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Politics & Communication...from "Hannibal Lecter to Memory Palace" #101 · How To Talk To Humans

• 0:03
  Larry Wilson: Hi, this is Larry Wilson, and this is how to Talk to Humans. This is the podcast that shows you how to improve your communication skills. Are you looking to get a better job? Are you looking to find a relationship? Are you trying to do things in your life that have frustrated you and eluded you so far? I can show you so easily how to change that. Now, I can only do it with humans.
• 0:30
  Larry Wilson: If you're looking to deal with vampires or zombies, extraterrestrials, this is not the show for you. But if you're really looking to improve your communication skills, I can show you what I've learned from 40 years in show business working with the biggest celebrities and superstars in the world.
• 0:49
  Larry Wilson: And their secrets are unbelievable. What I'm going to be teaching you during this course of this podcast every week are tools that you can use to communicate toward success. Thank you again for joining me for another episode here. I'm notoriously apolitical, and those of you who've been listening and who know me, who've trained with me, you know, I have no interest in politics.
• 1:24
  Larry Wilson: I think first and foremost, if you're really focused on improving your communication skills, politics is a huge distraction. And so I just really have no interest in it. But today, I'm going to take exception and talk about politics. I wish you could see my engineer's face. He just looked like he slid down a 50 foot cheese grater into a bucket of iodine. Yes. All right, now I have to come clean with you. I am going to talk about politics, but I'm not the way you think. I'm not going to tell you who to vote for or, or who I think is a dope or who I think is great. That's not really what I'm interested in, unfortunately, as always, I'm focused on communication.
• 2:23
  Larry Wilson: I say this because I, you know, like all of us, I'm bombarded with messaging, and a lot of it's political, whether it's on television, on radio, on social media. I know you must see at least as much as I do, maybe more. I try to limit that stuff, but it seems to just be overwhelming, the amount of messaging. And of course, being who I am in my particular bias, I don't really listen to their message so much. I'm more interested in how they're delivering it. I. I'm more interested in their communication skills. Now, if I was very savvy, I suppose I would reach out to the ones who I think are terrible and offer them my services, say, you really should be training with me. In Wilson Method.
• 3:20
  Larry Wilson: But even that doesn't occur to me because my experience has been with a lot of these political people, they all think they're geniuses. It doesn't matter how many times they're proven wrong. Doesn't matter how many pieces of video or audio tape you have of them saying the exact opposite of what they're saying now.
• 3:45
  Larry Wilson: Last week, last month, last year, they said the opposite. And it. They're. They have no shame. They're not embarrassed by it the way you, you or I would be. They. They're impervious to this sort of thing. So that's also one of the reasons I don't reach out to them. But I wanted to talk to you because there may be people here in this audience of this podcast who one, are humans and two, are maybe interested in politics.
• 4:18
  Larry Wilson: Maybe you have a point of view.
• 4:20
  Larry Wilson: And if you do, I think that's great. I don't have anything against that.
• 4:28
  Larry Wilson: My focus is on teaching you to be able to communicate more effectively. I'm here to show you simple, simple techniques that you can use to make yourself more persuasive with your message. If it's political, clearly. Well, I'm going to stop myself when I say clearly because I want to come back to something that's fundamental to Wilson Method.
• 5:02
  Larry Wilson: I have a mnemonic device. And of course, that's a funny word, mnemonic, because it has a silent M at the beginning of it. It's spelled M N E M O N I C. A mnemonic. For those of you who don't know, a mnemonic device is something. It's a arrangement of letters or words or sounds that are designed to help you remember something, is a mnemonic device. And the very greatest example of it I've ever seen, as I'm saying this to you, I realize I can't do this from memory, which is sort of funny, considering I'm talking about memory devices. But there's an incredible description in Silence of the Lambs, the book that spawned the huge, gigantic, successful movie.
• 5:59
  Larry Wilson: There's a fantastic. The author, Thomas Harris, is great, great writer. And there's a description where Hannibal Lecter, who is kept in isolation a lot of the time, and he's not bothered by it at all because as Thomas Har describes him, he has a memory palace. And what it is, it's. It's filled with mnemonic devices to remind him of things. And of course, he's. For those of you who aren't clear about this, Hannibal Lecter is A fictional character. He's not real, but Harris writes about him in such an incredible way that he feels real.
