach. That's right on paper. I describe myself much the same way you do write um that I help politicians and others, be the organizational leaders or other folks in the media, or advocates or school kids.

I work like I'll work with anybody to express themselves effectively, and so I like to work with people who agree with who I want people to hear um. But other than that, it's people from all walks of life. And then there's also a whole strategy side. There's a whole strategy side. And I do a lot of other comps, Like I've been the COMPS director for the Democratic National Committee Party at some point. So there's a bunch of

other associated communication. How quote unquote we present ourselves and what we're presenting ourselves with. We don't just tell people to fill your voice to the edge of the room. There are more things than that. Yes, there is a much I don't know if you've talked about this before in this but there is a much misquoted study from the early seventies Morabian. Do you know about Merabian? He's like a local boy, right, he was at u C. L A. And you don't know everybody in l A

is not from l A. Okay, that's fair. He was transplants fair enough, fair enough like DC. But he was doing these studies where he was trying to figure out how do you decode the emotion or what's the most important channel through which we interpret the emotion of somebody who's talking to us. And so we got three We got their words, and we've got what we're seeing, and we've got what we're hearing. Obviously you're hearing their words, but the music in the time of the tone in

the voice. And so the punchline is that the way it's mostly told is the words are only seven percent of the communication and some vast majority like more body language, and then between and is tone of voice. And that leaves less than ten for us to very depressingly, uh reflect the content of what we're trying to very nice, he said, But what he was actually asking is where does the emotion come through? And what he was doing to come up with these suspiciously precise numbers was to

hit them against one another. So we've all been in a room where somebody stands up at the front of the room to talk to us and says, I'm happy to be here today because and you're like, really are you now? Clearly not? Or if the bodyline, which is yeah, like he wants to our confidence that we're saying confidence sounding things that I don't belong here, then we we believe our eyes and our ears over the right, over

the content, over the words themselves. So it's a very clever way to figure out what matters in terms of the emotion just by pitting the channels against you another. But what it gets reduced to is seven percent of your communication. Only seven percent of your communication is what

you say, so what right? So like read from the dictionary but just have really gleaming white teeth and stand up straight and no no. But the emotional content is why anybody is going to take time out of their schedule to go and visit with somebody and be in the same room as opposed to sending an email. Like we have lots of ways to send words around these days, but we take that time not just because of you know,

conversation back and forth. We can do that electronically too, but we want to be in the same space because there is an emotional thing that happens when two all are together and seeing each other and being in each other's presence, and that's an important thing. That's what's what means, what gives meaningful and important matter. And so just for listeners, the sort of button of this misunderstanding of these three different statistics is that it's not that what we're saying

doesn't matter. It's that if our body language and our tone of voice were not in alignment with what we're saying, we will not believe you. Yes, I use lots of political examples because that's where I hail from. And you know, Sarah Palin strode on the national stage and everyone went wow, who she And then she said down for an interview and couldn't string together enough thoughts and yeah, and it blew up. So you gotta you gotta know your content.

But just knowing your content isn't enough to make it matter to anybody necessarily well, and also for those of us thinking about how to apply this in our lives to really trust that how we think about walking onto that stage and trusting ourselves and believe thing ourselves and the strength side of it maybe is actually going to have an impact. You know, we can't actually just know our material. We have to also trust that our body is going to reveal whether or not we feel like

we deserve to be up there. That's right. So what is that mental work that we can do ahead of time? Which actually leads me to my real question, which is, how do you work with people? What? What is that? What is an hour long experience with me? Yeah, I mean, obviously, let's say a new client, Let's say maybe somebody running

for office. Let's say maybe a woman. I am working with a lot of just overachieving people who have a lot of smart thoughts because that's their job, and they've trained and you know, spent god knows how many years in school, and then I had all this experience, and so there's a lot of content rattling around in their

heads upstairs. But often times the reason I get called in is because it's not doesn't seem to be coming out right, or doesn't seem to be having the intended effects and the desired effective, which we might say, literally everybody needs that. Everybody, all these perspective things were rattling around in our heads. Definitely, definitely, So when I get called in for essentially, you know, kind of remedial stuff,

but it's not always remedial. Sometimes it's just like, look, we need to step this up, and we need to compete on a way bigger stage, and we've been used to and so let's let's talk about what's going on here. Um, Oftentimes I'm dealing with people who are very comfortable in an analytical space where they're thinking about stuff and there's logic and stuff makes sense, and they're much less comfortable

in a sort of touchy feely intuitive space. And part of what's tricky about this for them is they feel like they're being thrust into a space where the rules of the game are not clear to them and they

have no way to take control back. And when the game do you mean, like literally, when we're communicating with people to try to get them to do something for us, right, to have people respond positively to them and their message, right, And so part of the reasons to take the time to write a book about this and to you know, work with all these academics and think about this theory

and structure. Is that part of what I will often do at the beginning of my session is to introduce that as a way for people to now have a way to think about what's working and what's not, what they're doing, and what levers they could you know, pull to change the outcome, because before it was just like, you know, you need better energy or more confidence or all things which are totally true and worth saying and worth identifying, but not super actionable for somebody who who

is not comfortable operating in that space. I mean, you spend a lot more time on set than I have, and maybe on set that makes all this like oh yes, of course more energy, right, But my people, a lot of my people that's like, you know, you might as well, you know, grow another head perfect. I mean two things.

