Joel Silverstone argues that difficult conversations fail because people act inauthentically. Stress hormones distort your tone and body language, breaking trust. He teaches a three-part fix: clarify your intention, use an improvisational mindset, and control your breath and posture to stay genuine.
Chapters
All right, you're in the midst of giving feedback to someone, or you're in a difficult conversation, and it's not going so well. It's probably because your tone of voice, your choice of words, your body language is giving you away. You're not such a great actor. In fact, your acting kind of sucks. Why are we acting like we care, acting like we're interested, when really our intention is about building trust and getting to dialogue? So let's do this. I'm going to ask you now to think of someone that you have to give feedback to or have a difficult conversation with. Think of that person. What is it you want to say? What is it you want to accomplish? What are they going to say? How are they going to react? All right? So, I'm going to talk to my boss. So think of that person. Got it? Great. Were you thinking of conflict? Because that's usually where we go, and our first reaction to that is going to be emotional. And those emotions is going to flood our abilities to think straight, affects our mood, our choice of words, our body language. So here's the thing. Our cortisol level is about 3 times higher. We are in fight or flight mode. So when we're giving feedback, we may believe that we are smiling, But all the other person sees is a clenched jaw. So take 2, here's what we do. What do good actors do? How do they earn our trust and they are able to be genuine take after take? And how can we apply that person after person where we're giving feedback? Well, it's 3 things that have to be aligned. It is your mindset, your breath, and your body. And when these 3 things are aligned, you're in the zone. So let's start with mindset. Let's focus on that. Now, as you heard Jimmy say earlier, an actor's job is to move the other actor. In fact, that's their intention. And our intention should also be about moving that other person. And when our intention is clear, it gives us a map. It gives us a destination of where we want to get to. When we get off track, when we become objective-focused, like, I want to change this person, We start getting into leading questions like, don't you think? So, let me ask you this. What is your intention when you're giving feedback? Is it about building trust, deepening the relationship, focusing on the issue, not the person, or the belief that people want to get better, or the feedback is about a continuous improvement? Because when you get sidetracked and you get objective-focused, what happens is you start to do what bad actors do. And that is that they force it because they're not feeling it. So they feel they have to emote, they have to fake it. And that's what leads us to bad acting. So take the pressure off of yourself. Change your self-talk, which is think of that as a, as a third person instead of the first person. Change it to the third person. And let me give you an example. Joel Silverstone is going to build trust. That will be his intention. And when you see yourself as in the third person, it really helps you to be the character. And how do you do that? Borrow from the world of improvisation. Rule number 1 of improv is yes, and, which is about collaboration, being open to ideas, not dismissing or judging them. Because the second rule is always make the other person look good and listen for the other person to feel understood. And how do you do that? Listen for accuracy. Not your assumptions. Now, most importantly, you have to breathe if you're going to do this. You need your oxygen. Your brain needs 20%. It demands 20% of your oxygen. And if you're not breathing, it affects your choice of words, your body language, your tone of voice, your ability to think straight. So we're going to do this together. I'm going to ask you to, in a second, to breathe in through your nose for 3 and exhale for 5. So here we go. Let's breathe in for 3 through our nose. 1, 2, 3. And exhale through our mouth for 5. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Great. You can even hear my voice has just gone down an octave. It's a lot more reassuring. And then your body language right now. Relax your forehead, drop your shoulders, and stop clenching your buttocks. And then finally, the quick hit here is when you really need to get into character, you really need to get into that moment, is ask yourself, what made you smile today? Think of that genuine moment that really made you smile to get into that moment where you are genuine. And when you are being genuine and real, here's the payoff to the other person. It's gonna trigger their oxytocin. They're gonna feel cared for because you're being real with them. And when you are being real, it's then gonna trigger their dopamine, the motivation reward. This was good. I want more of this. And so, ladies and gentlemen, when you're Mindset, your breath, and your body are all aligned, you are now ready for your feature presentation. Thank you.
