175: Steve Martin — Messengers: Who We Listen To, Who We Don’t, and Why

Oh, why is it that sometimes you introduce an idea and it's shot down, it's rejected by people and yet a short while later somebody else talks about it and it's the best idea ever? What's that all about? Today's show is all about how the messenger sometimes is more important than the message. And what can you do to improve your messengerness? How could you be a more effective messenger? And the surprising effects this has, not just in pitching something, but in all the ways that we operate in society, that we lead our companies and so on. So, fascinating show. Listen in. Hello and welcome again to the Scaling Up Business podcast. I'm your host and favorite neighborhood scaling coach, Bill Gallagher. So on the show with me today is one of our speakers, an all around, well spoken, well noted guy, Steve Martin, the other Steve Martin. Not the wild and crazy kind of guy, but featured on BBC TV Radio, the Times, New York Times, hbr, Time magazine. He penned the now famous tax letters that generated billions of extra revenue for the UK government. And his columns are read by over 2.5 million people every month. He's an honorary professor of management practice and behavioral science at Columbia. He's a graduate at the Columbia Graduate Business School in New York, and he's a guest lecturer at Harvard and the London School of Economics. So welcome to the show, Steve.

Hello, Bill. Good to join you.

Yeah. So excited to have you. This is a great topic on the show and I understand you are down in Southern California in Laguna beach this week.

I am the beautiful Laguna. It's just amazing here.

Weather is lovely there all the time. It's this nice little pocket of grooviness right on the beach.

So I want to live here.

Actually, we were thinking about a couple years ago selling our house and moving down there up in Northern California. And the kids, I have two grown kids now and they were both like, no, no, do it. We like our house. We'd like to come back. So like, well, maybe we'll trade it for a while or I don't know, I spent a lot of time upload.

But yeah, I think your kids, that's good counsel. You should listen to them. I think this idea that, you know, we, you know, there's that famous paper, isn't there, that looked at people that move from Ohio to California and you know, they're happier for a while, then this becomes the new normal and so.

They don't appreciate the specialness of it.

So I think your kids are right.

Yeah, well, okay, so we're going to get into this idea Here of how the messenger matters. And each of us has different skills as a messenger, different styles and things like that. It's a really great, fascinating subject that can enhance your credibility. Talk to us a little bit more about your background and how you come to work in this area and how, you know, give us more about you in the world of messengers.

Sure. Well, I guess my career can be divided into two. The first kind of third, I guess of my career I spent in the classic corporate world. I worked in sales and marketing and kind of learned the trade of the practice of influencing people, whether that's to, you know, buy product, you know, support a particular initiative, you know, design aid, marketing campaign, these kind of things. And towards the end of, you know, the first third of my career, so eight or nine years in, I met a pretty famous psychologist, a US based psychologist who will be a name that's familiar to many of the Scale up listeners. And that's Bob Cialdini, the social psychologist from Arizona State University. And that was kind of in the year 2000. And we started working together and that became a brilliant introduction for me, a very lucky introduction as well. And so I've been working with Bob now for these last 19 years or so. We've written a couple of books together, we've consulted together, we've run programs together, we've both spoken at Scale up conferences together, we've published research together. And you know, I've learned an awful lot about the process of influence and persuasion and you know, Bob's groundbreaking work on those six universal principles. And you know, we've been applying those principles in meaningful and ethical ways to a whole variety of different, you know, business and governmental, you know, concerns where, you know, essentially we're looking to, you know, ethically influence the behavior of others. And one of the things I've noticed these last couple of years is that increasingly in this crazy, information overloaded world that we actually live in, Bill, there seems to be these individuals, these characters, these messengers that pretty much, it doesn't matter what they say, they, they seem to be heard, not necessarily by everyone. But there does seem to be this emerging trend that we are paying often less attention to what is being said and increasingly focusing our limited amount of attention on who is saying what is being said. Often, regardless of its wisdom or its foolishness.

Is this the same as choosing what to do and buy based on the Kardashian?