One is, yes, when you're working with people who are professional performers and who have spent their lives trying to figure out sort of the mind body connections that they actually know how to sort of work the instrument that is themselves that's instantly easier than anybody I've worked with who's from the business or political sectors, because there is

a disconnect. I mean, it just happens societally, like we get put in boxes and we get our heads cut off from our bodies, and you know, we forget how to like access joy and I'm really like, what was that? Seven? What was that? What's in the box? Um? And the other part of it is there's such an immediacy when you're about to go on camera and your scene partners right there and you're acting opposite them or on stage

or something like that. But I imagine that sort of the further way the audience is, whether it's through a lens or you're on a big stage and the lights are blinding you. Part of this is like, how do we bring the version of ourselves that we're that we like, that we're used to when we're talking one on one with somebody and scale that up to these really like

artificial feeling exactly exactly exactly. And for folks who are communicating not in character most of the time, oh yeah, that most of the time, what we're going for is some version of how they are with their friends or wherever it is. That they're relaxed and comfortable expressing themselves. Not always some people that's not ideal and we need to about that. But a place where they are communicating

authentically how they feel on the inside. That is what makes us first of all, that's what makes us trust people. Donald Trump communicates authentically the stuff he's either fooled himself about or the stuff he's trying to will into being, but he's definitely speaking from a place that he has

some honest feeling around. It's the facts are all wrong, but he's saying what he feels in a way that for poor Hillary Clinton, right, who knew if she said one thing that was a little bit tinily factually questionable, she would get triple checked and wrung up for it

by the media. So she when she's speaking, was constantly editing and monitoring what she was saying in a way that you could see the gears grinding as she spoken, so it looked calculated, even when it was her absolute best effort to be honest when it comes to the facts. So it's the speaking with feeling in politics. There's been an interesting move and I think this is true in the business world too. I don't know if it's everywhere. But basically we talked about going from oration to conversation.

So oration is this sort of formal thing which, if you think about it, just from a technological standpoint, right, go back a few hundreds of years when they used to teach rhetoric in schools like that was the main topic of conversation. Is how you do this in locos and path ups and all this stuff. And if you think about it, you've got no mike. We don't have one of these things here. And so you are if you're standing in front of a crowd, you have to project to the back of the room kind of thing

for people to hear you. And if you want to be covered in the media, you have to write this speech down so you can give it to the newspaperman, which means that if you're gonna tell them that you gave the speech, then you have to give the speech. You have to write the speech down first and then stick to what's on the page. Right. And the amount

of ways that this has changed. Right now, every one of us has a like enormous TV the size of a like seven year old in your living room, right, and you and it's h D and you can see every poor well no, there's people thankfully for that, but but you can see every twitch of every facial muscle, and we want to because that's how we know that you're getting a straight dope from that person. Right, Very

different totally. It's that real authentic feeling. And if even feels like they're reciting lines, this is a thing that's you can bridge this, and you know more about how to bridge this than most people do. But forget the act of reading, right. We all know we can see somebody looking at the page and they're looking down and then they're looking up a US, Okay, fine, their reading.

The act of citing something that someone has memorized. Unless you're a pro at this, that is a different mental activity than just what you and I are doing now talking, right, And what that means is it has this different set of nonverbal behaviors around it. So when you and I are talking, we can see each other, we know that we're just speaking what we're thinking and feeling in the moment. That's the real deal. If I'm reciting something, all my

non verbals are going to be different. My vocal tone will probably be different, my my visual will definitely be different unless I'm really really good at this, right, But so so the other major factor when you're reciting is that you can't pivot. You're not listening. Yes, exactly exactly, it's not going to fit My answers aren't going to fit what you're saying at all, right, yeah, and so

if you're doing that, people know. And then in my world, in the political world, the question is immediately okay that it's not you. Yeah, you agreed to say it, but I have no idea what team of you know, consultants and polsters and gods who else wrote that crap for you? And so I get that you've signed off on it, but I still don't know who you are, except that you're someone who signs off on whatever somebody else tells me to say. That's not where we're going. You gotta

bring it. You gotta be real for people to be like, that's who I want in charge. So it feels like a authentic equals good. But be what if your authentic self isn't doesn't huge to what not even but doesn't he to what society says is what we're used to seeing a powerful person looking and sounding like and you know, working with a type a straight white man where the problem is like, let's bring out some warmth. Great, yeah,

we know about that. I mean, you know this sort of idea of where he used to being analytical but of we got to tell some stories in here because I hear stories or what what tick right? I mean? But inevitably there is some element of that. But I mean, there's this great line from Rebecca Trayster's book Good and Mad where she's talking about your work and she says that for men, a little bit of warmth goes a long way, and for women a little bit of strength

goes way too far. Yes, what do you do when somebody's authentic self quote unquote isn't as palatable to like the old Guard of listeners? Yeah, So there are different ways to think about this. So if I want to explain this within the strength and warmth framework, the old Guard has the power, doesn't want to give it up any more than anybody else with power does, and they're

looking for some things. There's some stuff that they're looking for that registers to them frosty as they are as warmth from that audience's point of view, something that's familiar, something that validates how they are in the world, right, and so how do you appeal to those people? Some of it is ask kissing. We all know that, right.

