Do you really know what people think about you or your professional brand?

Are the words you use to speak about yourself or your products and services creating the right connections in the minds of your prospective customers?

Is there a better way to communicate with people who have vastly different opinions and beliefs than just expressing your own beliefs more loudly or disparaging theirs because you know they are not right?

My guest on this episode is Lee Carter and Lee has written an amazing book called Persuasion: Convincing others when facts don't seem to matter. You'll likely hear me say several times in this episode that most of the recent books I've read on Influence and persuasion have been rehashes of Cialdini or Greene, unless they've actually been by those guys. There are some exceptions but it is quite rare to encounter knowledge in this field that is original and valuable and Lee has, in my opinion, managed that successfully.

In this episode, we'll discuss the rationality of people in general, language landmines, communicating with people who hold polar opposite beliefs and the role of active empathy in persuasion. We also got onto discussing how Lee was able to see that Donald Trump was going to win in 2016 when everyone else was saying he couldn't. I even managed to get Lee to share some of her top media tips from her many appearances on national media in the US.

Lee's book Persuasion: Convincing Others In A World Where Facts Don't Seem To Matter is available to buy in paperback, kindle format and on Audible. This is one I recommend getting on multiple formats because you're gonna want to refer to it time and time again.

(I've been waiting to bring this episode to you for so long and am super happy to finally release it. It's not been without problems. Despite the whole summer hiatus thing with my new job, and then getting covid, I also had to deal with technology issues on the platform I recorded the episode with. No one said podcasting would be easy... lol. That service actually offered to sponsor my episodes but I declined it as I can not in good conscience recommend a service I've had so many issues with. Just know that getting this episode to you has been a labour of love and it really is one of my personal favourite episodes of Podfluence. Let me know if it is yours too.)

Next time, It's just me and I'm going to be talking about the 7 deadly sins of podcasting. I hope you will join me for that.

Want to find out what podcasting could do for your business? Take this short quiz https://mrqz.to/podcastpossibilities

Come and join other professionals who are building their authority through podcasting in the Podfluencers Facebook Group https://bit.ly/3aesFPJ and get your free download of How to build authority with podcasts

Did you enjoy the show? Did you learn anything new or useful? If you did, then the best way to show your appreciation is by sharing the show with your online network. Tag me and I'll give you a shout out on an upcoming episode. Leave a review and I'll read it out on the show.

Of course, if you REALLY liked it, you're welcome to support the show financially too using the link below.

Support the show (https://speakinginfluence.supercast.tech/)

If you're a professional focused podcaster who could do with some help growing and monetizing your show, you should check out the Grow The Show podcast with Kevin Chemidlin. Kevin is helping countless podcasters like myself to make the improvements and practices on their shows that will get bigger audiences and more monetization to make more shows.

Mentioned in this episode:

Podfluence Weekly

Join us for the official Podfluence Weekly newsletter https://present-influence.ck.page or Subscribe on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=6882642444815519744

Welcome to Podfluence.

Today we are covering a topic that is really at the heart of everything

I created this show to be about, and that is the art of persuasion.

it is very hard to come across guests who are real experts in the world

of persuasion, and yet my guest today is truly that, and that makes

me very lucky as a persuasion and influence based podcast to be able

to introduce my guest to you today.

For anyone who's ever had challenges communicating with their family.

Persuasion skills can be really important, not just for you, but for

everyone in the family that if you can all find better ways to communicate

with each other, you're gonna have better, healthier family relationships.

And my guest and I talk about that somewhat here as well.

Other topics that are gonna come up in this episode are things like language

landmines, those triggering words that can sometimes mean different things to

different people, how to communicate with people who have polar opposite opinions.

Shouldn't we be able to have conversations with people who disagree with us,

maybe quite vehemently disagree with us without it resorting into

a shouting match or personal abuse.

Having active empathy, which is something we talked about during the

show and transcending the divisions that we have in society and often in

our closer relationships with people.

Even things like dealing with gossip in professional situations, like if

there's rumors flying around about you that are not particularly favorable,

something that my guest herself had to deal with in her job, you'll see

here how she dealt with that and how you might want to as well, if that is a

situation you've ever found yourself in.

My guest is called Lee Carter.

Convincing Others When Facts Don't Seem To Matter.

Available both on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible, and I can highly recommend it

It's my hope that you'll enjoy listening to this conversation

as much as I enjoyed having it,

So all that remains for me to say is enjoy the show.

Welcome to the show.

I am a very lucky podcaster today because I'm getting to speak to, an author of

a book that I have absolutely loved reading, and I read a lot of books

about influence and persuasion, and I often find that the new ones that come

out, are usually just regurgitations of things that have happened before.

This one is not.

This one has some new content in there.

Some stuff that I really wanted to get there is really helpful to anyone who

has a business, anyone who has a brand, and to anyone who has customers who they

want to have a better relationship with.

Let me properly welcome to the show, first of all though, Lee Carter,

it is great to have you with me.

Thanks so much.

so much.

I'm really excited to be.

I've been very much looking forward to speaking with you the

reasons that I just laid out there and more besides the book is fascinating

and I definitely want to get into some of the stuff that you talk about

in there because, you dunno what to expect when you start reading a book

about persuasion and it's so many of them have been just the same old

things repeated over and over again.

Or maybe just put it in different ways, but you are writing from professional

experience and from clients who you've worked with to help them grow their

influence and be more persuasive.

And I think people are really gonna look forward to hearing about that and

definitely gonna want to hear about the importance of empathy and persuasion.

And we're gonna get to all of that as we go along.