Well, the Kardashian, I think is one example of this, you know, that messenger, through simply having a form of status in this instance they're famous for basically being famous, right? You know, they don't necessarily know anything substantive about a particular issue or a particular product, but they put their voice to it and it commands attention. Not everyone listens, but enough people do listen that it creates a momentum, it creates a change. And. Yeah, so together with a colleague of mine, Joseph Marx, who is a brilliant researcher currently doing his PhD at University College London, you know, a couple of years ago we were talking about this, we'd have these conversations over lunch about why stuff happens. You know, why is it that a pop star can, you know, have a claim of whether a vaccine is effective or not and people believe them rather than their doctors, you know, for example, you know, and we'd have these conversations and we'd start to think about, well, what are the qualities or the characteristics of the people that a society listens to? And, you know, we kind of batted these ideas back and forth and then we started, you know, we're, we're scientists at our core. We're interested in, you know, what the research says. And so we started to look at the research and we found that no one had really looked at this in any detail for close to 40 years. That was the surprising thing to us, Bill. You know, you'd think that there'd be researchers, you know, around the world that have formulated models and, you know, theories about this. And whilst they'd looked at individual traits, no one had looked more broadly at this idea of, well, what are the fundamental characteristics that make an effective messenger in today's society and what evidence exists that these are valid and robust effects and how might we think about them and create a framework for them? And importantly, and I guess of relevance to your listeners in particular, how can we use these insights in meaningful and useful ways? And so that was the beginning of a two year journey now. And we're, you know, at the point now where the book is written and is now about to be published.

So I think immediately, I think, like attractiveness, aspirational qualities, lifestyle, I think of tone of voice delivery, I think of other oratory skills, and then I think of the word choices, the speech making as well on that, and the cadence of delivery. And then I think about not just attractiveness, but also like the physical presence. Do I perceive the person to be important, to be a leader? Are those the kinds of things you're talking about here?

Well, I think you've ticked a lot of important features there, Bill, but actually there are even more that are fundamental to the characteristic of an effective messenger. And surprisingly and perhaps unnervingly, many of these fly under the radar. They are so fundamental to the characteristic of an effective messenger that we intuitively recognize them, often in a matter of milliseconds, but don't necessarily see them consciously for what they actually are. So those things that you're talking about are important. But what we actually find broadly is that the successful messengers in today's society largely gain their improved effectiveness by adopting one of two fundamental positions. And we call these positions hard positions and soft positions, or hard messengers and soft messengers. So the hard messenger essentially establishes that they have some form of status over their audience, often before they deliver their communication or their message. So you're right, the idea that the rich and famous, someone with socioeconomic position or someone with presence, so this is the dominance characteristic, you know, we. We seek out and follow the lead of dominant messengers in certain contexts and characteristics. And then competence is a third hard effect. The idea that we follow experts. If we see that someone has expert status over us. And then the one that you've already mentioned, Bill, attractiveness, you know, sometimes we are just inclined to follow someone who has physical attractiveness. So those kind of other. The four components of the hard messenger, and in each instance, what they're doing is they are signaling that that messenger has some form of status over an audience. But then, in contrast, there are other. There's this other type, the soft messengers, who don't signal their status over an audience, but instead signal their connectedness with their audience. So these, they have softer traits. These are the messengers that exude warmth or trustworthiness or a vulnerability or charisma. So there we have. We have those two broad categories of messengers, hard and soft. And within each are four primary traits that largely decode the vast majority of these situations where we are likely to listen to someone. And what's really interesting, I think, and again, unnerving to Joe and I, is throughout the course of this two year program of research that we've conducted and the subsequent book that we've actually written, at no point have we ever concerned ourselves with what actual people are saying. You know, the content. The content, yeah, we've largely left that as not necessarily an irrelevance, but there are circumstances that we've actually found where, and we can all think of them. Not a day goes by in the news cycle where an individual, some messenger of sorts, will say something that probably doesn't make much sense or might even be questionable in terms of its accuracy or its truth, yet it's still believed by certain people and one of these messenger traits will largely be responsible for that occurring.