It feels like what we're also talking about is short term versus long term, because in the short term, for somebody who say hires you, we're saying, how does that person who hires you succeed in the narrowly defined success that they're going for in the next pitch or the next cycle or the next whatever. And in that case, success means playing by these rules and dialing up the

thing that they're missing. And then there's the much longer term idea of where we're going with all this and what responsibility or opportunity we each individually have in saying

just because this is how it's been done. Absolutely, if you look at change or persuasion as something that we're trying to do in this communication space, right you almost always, yes, you need somebody's attention, and that's a preliminary thing, and you may need to break some china to get there, But for the most part, you're meeting your audience where they are at now. First. Then once you've established to your audience that you are worth listening to, now you

can introduce new thoughts. Now you can introduce new ways of thinking and new approaches that might include having their ears more open to a different kind of approach the next time within the system. To you gotta win the game before you can change. All right, we're gonna take a break if you right back. Hi, We're back with John. We were talking on the break about how important it is to remember that we have a body in all

this work. And John, you mentioned that you do warm ups with people sometimes if the environment seems to allow for it, kind of whenever it can be gotten away with, which is its own issue. But yeah, well when can it not be gotten away with? Because I'm interested in corporate culture and culture, what sort of work culture? Uh, you know how how it loosens over time? Well, it can be a little bit abrupt, and these things like a lot goes into that judgment, a lot like are

you right after lunch and everybody's half comatose? Or first thing the morning? Is actually sometimes these are actually good excuses to do this. The move that I'm talking about is getting everybody up out of their seats, moving around for just a minute. And there's there's a whole scientific piece about why that's a good thing, and it's an

opportunity to explain that that why that matters. You have a relationship, a working relationship with Amy Cutty, do I feel like is known for allowing people to take up more space with their bodies. This is the thing which has all the scientific basis and there's the Harvard hanging over it all. I mean, these are sort of encourage people to loosen up around this stuff? Does that work? I mean, what's people's reactions? Like, everybody get up right if you move around and take up lots of space.

And basically, in the early days when people were nervous before speeches, the standard prescription was jumping Jack's twenty outside right now out and they come back in and be like, oh yeah, this feels better. And it was that mechanical because, as you mentioned, we have a body, and all of that stuff that's going on the experience of being nervous and all of that tightening and warbling and weirdness is energy that's being directed by various glands and things going

on in there. And you can seize control of that a little bit by moving around in certain ways. So basically, move around, take up space, shake it all out a few minutes before you're doing whatever it is you're doing. In at the very minimum, it takes the edge off what you're doing. But if you're really whoop and holler and get into it, you get yourself in a totally euphoric but much more confident place to be able to stride into that situation and have people go, oh, oh, okay,

what's what this? This is interesting? What's this going to be? So you seem like a real person, You seem like a real person who's not wanting to crawl into a whole because you're terrified because this is a very and it is it's we get called upon when you're successful in life and you get asked to speak to groups

of people at once. It is nerve racking. Right. All the studies show people would rather be, you know, in the coffin than doing the eulogy or eaten by a shark than whatever, all the public speaking stuff, And there's a good reason for it that people totally just don't appreciate. The good reason is this, So if you and I are now sitting across table from each other, that's great, and as I'm talking, you're not checked out, You're not just like staring at me like you would a YouTube video.

You're nodding, and you're mum m m, and you're making good eye contacted facial expressions and all of these good things that tell me you're doing great, keep going right. If I weren't doing this, this is good, we could do a little experiment. No, please don't. If you were just staring at me blankly, I would start to get a not in my stomach after just a couple of minutes, because I'd be like, oh, oh, this is bad. Oh

this is going horribly wrong. And what happens when you do this in front of a whole group full of people is to them, it's not a conversation. They are the audience and you are the television, and they are off the hook for this interaction. And no matter how much you love your favorite TV show, you do not nod and and whatever at the screen as it's going. So they're just send them encouragements, right. Oh, that would

be like get the net right. So, so they're just rocked back letting it wash over them, which means they're staring blankly at you, not one blank face, but a whole sea of blank faces. Now and so of course you're going to get not in your stomach and like have all kinds of physiological changes that signal nervousness because it looks like it's going horribly because why aren't these

people talking to me? Right on a really basic level, if you look at someone saying we get you, that means they don't get you, or at least it opens up the question in your mind, and then you're spending half your time up there thinking hate me. Right, And because when people normally approve what you're saying to them, you get this whole stream of feedback that's not there. So how do you break that pattern? Right? Right? Picture them that no, do not, picture them in their underwear.