But I want to start off by asking you, who is somebody for you, who

you look up to, who you respect and of admire for their influence and

persuasion and how they have gone about?

There's a few people in my life who have really, I think,

shaped my view of persuasion.

One is my aunt she was my grandmother's sister, and I always found it

amazing that she could change the way that she was talking about what

she wanted based on the audience.

So she and her husband were very, very different.

I always saw the way she was able to navigate getting.

To buy into a change in decorating that she wanted to

do, that he might not wanna do.

And then I've noticed in my family, there's a lot of those kinds of dynamics.

A lot of people with strong opinions, different opinions.

And the way to get your way or to change people's mind is generally

by speaking softly in a language of the other person, not loudly.

in your own language to try and change somebody's mind.

Yet it almost never works when you're trying to push really hard

to get your point of view across.

So that was something that, that always shaped me early on.

And the other is about.

Oh gosh, it was about 17 years ago, I heard Frank Luntz, who was one of

the founders of my firm, speaking at a conference about the impact of language

on the 2004 election in the United States.

And I thought it was just so fascinating to think.

It's not just your policies or your positions, it's how you express them and

articulate them can really galvanize your base, change the way people view you.

And it was something I'd always believed in, but to see it in practice and

laid out that way was just something fascinating and it felt like I, it's

something I always wanted to do.

So you lay out some of this in your book because you talk about how

you were able to predict just by how persuasive particular candidates were the

result of the election of Donald Trump.

And you, you ha said, regardless of your political opinions, like you had

that like no, he's got the persuasions thing down, and you were able to see

those sorts of things and I know.

A subtitle of your book is Persuading When Facts Don't Matter.

And I think anyone who's gotten into influence and persuasion

knows how important the emotional side of things are.

The connection side of things really are, and I think a lot of people forget that.

They think the facts should be enough.

The data, the information should be enough.

And this is something that, that you talk about a lot.

And I think even in, in the examples you've given there, it's like you're

suggesting that the emotional side of that is, Particularly important,

but I wonder if you can te tell us a little bit more about where you first

started to recognize that emotional side of persuasion and what drew you

into wanting to work in that area.

Yeah, I think I've always been fascinated why the

language that you choose and you.

Changes the way you view something entirely.

When I was growing up and I was in high school at my family's dinner, we

always used to have these different kinds of conversations and we'd

have to come prepared with a topic.

And so I would come to the table and say, what's the difference between a nerd, a

geek, a dork, and a dweeb and a loser?

If you looked in the dictionary, they all sound exactly the same, but each one of

them makes you think slightly different.

It's each one of them has a picture that's just a little bit different,

and then we would discuss the nuance.

And so we often think when you go out there that you're just, if you say

this, you get your point across by communicating the words you choose

have a huge, huge impact, right?

It makes all the difference.

So I've always been fascinated with that.

And then our firm at Ms.

Lansing Partners is the firm in politics that started a lot of shifts

in perception based on language.

So it used to be called global warming.

Now it's called climate.

People used to debate whether or not the weather was getting warmer,

whether it was, what it was, once you talked about chi climate change, it

changed the conversation entirely.

Now we're looking again, that climate change has been completely

politicized and so it's almost time again for a refresh in that language.

And so we're seeing people now start talking about more extreme weather and

what we need to do to try and hold that back, and it becomes less political.

also know the difference between things like the estate tax and the death tax

and estate tax seems something like, oh, who cares as poor, wealthy people

on the hill, they can afford extra tax.

A death tax seems something that we're all gonna have to face.

And it seems very unfair.

A tax just for dying.

You can change the way people view things by the way that you talk about

them or the way that you frame them.

about the difference between used cars and pre-owned vehicles.

Same thing, very different outcome in how you perceive them.

When I started to learn that this was a discipline, I thought, oh my

gosh, how amazing that you could spend your career helping people

communicate more effectively.

And our whole philosophy, it's not what you say that

matters, it's what people hear.

And our job each and every day is try to find, there's many ways

you can talk about an issue, your company, your product, your self.

There's only one that's really gonna have the impact and drive

the results you're looking to find.

And our job is to find it.

And so in some.

you almost have to suspend your own beliefs and get in the i, into the mindset

of your target audience in order to really persuade them, because it's never

gonna start with what you wanna say.

Yeah, there's there's an thing that people always teach in public

speaking skills or certainly the good public speaking trainers teach it.

That the most important conversation in public speaking and presentations is

the conversation that's going on inside the head of the audience, not the one

that you are necessarily having them.

And I think this is sort of along those kinds of lines, right?

It's about how you are being perceived and the thoughts that you are eliciting

with people rather than what you actually perhaps want to be putting across.

Like the meaning of the information is what's being understood

rather than what's being.

That's absolutely right.

When you think about so many of the conversations I have with clients or

people who are trying to understand how to persuade, start with, well, if people

only knew X, Y, Z, then they would know.

We are a good company, a good product, but people are, aren't rational beings

who occasionally behave Emotional.

People are emotional beings who.

Occasionally behave rationally.

So we really have to understand what it is that they're feeling in

order to try and engage with them.

It's a very different position to come from because a lot of people

say, okay, if I wanna persuade someone, they need to behave more

responsibly towards the climate.

They need to understand by 2030 x, y, Z is gonna happen.

I'm gonna go through a laundry list of facts, but that's not how we process.

, I facts aren't going to change my heart, my mind, because you have your facts.

And I'll Google and I'll find my own facts that are gonna contradict yours.

So you said by 2030, I found one that said by 2040.

So who cares?

And it's just not gonna work that way.

But if in instead you say, do you love camping?

Do you love sitting outside by the fire and looking up at the stars?