Well, I think, not to be political, but to use it as an example, I think of some folks having some of those traits on both the hard and soft side in our past presidents. And whether you agreed with their policies or not, I think both. Well, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama had loads of great messengers, but so did, on a very different scale, Ronald Reagan.

Yeah.

And when I think of the Bush presidents, I'm like, yeah, those were very weak messengers.

Yeah.

Without regard to the policy or the content or whether or not I liked them in their politics. Right.

Well, you're exactly right. And I think that there does seem to be a broad acceptance that past presidents like Bill Clinton, Barack Obama had a certain charismatic appeal. In fact, actually, there are studies, there's a couple that we cite in the book that look at the inauguration speeches of past presidents and the number of charismatic type metaphors they use in their communications and their speeches. And we find that actually the number of those metaphors that are actually used and the charismatic way that they actually are delivered can have a dramatic influence on whether they'll serve a second term or not. So researchers actually looked at these things and found that presidents that typically are one term in office typically use much less charismatic language and use far, far fewer metaphors in their inauguration speeches than those presidents that serve two terms. So it's kind of interesting one already we see how that's playing out. And again, what's being said matters less than the way it's actually being communicated.

Well, switching then to the business realm. Right, I see. Well, actually, before we do that, tell me the story. I saw a note here about that the British government was looking for a spokesperson in the 80s around emerge. Tell us.

This is one of the. Yeah, so I mean, one of the. I think one of the advantages of being given some time to kind of explore a topic like this in detail is that when you get into the reeds of it and the thick grass, you kind of. All these crazy stories emerge. And this is one of my favorites. Back in. It was 1981. So think about 1981. We have Margaret Thatcher, who's in power here in the United Kingdom at the time. Ronald Reagan, who we just mentioned is five or six months into his first term as president. Brezhnev, I think, is the president of Russia. It's kind of still that the Cold War is largely over, but you still have that kind of difficult relationship between these three parties. And a meeting is called in the heart of the British Government and it's called by our home office, so, you know, similar to your kind of Homeland Security office, I guess. And the topic of the meeting is a leaflet, a pamphlet that is going to be essentially printed and distributed to all the citizens of the United Kingdom, giving them information about what to do if, heaven forbid, Russia decided to push the button and launch a nuclear attack on Britain. Okay, yeah. So it's a, you know, a fact based pamphlet of here's what you should do. Yeah, yeah, in, in the event of this nuclear turmoil.

Yeah.

And. But the conversation in the Cabinet Office quickly moved to not what the content of that leaflet should actually be, but who would be the best placed individuals to deliver these messages, you know, to say, who would the British public listen to in this state of crisis? And you'd think to yourself, well, surely they'd listen to their elected leaders, they'd listen to their local politicians, they maybe listen to armed forces, they maybe listen to, you know, the equivalent of the National Guard or, you know, the police force, these, these kind of things.

Right.

But no, you know, they said no. Well, we don't think that they would listen to those people because they don't know who these people are. What we need is we need a familiar face, we need a trusted face. We don't need someone that actually has competence and expertise in what to do in the case of a nuclear attack. What we need is we need people that have a familiar face, a trusted face that people are more inclined to recognize and listen to. And so, and two names emerged. And those two names were Kevin Keegan and Ian Botham. Now, those two names may not necessarily mean too much to American listeners, but let me tell you why they were the perfect messengers for this particular job. Kevin Keegan at the time was the most famous soccer player and the captain of the national England football team. And Ian Botham was the most famous cricket player in the United Kingdom who only a few months previously had pretty much single handedly battered the Aussies into submission in one of the most important cricket games in the world. It's called the Ashes, where England play Australia. Now, neither of these guys have any knowledge of what to do in the case of a nuclear fallout. They have no training in how to manage public unrest. They have squat when it comes to the kind of skills required and the qualities required. Yeah, but they have presence, they have some socioeconomic position and they're probably well liked. And it's really interesting, I mean, it's a funny story that the British government will be talking about this but actually, there's a really important point behind this story which plays out not just in a case of nuclear turmoil, but it plays out everywhere, which is when we see an individual as having some characteristic or trait that we recognize in them, we find it very, very easy to then assume that they have other traits that have nothing to do with that basic characteristic. Oh, you're the captain of an England football team, you're a good cricket player. Oh, that must mean you're a pretty good guy when it comes to marshalling, you know, what to do in the case of civil unrest. Absolutely. Makes no sense whatsoever. But we make these connections, we assume these things about people based on a different, entirely different trait that we see in them. That's the really interesting thing.