I think that was the Brady bunch. I don't know how that guy it's that that's not what you do. So first of all, you can strengthen your own sort of confidence and take control of your own physiology, just the way we're talking about before. For sure, part of

it knowing is part of the battle. Knowing that that seal blank faces, that that's what's happening when you see that, and also knowing that when your lizard brained you know, sees that you are going to have some of that physical reaction, even though you know why they're doing that, and that's okay to the problem. The real you know, sort of public speaking fantastic stories of the disaster and when the wheels came off and all the rest of that.

That stuff happens when people beat themselves up for it. When people get nervous in the moment it's still a moment, and then they say, oh my god, I'm nervous. Oh my god, I'm screwing this up. Oh my god, why am I nervous? Like, and people will tell themselves, they'll set themselves up for this. They'll say, I'm going to be great at my talk as long as I don't get nervous. Well, guess right, recipe for disaster. You know what I'm really asking, I think is probably how do

people change? How do you get people to change? You know, I mean, how do they get themselves? Because obviously it's if they've paid you, they have a vested interest in making that change. But also it's really high right, somebody who's right in the check thinks that this yeah, exactly exactly. Sometimes that's right. There's also the question of buying it, just like exactly. Yeah, yeah, I know that as a coach.

So your book is structured in two main parts, the hand youre dealt and playing that hand, which I think is a really handy way of thinking about, you know, what we have control over obviously certain aspects. And you talk about this at the beginning of the playing the hand section, where we're sort of going from here's what you look like and you can't control it into here's what you can control, and you say, you know, sort of sort or you can't do much about the way

that you look, etcetera. But that's exactly why these physical attributes are far from the last word on how people judge your character at the end of the day, character as a matter of who you choose to be, not the way you happen to be born. And then you know, you talk about there's unconscious stuff, and then you say unconscious stuff meaning we're lost in thought or we're having these moments like we're just describing. And then there's this

line that I wanted to read. But even if a lot of behavior is unconscious, nearly all of it can be subject to conscious choice. You can choose not only to behave differently, but to learn how to behave differently. You can take steps that change the way you react unconsciously in the future. Some of these changes require a lot of practice, but others just take a little imagination. Will you tell me what that means? You know? Where I start thinking about this is back with our friend

Arabian we talked about a little bit earlier. Because the reason that we trust the visual more than we trust the vocal, and the vocal more than we trust the words is those are in reverse order of conscious control. We have to consciously choose which words are coming out of our mouth by and large, and since we're choosing the words anyway, the vocal tone is sort of right there, so we can play with that a little bit consciously

more easily too. But when we're forming words, we're mostly not thinking about where our hands are or posture or

any of that stuff. And so as an interpreter of human communication, I know that most of the time the things that I'm seeing are going to be controlled not by somebody deciding what to show me, but just by how that person feels right, and then next most for vocal tone, and then lastly for the words themselves, which they're consciously choosing so the question is, how do you take at some point conscious control of what's going on with the rest of that stuff, Not because we want

to lie, but because we want to actually express ourselves even more confidently, even more effectively. And part of that is muscle memory, the kinds of things that we might do. We put a lot of emphasis on the what we call the warm up or team. I'll give you a

quick story. So first time I went on TV at National TV was it was what's his name, Chris Matthews, and so I was doing like body language interpretation on some debate thing, and I was excited, and I sat in a little booth in a little box, and it was a remote thing kind of like this, and I had all my answers for everybody, Yeah we're not really, but but the like me and the mic right, And I wasn't sitting there with Chriss, so he was in

some some other city. And I was really enthusiastic and it was great, and let's just say the effect was not what I wanted. And what I mean by that was I was like waggling around and jumping all and doing this thing with my neck that kind of looked like a bad Stevie Wonder impression so ironic that you were talking about yes, right, And so the next time I went on this is the actional part when I'm sitting in the chair and I miked up and made

up and all of this stuff. What I did in that moment to kind of get my body language in my muscle what we call short term muscle memory, the short term muscle memory where I wanted it to be was I just did this little miniature movement like I was heading a soccer ball back of soccer practice. Boom boom, boom. And what that did for me is then when we were live, I didn't have to think about it that much.

Where my body went when I started to talk was here instead of so forward and backwards, instead of side to side in a serpentine motion, which was not but the forward and backwards. If you're in the room with me, you'd see is like, not, yeah, it's not No, it was not huge. I was not jumping out of my chair and thrust in my forehead at the camera. But but it changed posture and it changed movement, and it

was much more at least appropriate for that setting. Right, And you can change the stuff, and you can be who you want to be. So how did you think about the actual content of what you were saying while

also thinking about do this thing with my body? Well, this is the beauty of the warm up or team, right, which is in the moment, I was thinking about my content, but my muscles were doing the thing that i'd been doing a couple of minutes ago, a couple of minutes before, which is for and backwards thing, And so it was much easier for me to reproduce that in the moment. You know, you have a limited amount of bandwidth, limited amount of conscious bandwidth in the moment, and the more

