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How One Simple Question Can Improve Every Conversation · How To Talk To Humans

• 0:02
  Larry Wilson: Hi, this is Larry Wilson, and this is How to Talk to Humans.
• 0:07
  Larry Wilson: This is the podcast that shows you how to improve your communication skills.
• 0:13
  Larry Wilson: Are you looking to get a better job?
• 0:15
  Larry Wilson: Are you looking to find a relationship?
• 0:17
  Larry Wilson: Are you trying to do things in your life that have frustrated you and eluded you so far?
• 0:24
  Larry Wilson: I can show you so easily how to change that.
• 0:27
  Larry Wilson: Now, I can only do it with humans.
• 0:30
  Larry Wilson: If you're looking to deal with vampires or zombies extraterrestrial, this is not the show for you.
• 0:36
  Larry Wilson: But if you're really looking to improve your communication skills, I can show you what I've learned in 40 years in the 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 the course of this podcast every week are tools that you can use to communicate toward success.
• 1:07
  Larry Wilson: Hi, this is Larry Wilson.
• 1:09
  Larry Wilson: Thanks for joining me again on this episode of How to Talk to Humans.
• 1:14
  Larry Wilson: I want to ask you something.
• 1:17
  Larry Wilson: What do you need right now?
• 1:20
  Larry Wilson: Right this second.
• 1:22
  Larry Wilson: Think about that.
• 1:23
  Larry Wilson: Can you tell me?
• 1:25
  Larry Wilson: What do you need?
• 1:27
  Larry Wilson: It's quick and easy to come up with a glib answer, but it may not be really the most meaningful answer.
• 1:37
  Larry Wilson: When you think about what you need, it clarifies your goals.
• 1:44
  Larry Wilson: If you need a sandwich, if you need a raise, if you need a date, if you need a car, whatever it is, by thinking about that, it makes it much easier for you to make a plan what you want to do with your communication.
• 2:02
  Larry Wilson: In that same way, I know that there are a great many of you out there who are entrepreneurs.
• 2:10
  Larry Wilson: And like it or not, entrepreneurs have to wear many, many hats.
• 2:17
  Larry Wilson: It is not enough.
• 2:20
  Larry Wilson: Maybe you have a fantastic recipe for pizza.
• 2:24
  Larry Wilson: Well, it's great, but if you're sort of a one-man band, then you have to market the pizza.
• 2:32
  Larry Wilson: You have to handle all the business for the pizza.
• 2:35
  Larry Wilson: You have to arrange hiring and firing of employees.
• 2:38
  Larry Wilson: There's a lot you have to do that has very little to do with making pizzas.
• 2:44
  Larry Wilson: Perhaps you teach people to play guitar, or really there's no end to what it could be.
• 2:51
  Larry Wilson: Maybe you're involved somehow in uh fitness training with people to help them lose weight or get in shape.
• 3:00
  Larry Wilson: Whatever it may be, the needs become much bigger than just what your expertise is.
• 3:09
  Larry Wilson: And if you are only focused on what you need right now, you're handicapping yourself when it comes to conveying your message to your target audience.
• 3:28
  Larry Wilson: This is uh an exercise that's very easy to do, as with everything in Wilson method, very simple, but it involves thinking about what your ideal customer needs right now.
• 3:47
  Larry Wilson: It sounds so simple.
• 3:50
  Larry Wilson: Instead of thinking about what you need, it's what do they need.
• 3:55
  Larry Wilson: And the process of inquiring along those lines is engaging the act of empathy.
• 4:04
  Larry Wilson: Empathy is not sympathy, which I am quick to point out.
• 4:11
  Larry Wilson: Sympathy is when you feel sorry for someone for whatever they may be experiencing.
• 4:19
  Larry Wilson: Empathy is when we try to imagine ourselves in someone else's shoes, what they may need, what they may want, what they may be feeling, or what they may need right this minute.
• 4:39
  Larry Wilson: Because if we can identify that, if we can now, I don't want to suggest here that you have to learn how to read minds.
• 4:49
  Larry Wilson: But I can tell you this.
• 4:51
  Larry Wilson: If you practice empathy, if you practice it might be as simple as walking through the mall, looking at people, various different people, and trying to imagine what must their life be like right at this moment.
• 5:10
  Larry Wilson: What are they thinking?
• 5:11
  Larry Wilson: What are they feeling?
• 5:11
  Larry Wilson: What are they concerned with?