Or you try to find a place where you can connect with someone

about the wonder of the planet.

And most often you'll be able to find.

and you can say, do you wanna be able to do that with your

children and grandchildren?

I think let's make sure that we start working to ensure

that those areas are protected.

Do you wanna go fishing with your kids or whatever it is?

Find most people, even those who deny climate change will say, you know what?

I don't do it.

I don't do it for the Al Gores.

I do it for the outdoors because I do love the.

and I wanna protect that and make sure that generations to come have

access to all of these things.

And you can start changing the conversation, but it's not gonna

be by saying, do you know if you keep going the way you're going by

2030, we're gonna be underwater.

That just overwhelms people, scares people, put them in anxiety and isn't

it might even make them fight back and that's just not the way to engage.

It's really by trying to go into their emotion and find that

connection point where we can both.

I think that's one of the things I did particularly enjoy in your

book is that you really do talk about how you can, how we can start to communicate

across what seemed like great divides of very polarized opinions these days,

and that we have to essentially use our skills and our understanding to

try and get into someone else's model of the world and their language and

what they're understanding by things.

Because it's very I think we've seen this many times, and I've seen this

in certainly in personal development events, that we often will hear

the same words, but have completely different meanings attached to them.

And again, I know this is something that you talk about in the book,

but can you just tell us a little bit more about like the different

understandings of essentially the same thing that seem to separate.

Oh, absolutely.

There are words that you can find.

I almost call, we call them language land.

Sometimes people call them trigger words, but there are words that can

be heard entirely differently based on what you believe to begin with.

So for example, we're just talking about climate change.

Climate change to somebody who is on board.

It is obvious it is truth.

It is a hundred percent happening and we need to do everything we can to stop it.

So they hear climate change, they don't get triggered.

When you talk to people who haven't necessarily gotten on that sort

of environmental engagement curve, and they're sort of somewhere.

They're, they hear climate change is political, and it's not

that they don't believe that we need to do right by the planet.

It's what they think is climate change means to them, things

are gonna get more expensive.

There's a sense of unfairness because we can do everything right in our country.

But then if you look over at what's happening in China, it's unfair.

They're already struggling to pay for their bills.

Yeah.

you're gonna tell them they're gonna have to change everything.

Things are gonna get more.

They also hear people who believe in climate change hate people like me.

So that's a movement for somebody else.

Once you understand how they view that, then you can start

communicating with them.

And it's almost like breathing.

We say it's like in with a good air out, with a bad.

It's like in with a good language, out with a bad.

How do you exclude from your conversation?

Any language it's gonna be triggering or.

almost any debate you can find this, you can also find the same

thing in corporate messaging.

There's certain narratives that exist out there that, that get triggered.

So one of the narratives that a lot that's out there is that

companies put profits before people.

And so when you start talking about raising fees or doing something like

that, or corporate executive convers, if you're not careful, you can end

yourself square in the middle of it.

A huge problem because everything that you say is gonna be held underneath

the scrutiny of those narratives.

So it's really important when you're communicating to an audience with

somebody who has a different opinion and then you, you understand what baggage

exists that they believe about you.

Is it that you put profits before people?

Is it that you judge people like them?

Is it that you know?

Things are unfair, is it?

Whatever that is, you need to understand what that is really deeply

so that you can avoid any language that's gonna be that kind of language

that creates, a social media land fire of that you see all the time.

Yeah.

And is this generally something that people don't really get unless they've

done some work with some, with an agency like yours or with somebody who's been

able to come in and highlight these particular things into a, to a company?

Yeah.

One of the things that I've found over time, and a lot of people now

talk about the importance of empathy, which most people think about.

It's just putting yourself in the shoes of your audience.

I teach it as something that I call active empathy because we all

have the ability to have empathy.

I mean, 99% of us have the ability to have empathy.

Unless you know you've got narcissistic disorder or some

other kinds of things like that.

Most of us can have empathy, but we have natural empathy for people who are just

like us, not for people who are different.

And so if we are trying to communicate with people who are different with than

us, which by the way is most of the time, we have to suspend our own beliefs and

put ourselves in the shoes of the other, not just in why they're doing what they're

doing, but in three different categories.

So to me, active empathy is made up of three different places.

The first is emotional empathy, which is why do people feel the way they feel?

There are certain feelings that we have that are really good feelings,

whether you believe in God or not.

Some would say they're God-given emotions.

Others would say they're biological emotions, but they all serve a purpose

For us, that's really, really important.

Even things like fear.

Fear indicates it's like you gotta get outta dodge.

Anger indicates there's a problem that needs to be solved.

Joy indicates it's something that you should continue to be doing.

When somebody feels any of these emotions, it's really important

that you understand them.

And when you're communicating, you need to know what you're tapping.

any of those biologically good feelings and even the ones that we might say

are bad feelings are okay, but if you stop into what is called inhibitory

emotions, and this is all based on something called the change triangle.

Inhibitory emotions are shame, anxiety, and guilt.

If you make anybody feel shame, anxiety or guilt by trying to

persuade them, you're never gonna win.

They're gonna either bury their head in the sand or they're gonna fight.

and most persuasion strategies when you're talking about important things

whether it's politicized or whatever else, you try to persuade somebody by

saying, you've gotta know this, or if you don't act now, it's gonna be too late.

Those feelings, shame, anxiety, and guilt is exactly what you're putting in

them too, and it's going to backfire.

So you've gotta make sure that you understand how they feel currently.

And when you're communicating to me what emotions are you

making your target audience feel?

Yeah.

Sorry I said that I just wanted to say I, I can think of a very specific example of

that in my own life where I was asked some people were talking about astrology at a

lunch, and I don't really believe in it.