nervous you are, the more of that shrinks. Right, So you can't control everything all at once, even if you have very specific, fantastic plans for how you're gonna do your voice here and you're gonna do your other thing here, and no, no, no no, it's going to happen in the moment. And so it's like Ron popeel yes said it and forget it. No late night infomercials, so you're setting your your that's right. So like early eighties introvercials, late night

sleep deprived idiots buying things that don't work. So by practicing that, I'm more confident that my body is going to do the thing at once. And this is something I imagine with clients you have to sort of just lightly convinced them of because there is that sense of like, oh my god, how could I possibly keep track of all these things at once? But no, actually like doing this little bit of practice ahead of time, and then you don't think to your body right, and then you

don't have to keep track of it. The a number one question. I don't know if it's always people's first question, but it's the thing that they actually do need to know and don't know when you're speaking in public unless you have no cards or a clicker or a podium or a mic. Is what do we do with my hands? It's like being the boy at the sixth grade dance and like do I snap? Do I point? What do I do? I don't know. For the women listening, I feel like that's a really funny, like revelations about what

we're thinking about. The boys had no idea. They knew like if you guys wiggled a little bit, it looked pretty good. And for us, it's like all of our gestures that we've been rehearsing for the last few years were from football, which does not look it on a dance floor. It's a different thing, or baseball anyhow. So the question of what to do with your hands, mostly when we're talking this is not universal. Mostly when we're talking, our hands move, and that's great. It gives some visual

interest and kinds energy. There's an old saying in this business it's just the public speaking piece, that your audience is never going to be more interested in your material than you are. So if your hands are dangling at your sides and just your mouth moving, and you're not even excited enough about it to move your hands, it's going to convey that like this as dry as dust, why would they be interested in? Like you clearly want to be somewhere else, Why should I want to be here?

But mostly, if we can start feeling a little bit, our hands are going to do a thing until you reach the end of the sentence, the end of the paragraph, if you want to think about it that way, and then suddenly your hands have no idea where to be, And there's a whole catalog of things that they do

in that moment that are mostly awful. And awkward and visually very distracting to your audience because we're visual creatures and those hands are speaking more what happens at the end of their story, that's right, And usually it's some sort of clutching, nervousness or weirdness, and there's every different variety of thing, and so there are a couple of

things that don't look bad. So one of the things that we do, again, the warmer routine, is a great place to reinforce this is go through motions that show how do you come back to a resting position that's usually your hands nested one inside the other around sort of belly button belt buckle. Yeah, you're you're doing it sitting down. It's belly button belt buckle level. We can't talk about this about becoming self conscious? Yes, oh god.

Back when I was single, oh my lord, Like it was the worst part when I had to explain what I did for a living, because as soon as people figured out that I had something to do with body language, suddenly they're shifting nervously in their chairs and just entirely self conscious. And it was awful. Yes, I get this as well, Yes, but the voice I feel like thinking

about my accent. I'm like, I'm thinking about the content of what you're saying and your body language and your exactly exactly and think, so you know about this, you don't have to mention it. I want to say though, because there's a natural segue in here when you're talking about people up on the podium and being interested in

their material. I would love to know what makes you tick, what makes you want to do this, How are you contributing to sort of like how I mean a little bit, I'd like to know that, but also really like what makes you excited? So okay, where to start? So me, you want to talk about me? Is that's what you're saying. You want to talk about me? So you are my

guest and I am your guest. Okay, So me, I would like to take this moment to appreciate that you were the first straight white man we've had on and I value so that even you are having a moment where you're like, oh, God, surely no one wants my boring suburban upera ship. No, I'm not to be fair. I'm not asking about your boring suburban upbringing. I'm literally saying, what makes you excited about this work? Because you know how humans communicate? Is I have reason? You know, I

excited should be exciting? Right. Two thousand and four there was an election and the Draft Dodger beat the War Hero, and I first of all didn't want that to happen um, and I didn't want it to happen again. And so the reason that I do this had a lot to do with politics, and politically, Democrats fancy the right person to win. Yes, I want the right person to win.

And for the most part, there are some arguments about policy or whatever, But for the most part, the people that I want to win are the ones who are trying to figure out how to govern the country in a way that makes everybody the most people like some kind of maximal happiness. So you can argue about what

the end state is. But then there's another party that makes a very good thing taking money from people with power and money and keeping their power and money safe, right, And that's it was sort of always us, And that's fine. But I want the good guys to win because I'm a Star Wars kid, and so their own biases that if we just explain to the people how good our ideas are, they will choose us to implement those ideas for their benefit. And if they're not choosing us, we

just have to explain it more thoroughly. Yes, we got to hold them in their seats longer and make them exactly. Meanwhile, the party that's doing this as an investment basically for their clients who are their donors, know how to put on a show. They know how to put on a show because they listen to best practices. And it's not so much the scientists. Even that they're looking to is

Madison Avenue and like, so what works. But the point of this podcast truly is about best practices for those of us who don't necessarily look like the old guard thinks power should look or sounds. Yes, you know, I asked some friends if they had any questions for you,

and all of them head questions. I mean, sure, yeah, okay, obviously that all of them ask the same question in different ways, and it is the same question, which is, how can we come across as knowledgeable, confident sort of without coming off as threatening or aggressive or a bitch? That's that b word? Ye, it's my I am there. Yeah. I prefer not to, but everybody I don't have to. Everybody knows what and truly the other questions were how do you speak truth to power without fear of retribution?