• 6:45
  Larry Wilson: Lecter seems like a very real person, and he's very brilliant. And so his mnemonic devices are amazing. And at one point, he wants to send Clarice Starling a message. He wants to mail it to her. And so he goes into his memory palace and walks down some corridors. And Harris describes these various things that he sees that are designed to remind him. For example, he sees a picture. There's a parade, and Clarice Starling is riding in a jeep next to Jesus. And Jesus is holding an Enright or Enfield rifle.
• 7:35
  Larry Wilson: And there's some other incredibly bizarre details about it. Now, this is a fantastic description of a mnemonic device. If you picture something that's outrageous or absurd or so strange, so peculiar that you can't imagine seeing it in real life, it's very easy to remember that if then in turn, those elements trigger other ideas.
• 8:06
  Larry Wilson: In the example that Thomas Harris is using, Jesus lived to be 33 years old. And so the first part of her address is 33. And then the Enfield rifle or Enright ruffle, I can't remember, is a 308. So that tells him it's 33308. And it goes on so that we see how he's able to remember her address. I only mention this because I've seen a number of lesser authors who don't seem to understand what that is.
• 8:47
  Larry Wilson: And they talk about a memory palace.
• 8:49
  Larry Wilson: They obviously have read Silence of the Lambs and they've just interpreted. They're not paying attention to what Harris has written.
• 8:57
  Larry Wilson: They're just. They describe it as, oh, yes, it's a fantastic imaginary palace in their mind filled with memories. Well, yes, but that's not describing how the mnemonic device works. I only went astray with this diversion to make it clear that it can be very helpful to you when you're learning new things or trying to remember things.
• 9:27
  Larry Wilson: I say in Wilson Method. I want you to live in 3D. This is a mnemonic device. Everyone knows the concept of 3D. Like 3D movies or 3D pictures. It means three dimensional. I use that to remind you of three words that start with the letter D. And thinking of living your life in 3D makes it easier to remember. Those 3Ds are determine, define and deploy.
• 10:05
  Larry Wilson: I want you to determine what your goal is in communication before you begin.
• 10:16
  Larry Wilson: Then I want you to define the means of transmission. Because although we all our brains are so Powerful and work so fast. We think, oh, they're all the same, you know, all these. No, they aren't all the same. Every. Are you speaking face to face with someone?
• 10:36
  Larry Wilson: Are you writing someone a text? Are you speaking on the phone? Are you speaking on.
• 10:42
  Larry Wilson: On a broadcast like I'm doing here?
• 10:44
  Larry Wilson: Are you writing an email to someone?
• 10:48
  Larry Wilson: Are you, God forbid, writing by hand, old school, handwritten note? All of these require different techniques. They're all enormously powerful, but it's not like there's one size fits all to get the most effective communication possible. So I imagine at this point, some of you are thinking, I thought you were going to talk about politics, Larry.
• 11:20
  Larry Wilson: Yes, I am. And I'll tell you what struck me. I heard a couple different interviews. I'm not going to say with who. It doesn't matter. They were people in politics. They're probably God, I guess they were congress people, maybe, or senators. I don't know what they were, but one of them was somebody talking about. To be perfectly honest, I can't even remember what it was. But they were very impassioned about this particular thing.
• 11:57
  Larry Wilson: And whoever was interviewing them was pitching them softball underhand pitches, you know, it was someone who clearly wanted to promote their agenda. Then somebody. I'll go back and deconstruct why I thought these were so important for understanding communication. Another interview I heard was someone who was dealing with interviewer who's more contentious. He wasn't actually confrontational, but he clearly wasn't there to promote their agenda. He really wanted to just find out what they had to say. And in the first example I was struck, it was so interesting that simple first D in three Ds determine. I know that sometimes when people are training with me, they think the things I'm teaching are too simple.
• 12:57
  Larry Wilson: Well, they are simple. That's on purpose.