And I was like, I like, how can you believe in this?

It's crazy.

It doesn't even make sense.

And they just got very defensive about it.

Whereas I know now if I just asked some questions and been a bit less accusatory

or or like shaming or good this is stupid.

How do you believe in this stupid stuff?

We would've been able to have a useful conversation about it instead.

So, sorry to have interrupted there.

Really looking forward to hearing the second part.

yeah, no there's no doubt about it.

And you can do it without even meaning to do it.

It's when you believe something so strongly, you can say something that makes

people feel so bad about themselves that there's no way you're gonna persuade them.

And you see it in politics all the time, and it often happens when you're

preaching to the choir and you think that's just gonna change people's mind.

It doesn't.

It can just really alienate them and it goes beyond just you know, how you feel.

It also can go into some other categories of things.

The second categor.

It's to me really about why do people believe what they believe?

And Jonathan Height has this great thing called the Moral Foundations theory.

In it, he says, everything that we believe is based on certain moral foundations.

And so there's these things that are just core and essential to why

we feel the way we do about issues.

So the United States, when he talks about Republicans and Democrats,

he says, Republicans primary value is often liberty versus oppress.

So what that means is you'll often hear a language of freedom we have

right to and they're nothing to them scares them more than the government

taking away those rights and freedoms.

Democrats primary value is harm versus care.

We have to take care of everybody else, and we put ourselves second.

Care comes before everybody else.

So in really, really tragic circumstances, like what we're doing, what we're

looking at in the states with school shootings, your Republicans saying,

Don't take away the guns, right?

We have to put more safety in schools because we have a right

to bear arms, and nothing scares me more than taking that away.

Whereas you'll hear Democrats say, we can't afford to let this

happen to our children anymore.

You must not care about kids.

You put yourself before people.

What's gonna happen there is they're never going to agree because they're

going at it from a different perspective and talking about different, if

you wanna change somebody's mind.

And what's gonna have to happen in this country if we want real change,

is people are gonna have to change their minds one way or the other.

And that means we're gonna have to understand the value that you're

trying to talk to and the other person to get them to change their mind.

Otherwise, you're just gonna go head to head with them constantly

And do you see any pa, do you see any path to being able to

bridge that kind of gap between the polarization other than on a sort

of case by case individual level?

It does sort of seem like that polarization is very strong in the media,

which I think maybe goes on to reinforce a lot of the division between people.

There's no doubt about it.

The environment that we're living in with both social media being

driven by what we like, what we engage, , the stuff that engages us

is the stuff that makes us angry.

The stuff that gets ratings on the news is the stuff that gets your

heart rate beating so quickly.

It's why sometimes it's like, I just need a break from the news for a week.

I'd rather bury my head in the sand cuz we're constantly just getting agitated.

We do see occasionally there are people who rise above it all who

just transcend and give us hope.

Now you think about the way Obama in the United States in two.

eight, when he ran, he ran in hope and change.

He transcended and made us all believe in something greater.

Those kinds of leaders and those kinds of, I would call them persuaders, are

able to make real lasting change because they rise above it so that it's not

just about it being black and white.

You're right, you're wrong, but it takes some discipline and it

takes a certain kind of communic.

The other thing is it takes fortitude because when you're somebody who's willing

to compromise, right now you're seen in some ways as weak people say, how dare

you compromise with those evil people.

On the other side of the argument, compromise is what's the key to forward?

Because we've never seen any huge sweeping change happen all at once.

When you look at the civil rights movement, if you look at gay marriage,

if you look at anything that required real change in how people viewed

the world, it happened incre.

So we've gotta find a way to get excited about small victories

and take credit for that.

And I think people are hungry for it.

I've tested so many different messages with different audiences to try and

understand what's it gonna take.

People are tired of it.

There's gotta be a better way than the way we're doing it right now.

But it's gonna take somebody who's got, a lot of fortitude because again

those ratings and the social media clicks and everything is driven by

emotions that aren't necessarily.

I can absolutely see that and I probably agree that it

is really gonna take some powerful leadership to make massive change.

Whilst I do think there are things being perhaps do in a, on

a small, in our own small ways.

to help improve those conversations and to be less polarized in

life and to bridge the gap.

I speak to people all the time from all sorts of different political persuasions

because I'm very aware that it's very easy to stay in your own bubble.

And people have their beliefs very often because of the environments they've grown

up in and the traditions and the things they've been brought up to believe in.

Not because they've made a decision in their adult life necessarily.

It's usually follows on from that what you've essentially been, I guess,

programmed with from a very young age.

The, or the decisions or the voices you hear or the stuff that's makes us who we

are and our background is our identity.

And it can be very hard to step.

From that and I guess people do feel threatened, if anything is sort

of treading on what they identify as being part of who they are.

and it happens even within families, right?

It used to be that most families were the same politically and religiously, and

now we're seeing as the world's changed.

That's not always the case.

But what sadly happens with a lot of families is instead of trying to

understand each other, they'll just say, we'll suffer through Christmas and we

won't talk about anything that's divisive.

But then there's families where you'll be you'll make incremental change.

Now, I come from a family that's mixed of evangelical Christians and hardcore

democrats and people who are atheist.

I'm married to a Jewish man.

My, my stepsister was married to a Muslim.

It's all, we've got everything going on, but everybody

keeps showing up as who they.

and what's happened over time is that the conversations that

we've had have all shaped us to be more open and more accepting.

But not every family does that.

Not every family is willing to say, a lot of people try to change who they are to

show up at the table to avoid conflict.