But I don't think it's just any celebrity. Right. Because rhymes with Kevin Keegan is Steve Coogan and comedian, actor, who would be a terrible choice. Right. Because he's always playing sort of a self serving character, I think.

Yeah, you're exactly right about that. You're exactly right about that. But there, I mean, this, this halo effect, which is what it's called, is playing out as well. You say, well, you know, he's a bit of a, you know, you know, it's not a particularly effective messenger. He always plays these kind of slightly tragic characters.

Yeah.

So the halo effect is playing out there as well. So say, well, if he's a tragic character here, then we probably, probably don't want him over here, you know, advising us or dealing or telling us about what to do here, there. Or in other instances, that halo effect that we see one of these messenger characteristics. And it's very, very easy then to assume that that individual has other characteristics that don't necessarily have anything to do with why we've assessed them in that way.

In the first instance, actors complain about being typecast. Right. But I think leaders and people speaking on behalf of companies also sometimes complain they're only listened to and related in a particular way. Although I would say that as a speaker, coach, former CEO, one of the things that I've learned is sort of, it's good to know how others get you. Because then, and although it might not sort of fit the self image you have, you can play with it if you know how you're seen by default.

Right, exactly right. Exactly right. If you are able to identify in some reasonably robust way, informed way, the strengths or the traits or the preferences that you typically rely on when you are communicating a message, whether you adopt, you know, are you the type of Individual that adopts a typically harder approach or a softer approach. Do you play on your expertise or, you know, do you, you know, lead with your warmth? Understanding what your preferences and your, you know, patterns are is incredibly helpful because one of the things that it might lead you to consider is in certain circumstances you might be the best positioned person to deliver a message, but that may not necessarily mean that you're the most effective person to deliver that message.

You mean I might be in the role and the most knowledgeable, but I might not have the right traits to deliver this particular message?

Yeah, I mean, well, let's, let's think about an everyday business example. So you're going to put a proposal together for a client and, you know, you might have great technical expertise. You might have to, you know, draw on all your training experience over the years, put together a, you know, a technical brief, you know, outline a timeline, a proposal for delivery, a statement of works, all these different kind of things, and you do that wonderfully. And that's your skill set. Doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to be the best person to present that proposal. You know, just because you are the author of it or just because you are the creator of that piece of work doesn't always mean that you're going to be necessarily the best presenter or salesperson in that, in that instance, if that proposal then needs to be sold. So I think, you know, it's kind of, it can be quite humbling as well to recognize that sometimes you might be the best person to produce or develop something. Something, but you might not necessarily be the best person to, you know, deliver it. To deliver it, to communicate that. That's the case.

Now, did you study the cultivation and application of these things as well? Because I know there are certain things that I wasn't very good at, but I have become good at over time. Real work at them.

Yeah. So I mean, in the, the primary focus of our research in the book is to identify what are these universal traits and how do they play out. But as you do that, you invariably find, you know, situations where there are kind of interesting applications for them. You know, so one of them, for example, is how messengers are introduced. An important part of any business endeavor is to present a good case, a compelling case, a good set of messages or proposals. But what's really interesting is that we also find that the way that a messenger is introduced before they make their presentation or proposal can have a huge impact on how that proposal is accepted or how it lands, even when it doesn't Change. So I'll give you an example. We did a study a few years ago, small in scale, but I think illustrative of this point with realtors, real estate agents, where, you know, so real estate agents have a proposition. They, you know, we want to market your property. We do it for this price. You know, these are the services that you can expect to get from us. And when you compare their propositions to their competitors, they're pretty much the same. So there needs to be some element of differentiation there. And we found that actually the differentiation isn't in the service or the delivery of the service. It's actually in the way that the realtor is introduced before they even start work. And so the study that we ran, we simply, you know, arranged for people who were interested in having their property marketed to contact certain real estate agents. And then when the receptionist answered the phone, we would vary how the real estate agent that they were about to be introduced to was in fact introduced. So sometimes it would be right. Let me put you through to Bill Gallagher, who's, you know, our head of sales. He has, like 20 years experience selling properties in this area. He's a member of the local Orange county, you know, realtor board. You know, you can be very confident in the information and the advice that he's actually going to give you. That was one condition. In another condition, you know, you get the standard introduction. Well, let me put you through to Bill. He'll be able to help with your inquiry.