• 13:00
  Larry Wilson: I don't believe in complicated Byzantine techniques.
• 13:05
  Larry Wilson: I think that's just a way to intimidate and impress potential customers so that they go, ooh, that's so complicated, I can't understand it. This guy must be really smart. I don't believe in that.
• 13:21
  Larry Wilson: I think if you're really smart, you should be able to explain any idea to anyone so that they understand it.
• 13:32
  Larry Wilson: I don't think that idea of, you know, battering people with complicated ideas or notions is a good idea.
• 13:41
  Larry Wilson: I don't think it's good. I don't.
• 13:42
  Larry Wilson: It's not a good way. If your goal is to intimidate people, then, yes, it's great, fantastic. But if your goal is Actually to really communicate an idea or message, it's terrible and it's so simple. Anyone can do it. I go out of my way to make this clear. Again, I'm not saying that you have to do this every time you open your mouth. If you're in a restaurant and you want to order a cheeseburger, you don't need to go through the three Ds and work all this out. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is when you have here, here's a member of Congress or a Senate is being interviewed, this is serious.
• 14:30
  Larry Wilson: You're going to go out on some broadcast, it may very well be heard by millions or tens of millions of people. If you're serious about politics, if your heart is in the right place.
• 14:48
  Larry Wilson: I'm thinking you really want people to hear you and understand you. You want them to have a good idea. Well, this first person who I thought of was being pitched softball, underhand questions by someone who was clearly trying to help them, had a high pitched kind of frantic tone to their voice. And I thought, oh, that's really interesting. I don't know if it's on purpose, I don't know if it's incidental, but it didn't make me think that what they had to say was so urgent or important or well reasoned that, that kind of desperate. I'll see if I can duplicate it a little bit. It sounds sort of like what we're doing here. This is, this is very serious and I don't think we can rate another time.
• 15:49
  Larry Wilson: If time goes by and action is not taken, the people. You know, it had that sort of desperate sound and high pitched and I, I'm, I'm stopping myself because I don't want to say things that sound like I'm denigrating that.
• 16:05
  Larry Wilson: I'm not trying to. But it did not make the message sound attractive or palatable or well reasoned. The message that was communicated to me was this person feels very passionately about what they're talking about and that's certainly legitimate. There's nothing wrong with that. They clearly really believe what they're talking about and they feel very strongly that it's something very important.
• 16:46
  Larry Wilson: I'm not sure that's the best approach if you are trying to persuade people.
• 16:54
  Larry Wilson: Another reason I have a certain antipathy towards politics is especially nowadays, it seems mostly people preaching to the choir. I'm sure you know what I mean by this metaphor, preaching to the choir. Well, you're bringing your message to people who already agree with You.
• 17:19
  Larry Wilson: And I'm not sure what the purpose is in that. Maybe it's to reassure people that someone else feels the way you do. I don't know. I'm not saying there's no reason to do it.
• 17:32
  Larry Wilson: I'm just saying I didn't understand. And that's also why politics is not really as interesting to me. You know, if someone's in favor of starting forest fires, then seeing somebody come on, say to them, yes, forest fires are very important.
• 17:51
  Larry Wilson: I think we should all start them.
• 17:52
  Larry Wilson: I'm handing out a box of matches to everyone in the audience. Well, the audience already agrees with you, and so of course they're not going to have any objection to what you're saying. They're not going to have any contradiction to what you're saying. It just seems odd.
• 18:13
  Larry Wilson: The other person I heard being interviewed had a very different tone, and I was very impressed by the difference between them. The other person spoke. Well, this also sounds, because of my personal bias, the other person spoke in measured, standalone, short, declarative sentences, very similar to what I do, because the other person had a very clear message they were trying to present. And I have to tell you, my memory is that whatever they were talking about, I did not agree with, but I was struck by how reasonable they sounded.
• 19:03
  Larry Wilson: And I'm only telling you this because perhaps politics is a metaphor for business.