Sometimes you have to have the conflict make change happen,

and you can't be afraid of it.

But you have to step into a place of understanding and say, I'm gonna

give you the benefit of the doubt.

I believe you're a good person.

I know you're a good.

And if you start with that as the baseline, you're gonna be much

more successful in conversation.

Yeah, , looking more for what we have in common

than for our differences.

And I can see that in my own family dynamics, like my family

are quite religious, what my parents are, but I'm not.

And and so I think initially when we started to talk about some

of that stuff, it got a little.

There was a bit of friction and sometimes some challenges, but now

we've learned how to be each other.

So I think it is important to understand sometimes this stuff

just takes a bit of time, but you do have to have the conversation.

And I could have just pretended that I was like, oh, I'm just gonna keep

my mouth shut and not say anything and just go along with whatever.

But I couldn't really do that and be my authentic self.

So, you know, I can see such of this and I'm sure, I'm sure I.

to the show as well can recognize parts of their own life where they

maybe see that and that authenticity.

, I do want to get into talking with you about how very often it is that the

perceptions that people want to have are not always the best ones to have.

And then you do talk about this in your book, and I thought it was

very interesting that, sometimes the bank wants to say that says

they want to be more like Apple.

And you're like, no, no, no.

That's not what you should be.

I'll let you tell us a bit more about that.

about that.

Yeah.

I mean, oftentimes we do start the conversation with our own aspiration

when we're trying to persuade about a product or a brand or who we are.

And there was this period of time where every one of my clients would come to

me and say, okay, we need to be more innovative, and I wanna be like Apple.

And you're thinking, okay, you're a.

. The last thing I want from my bank is to be innovative.

I don't want an innovation when it comes to my money.

I want security and stability when it comes to my money.

If you're gonna innovate on ways to make things better, it's not about talking

about innovation because I hear innovation and money and I'm not that excited.

Similarly, I have a lot of pharmaceutical clients who are like introducing

something to the market, a brand new heart valve, a different way of treating

cancer, and they wanna say it's the most innovative treatment that's ever

come down the pipe and people are going.

Do I wanna be a Guinea pig?

Do I wanna be, have the most innovative heart valve ever put in my body?

That's a scary proposition.

What I want is a safe heart valve.

And I found in one project that I did, I thought this was fascinating, is that in

healthcare you can talk about something being breakthrough a lot more than you

can talk about it being innovative.

Cuz if you talk about something being break.

it can be safe.

So people will still say, penicillin was a breakthrough medicine and it's

a breakthrough medicine today, even though it was built in the forties.

So breakthrough can be safe.

It's something that it's game changing.

Innovation can also be risky when it comes to talking about healthcare.

So you've gotta understand how do you articulate what it is that you wanna be.

We also worked one time with a technology company who very famously had a lot of

problems with a software release that.

that they put out in the market.

And so they spent years innovating to try and fix it.

So when they went to go launch their next product, they wanna talk about how

innovative it was and how amazing it was, and all the bells and whistles.

And all anybody heard was, you're the company made that thing that didn't work.

I want nothing to do with your innovation.

So what they had to do was say, wait, you want us to have a campaign about this?

Is we've built this technology that just works.

That's not at all.

But that's what people needed to hear in order to wanna do it.

Because what they didn't like is a technology that just didn't make sense.

A thing that they couldn't find, a thing that didn't work properly.

They wanted something that was intuitive, that was gonna work seamlessly with

their workday, not create more work.

And it's so interesting.

Yes.

It took them years of innovation to get to that place.

So that's what they were so excited about.

. Totally.

It, that would've been the wrong way to talk about it.

And I always go back when I think about this to Steve Jobs's most real

famous announcement about the iPhone.

When he talked about the iPhone, he could have talked about the years of innovation

that went into it, the number of megabytes of storage he could have talked about

all the technology, all of the engineers, all of the ingenuity that happened to it.

But he didn't do any of those things.

What he did is said, you're gonna get three things in one and get the.

The phone in an iPod in one, and it's gonna fit in your pocket.

simple messaging.

He didn't go out and talk about innovation.

He talked about something that cuz was really transformative in the most

simple way that we could all understand and be like, well, I want that.

And sometimes that's what you have to do.

Instead of trying to talk about how crazy it was to get there.

You've just gotta speak in the language.

It says, get somebody to say, oh, I.

Yeah I think I, I can see this for myself, like when I first

started podcasts I think it was about, probably about two and a half years ago

when I first started my show and I was trying to be so clever about things and

I wasn't even really thinking about.

Making things connect with an audience or actually giving them what they want.

I was just kind of like, I'm just gonna do a show about what I want to do and

how I want to talk about it and be clever with my show titles and stuff like that.

And, Knowing, knowing what I know now, I know that that was horrific for things

like search engine optimization and or even just any, even just anybody having

a clue what the show was about, which is why I ended up changing the name of the

show just to make it that much clearer.

All right.

And it's gone from speaking influence and at the time people are listening

to this, it's now called Pod Fluence.

It just gives a bit of a clearer picture as to, alright.

I have a sense already about what that show's gonna be talking about.

So I already know whether I would be interested or not.

And these are just things that I never even took into account, but that empathy

thing you talk about of actually just thinking about who is the end user

here and what are they looking for, what are they gonna connect with?

Not what you want them to connect with, but what are they actually

gonna, what do they need to be able to trust you or to want your product

that the thing that they need to hear.

And if you can get that, that's.

Total magic.

You know, we just went through an exercise in marketing in our own firm and we

were listing out things that you could do with what we call language strategy.

