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Why Communication is Critical to Your Life #2 · 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?
• 0:15
  Larry Wilson: 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. If you're looking to deal with vampires or zombies, extraterrestrial, 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. And their secrets are unbelievable.
• 0:54
  Larry Wilson: 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. I thought maybe this week, I should tell you a little bit more about how I actually came to be an expert communicator. It was much easier in some ways than I expected it to be. I didn't really plan on this. As I was growing up, I had a lovely childhood in a lovely home. But my father, who I loved who was a highly acclaimed psychoanalyst, he was kind of bruised fruit. He had certain limitations that I think may have made him a brilliant psychoanalyst. He had difficulty connecting with people. Now, you might think, Well, gee, that sounds counterintuitive. That seems like you'd be terrible.
• 2:11
  Larry Wilson: No, you know, it's, it's complicated. Some of this, I've just learned the hard way through experience through seeing different things during my lifetime. But I remember a friend of mine who had to go in for very serious surgery. And he had a very nice and attentive and thoughtful and considerate doctor. But then they brought in the surgeon to meet with him.
• 2:39
  Larry Wilson: And this friend of mine was upset because the surgeon was very detached. The surgeon was talking to him like he was, you know, a car that he was going to do an oil change on or something. And later on, I said, You know what, I think that's a really good sign. He said, Why would you say that? I said, because you don't want the person doing the cutting on you to be emotionally involved in that. You want them to be totally dispassionate. Just, I go in, I remove this camshaft, I attach these things I whatever it is. And in a strange way, I think my father's inability to connect with people on a really human level made him a phenomenal psychoanalyst. I've met a number of people who are patients of his who completely flat out credit him with saving their lives. And these were very accomplished brilliant people.
• 3:49
  Larry Wilson: And I was very surprised to hear the way they talked about him.
• 3:54
  Larry Wilson: He wasn't different in his office. But the thing that worked so well for them in therapy, made for sort of limited experience for me as his son growing up. And I realized, from a very young age, I wasn't conscious of this. But looking back, I realized I was searching out for people who could connect. And you know, it's funny, because the very first one I think of it's, it's odd, is the Wizard of Oz. In the film The Wizard of Oz, because it sounds crazy as I hear myself saying it to you, but when he's exposed as not being a real wizard, he explains Oh, you know, Dorothy says you're a very bad man. He goes, No, I'm I'm not a bad man. I'm just a bad wizard. And then he goes on to address each of their concerns and problems. And the way he fixes their problems is with language. It's with the words he uses, how he phrases them in his mind, oh, you're under the mistaken assumption that because you run from danger, you have no courage. Why back home where I come from, they're men who take their courage out of mothballs every year and parade them down the street, the only thing they have that you don't have is a metal. And then he produces a metal for the cowardly life. And I thought, That's so interesting, as a tiny, tiny kid, I remember thinking, Oh, this is my real father. And it's so crazy, looking back from this vantage point of history. But I began to see that certain people in entertainment had some gift to be able to connect with people. I remember this television performer, from when I was very young, soupy sales, was a comic and had a television show. But I remember that almost before he spoke, he felt a connection with him. Now, this is obviously semiotic, the way he looked into the camera and the facial effect, the term that we use for the parts of your face, how they're working, you know, the most obvious thing is a smile versus a frown. You know, these are elements of facial ethic. I remember seeing soupy on TV and just being immediately captivated by him.
• 6:57
  Larry Wilson: Now, I didn't understand any of these elements. All I knew is this appeal to me. And as I grew up, I found myself being drawn towards entertainment. And I'm sure I thought I knew why. But like I say, I believe looking back, it's because that's what I was really looking for. There was a teacher, an elementary school teacher I had named Alton Cohen. Although I only learned his first name, years later, he was always Mr. Cohen, the most profound and long reaching effect on my life of anyone I can think of, he was such an extraordinary man. And he clearly valued language. And he would have us do what he called Chart work. Every Monday morning, he would have a list of 20 words that he gave you. And you're supposed to work on these during the week, and you're supposed to turn them in on Friday, you were supposed to go in and look up this for some of you listening, this may be shocking. In the days before, there were computers and the internet and things like that.
• 8:20
  Larry Wilson: You had to resort to the printed word on paper, and things like encyclopedias or dictionaries, you had to look up all these words, you had to write the definition of the word. You had to use the word in a written sentence to show your comprehension of the work. Now, I mean, this is 20 words every week, and everyone had to do it.
• 8:47
  Larry Wilson: I attribute my prodigious vocabulary to Mr. Collins training, but even more so he clearly loved language. And he would do things sometimes in class. He was very funny. He's very engaging. He was he was a guy who connected with people. I remember once he was digging through something, he was looking for some supplies and he found some old wooden ruler that he'd never used. And he said, Where did this come from? And he took it held it up and snapped it over his knee. And it was shocking to us as fourth graders, I guess, seem shocking that he did this. And he looked he said, You know, I did that.