• 5:13
  Larry Wilson: It doesn't mean that you'll be right, but that exercise of trying to put yourself in their shoes makes you so much more open to the possibility of connecting with them.
• 5:31
  Larry Wilson: Because when you do that, you are aligning yourself with their interests.
• 5:38
  Larry Wilson: Now they may say, oh, you thought uh you wouldn't actually ever tell them that you were doing this, but you might find that you weren't exactly right, that they were thinking something or feeling something else.
• 5:50
  Larry Wilson: But what they feel from you is that you are not simply focused on what you need right now, that you're thinking of other people's needs.
• 6:02
  Larry Wilson: And that changes you from being in an adversarial relationship into being a partner with them, being an ally, being a friend.
• 6:14
  Larry Wilson: If, for example, the most obvious example I can think of, if you're a speaker or you'd like to be a speaker, if you take a moment before you go on stage and think about the audience that's out there, what little you may know.
• 6:32
  Larry Wilson: Maybe it's before a holiday, maybe it's a time of year that has a special meaning in some way.
• 6:40
  Larry Wilson: If you're thinking about them, when you hit the stage, you will notice they are more receptive to whatever your message is.
• 6:50
  Larry Wilson: And the reason for this, it's the same as I've talked about facial affect, about vocal affect, about eye contact.
• 6:59
  Larry Wilson: All these things are about creating an impression of you before you've spoken.
• 7:09
  Larry Wilson: This takes place when you practice empathy.
• 7:14
  Larry Wilson: That act, whether you really have figured out what they may feel or not, the fact that you are attempting to do it projects a quality about you that shows you are not simply thinking of yourself.
• 7:36
  Larry Wilson: And that's enormously appealing to people everywhere.
• 7:41
  Larry Wilson: Even, I would venture to say, audiences that may not speak your language.
• 7:46
  Larry Wilson: I think they can feel it.
• 7:48
  Larry Wilson: They may be able to feel it better than an audience that does speak your language, because they have nothing to go on except the silent, semiotic signals they're getting from you.
• 8:02
  Larry Wilson: Have you ever met someone and you instantly liked or disliked them?
• 8:09
  Larry Wilson: I mean, you can come up with an explanation, you can start making rationalizations and stuff, but the truth is it's something that's taking place on a nonverbal level.
• 8:22
  Larry Wilson: And of course, this is our goal is to cultivate this and develop it as technique.
• 8:30
  Larry Wilson: So it's not just uh cross your fingers and hope it's gonna work.
• 8:36
  Larry Wilson: That, of course, is the trouble with relying on talent.
• 8:41
  Larry Wilson: I'm reminded of the story about Peter O'Toole when before he was a big star, when he made this uh film for David Lean, Lawrence of Arabia.
• 8:54
  Larry Wilson: And this was a gigantic event when it was made.
• 8:58
  Larry Wilson: This is in the early 60s, and there was no CGI.
• 9:03
  Larry Wilson: When you had a battle scene in the desert with thousands of horseback riders with rifles and swords, you really had to have those riders with swords, and you had to have trained uh horsemen and you had to have stunt people, and they all had to be costumed, and you had to have armorers prepare the weapons.
• 9:24
  Larry Wilson: It was a gigantic undertaking.
• 9:26
  Larry Wilson: And David Lean had this vision for this film.
• 9:30
  Larry Wilson: I don't know how he convinced the studios to go along with it, but he did.
• 9:34
  Larry Wilson: They shot it all on location, and they hired this uh young, uh virtually unknown actor, Peter O'Toole, to play Lawrence of Arabia.
• 9:46
  Larry Wilson: And there's a gigantic scene in this film that's referred to by Lean and others as the Battle of Aqaba, when it's it's a gigantic action scene.
• 10:01
  Larry Wilson: And the story is that all the major actors were in trailers because they were on location, they were in the desert.
• 10:14
  Larry Wilson: And the first assistant director's job is to go and tell the actors when they're ready to have them on set.
• 10:20
  Larry Wilson: They've been setting up for hours and rehearsing stunts and horses and all sorts of things, pyrotechnics.
• 10:29
  Larry Wilson: The first AD goes to Peter O'Toole's trailer and knocks on the door, says, Mr.
• 10:35
  Larry Wilson: O'Toole, we're we're ready for you.
• 10:38
  Larry Wilson: And O'Toole steps out in full costume, opens the door, looks around, sniffs the air, sort of goes, No, I don't think so.
• 10:51
  Larry Wilson: Not today.
