At 11 years old, I was diagnosed as having Asperger’s syndrome, now called Autistic spectrum disorder. I know what you’re thinking: “Wow, the guy who wrote a program to find friends is Autistic? Shocker”.
Lol, yeah…
I’ve spent years honing and crafting my social skills to a level where people have no clue that I’m on the spectrum. All of these skills are relatively easy to learn, and it surprises me how few people know some of the more rudimentary tricks, even among sales, managers, and others who put serious stake in communication. So as a public service to my awkward friends and colleagues, I want to share a few tricks that can help you get out of your head and start communicating with others in an effective and reasonable way.
Most of the tricks that I’ll be discussing today come from a book by FBI hostage Negotiator, Chris Voss. It’s called “Never Split the Difference” and I consider it to be required reading for those on the spectrum. If you like the summarized techniques I talk about here, you REALLY need to buy this book. I’m not sponsored, just grateful.
Without further adieu, let’s talk about some of the techniques.
Labelling
Labelling is a technique where you state an observation in the form of “It looks like”, “It seems like”, and “It feels like”. This is the most versatile trick that Chris teaches, but it’s most basic use is to get people to open up.
“It seems like you’re down.” “You look pretty happy today.” “It feels tense in here.”
You don’t need to elaborate typically. These statements tend to be an invitation for a person to vent their emotions. Those who are having a rough time want to offload their frustrations and those that want to celebrate are looking for people to talk to.
When you use this technique frequently and sincerely, you will find that people fill you in on all sorts of coming and goings.
Calibrated Questions
A calibrated question takes the form of a “How” or “What” question and is designed to get people to help you out.
It’s application is pretty obvious in hostage negotiations. “How do I know that they are still alive?” In regular business though, it can help you to draw resources, support, and little details that can utilize someone else’s brainpower. Here are a few common ones I use on a daily basis:
- “How can I get you that report if I don’t have the data?”
- “How can I give you an estimate if our team hasn’t worked on this before?”
- “What could prevent this from going through on time?”
- “What is the client’s take on this?”
The tone is really important here. These questions are designed to show that you’re willing to cooperate, but that there are details that they can provide to help you out. When you get good at asking these, people will naturally fill in the gaps for you.
It’s also important that you don’t use “Who” and “Why” questions when discussing problems. People get defensive because corporate life has trained workers that “Who” is usually followed by “do I need to fire?”.
The Late-Night DJ voice and mirror neurons
Have you ever yawned and suddenly everyone else in the room yawned? That is the work of mirror neurons. As a social animal, people are equipped with mechanisms that keep us checked in with people that we are around. The yawn is a signal that tells the group that it might be time to take a break to allow the group to recharge.
Another mechanism is emotional cadence. If someone is relaxed, speaks slowly, and keeps their voice in a lower register, that mood is contageous. If someone is speaking quickly, with an elevated pitch, and clear anxiety, it signals to the group that they need to be nervous too.
The mood of the group will stabalize over time. If you happen to be in a room with a lot of anxious people, speaking with a “Late-night DJ voice” can tune everyone into relaxation. What’s a “Late-night DJ voice”? Watch any commercial with the Allstate guy. “That’s Allstate’s Stand. Are you in good hands?”
The more relaxed you are, and the more you respond to pressure relaxed, the more others will see that you have things under control and will relax themselves. Try to keep things either calm or fun and conversational.
Mirroring
Want to tell people, “No” without using the words? Repeat what they tell you but with an awkward pause.
“Hey, this really complicated assignment is due Friday.” …Awkward pause…“due Friday?” “Well yeah, there is a meeting with the client” “Friday…” “Yeah, I know… it’s a little too tight.” “little too tight?” “You need more time don’t you.” “Yeah…”
This exchange above isn’t too out of the ordinary for my teams. In my previous company, we were explicitly told that we could never tell the client, “No”. That said, they never said we couldn’t respectfully repeat their unreasonable requests back to them.
When you combine mirroring with labels and calibrated questions, you can often get the client to realize what a problem they are creating with a specific request. Even if they are adamant, using mirroring with labels and calibrated questions can get you resources and juicy details that you can use for later.
Chris Voss, talks about black swans in his book. I won’t go into them here because you should really be reading from the master, but these three techniques have gotten me more black swans than any other technique here.