He's not busy right now.

Yeah, yeah. But what was really interesting is that nothing changes about what the realtor then offers in terms of proposition. Just that credentializing here's a competent messenger. And in that instance, actually, there's a couple of things that are really interesting about this. So just in terms of, you know, the impact on the business, the increase in the number of valuation appointments that were arranged and the increase in the number of written contracts rose by 20 and 15%, respectively. So any business who, you know, wants to heighten their credibility and their competence in the eyes of their customers might want to think about how their expertise is introduced before they start making a pitch. That's the first thing. But what's also interesting, and we found this in other studies, is that the way that you introduce staff has an impact on that staff member's performance. If they're being introduced as credible, knowledgeable, experienced experts, you're giving them kind of labels to live up to and perhaps.

With both them and the others. Right, exactly right.

Exactly right. Perhaps the most important Thing of all, beyond the fact that you're raising people's performance and you're increasing, you know, opportunities, is that this is something that comes entirely free of charge. It doesn't cost you anything to do it as well.

Well, it's funny because I think they're. I think we do that sort of thing unconsciously. So sometimes we're like, oh, I want to introduce Bob. We're so excited. We. We recruited Bob away from a key competitor. He's been the rock star who revolutionized this company, and we're really glad to have him join our team. He brings a wealth of industry knowledge and incredible energy. Please welcome Bob. And then there's, hey, we brought in Joe over here, and Joe was out of work for the last six months. Or we just say, hey, we're really proud to have Joe join the team. He's looking forward to learning all about our industry. Neither one of those really sets up Joe for success.

Exactly right. And I think you're right. Yeah. But I think you're right about that. They're done. These introductions are done off the cuff, in the moment.

Yeah.

And there's another option there as well, which is another thing that happens is sometimes we just leave the individual to introduce themselves, and that never works out well.

Yeah.

What are they going to do? They're going to say, oh, let me tell you all the reasons why you should listen to what I've got to say and why I'm an expert. I mean, immediately you build this wall between them and the client or whoever they're communicating with.

So, yeah, so as a speaker, a spokesperson, I know there's another one, too, where that undermines the credibility, and that's I introduce myself by proxy, I write an introduction, I give it to you, you read it off, and it's clear you don't know me or care about me. And then. And it's just like I sort of wrote something and it's like this awkward kind of thing versus and I was. I suppose I'm often guilty of this in our show, Guests in that I don't open. I mean, I'll report some facts, but if I really know someone, there's a warmth and an authenticity to the message that's different.

Exactly. And what you're talking about there, Bill, describes beautifully the soft messenger trait, this idea of there's a connectedness here, you know, and with connectedness comes not just warmth, but trustworthiness as well. I can trust this introduction. It seems like a credible one. It seems like a truthful one. It's one that I can open my ears to. So it is the case that, you know, like most things in life, it's not that if you're a hard messenger and you typically are more skilled in adopting some of these harder messenger traits, that you're going to be more effective than a softer one. No, that's not the case at all. There's always that balance, and there's always going to be this context or particular that will have a determination on whether you should adopt a harder approach or a softer approach.

So tell me again, the hard. What are the hard traits?

So the four hard traits are socioeconomic, economic position. So, you know.

Right.

You're how rich and famous you are in common parlance. Competence. You know, should you be listened to? Because you have. So I have instrumental value. Yeah. Are you an expert? Do you have some potential? Some. Do you have some expertise that I would benefit from learning about?

Right.