• 10:53
  Larry Wilson: And he turns and goes back in his trailer and slams the door.
• 10:57
  Larry Wilson: And the first ID is knocking over, Mr.
• 10:59
  Larry Wilson: O'Toole?
• 11:00
  Larry Wilson: Mr.
• 11:00
  Larry Wilson: O'Toole, he won't come out.
• 11:01
  Larry Wilson: So the first ID runs to David Lean, the director, and says, Mr.
• 11:06
  Larry Wilson: Lean, I don't know what to do.
• 11:07
  Larry Wilson: I went to Mr.
• 11:08
  Larry Wilson: O'Toole's trailer and he came out and he said, No, not today.
• 11:11
  Larry Wilson: I don't know.
• 11:11
  Larry Wilson: And I what are we going to do?
• 11:13
  Larry Wilson: You know, we've got these thousands of people here.
• 11:15
  Larry Wilson: And Lean said, Well, there's nothing we can do.
• 11:19
  Larry Wilson: He's not feeling it.
• 11:21
  Larry Wilson: So try to shoot what we can as inserts and second unit and try to get some shots of explosions and some horses.
• 11:30
  Larry Wilson: And we'll try again tomorrow.
• 11:33
  Larry Wilson: And then the next day they tried and everything was fine.
• 11:36
  Larry Wilson: And O'Toole came out and did this and was fantastic in the role and is enormously talented and became a huge star because of it.
• 11:44
  Larry Wilson: But that's what happens when you rely on talent.
• 11:50
  Larry Wilson: It cannot always be summoned at the snap of your fingers.
• 11:56
  Larry Wilson: But technique can be.
• 11:59
  Larry Wilson: Technique is always at your command.
• 12:03
  Larry Wilson: And that's what I teach in Wilson Method.
• 12:06
  Larry Wilson: I don't know how to teach anyone to be talented.
• 12:09
  Larry Wilson: I don't know if there's anyone who knows how to do that.
• 12:13
  Larry Wilson: But I definitely can teach you technique because technique is transferable.
• 12:21
  Larry Wilson: And so when you're thinking about what you need right now, you might serve yourself better if you spent that time thinking, what do my clients, my customers, my consumers, in whatever capacity they may be, what do they need right now?
• 12:47
  Larry Wilson: Because I guarantee you, if you can conjure up a clear image in your mind of what they need, they will be hugely successful.
• 13:02
  Larry Wilson: In fact, it's not just with business, it is in personal relationships as well.
• 13:11
  Larry Wilson: Men and women, men and men, women in women, everyone who's involved in a relationship, that act of empathizing with the other person changes the relationship.
• 13:30
  Larry Wilson: I don't mean it changes it fundamentally in terms of all elements of your relationship, but I mean in your communication that takes place in that moment, you are no longer adversarial.
• 13:46
  Larry Wilson: You can diffuse a fight in almost any situation by doing this.
• 13:52
  Larry Wilson: Because you're not thinking about what you need right now, you're thinking what do they need right now.
• 13:59
  Larry Wilson: It doesn't mean you have to provide what they want.
• 14:02
  Larry Wilson: You're not obligated in any way to fulfill other people's desires, but the process of thinking about it makes you an ally.
• 14:15
  Larry Wilson: And when an ally comes forward to discuss something, to suggest something, to convey a message, the audience is a hundred times more receptive.
• 14:38
  Larry Wilson: I think it's very valuable.
• 14:40
  Larry Wilson: I hope that you feel the same way.
• 14:42
  Larry Wilson: And if you do, please share this with your friends and family.
• 14:49
  Larry Wilson: Share it with your coworkers, share it with everyone you possibly know until everyone in this world learns to improve their communication skills.
• 15:01
  Larry Wilson: Think of what a fantastic revolution that would be.
• 15:08
  Larry Wilson: This has been Larry Wilson.
• 15:10
  Larry Wilson: I want to thank you for spending this time with me, and I hope you found this information useful.
• 15:16
  Larry Wilson: If you're looking for more, you can find it at thewilsonmethod.com.
• 15:21
  Larry Wilson: There's a ton of stuff there.
• 15:25
  Larry Wilson: If you want, you can even speak to me because I'm human.
• 15:30
  Larry Wilson: Send me an email at info at wilsonmethod.com because I read every single one.
• 15:39
  Larry Wilson: I hope that you'll join us next week in this continuing journey.
• 15:45
  Larry Wilson: And you'll be with me for the next episode of How to Talk to Humans.