Listening: Making LOVE To Your Audience

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to get the most challenging audiences to listen and respond to you. Reading time: 1:58.

Listening with your eyes in particular and — with your entire face in general — is a keen leadership skill that very few leaders in my experience have mastered. We can all learn the art of listening with your eyes from Art Linkletter -my all time “eye” deal leader extraordinaire — and host of a network television talk show in the 1960s.

Art Linkletter1 — Art Linkletter interviewing youngster on network television.

For 17 years on network television- as the then longest running daytime program- Art Linkletter made an art of conversing with people known more for their lack of attentiveness and their inclination to fidget and even cry. But Linkletter calmed those 5-10 year old youngsters. With his eyes.

Linkletter would kneel and bring his face up close to the face of a youngster. He would ask questions but the kids only saw his wide eyes like huge lollipops. Inviting. Sweet. Juicy.

Continue reading “Listening: Making LOVE To Your Audience” →

Leaders Are Great Kissers Intentionally

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to help you concentrate more fully and perform more effectively. Reading Time: 2:56.

So what kind of a kisser are you? Your kissing style could be a measure of your leadership capability. Consider this scene in Robert A. Heinlein’s novel : Stranger in a Strange Land:

“Anne tell me something. What’s so special about the way Michael kisses?” Anne looked dreamy and then dimpled. “Michael gives a kiss his whole attention.”

“Oh, rats! I do too.”

Anne shook her head. “No, some men try to. Men who did a very good job of it indeed have kissed me. But they don’t really give kissing a woman their whole attention. They can’t. No matter how hard they try, some parts of their minds are on something else:

“Missing the last bus.

Their own techniques in kissing.

Worry about their jobs.

Or money. Or something.

“Now Michael doesn’t have any technique. But when he kisses you he isn’t doing anything else. Continue reading “Leaders Are Great Kissers Intentionally” →

“Listen: Do You Want To Know A Secret?

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to enhance your critical listening skills. Reading time: 2:27.

“Listen: do you want to know a secret? Oh, I can hear the Beatles’ song now. Great memories. But with all due respect to George Harrison’s clandestine offer, the answer today for too many people is: “No. No. No. No!

Most people do not want to know a secret. That would mean they would have to LISTEN!

And most people are too busy to really stop and listen. Even if it kills them.

Take for example the night the Martians invaded New York City.

It was fiction.
It was fable.
It was make-believe.

But millions of hysterical Americans believed this Halloween evening radio broadcast in 1938 was real.

And panic broke out across America!

Continue reading ““Listen: Do You Want To Know A Secret?” →

Personal Communications: Tuning In To WII-FM

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here is an idea to help tune into your audience more directly.

It’s instructive to note that the accent falls on the U in the word communicate. That’s why the most effective leaders I know first make a You-turn INTO the audience long before directing their message TO the audience. These speaking leaders know they have to deliver the Audience to the speech long before delivering the Speech to the audience.

Tune in to your Audience's Interests

Persuasive Public Speakers Focus on the Audience's Perspective

These speaking leaders know their audience is always tuned into the most listened to radio station in the world – WIIFM (What’s In IT for Me). That’s why they adopt a three step process in delivering the Audience to the speech.

They (1) tune into the same WIIFM station that the audience is listening to so that they can personally feel what the audience feels. They (2) weave those feelings – those threads of hope and despair—into a net of mutual understanding that surrounds the speaker and the audience. And they (3) tug ever so gently on that net of mutual understanding to pull the audience toward the speaker –and into—the message.

These speaking leaders heed the advice of Benjamin Disraeli, the former British Prime Minister, who said: “Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours. As speaking leaders, they transform the audience’s feelings into poignant words – words that prick the heart and soul of each person in the audience. Words that prick them personally. Words that prick them passionately. Words that prick them powerfully. Continue reading “Personal Communications: Tuning In To WII-FM” →

Playing Your ACE in a Stacked Deck

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to help you break down inherent barriers to your ideas.

The idea was sound. The hard-working, highly competent manager checked his facts. He had the documentation. He presented his idea clearly and concisely. No one could refute the thinking process or the expected results.

The idea worked elsewhere. It could work here. It should work here. It will work here, he assured anyone and everyone. Yet most of the decision-makers in the company he needed to persuade remained poker faced even though they saw that indeed the company could benefit from his idea.

But his idea never got off the ground, even though he had done the proper research, even though he had earned third-party endorsement from his peers outside the company. What happened? Why didn’t his idea fly?

Perhaps this highly competent manager forgot to EARN THE RIGHT to present a new idea beyond his credentials, expertise and education. I have been in the shoes of this highly competent manager. I learned the hard way that when no one is buying your well researched, well thought-out idea, when the deck seemed stacked against you, the most persuasive leaders play their ACE.

ACE-Acknowledge, Coordinate and Enhance — is a three-step persuasion process. Continue reading “Playing Your ACE in a Stacked Deck” →