• 9:41
  Larry Wilson: And like the room was signed said, because I want you to remember, rules are made to be broken.
• 9:48
  Larry Wilson: Oh, my God. We laughed so hard at that. Now, it's not the funniest joke you've ever heard.
• 9:55
  Larry Wilson: You have to picture the context.
• 10:00
  Larry Wilson: And although it may seem like a very small or trivial example, that kind of thing, knowing the room that you're in, and the audience that you're communicating with genius, genius, so many times, to this day in my life, I think of Mr.
• 10:22
  Larry Wilson: Cohen. So it should not really be a surprise with that background, that I wound up in entertainment. But what was the most interesting part was, I liked entertainment, it's fun, it's really enjoyable. You know, sometimes some people have jobs that are really hard, or that bring them into stressful situations. I mentioned before about having a friend who had to go to a doctor, you know, doctors may have to give people bad news sometimes. Well, very rarely do you have to do this as an entertainer, mostly you're, you're there and people are delighted to see you. And if you do a good job, they have a wonderful time. So it's a lot of positive reinforcement and really pleasant things. And, and because of it, I wound up meeting people that I never would have imagined in a million years. And because of this, I have a very strange perspective on life. I don't always react the way you might think a person would. When I was very young. I remember seeing the movie Bye Bye Birdie with Dick Van Dyke and, and Margaret, and I love them and thought it's fantastic.
• 11:44
  Larry Wilson: Later, as a grown up, working in showbusiness, I performed with both of them. And it's even now as I'm telling you this, I'm surprised at my reaction to it.
• 12:00
  Larry Wilson: It seemed perfectly normal to me somehow, that I am, you know, I'll actually put out a request.
• 12:06
  Larry Wilson: If anyone listening to this podcast, has some weird connection somewhere to archives of video. I did a television show. I think it was Dinah Shore show. And I did a segment I had appeared on the show many, many times. And Dinah Shore always in those days, it was sort of a novel thing. She would sometimes do a cooking segment where she would have a celebrity on, you know, here's Chita Rivera, we're going to cook her favorite dish, whatever it was. And this is in the days before, this is a regular thing of, you know, Top Chef or that sort of thing, you know. And so, I as a joke, I said to the producers, after I'd done an episode, I said, Well, you know, how come Dinah never has me on to cook? And they said, Oh, we didn't know you cooked? Well, I don't. But I said, Of course I do. Are you kidding? And they said, we'd love to, oh, that be fantastic.
• 13:08
  Larry Wilson: So they scheduled. So I go home, and start to create a comedy magic routine that involves all different kinds of food or cooking. And I'm producing all these crazy things and things are multiplying and vanishing and, and I'm throwing them on this big chafing dish. I set fire to the chafing dish. And I'm supposed to be making rabbit stew that's supposed to be clearly it can't be you know, it's a mess. So I cover this burning dish. And the host is supposed to say oh, that's your rabbit stew and I say no, this isn't I lift the lid off.
• 13:45
  Larry Wilson: There's a live white rabbit with a neck tag that says Stewart on.
• 13:49
  Larry Wilson: Alright. So that was the gag that was the routine. So they contacted me maybe a week before maybe only a few days. They said oh, we're gonna have some celebrities to assist you. With this comedy magic cooking thing I said great. Didn't say who they were. So I show up. Who are the two celebrities. Lucille Ball, and Dick Van Dyke. Now, both of these are their giants, of course, in entertainment.
• 14:27
  Larry Wilson: They're giants in comedy. But and you think that a smart person or a logical person would be somewhat intimidated by the I'm not smart enough to be intimidated by that. I just I remember the experience very clearly. I thought oh, this is great. But it didn't occur to me to be unnerved or freaked out. I am now and I'm thinking about it. But at the time, it just seemed perfectly normal. This is sort of with show business light. So the gag the way it was set up is Lucy was going to read the recipe off a piece of paper.
• 14:59
  Larry Wilson: She was sort of the straight man. And then Dick Van Dyck was going to write it on a blackboard as I perform whatever it was. And then of course, I keep changing it and it makes troubles Riddick Van Dyck, and he's going, both of them were so brilliant, they made me look so much better than I really was.
• 15:20
  Larry Wilson: It was unbelievable. So unbelievable experience. You know, you hear sometimes, musicians talk about getting into a groove. Well, this may actually be a reference to a time, a Halcyon time, long ago, when people listened to records, you know, made of vinyl that had grooves in them. And the idea that if you got into this groove, there's no stopping, you're just going, that you can do no wrong. That's what it felt like. The reason I issued this as a challenge to anyone listening, there's all kinds of there's hundreds of television appearances I did that are lost that are gone, because we didn't have all the technology that's available. Now. I remember in those days, I used to have to hire an outside company, to they weren't allowed to record the whole show, because that was considered a copyright violation. So they would do what's called an air check. They could just record a little portion of the show. So you would pay them an exorbitant amount of money to record on three quarter inch U Matic tape, the part of the show that I was on, and I thought, you know, in those days, also, you'd record you go in and tape a show, and it wouldn't air for maybe weeks or a month. So I had time to prepare. And I found out when it was going to air. I thought you know what, I better make a backup just in case. So I hired two different companies. And after the episode aired, and I saw it and it was unbelievable.