How do you maintain your heart health when you must align with expectations of female communication in systems that often do not allow for truth to be spoken? I mean, you know. And the other one is about how do you get permission quote unquote to be justifiably angry without the perception of being a bit and being treated in

a weird, placating, dismissive way. Right, And so the questions that I can answer more easily are what kinds of communications are received well and allow you to be effective within the context of the organization. The questions that are trickier our heart health and where do I put all this anger right? The pretzeling of ourselves in order to do this right? So if I can execute this, do I have like a closet I can just go scream into for five minutes and let it all out or

whatever that is? And that is a bigger challenge for sure. There's also that makes me think of statistics. I've heard that like, the more women in leadership, the more parity there isn't an organization, the less these issues actually come up. That's right, and so there is a long term strategic plan if the strategy, yes, okay, which is to meet people where they're at now and succeed so that women

are in charge and win the game. So you can change it, right, So once you have women in positions authority, and they're all these expectations, and I guess, for good and for ill, right that like, once we put women in charge, everything will be wonderful and there will be much more empathetic leadership and outcomes will be greater. And I'm not sure how to right. I've been schooled that the answer to the patriarchy is not a matriarchy, right,

it's feminism. Is that we're not actually saying hierarchical structures are fucking awesome. Let's just do there. That's right, That's right. Yeah, No, it's a whole different way for like maybe like a little bit just to like, but now, I mean, obviously the whole lie of patriarchy. I think this is good for man. I mean it will actually be pretty great. Will tell you it's good for everyone because everyone knows

their place. And let's look politically, there are a whole lot of women who voted that way because of much more comfortable lifelong indoctrination is the patriarch and fear of change and all the rest of it and proximal power. I mean, it's white women that we're talking about, totally, totally. I mean that's a really interesting one and or some really interesting research done just politically to figure out who are these women and how do we talk to them

and what are their lives like? And it was like, yes, there are two earners in the household, but my house is a much happier place when the man in it can feel like the head of the household and feel respected and feel like he's living the life his father lived.

And having Hillary Clinton in charge of the country is going to like mess with that and some deep band And I know that in the relationships in my own life the men in my own life, as a you know, completely out feminist who tries to live my values, I know what it is in those tiny moments of disagreeing with a man to make sure that they still feel great about themselves. Yeah all, And we don't like to talk about this much. And for many people it's not

a practical consideration. And that's a wonderful thing. But for many people. The threat of physical violence is a real thing, not from strangers, and that's part of life for way too much of the population. Still, so you're such a good straightway. Um, you worked with Hillary during the campaign, is that right? Can you tell us a little bit about what you focused on. So we've focused on the impression that she was making and how she was coming across.

So I worked with her very specifically around each of

the three general election debates against Donald Trump. And so she was being pitted against this monstrous figure who was super hostile and takes no prisoners in his own approach to communication, and she I was in the classic double bind where she had to project authority, she had to defend herself against this guy was by definition a competitive endeavor, and yet she had to be appealing to voters as somebody that they would potentially be seeing every day on

their media and could not appear to abrasive, could not appear off putting in that way, which, as we know, is really hard for women to accomplish both of those things at once. I mean, one thing that I do remember clearly, because it was such a ridiculous thing to have happened, is that I was literally you know me, the hell am I was literally advising Hillary Clinton world historical figure that it's a sexist country and not not like she didn't know that. Of course she knew that.

But if you want to be in charge of a sexist country, then there are some things that you should take into account that are different than then how you might otherwise. I much less. I wro only in the like, oh my god that then like that, Yeah, I fucking know that. Right's much for like? Yeah, I mean thanks for exactly exactly well, and not just the female experience

but her unique Look. The reason I'm asking is now that Elizabeth Warren has dropped out, I can't help but wonder if there's any way the outcome would have been any different, if the stuff that's within our purview had been different if she had demeanor, No question. I mean, if you want me to analyze Elizabeth Warren what happened with that? I can do, yeah, not think directly. And I love her and have a lot of thoughts about

what she did effectively and less effectively. Look, there's a narrative that I think is accurate that says, whether it was a conscious decision or not, that she kind of sacrificed herself to save democracy from the billionaire interloper, that she used the occasion of Bloomberg's first appearance on the debate stage to lay waste to him in a way that crippled his surge in candidacy at that point, but

also painted her in not the most appealing light. She came down hard on him, and that was not necessarily the most flattering image she could have projected for herself at that Do you think, though, that it was meant to suggest him as a proxy to how she would be with Trump in a debate. Yeah, and I think