Dominance is the third effect. So this is largely a dispositional traits. You know, there are some people out there that are heard because they are dispositionally dominant. They. They see everything as a game where there's a winner and a loser.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. And I.

So I think of this both as like a high D in the disc test as well as, like, command and some of the other things on, like in the strengths finder. I do. I'm very high. Command is one of my top ones. I'm very dominant. But I'm also not six foot. I'm, you know, I don't have some of the other, like, physical terms of that.

Yeah, yeah.

Except I'm a straight white male from North America, which, you know, gives me a certain presence.

It does, it does. And I think you're right, you know, in. When we talk about dominoes, which I.

Laugh at tragically, but it does, right?

It will.

Yeah.

Unfortunately. Yeah. And the fact is that. Yeah. When you know that that dominant messenger effect is. Is both characterized physically and in a. Demeanor as well.

Right, right.

And then the fourth heart effect is physical attractiveness. You know, the fact is that those folks in our society that are lucky enough to be born genetically blessed, shall we say, often confer an advantage in life from a very. And what's interesting is, is that these traits will often be recognizable at a very, very early age.

You know?

You know.

Well, I, you know, I can think of something that was really, like, palpable. Like, I can still kind of see it and picture it. Years ago, we were interviewing a sales candidate with a business partner, and I were interviewing a sales candidate Business partner, female. We're interviewing this candidate. We had a whole bunch of people that were going through quite a lot of candidates, and this one didn't really have a resume that suited, except we kept moving her ahead and we liked some of the words we said, but as we walked out, we couldn't put our finger on any one of them. And we both said, you know, I think it's because she's very attractive. And she was unusually attractive in a charismatic kind of fashion. It's not necessarily that either one of us wanted to date her. There was a certain presence that was attractive, independent of sexual or romantic attraction. Right. Like, oh, we're just drawn to it.

Yeah. We become drawn, we become magnetized to those attractive, charismatic messengers. And again, the universal here seems to be true that we're not necessarily paying attention to what they're saying. They're not necessarily communicating a message that is a more effective one or a more beneficial one. We're just using these fundamental characteristics that we recognize super quickly. As I say, sometimes in milliseconds, and often using that to determine the validity of that messenger's message. Regardless of, regardless of what it is.

We evaluated that if we wanted that person to really just sell, if it was a pure sales role, that they would probably be really effective with others because everybody was sort of drawn to them and wanted to believe what they had to say.

Well, that's interesting and it's true to a certain extent, but that's not actually the full picture.

Yeah.

So we found some studies that showed that if you employ super attractive salespeople to sell to doctors, so physicians, there's.

A lot of that.

Yeah. That the attractive salesperson is pretty effective at. And, and, and the doctors who will deny succumbing to the attractiveness of these, you know, super good looking sales reps, they prescribe more of their drugs.

Yeah.

But it seems to have a limited effect. So in terms of the time. So, you know, these super attractive salespeople, the evidence suggests, are pretty good at getting people on board, on side. So if you, you know, if you're trying to attract customers, you know, and get them kind of to start using one of your products, they were super, they were super effective in that, in that context. But as time went on, that kind of halo of attractiveness tailed off somewhat.

So it's like, it's like the door opening, the initial close, but not necessarily strategic selling, solution selling or account management type stuff.

No, I mean, in the world of espionage, it's the classic honey trap.

Yeah. Yeah. So Those are the hard ones. And what are the soft skills then?

So the four primary soft messenger traits are warmth. We are drawn to messengers that have some warmth or connectedness or similarity with us. Second is vulnerability. So sometimes we don't always listen to messengers that have status or have attractiveness. Sometimes we're more inclined to listen to messengers that literally have no other traits. Their heart is on their sleeve. It's all out there to be seen. The third soft trait is trustworthiness. The extent to which we can predict the future actions of a messenger increases our levels of trustworthiness in them, and we're more likely and inclined to listen to them. And the fourth and final soft messenger trait is charisma. Those people that have that ability to connect on a much broader, almost kind of universal level. They're able to kind of get us to not just think about ourselves, but just see the bigger vision and to do that in a way that has overt positivity, powerful.