• 17:10
  Larry Wilson: The the idea that I'm performing with Lucien dig Van Dyck that didn't even register with me, it was just that it was so great, you know. But then I called up the air check people after it aired, and I called the first one. I said, so did you get that? He said, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. We had some kind of malfunction. All our machines went down. I said, That's okay.
• 17:37
  Larry Wilson: That's okay. I said, I have a backup just so I called the second one. He said, Oh, was that last week? Yeah. So, like so many episodes of things I did. I have a video of the mediocre performances I did, where sometimes even the disastrous, or train crash episodes. But the really valuable one. But, you know, part of what is so unusual was that I had this experience of working with these giants, that I found myself working in close proximity with these extraordinary community communicators. And I will stand by this thesis, as long as I'm alive. I believe that the most successful people in entertainment are the most successful because of their communication skills. I know there's other people who will say, No, no, it's their talent.
• 18:39
  Larry Wilson: In some cases, it may be their talent. Another famous actor told me a very funny story about Peter O'Toole. When O'Toole was sort of young, unknown and was cast as the lead and Lawrence of Arabia. You know, people who'd seen him said Sky's enormously talented, right? And they're shooting the big battle of Akbar sequence. And this is in the days before CGI or anything like this. Part of the reason that was such an extraordinary accomplishment, Lawrence of Arabia, it was all shot on location, they went to the desert, and they shot all this stuff. When there were 10,000 people riding horses and camels with guns and saber. That was all real. That was not CGI. And to coordinate a scene like that, and, you know, obviously you'd have I don't know eight 910 cameras filming stuff, because you're gonna get one shot at it.
• 19:44
  Larry Wilson: The story is that all the stars were in trailers because they're on location. And the first assistant director's job is to go when they're ready to shoot they've spent the entire I don't know four or five, six hours set. Doing everything up and rehearsing stunt people and the riders and all this, explosives are gonna go off on 1000s of people. And the first ad goes to Peter or tools, trailer knocks on door, says, Mr. O'Toole, we're ready for you. And the door opens and there is a tool in costume. He steps out, looks around surveys the 1000s of people sort of snuffs the air says, No, I don't think so not today. And turns and goes back in his trailer and closes the door. And the first ad is freaking out. Mr. O'Toole can't get him to come to the door. He goes back to David Lean the direction goes, Mr. Lien, I don't know what to do. I can't I can't get him to come out of his trailer. He said No, not today.
• 20:57
  Larry Wilson: And lean said, well, then we'll try and shoot some other stuff we'll try and take advantage of he said in that first ad is like what? And lean said he's not feeling. So not going to happen today. Now that's what happens when you rely on talent. I can't tell you how many Academy Award winning actors I've worked with, who were very clear, they don't rely on talented. The ones I'm thinking of people like Timothy Hutton, like Karl Malden, enormously talented, don't misunderstand me. But they weren't foolish enough to rely on that. They wanted to have technique that's in their hip pocket that you can always access and use anytime you want.
• 21:51
  Larry Wilson: That's really what Wilson method is about, is having technique, real tools that you can access anytime, anywhere. You don't have to cross your fingers and hope you're going to be able to pull this out of the fire. You know, in the famous book of military strategy, The Art of War by Sun Tzu, he counsels that great battles won by great generals. There's no surprise or excitement really for them.
• 22:30
  Larry Wilson: Because the battle is already won before it's begun. They know they've already laid the groundwork done the preparation, done the planning the strategy, there's no surprise to them.
• 22:47
  Larry Wilson: That's what the tools in Wilson method prepare you for. It shouldn't be a surprise. It may be a delight. You may feel filled with satisfaction and gratification. But in fact, it should not be a surprise. And that's really what the combination of all these years working with these people, all these famous people, I would look at what they did. Sometimes it was for business. Sometimes it was for negotiation.
• 23:25
  Larry Wilson: Sometimes it was for their personal life. I saw how successful they were, again and again and again. So I sort of accumulated all these tools until I realized oh, I'm sort of a communications expert. In the next episode, we'll explore this more in depth and in practical terms that you can start using immediately. This has been 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 at the Wilson method.com There's a ton of stuff there. In fact, if you want you can even speak to me because I'm human. Send me an email at info at Wilson method.com Because I read every single one. I hope that you will join us next week in this continuing journey. And you'll be with me for the next episode of how to talk to humans.