So it's like language strategy to position a product, language strategy to

rebuild reputation, language strategy to.

and then we were having this conversation about it all and we're like, no one's

looking for a language strategy.

They're looking for how to position your product in a crowded marketplace,

how to break through when people don't know who you are, how to

turn people's opinions around.

We've gotta reframe things in the language of the other person.

It's not about what we are, it's about what they're looking for.

We're meeting a need, and yes, we have a point of view.

but we're secondary to everything.

And so what you're talking about is exactly right.

I think you can write your list of what it is that you wanna say, but it's

really important to go through a framing exercise in often what we do and when we

start talking about what we wanna say.

If you're thinking about, and you're a podcaster and you're listing

out your episodes, you're gonna start with a list of what it is.

But what you should do is take that list and say, okay, what

does that mean to my target?

and how do I translate that into a benefit for them?

What are they gonna get out of listening to the show for 30 minutes to an hour?

What is the benefit to them?

What are they gonna take away?

And you're gonna find that you'll totally change how you describe things.

Yeah, I mean, I just re recently went through a whole

exercise of retitling episodes to do this kind of thing and to make

it very clear what people were going to be taking away from the episode.

And whilst it was a bit of a long and arduous task, it was

absolutely worthwhile and totally necessary to be able to have that.

Better communication with people.

I wonder, I mean, you are someone who does a lot of media appearances

and you are even a familiar face on some of the news networks.

So I wonder what sorts of things you hold in your own personal arsenal,

I would say, of tips and tricks that help to make you more influential and

persuasive in your own media appearance.

Hmm.

You know, I think when I first started doing media in

2015, I had to be so prepared.

And I always recommend being repaired.

It's not to say that, but I had notes that were pages long.

I had background documents and it was gonna be for a seven

minute hit on television.

But I went in with everything under the sun.

I had a laundry list of facts.

I was ready and it made me talk too much and have nothing memorable.

So what I tell people is, if you're going to go out there,

talk about less with more.

Make sure you know what points you wanna make.

Yes, do all of that research, but it's very much like that quote.

If I had more time, I'd write a shorter memo.

Make sure you distill it down so you know the three things that you want

people to leave with from that segment.

It makes all the difference in the world.

So I might have pages and pages of notes, but what I'm gonna have is one page that

I write in big letters with Sharpie pen.

These are the three things I wanna keep coming back to, and once I have my.

and you know that this is something that works.

Cuz if you think back and this doesn't just apply to media

hits, this isn't everything.

If you're going to give a big presentation, if you're going to

try to close a sale, same thing.

What are three things you want them to remember and know exactly what it

is so that you can close out with it.

And so I even find if you look back at political campaigns,

almost everyone, if you look back at the tagline and the signature

policies of what that politician.

The one that won had fewer than the one that lost.

It takes a lot more discipline to come up with fewer things, and so that

is, to me, one of the biggest changes that I've had to make over time.

Yeah, definitely.

I mean, as much as I think everyone is very aware, at least politically, of

all the three word slogans that you will often hear, especially, I'm more familiar

perhaps with UK politics, although we do see a lot of the US staff as well.

But three word slogans are incredibly common

So sometimes yeah, and but, but you know, the, the UK is a bit of I'm trying to

think of a nice way to say this, A bit of a mess at the moment politically as well.

There there's a lot going on there, but there are three words, slogan things.

We're all very familiar with them, but they're still very

powerful, even though we know

that's what's being done.

That power of three thing, that thing that just stays in your head.

Those things of having stuff that's actually quotable.

I think far too many people do a lot of media appearances and are not memorable,

or they'll say a lot, or they have this, I just wanna share all of my knowledge.

I'm just gonna do a huge knowledge dump here and take away whatever you pick out

of it, rather than just having, right.

Let's make sure you have these takeaways and that I make

it as memorable for you as.

and something else that I got really, really good advice from a

network executive early on in all of this.

And he said, you're gonna go on a lot of different shows and they're gonna tell you

in order to be successful, you need to go hard, right or hard left, or try to shock.

Let me tell you what you're good at.

You're good at helping people understand what they don't understand.

So every time you go on air, you show up helping somebody understand

what they don't already understand.

That is your mission every time that you show up.

And I think if you have that kind of a filter, what is your.

Everything else becomes so much easier.

What is your master narrative?

What do you wanna be known for?

It serves as a filter for how to narrow those things down and any,

anyone who is trying to become a thought leader or an expert, you

should be able to answer that question.

What is my thing?

I particularly like those come back to, but I particularly liked a lot

of the elements of us really helping us.

Understand how you can use persuasion skills in your own life and also where

we perhaps don't do such a great job of communicating, because you talk about

some particularly personal examples about how this affected you in your

own organization, where you were being misunderstood and misconstrued

and you recognized that you had to

set the record straight in a way that wasn't gonna be like super defensive,

but I was actually gonna be like, no, I'm just gonna have to be a bit more authentic

and vulnerable here with you all.

Yeah.

You know, when you're dealing with a misperception, and this happens all the

time, whether people think about you in the wrong ways, if you're a leader, that

people don't look at in the right way.

If you're a company who's being misperceived, if your product is

misunderstood, if you're trying to change the mind of 70, often the first step in

communicating about it is acknowledging the concern of the other person because

it gives them permission to listen to you.

So a number of years ago at my organization, we had our first 360 review.

And for those of you who've ever been through them, they're very, very painful.

They cause a lot of anxiety and oftentimes, Feedback that can be somewhat

surprising to you, especially if it's not something you do on the regular.

So the first time that we did it, I got feedback that was really, really tough.

I mean, heartbreakingly tough.

Some of it was kind of easy.

It was like, we want you to be more of a thought leader.