So I would say that I'm probably pretty low on warmth and sometimes go bad on trustworthiness, that I'm more of an introvert. The social stuff sometimes is challenging for me. And on the trustworthiness, I'm often perceived as too salesy, too promotional. And then my trustworthiness, you could feel it dropping if I push too hard. So I've learned to pull that back. But I have cultivated and really developed opening up. So the vulnerability I've seen and cultivated and practiced and learned to be really courageous in that realm. And it's become a hallmark. Like, you know, you'll know that if you are in a talk or workshop with me, we'll go through a range of emotion. I will be particularly open and share myself with you. So that's probably the thing. And in fact, courageous authenticity is our first company value. And then the connection is another one that I've also worked at. It doesn't come naturally at all, but it's very well practiced. And that's where I really spend time to an energy and effort to connect with someone, anyone or a couple of people in delivering a message and communicate with them. And it has like a halo effect. Like, if I talk to you and just really appreciate your world and listen deeply to you and like that, I produce a connection to you that others feel a part of. If it's public, they witness it.

Well, that's exactly true. And I think we've all experienced examples of that. I'm thinking of the classic situation in business where we meet someone at a conference and we get Chatting to them, and I find out that this person knows Bill Gallagher. And I think that Bill is a pretty good guy and he's a warm guy. It's very easy for me to then assume that this person, this new person I've just met, has those same qualities as you do, Bill, because you both know each other in that instance. In contrast, we can also meet someone for the first time and we find that we both know someone in common, and I don't like that person. It's very easy now for me to assume that the person I've just met might be a little more unlikable as well. This is this halo effect again. But in this instance, it's not just, you know, I'm seeing a characteristic or trait in you and using it to assume that you have other traits. I'm actually looking at this trait and assuming that it's evident in others that are connected to you as well. So.

Well, don't we presume things like taste like, oh, you like that musical artist, or you like that movie, or you like that whatever, then you must be a little bit like that. And I like that, too. So we met. That's the thing in common, right?

Yeah, exactly right. Exactly right. That's that connectedness. And if that message of connectedness comes with an element of trustworthiness about it or, you know, warmth, then it can be incredibly potent. You know, we will then listen more to that individual, to that communicator, and again, not necessarily pay as much attention as we perhaps should to what's being said. We're using that messenger characteristic to assume that what follows in a communication is worthy of our ears.

Yeah, well, I was speaking actually to more like, if I'm delivering a talk or workshop and then there's an opportunity for an interaction with someone, I listen with a great deal of care and empathy for that person. My trustworthiness rises because I treat them gently, safely, with deep regard, and I guess the warmth does too. But it's connecting with someone, and then you observe that, and you're like, oh, Bill's a good guy, or he's a generous guy, or that guy.

Yeah, well, that's important. And the thing about trustworthiness is it's not held by the messenger, it's held by the audience. So, yeah, you know, trustworthy for the messenger. Right, yeah. So trustworthiness is essentially other people's confidence in being able to predict how I or you will behave in the future.

Right.

That's what trustworthiness is. I think often, and we see this Certainly in the political world that we confuse trustworthiness with truthfulness. And they are not the same thing. They are absolutely not the same thing. We can trust people to lie. So I think there is.

Oh yeah, you can trust me to lie by the minute. How are you doing? Awesome. Super great. Or the classic, how are you doing, honey? Fine. There's communication.

There's that tonality thing you were talking about earlier.

Yeah, yeah, I think so. For me, when I hear these things, I feel like the path to everything begins kind of with self awareness. Like assess yourself, know yourself especially how others perceive you, not how you perceive yourself, and then you become a more effective messenger leader, spokesperson, et cetera.

I think that's exactly right. And it's actually now the research has actually been done and we've, we've, we've, we've finished the research. It's something that anyone can do. You know, there's, there's a short test that anyone can take, it's free. That will, in five or six minutes, put you in a variety of different situations, ask you a handful of different questions, and it will inform you as to your primary and secondary preferences across these hard and soft messenger traits. So you can get that awareness, Bill, you can see whether what your guts are telling you actually is a reflection of what actually you really are in terms of your messenger preferences. So encourage people to do that and do it maybe not just for yourself, but do it for your team members as well. So that, you know, I think a good team is one that actually is able to convey a balance, a variety of these different messenger traits so that you can pick the right messenger to deliver the right message in the most effective way. If you have that balance across the team.