Accusation Audits:
Nobody wants to be a screwup, but unfortunately mistakes are made. Contracts go over budget, deliverables aren’t on time, or presentations are flopped. When that happens, the injured party is going to be FURIOUS, and depending on how long they get to ruminate on your mistake they might be ramped up to 11.
You need to deflate their emotional energy, and the best way to do it is to give them an ability to vent.
Now, Chris doesn’t make this distinction but I find there are 2 different accusation audit types.
“The repentant confession” and “The labelling lawyer”
The repentant confession is when a person asserts how in the wrong they are while using all of the talking points that are no doubt in the person’s head.
“Before we begin, that presentation was UNACCEPTABLE; I mean what lack of preparation! And the stuttering? What was that all about. Look if you don’t want to work with me again, I get it. I can’t believe how sideways that went! And so much was riding on it!” And on and on.
If you use enough real emotion and use everything that they want to say, they are going to have all of this energy and it won’t have anywhere to go, so it usually wraps around into an sympathy.
The problem with the above method is that an outburst where you are admitting to failure means that you might be confessing to breaking the terms of a contract which can get you into legal hot water. That’s where the second version of this comes in which is the labelling lawyer.
With the labelling lawyer, the repentant party labels the situation and gives the client the ability to vent.
“That was rough. It must seem like we really dropped the ball there”, then silence. Use multiple labels to draw out every complaint from the client. Take their fury and make sure to use the “late-night dj voice”. Because you labelled the situation with “It looks/seems/feels like”, you have admitted nothing, but with the right tone of voice, you say sorry without saying sorry.
Using No
So people are allergic to hearing the word, “No”. No sounds so final, but it’s not. When people say No, they are establishing boundaries. You need to approach No with the enthusiasm of someone playing battleship. Every No is simply establishing where the ship is not. Every yes tells you the operating area where you can make progress.
Now that you aren’t as scared of No, there are other benefits.
No requires less energy in a lot of situations.
“Do you want pizza or Tacos?” “Ummmmmmmm” “Are you opposed to Tacos?” “No”
In that very simple example, you can get to an answer way easier by asking about their objections than by providing choices.
There is a LOT more to the power of NO, but read Chris’s book. He will do it far better justice than I ever could.
The turning point
Have you ever listened to your Uncle as he was watching whatever political news show he prefers? At some point, he’ll probably utter one of the following phrases:
- “Exactly!”
- “That’s Right!”
- “You Nailed it!”
- “Amen!”
These phrases are indicative that a person feels like their point of view has been perfectly stated by another person. When that happens, Chris Voss points out that they have essentially crossed the Us vs Them divide in the brain. The more times you hear those phrases from another person about something you say, the more that person knows that you understand where they are coming from. And if people believe that you understand their point of view, it follows that you will act in a similar way to them, hence they give you their trust. If you hear those phrases, you are a part of their tribe and can be a bit more honest and assertive than before.
Be careful though. If you hear the phrase “You’re right”, especially if the tone of voice is forlorn or annoyed, the other person is telling you that they want you to shut up. They hear where you are coming from, but they don’t want to hear it. You are not part of the in-group when you hear that.
Desire binding
Desire binding is tying something you want to something someone else wants. I won’t say too much on this technique as it’s pretty self explanatory, but I will say this:
This is literally the definition of a quid pro quo.
Be very careful that you don’t tie business favors with personal favors because that is a conflict of interest.
Use this technique for when a project you are on is stuck. “I’ll help you accomplish this task, because it will free you to remove the blocker on my task.”
Bernaysian stamps
I’ve talked about Bernaysian Stamps at length before, but it bears repeating here. A Bernaysian Stamp is a phrase that rewrites the expectations of the social contract. Using the phrase indicates consent with the change.
So for example, if you use the expression “Building the plane while flying it,” the social contract is appended with the idea that ideas should be built and tested before they are flown.
Another example is “quiet quitting”. If you use that phrase, you are acknowledging that not going above and beyond is a fireable offense, and phoning it in is a form of quitting.
Learning how to craft and utilize these phrases can help you shape your culture.
Summary
In short, these techniques can transform how you interact with clients, colleagues, and investors. I recommend you get very good at labels and callibrated questions. I’ve taught these techniques to coworkers at my last job, and we saw a number of clients change their tune. They saw us as more collaborative, insightful, and in short… more like partners than hired guns.