In this lesson we will be looking at how to use communication to influence. Communication is one of those things we don't normally think about - we speak, others listen, it just kinda happens. Yet we can also often get it wrong resulting in misunderstandings and missed opportunities for connection. Psychologists have long been fascinated with communication: it's an external representation of our inner worlds. Through language we share our values, beliefs and cultural norms.
One poignant example in my own Product career comes from a time I was working with colleagues based in Munich on an API integration with a Global Distribution System used in the travel industry. Aside from the obvious language barrier (I speak no German, so all conversations were in English), our styles of communication were quite different. The German team valued perfection, and I valued learning - even if that meant failure - so our approaches to building product clashed. As a result I wanted to build a minimum viable product, they wanted to have all the features in place from launch. In our conversations they were direct about their needs, and even though I consider myself a direct communicator I struggled sometimes. In the end, matching their directness was the only way to influence the decisions we needed to make together. An example: if they asked me if something was possible and I knew it wasn't, instead of trying to soften it I would simply answer 'no, that's not possible'. I felt uncomfortable at first until I realised this was having a positive effect on our relationship. So what did this tell me about how we use communication to influence?
So let's spend today looking at how we communicate.
I used to work with a CTO whose catchphrase whenever someone disagreed with a point he was making was "that's just semantics". It was so dismissive and condescending - and somewhat of a redundant phrase due to its tautology.
Semantics is all about meaning. Lexical semantics is about the meaning of words themselves, with phrasal semantics looking at the meaning of sentences. It's the difference in meaning between 'knowing your sht' and 'knowing you're sht', with sh*t having very different meanings depending on the context of the sentence it appears in.
You may have heard that eskimos have an unusually large number of words for 'snow', which is claimed to be as a result of snow being culturally important to them. There emerged a theory of linguistic relativity, also known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which is hotly debated amongst psychologists. This theory claims that the language we use shapes our world view: how we perceive reality, and therefore how we think about reality. Various studies have found both support and a lack of evidence for its claims, with more recent research looking at the effects of brain lateralisation to uncover a more nuanced understanding (e.g. Gilbert et al, 2006) - it appears that sometimes language does influence how we perceive the world and sometimes it does not.
One thing we're taught in coach training is to use the client's own language when summarising what they've said. Paraphrasing can break rapport because using a different word can mean something else entirely to the client. Say a client told their coach about wanting to become more confident at presenting. A conversation might go something like this:
Coach: What would you like to work on today?
Client: Well, I've got this big presentation coming up and I don't feel very confident giving it. I've given presentations in the past and they make me feel nervous. I kinda stutter and forget what I'm going to say.
Coach: Ok, so you would like to improve your confidence with public speaking?
Client: thinking for a while. Ummm, it's not really public speaking. It's more when I'm in a meeting and have to stand up in front of my team to talk about my work.
That simple substitution of 'presentation' for 'public speaking' has broken rapport. It's made the person stop, think, and consider if they've really been understood (remember lesson 3). The meaning of 'presentation' and 'public speaking' are two different things - apparently for both the coach and the client!
So to use language effectively in influencing, we need to become mindful of the words the person we're looking to influence uses, and what the meaning of those words are to them. Then start to use those words ourselves to show we understand them. In Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) this is called 'matching'. Let's look at how Jenny uses this technique.
Neil is presenting the monthly metrics in the Product team meeting. "As a result of pivoting the product it appears the numbers have improved. Monthly Active Users is up, which has increased our revenue by £150K this month. Great job team." Jenny's colleague Alex has a question. "That's great to hear. I'd like to know, was there any downside in changing direction with the product? Like, whilst retention is up I can also see a dip in acquisition - are we worried about that?" Neil looks at Jenny to take the lead on answering. "Sure Alex, whilst MAU is up we have seen fewer users signing up for our product. It looks like the pivot was successful in optimising retention, but we need to look at how we can grow now too. I've got some ideas to share on that in a mo." The rest of the meeting continues, and afterwards Alex catches up with Jenny. They ask her "do you think Neil gets how disruptive this change in direction is? It's always happening, we commit to doing one thing and then a few months later we have to stop that and do something else." Jenny takes a moment to consider her response and not react. "So I think we saw this change in direction coming for a while, the metrics were getting worse over time not better. It makes sense to pivot at this point, and the early signs are positive. I understand your frustration at having to stop doing something we'd committed to. What can I do to make it less disruptive?"
Here we see that Alex and Neil do not have rapport - there's a misunderstanding which leads to frustration (probably on both sides). Neil talks about a 'pivot' and 'monthly active users' whilst Alex talks about a 'change in direction' and 'retention'. Jenny reflects Alex's language back to them: change in direction, stop doing, commitment, disruptive. This creates rapport between her and them. Jenny also maintains rapport with Neil in the meeting by using his language - MAU, pivot. What this example shows is that in any message people will hear only what is meaningful to them - and that's usually based on the language that they use themselves.
But this focus on what we say only accounts for part of how we communicate: how we say something can be much more important.