Well, I see knowing your skills and traits, pros and cons, as a leader, as a human being, is all of that is always access in the beginning is that self awareness. And especially since it's about interacting with others, you've got to know how others perceive you, which sometimes is upsetting and surprising, especially if you've been hoping and praying that something had gone away on its own, some annoying tick or something like that that you've been teased or criticized for since you were a little kid. In part, you probably worked very hard to overcome it and that kind of thing. But if you become aware of it, it can be pretty powerful. I remember when I was going through some intensive speaker trainer training many years ago, there was a guy who got up and he had an unusual physical defect. His eye looked off in a different direction. And he introduced himself as like, hey, I'm Adam. And by now you've already noticed that one of my eyes looks off in a weird direction. And I just want you to know that I'm fine. This has been the case since birth and in a moment you'll stop to pay attention to that. And sure enough, it was true and it worked beautifully. And then we just started being with the speaker and, you know, and interacting with them and like that by the Converses also, Tribe sat with speakers who had some unusual quality or characteristic to them. A style, an accent, a physical presence, a way of dressing or something. And they didn't address it. They didn't seem to realize that they were different and unique. And they didn't speak to it or anything. Like, so the whole time I'm like, what is the deal with that shirt? Or whatever it is, I'm fixated on this point of difference that's unexplained, unaddressed like that and seems at odds with everything else.

I think you're right. And actually what those two examples that you've actually given there, Bill, neatly demonstrate is, you know, more broadly, and I think this is a, this is a situation that we've all experienced. You know, when, when you have an idea or you have a proposal or you, you know, you want to just say, I've got something to run by you. And you present your idea and you get that look from an audience that is kind of like, nah, that's just a bad idea, forget about that. But then someone else comes along a couple of days later, says the exact same thing, and suddenly that idea that was dismissed out of turn a couple of days previous is now the best idea since sliced bread. That's the classic example of what we're talking about with these messenger traits in this messenger book is I think we've.

All had some version though at some point. It's infuriating. You're like, what the hell? I just said that.

Yeah, I've been saying that. It's absolutely infuriating. So. But the point here is it can't be the message because what's being said is the same. It has to be the messenger. And to your point, I think sometimes looking and sounding right appears to be often more important than actually being right and it. And this. So we've talked a little bit about it in terms of how it can apply to business, how it applies, applies to coaching, how it applies to leadership and self awareness. But there's a much, much broader implication here, Bill, which is this doesn't just play out in business. It doesn't just play out in conferences, in our interactions with one another at work. This plays out across the whole of society. You know, often we are choosing to listen to people simply because they look and sound like they should be the people we're listening to. You know, and as a result, experts get dismissed. You know, we start paying attention to, you know, people that are rich and famous and taking advice about, you know, whether she'd vaccinate our children, for God's sake, these kind of things. So they don't just shape who we perhaps listen to or respond to in the moment. They fundamentally shape what we subsequently start to believe and who we become. And that has a much, much broader implication.

Yep. Well, it's a fascinating conversation. So some recaps, you want to be aware of these traits, learn them, understand them, and then you want to kind of know where you fall with them. So of course you're going to want to read the book for that. Right. And as this recording comes out, you will have access to the book and to the website with the online assessment. Right. So they can begin to get a sense of. Of their own strengths.

Exactly right. You can visit messengersthebook.com and find out what type of messenger you are for free. All it requires is about five or six minutes of your time.

Awesome. So messengersthebook.com we'll put that link in the show notes as well. And can they get the book just about everywhere?

Yeah, absolutely.

Everywhere messenger is the book. Messengers. Who we listen to, who we don't, and why. Steve Martin is our guest. Thanks so much for joining us on the show, Steve.

Thank you for your time, Bill. It's been a pleasure.

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