that's a strategy too. But if that was her strategy to say, here's how I would approach Donald Trump, and here's how I would appear on America's television screens in October of asking to be their next president, I don't think it was a good answer. I think it was way too harsh, frankly, And even though if a man did exactly the same thing, it worked in terms of blowing up the target, Yeah, for sure. But I fired

a sacrif faced her own her own. There is something we call the quality of life voter theory, and that is that it is actually very rational to vote for somebody who you find pleasant, because the chances that their policy prescriptions are the right ones could get past would have their intended effects are very remote and very hard

to judge for your average voter. But your average voter is a pretty good judge of whether, if this person were elected, that the experience of having them in their lives and talking to their coworkers and their kids about this person and hearing them on their radio every morning, whether that would be pleasant or not, and that affects their quality of It is the implication that if she had not eviscerated uh Bloomberg, that her campaign would have

done better on Super Tuesday. It depends what else she had done instead. She can be very winning. She's a fantastic communicator, not just because she's freaking brilliant, but she has a tone that she achieves sometimes that is just so lovely, that is both authoritative but so empathetic at the same time. She does the strength or balance really beautifully, but she doesn't always stick to that. She often does other things instead. Town halls energy is so different than

her debate energy. That's right, that's right, and the debate is a competitive endeavor. And so it's understandable that she goes there. I mean, look, I would have liked the narrative to have been that that way that she you know, handled Bloomberg, which made you know, women around the country cheer at somebody who wasn't just playing um, you know,

the the nicest women, thank you. But but because of our own experience being within the double body, seeing somebody oh my god, yeah love you know, sort of unfurl it in their way, unapologetically, it would have been great if the story had been and that worked, and she was rewarded and in some the way she was. There was some surge after that, obviously, probably from the people who saw themselves in her, But then for the ultimate narrative to have been you know, oops, that fucked her,

that pretty hard to swallow. Look, I don't think it was just I think there was a moment there ahead of Super Tuesday for her to show us her most compelling version of her that everybody would feel fantastic going to sleep at night and waking up in the morning knowing she was in the White House and in charge of everything, and she did not show us that. She chose instead to cut this guy off at the knees.

Looking at the example of Obama and how he never, ever, somehow and in his entire public career, let himself be seen showing I don't have any visual for it, except possibly like the sort of like surge of strength when he said bin Laden has been killed. But even that wasn't anger. It was just like intensity. Yeah. Yeah, I mean he looked annoyed a lot when he was president. He was dealing with all this other stuff, but he

didn't do the angry thing. That's a good point, because you know, I think that the thing that you know, people like me bump up against when we're told that women can't show anger in public is like, you know, fucking we can. We just have to figure out how to do it right. But maybe the answer really is, if you take from you know, the Abamba lescon, the answer really is try to channel it into something else

that is just more palatable. And listen, I have a temper, and mostly I don't like that, but it's certainly part of who I am, and I don't like to tell people you cannot do that, but I think it is certainly instructive to see that our first African American president is somebody who had that whole aloha spirit going and never ever, ever, once even gave us a visual that's infuriating. I need to take a break to U, simmer and

come back to find out whose voice you've picked. So we are back and we are going to talk about the person whose voice you brought in for us, John, who did you bring it? I brought in the former governor of the great State of Texas and Richard. What a classic, classic, gorgeous archetype of dating yourself here, I think, well, and for all of us who were not necessarily conscious

and certainly conscious of the political world in the eighties. Um, she really burst onto the national stage in the eighty four and then especially the eight Democratic National Convention where she was the keynote speaker. And we're going to listen to a little of that. Why did you choose her? So?

I chose her because to me, she's as good as anybody male female at projecting all of the things that you want in a leader all at once, and to some degree that makes her sort of so wonderful that she's inaccessible that the lessons from listening to her are probably harder to implement to some degree. But I do think there's a lot there to unpack, and I think it's worth just admiring the fact that it can be done, and it can be done at such a high level

in such a compelling way. And she's just marvelous to say, Okay, we're gonna listen to a little bit. Behind his calm, there's an impatience to unify this country and to get on with the future. His instincts are deeply American. They're tough, and they're generous, and personally, I have to tell you that I have never met a man who had a more remarkable sense about what is really important in life.

So she's talking about failed Democratic candidate for presidency and nine eight Michael Ducacus and I chose that clip partly because actually of the content of it, because she actually talks about what leadership means, you know, but also for the style. She was known for her one liners and her humor, and so this was a bit where she's not relying on that, and yet it's still, you know, extremely strong when we look at her. If anybody wants

to go to YouTube and check this out. Texas Treasurer and Richards gives the keynote address at the nine Democratic

National Convention, that's what it's called. You know, the look of it and the sound of it are somewhat surprising, especially I think for modern audience, because she really looks like a I mean, she looks like Nancy Reagan, you know, she looks like the eighties, and but she looks like a specific kind of grandma who should be like really tight, and yet she's got a looseness and a sparkle to her.