• 19:13
  Larry Wilson: I know that the majority of you listening to this podcast are entrepreneurs, small business owners, executives. You have business concerns, and no matter how successful you may be, you can always do better. I have a number of very high profile clients at Fortune 500 companies who are very interested in training with me to get better. It doesn't mean they think they're bad. It doesn't mean they think they're floundering. It's the same reason, I guess, that Coca Cola advertises as much as it does. I know that people think, well, why do they need to advertise? Everyone knows what Coca Cola. Well, of course everyone knows what Coca Cola is.
• 20:10
  Larry Wilson: But by constantly thinking of new ways to communicate and creating campaigns and doing all that sort of thing, it keeps us all aware of Coca Cola. It keeps us thinking about Coca Cola. By God, I wish I had one right now. My point is, it keeps us thinking about them, and that may be the number one thing we want to do with your business.
• 20:42
  Larry Wilson: Now, you might have a business that's highly specialized. It may only deal with people who own ant farms. And so you might think, well, I don't need everyone to be thinking about. No, you don't you need the people with ant farms to be thinking about your product or service, but you need them to be thinking constantly, not every moment. But we don't want large swaths of time to go by where you don't think about them. And so perhaps you can take this example from the world of politics. If you think about what your goal is before you begin, and I don't mean the second before you begin, what's wrong with doing it the night before or the week before, or as one of my high profile clients does.
• 21:47
  Larry Wilson: Very, very smart woman. She came to me months before she had a presentation to me. Well, that's very, very smart because then she and I were able to work over months.
• 22:05
  Larry Wilson: We talked about what her goal was and what she was really trying to do. And then she put together her first draft and we kept refining it.
• 22:13
  Larry Wilson: And then when it came time, I guess there were a number of speakers at this presentation she did. She was the big breakout star. And everyone mobbed her afterwards and was. They wanted to connect with her because she had made an authentic connection with the audience.
• 22:34
  Larry Wilson: That's what our goal is in every communication. And it's not difficult to do.
• 22:44
  Larry Wilson: There's no one listening to the sound of my voice here who cannot do it. If you speak English well enough to understand what I'm saying, then you can do this. But it does require you to make the effort. It does require some kind of action on your part. And just like these politicians, I heard the one who sounded desperate. I wonder, was that their goal? I want people listening to know I'm passionate about this. Well, maybe it was. I don't think it was. I think they don't think about this stuff at all. Or I think there's also a. Nowadays, I think there's a current idea that passion trumps everything. I probably shouldn't have used the word trump.
• 23:38
  Larry Wilson: My, my engineer thinks that's hilarious. But there's a. It's very common now. You hear people who say the most outlandish and crazy stuff, but they're very passionate about it. And I think they think that carries the day. It might carry someone's attention at the moment, but will it stay with them? No, I don't believe it will.
• 24:05
  Larry Wilson: Will it impart their message in the most effective way? No, absolutely, yes. It does not. You know, you can stand up in church and fart really loudly.
• 24:21
  Larry Wilson: Will you get everyone's attention? Yes, you will. But that's, I think, the equivalent sometimes to what some of these people are doing with messaging and it's so easy for you to take that first D to determine your goal and in advance, so that the way you present your message not only is clear, not only gets through clearly to your audience, but is also persuasive. When your voice sounds calm, when you're speaking in measured, short, declarative sentences, it's very easy for us to follow what you're saying. It's very easy for us to understand your meaning. And somehow, I think implicit in that kind of delivery, we feel that you have great confidence in what your message is.
• 25:28
  Larry Wilson: I hope you'll try this yourself, and if you do, you know I'd be delighted. I always love to hear from you. Some people have taken me up on this and I answer every single email. I can be reached@larryilsonmethod.com it couldn't be easier. This has been Larry Wilson.
• 25:55
  Larry Wilson: I want to thank you for spending this time with me and I hope you found this information useful. If you're looking for more, you can find it@thewilsonmethod.com There's a ton of stuff there. In fact, if you want, you can even speak to me because I'm human.
• 26:15
  Larry Wilson: Send me an email@infowilsonmethod.com because I read every single one. I hope that you'll join us next week in this continuing journey and you'll be with me for the next episode of how to Talk to Humans.