I can deal with that.

It was of one of those pivotal moments in my career where I was switching from being

a practitioner to a leader, and that's often a really tough time in your career.

you're going from being one of a team to trying a lead, and you haven't yet

yourself understood what that means, but your perceptions have been shifted.

So they wanted mean to be more of a thought leader.

They thought that I was really good at what we did, but they

didn't see me as a leader.

They saw me as more than more of a friend.

I was really good at bringing in new business to the firm, and many

people thought that I had used my looks and some other pretty terrible

things to bring business into the.

And there was just some really tough stuff in there and I remember,

taking and sitting with his feedback and it was devastating to me.

For anyone to think that I had, slept my way into to getting

business was just horrifying.

And I spent a couple days sitting with a feedback and I talked to

my husband about it and I was like, I have two choices here.

I can either quit my job because never wanna show up.

or I'm gonna have to really do something differently.

And my husband was like so angry.

He was like, you need to just leave.

Get out of there.

And I was like, but there is no other job like this.

I love my job, I love my company, I love my people.

And sometimes I say, if they can't hear you, it's not their fault.

You've done something wrong and how you're leading and how you're communicating.

So, we, what I did, I talked with our CEO about it and he

said, look, I've got your back.

I'll do whatever it takes to, I'll do whatever it takes

to support you through this.

And I said, okay.

And so on the staff meeting the Monday after I got this feedback, I

stood up in front of my organization and said, I got some really tough

feedback and it really broke my heart.

I heard that you want me to be more of a thought leader?

I heard.

, and I listed out some of the things and then I heard that you think that I'm

really good at bringing business in the door, but you don't know where it comes

from because people are filling in the blanks with, I'm using my looks, or I or

even worse, you think that I'm sleeping with clients in order to get the business.

And I had done some real thinking about why that was.

And I had a client who pretty in front of a lot of my team members one

night said we had last call at a bar.

after focus groups.

It was late at night as you often go out with clients and your team.

And he looks at me in front of my team and says, so Lee, do

you wanna have another drink?

I was like, what was the last call?

He's like, how about you come up to my mini bar?

And it became this joke at my company about Lee and the mini bar.

But I didn't know how to deal with it.

So I said, look, I know there's this ongoing joke about Lee in a mini bar.

I've laughed along with it, but I've gotta tell you, it was so hard

and heartbreaking and hard for me.

I didn't know how to make it anything but funny.

But it's not funny.

It's been hard.

I said, but I'm not gonna make those jokes anymore.

I'm gonna ask you not to either.

I said, but if you're curious about how I bring in new

clients, I'm happy to teach you.

I'm gonna roll out some training on some new.

everything changed from there.

There was like this softening because they saw the human side

and I was really emotional.

The way I'm talking about it now is not the way I was at that moment.

Cause it was, it really was hard.

But if I had never stood up in front of my team and said, I've heard you.

I hear your concerns.

This is what they were and I'm gonna move to change them.

It wouldn't have reset.

Cause I could have showed up and started doing things differently,

but people wouldn't notice.

It served as a reset moment and through my vulnerability.

, it gave permission for us to have a reset.

It gave permission for people to have conversations with me about things

that they never would've before.

Everybody understood what was happening and I think sometimes

it's hard when we have a reset.

People don't wanna acknowledge concerns.

They don't wanna apologize publicly cuz they're worried about it.

They don't wanna say be vulnerable, but that sometimes the only way to

reconnection is by gutting there and going to the place that's hardest.

Yeah.

I love the story and I really appreciate you sharing that as well on the show.

And I want to, I wanna ask you what was the, For you in writing

the book, why did you feel it was important to get this out there?

I've been doing what I do for a long time now, and

there's certain themes that I kept seeing over and over again.

Clients making the same mistake, leading with facts, speaking their own language.

not understanding what was happening.

Then in 2015 and 2016, as Donald Trump was going through the

primaries and he was going through the presidential election, to me it

was very clear why he was winning.

Most people are like, oh, he's, a lot of people are saying, there's

no way he's ever gonna win.

He's a baboon, he's a, this, he can't string two sentences together.

You know, that's never gonna happen.

Hillary Clinton is so established, she's, it's time for.

But as I was watching and testing with the audiences, I saw some

themes that were really clear.

So I started doing a presentation for my clients.

That was five lessons we can learn about communicating from Donald Trump.

Super provocative and intentionally so, but to help people

understand what's happening.

And then it was like, oh my gosh.

It changed people's view of what to do.

So for example, if you think about it today, what was Hillary

Clinton's campaign theme?

Most people don't.

Some people say, if you're in the States, they'll go I'm with her.

We're better together.

Her official campaigns slogan, if you look at the website, was Hillary for America.

People didn't know it.

Donald Trump make America great again.

Everybody knew it and he repeated it over and over again.

Hillary had 112 policies listed on her website and what she was gonna

do for America, which is amazing.

It started with a Alzheimer's and it scrolled on for five pages.

Every policy under the.

Donald Trump had five.

He was gonna build a wall.

He was getting tough on China.

He was gonna bring jobs back, and we still remember them today.

So I'm not trying to make a statement that Donald Trump is good and Hillary

is bad, but I'm really trying to say and point out the difference is Donald

Trump had met his audience where they.

. He gave them a message that gave them hope and he gave them something to

hang onto a few things that he was gonna do for the country that was

gonna make it better according to them.

And what that does is it gave them an ability to be ambassadors.

Why are you voting for a Trump?

He's gonna make America great.

He's gonna build a wall, he's gonna bring our jobs back.

He's gonna do this, and everybody could repeat it.