And sound wise, I mean, she's got her accent. She talks about it in this speech and fact and references it and says, this is what a real Texas accent sounds like. If you've been listening to Georgie tell you Rich Bush too much, which is a beautiful way of owning your sound. Right. What you've got here is something that's authentic. So why would I hide behind you know, why would I discount it? Absolutely? And then what I

love is okay. Content wise, what she's saying about this gentleman she's there to speak well of is that his leadership style is all American, that he's tough and generous. And I thought, well, what a talk about strength and warmth? Right, And then she said he has a calm exterior and an im patient interior. She's actually defining a style of

leadership that you know, we should all emulate. And what I love that I really want to point out to people is she has his line at the end where she says he has a remarkable sense about what is really important in life. And I love that phrase because you know her phrasing, rather because to say a sense about what is important in life, I mean talk about

an empty platitude. It could mean literally nothing. And if it was written either by you or by someone else and delivered by you, you could it is physically possible for every one of us to deliver that like it's just words. But instead she takes this pause right after

really what is really important in life? And you see her just actually go there so that those three words mean like her lifetime of you know, God knows hardship and making her decisions and and you know, doing hard things, and it's all in that tiny little pause right before it and investing in I'm going to say something that sounds trite, but I'm going to fill it with a life is humanly possible, absolutely, and that if you want to talk about practical stuff, if you want to deliver

something with strength that makes people sit up and take notice. The tone of how you deliver it is important, sure, but probably the most important thing is the pause that you take right before and right after what you say. The pause before gets people's attention because you were talking a second ago and now wait, the rhythm is different, what's happening, And so people perk up and they listen,

and so that pauses Okay, you're ready here totally. I think what's gorgeous about the pauses that sometimes we hear that advice and we just think, like literally stopped talking. But the secret fill it. It has to be you know what makes a pause a pregnant pause? And the answer is that there's a real sense of expectation in it and that comes from us literally breathing thinking and

interesting thought. We can see interesting thoughts on your face before you say them, and then you know, and the anticipation of what is going to come out and then

it comes out. And no matter how boring of a phrase, it is important in life quote unquote, it feels full oh yes, because you're you're in that moment, in that moment of that pause, you're making sure everybody's with you, You're drawing them into you, and then you deliver it, and then you pause again to say you got that right, right, right, and that you can talk to you know, that confidence that I can take that pause and people will stay

with me is they will, They almost always will. But to trust that you can take that pause is you know. That's That's what she's a real master class in. I mean, among other things, it is it's a gesture of strength. That's right to say that way that she feels like she's in her back. Do you know what I mean when you watch it, I mean it's it's a sound thing, but it's physical exactly. She feels like there's nothing about

her demeanor. Talking about what we talked about earlier with the you know, Morabian stuff, there's nothing in her demeanor that says I don't belong here. M She owns it. Yep, she belongs right up there in charge of the room. That's the kind of thing that even though yes, she's a masterclass and on repeatable, it is that kind of thing that I think we can practice. I think that's true.

I think the accent, as she said herself, is a little tough to image and if we you know, took kind of fact the right yes, no, not a good idea. And and she is both recognizable from her voice, she's recognizably female and older. There's a sense that she has she's lived some things, and so she's speaking with some experience and that comes through. It's always right there kind of in your face, that that's part of what you're

hearing is somebody's lifetime of experience. There, that's you know, that's not going to be as applicable to all of us, but the pause and the way she executes that moment,

you're right is directly useful to all. We can, i think, translate that age component, which you're right, we can't literally translate, but we can sort of metaphorically translate it onto ourselves in that it feels like the way she's using her age is she has earned the right or she has told herself you know, enough that she believes it, that she's earned the right to say, you know what I mean? You know what I mean energy, It's like what a genius and we can all do yes, even if we're

you know, not cracking our thirties yet or whatever. If you're confident in it if you are sure that it is the right thing and you can speak from there. Yeah, it's not insistent in the sense of being agitated, right, it's not upset. It's totally calm. This is how it is because you just know, and it's a way of connecting. You know, it's not just reflecting on her that she's got an authority on this subject, but it's connecting to

the audience. You know. What I mean is saying we're all in this together, right, right, Yeah, I love that. It's okay, Well, thank you, Yeah, thank you for bringing her in. She's like such a yea, you might as well. You might as well hear the best. Love it. I love it. I really appreciate that. Well, John, thank you so much. Of course it was a pleasure. Thank you to John for coming in. You can find out more about him in the show notes or on our website

Permission to Speak pod dot com. Also you can go to permission to Speak pod dot com if you have any awesome quotes you'd like me to read at the top of the episodes, and if you have any questions, I will do and ask me anything episode from time to time. And I want to know what is getting in the way of your voice. You can also send d M s or voice messages to our Instagram at Permission to Speak Pod, where we're posting a bunch of

content and please join the community. Thanks as well to Sophie Lichterman and the team at I Heeart Radio, to Megan Read, to my family and cohort, and to all of you. We're recording this podcast in the I Heart Radio studios in Hollywood on land that used to belong to the Tongva Indigenous tribe, and you can visit U S d A C dot us to learn more about honoring native land. Permission to Speak is a production of I Heart Radio and Double Vision Executive produced by Katherine

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