Why are you voting for Hillary?

Well, a lot of people say the first woman president, she's really qualified,

but you didn't get the halo of that.

So what I realized as I was explaining this to folks is that it really

helped them structure their messaging in a much more effective way.

And so this wasn't a book about Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

It was really a book about how do you persuade and reach your audience in a

way that's really meaningful when it's so hard today, because sometimes you just

don't understand how you're stepping.

It's people are getting more marketing messages than they've ever have.

Forget marketing messages.

We're getting text messages and WhatsApp messages and social media tweets and all.

How do you break through in this morass of stuff?

And it's really simple.

It takes discipline, but not everybody understands it.

So that was what led to the book and I think it, it's really meant to be a

guidebook that anyone can go through.

There's nine steps laid out, and whether you're trying to persuade someone in your

family to change their mind on something, Gun control or abortion or religion.

You can use it for that.

You can use it if you're trying to start your own business.

How do you position yourself?

You can use it if you're trying to be a thought leadership.

How do you position yourself and what is your story?

And can use it if a company or a brand, it's really broad.

In the end there's a workbook with a nine steps you can walk through.

And so it was meant to be a tool that was really actionable for people to

be able to understand step by step.

How do you.

Yeah, that's great.

And it's certainly something that I will be referring to for my own

information on a regular basis.

Cause I love it when I get great information and as I said right the

start of the show, there, there are so few books that are original in talking

about influence and persuasion and yours is, and it's really valuable.

I wonder for you as we start to, to draw our conversation to a close,

unfortunately, as much as I, I would love to carry on talking to your day

I wonder what perhaps other books or resources you might direct other

people to that might be useful maybe in this area, but certainly in our

communication and our understanding.

Yeah I tell people a few books that I recommend people

dive into in order to understand more on how to understand others.

The first is Jonathan Height's book called The Righteous Mind.

He talks in it a lot about the moral foundation theory, which I talked

about earlier, which can really help you understand why people

believe what they believe, and it just is so illuminating to me.

Another.

Which isn't necessarily about persuasion, but it is about understanding emotion.

It's called, it's not always depression which is by Hillary Jacobs Hendel.

She's fantastic, but she's one that who really helped me understand that change

triangle of what are good emotions and what are inhibitory emotions.

And I spent a lot of time with her when I was writing my book and trying to underst.

How do you communicate through?

So she's a therapist, and so therapist has to almost navigate

some of these things too.

So it was really interesting to try and understand the emotions

that you're reaching to others and how do you understand them.

So I highly recommend that book as well.

And then I think one of my all time favorites too is

Kahneman's book, thinking Fast.

great thinking first.

I've definitely read the other two.

I've yet to, and they're gonna be added to my book list.

And I just want, for anyone who for those of you who are listening, I'm

thinking, I wanna know more about this.

And then you wanna know those book recommendations or links to Lee's book

or to find out more information, that's all gonna be in the show notes for you.

So go and check out the show notes.

You'll find all the links to everything we've talked about there.

One final question for you before we do finish up, Lee what is your superpower

when it comes to influence and persua?

I think my superpower started actually by a place of insecurity.

And so my superpower is really helping people understand what they don't

understand, as I talked about that a little bit earlier, but it's about

listening more than I talk because.

I was never the kind of person that was gonna come out forceful on opinions.

I always tried to listen to other people to try and understand what it was that

I should believe because I was, and it started out of a place of insecurity,

but now it's become my superpower because it helps me sit back, gauge what's going

on, and then figure out what's the right place to, to start the conversation.

So I think that it's a combination of making sense of what I'm hearing.

So I guess a superpower would be super.

I like that.

Yeah.

That's a great superpower to have and and when we should all

strive to be better at ourselves.

It has been an absolute pleasure talking to you today and I really

appreciate everything that you shared with us and highly recommend

everybody to go and check out your book because it's one of the most valuable

books on persuasion that I've read.

Certainly.

Several years and really is one that I, as I said, I will keep

going back to you again and again.

But I do want to say, just as we wrap things up, Lee, thank

you so much for coming and being my guest on the show today.

Thank you so much for having me.

It's been a great convers.

Thanks for tuning in.

I do hope you've enjoyed the show and certainly I enjoyed that

conversation with Lee Carter.

I hope you learned some valuable content there as well.

. If you did and you think others might find that valuable too, please do share the

show out with your friends and network.

It's really the only ask I have for you from the show.

And of course, go and check out Lee's book.

I honestly think it's an amazing read.

It is not that often that I will rant and rave about books being so good.

This book was really, really good and I think you'll get a lot from it.

If persuasion is a topic that is important for you,

if you're not already subscribed to the show, you might wanna make sure you are.

Next time.

I'm going to start discussing the seven deadly sins of podcasting,

something that I have been covering in some of my newsletter articles.

And if you're not subscribed to the newsletter, you'll find the link

to do that, or the links, I should say, to do that in the show notes

where you can either subscribe to us on LinkedIn or Medium or beehive,

or even through my own website.

I hope that you will check out the newsletter and maybe take a look

through some of the back issues and see if there are some article topics

that you might like to check out.

My next guest episode in a couple of weeks is Simon Lancaster.

If you haven't checked out Simon before, I know.

that you're gonna love his books.

This is where I first found him.

He has great books about speech writing, about metaphors, and his book

Connect is about being able to connect with anyone anytime, anywhere, and

a lot of great information in there.

Simon is an amazing guy, amazing speaker and speech writer, and

you are going to love that.

So if you haven't subscribed to the show, I don't want you to miss any of that.

So wherever you're going, whatever you're doing, have an amazing rest of your day.